The current blender looks impressive! Had some doubts!

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi there,

I just checked the finished projects. It looks nice and impressive.

All the projects in there are fully made by only Blender?

I assume Blender can do modelling and animation right?

How about the Blender game engine? Are they same with Blender?

Can Blender compete with Softimage XSI especially the hair/fur thing?

I am not into 3d even I did before in early of 2003.

Do you think i can achieve the same quality of output and fast that I can achieve in Softimage XSI or Lightwave with Blender? Or you think Blender had a long long way to go before becoming a good product?

Can blender being exported into .x or .3ds so can be used in other DirectX game engines? Or Blender 3d modeller is only suitable for Blender game engine?

Is Blender game engine as strong and powerful as Doom 3 engine? Can it supports pixel and vertex shaders? HLSL? Powerful shadows and cel shading?

Will Blender had any problems with ATI Graphics Cards? I am using ATI Radeon 9600 Ultra Pro 128MB. I know my cards had some problems with Softimage XSI and Vue 4 Professional. The software will automatically close for no reasons.

As i understand that Blender is free, so i can use it for commercial purpose? Well actually i will use blender for hobby purpose, design some 3d stuff and upload in my new website.

I notice there are many other blender forums. So is elysiun forums the most reliable? Or i should post in different forums to get a reply for my question?

I saw that Blender had a new book - 2nd edition. Is that book compatible with the current and most updated version of Blender? If yes, I would like to get a copy from them. Is it good? Anyone read it before? Good for beginners like me? Most important i can learn step by step tutorials from there.

No worries, I understand the fact to be good in 3d, it is a matter of practice and time. I won’t think of creating some advance 3d animation is such a limited time.

Maya and 3ds max are hard to use. I think Softimage XSI is easy to use but is very expensive. Is Blender as easy to use as Softimage XSI?

Ok, why not someone tell me what Blender cannot do, but softimage xsi can do? So i can know what are the major weaknesses of blender.

Will Blender works fine on windows xp professional sp1 or sp2? I notice that there are many versions of blender and running on multiple platform.

I hope someone can answer my noob doubts! Please help!

Thanks.

2

OMG|! 13 questions! 13 Is ill omen :wink:

Unless stated differently, yes.

Right

Yes! One Code to Rule Them All

Hair/Fur is under heavy development, let’s sy ‘not yet’

The key point here is the ‘I’ :slight_smile:
Look at @ndy’s works, or endi’s etc. etc. their skill level
is exceptional and their images too, so Blender is mature, it
depends on the user :slight_smile:

As far as I know you can make standalone exe and use Blender game engine only

Cannot answer due to lack of info on Doom 3

Blender and ATI had problems due to ATI OpenGL implementation, but the issues are being worked on. At www.blender.org there are infos on compatibility

The GNU GPL license is very clear on this: yes.

elYsiun is the most vast user forum. www.blender.org holds developer forums.

Book is 2.3 guide, covering Blender 2.32 in detail and 2.33 as a last minute
chapter. It is Ok for all 2.3x series.

AFAIK Blender is the easiest of all :slight_smile:

Blender makes really awful coffee :slight_smile: Well, OK, cannot answer due to lack of deep XSI knowledge.

Yup.

Stefano

3

You can export to DirectX format in Blender 2.34 - look in the File->Export menu.

Is Blender game engine as strong and powerful as Doom 3 engine? Can it supports pixel and vertex shaders? HLSL? Powerful shadows and cel shading?

No, it’s not. However, Kester ‘alien-xmp’ Maddock, the lead game engine developer, has been experimenting recently with all sorts of tricky stuff, using GLSL. Have a look over here for a little preview: http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=4278

4

Thanks for the tip… will give it a try when i reach back home today :slight_smile:

5

Blender has many import/export scripts which include .x and .3ds from what I remember.

I think the important thing to remember is there is only an investment in time for Blender. You don’t have to pay for the product. Why not just download and play around with some of the tutorials and have a look at the Finished projects to get inspiration on what you can do with Blender.

Your questions sounds like the questions I might ask before making a large financial investment. :smiley:

Caleb

6

The Blender 2.3 Guide is very good. You can download the entire manual for free and also get the most up to date documentation at:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/
and
http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/htmlI/

The book can be purchased through the Blender Store or ordered through any bookstore. The advantage of purchasing the book is that the CD includes the .blend files for all of the chapters in the book. One of the chapters is a 30minutes + 30 minutes to create and animate a gingerbread man.

7

Interesting!

Gingerbread man from the Shrek 2…

Yeah, i will look into it.

But i had some problems with my monitor or graphic card at the moment…
might test blender fully later…

I had installed it and went throught page1.txt for basic training… well looks okay to me, but still had a long way to go before can be like you guys…

Can anyone tell me, what companies out there that used Blender for 3d game development, cinematics or any 3d simulations?

I just want to see how far had Blender went to. I saw Blender had a few conferences. Hmm tell me more?

Yeah, will get the book. But normally to order from Malaysia, take around 3 months (sigh, probably Blender had 3rd version of the book!)

Thanks ya for the tips. At least this forum had friendly people if compare to some other forums.

8

Hmmm, I recall getting my ass flamed for something like this. I started out with Maya and wanted to know how good Blender was. From using it, it is missing some of the flexibility that commercial software provides. One of the most important things being complex shaders. Blender uses a fixed model for shaders so some materials/effects can be harder to achieve like ocean shaders. Generally they will satisfy your needs and you can use external renderers to counter any issues you might come across.

You can even export to renderman compliant renderers so you’re output can rival the work of Pixar. The point remains (as S68 pointed out) is that it’s up to how good you are.

Yes, you can export Blender models as X3D and 3ds for use in other game engines. It has quite a few export scripts for game engines.

I wouldn’t think so. The Doom 3 engine is cutting edge stuff. There’s a reason that id software license their engines for hundreds of thousands of pounds. I think a lot of the Blender game engine has Python bindings which inherently makes it slower than other game engines which typically use C, C++ etc. Having said that, if you have a good graphics card and fast machine, you can make some nice looking games.

Haven’t used XSI but it’s easier than Maya. All the interfaces are hard when you are new to 3d but if you understand what you want to get from a 3d app, the interface becomes less of an obstruction.

I had doubts too mainly because I was sceptical that there could be so much functionality in free 3d software when packages that can do similar cost upwards of £200. But GIMP the free alternative to Photoshop, which I’d already used opened my mind to accept that free software can be as good as and better than commercial packages.

Companies prefer to admit they use commercial apps, possibly they might get a discount from the software by doing so. Normally you hear Maya was used on this or 3ds max on that. The fact is, studios use whatever gets the job done and they hack the code to make it do what they want so studios all over the world might use Blender but you would rarely hear about it.

Recently, there was a news item that said Blender was used for the previz of Spiderman 2. That is, the low quality animation sequences done before rendering. So, if it can handle the animations, all it needs is to be able to render well. As it can export to renderman compliant renderers and more, there’s no problem.

Blender can go as far as you need if you are prepared to write code to make it do what you want like the pros. If you’re not a pro, it will do what you need anyway.

9

Thanks again :slight_smile:

I got my answers now!

10

Well there is 14, you have to count the 0th question too :wink:
phew

There’s a thread around here somwhere about SP2
Blender seems to not like it, along to pretty much everything and everyone else (ok, exagguration, but still…)
[edit] Here we go: https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29556