max is the worst ui ever I have to agree. Lightwave has a efficient ui and the shortcut are really useful make the modeling so fast but it's a bit static compare to maya and I guess its need the last command button which crucial. that the reason Modo has the best ui because a good combination of AI with simple command and interactive layout. But the new blender seems interesting even if I know I won't use it.
And by the way if free apps like blender where better than max or maya why professional would bother to pay so much money. Stop talking non sense. Blender is a great tool because it's free but I4m pretty sure if you had to pay 300 £ for it would be a lot different. But it's a bit off topic. I'm happy if blender improve because the other free apps are really useless if youy want to do a quality work.

i said if you look from game developer side(in fact i meant indie developers by mentioning the price) blender stands best(considering price/what it offers.)

Well I just to to put some things right. I won't say anything about "good" or "bad" but simply show the possibilities of the gui.

Blender's gui definitely is hihgly customable! If you don't know that you most probably missed the part about splitting the views.

Additionally the gui's confiuration is saved together with the model. So you can have for every model a unique, adjusted gui.



For organic shapes for example I have this gui layout with every button I need instantly reachable by mouse.

At the top area the settings for rendering.
To the right area the material settings.
And to the bottom is everything for mesh manipulation.

I as well have a adjusted gui for terrain editing, buildings, mechanics (like robots and machines) and abstracts.

Okay blender has no pictures on his buttons but instead text which describes what the button does.

Further more you can tab each of those little windows into each other as well as take a window out of a tabbed register by simple drag'n drop

So would you please state where the problem is, considering gui adjustment?

greetings
KDuke

the problem is that the blender gui got a bit messy and inconsistent over the years. it's too inflexible (hard to extend) and doesn't cut it anymore for the very comprehensive, feature rich application blender has become.

there also are no customizable keyboard shortcuts and it's not customizable on the button level (you can't change buttons or place your own).

so 2.5 will certainly be a huge improvement but this doesn't mean that blender isn't great and very useful already. i still find blender's current gui better than the one of many other applications like max or truespace.

Nope.

Hotkeys are totally cluttered and fixed. Menus are totally cluttered and fixed. No customizable toolbars, err no toolbars at all. Splitscreen? That's 19th century. You can in nowadays software open as many windows with new views as you like, and so on ...

The current UI is in fact still the first UI that is there since years. Devs prefered to throw in new tools instead doing something at the UI. And with every new bit Blender became even more cluttered, adding here a hotkey where was free space, adding there a new button where was free space ...

That now changes with 2.5. Was more than time that Blender Devs have a look for a more human UI

that's not fully true. to a certain degree you can already do toolbars, custom hotkeys and your own menus with python... and if you know c you can customize everything anyway since blender is open source.

edit: the hotkeys aren't cluttered. there is a system behind them and most of them are quite logical.

huh? look at modo, the unity editor or recent versions of adobe software and so on. they more and more use the non-overlapping split screen approach blender uses since over 10 years because it has proven to be much more user friendly than having to juggle floating windows around all the time.

they didn't postpone it because they were stupid or lazy but because they had to build a big enough developer community before the 2.5 project became feasible.

Very small degree unfortunately. But yes, you are right. I tend to generalize sometimes

Python? C? *Gigglemode on* Ah i see. And with C++ you can even build your own rendersoftware ... *Gigglemode off*

For me not really a valid argument, sorry. I want to use a software, not develop it



Hmm. I can choose to have a splitscreen layout when i want to. And have quickly discarded that layout. I was at pulling all the time to make the current needed view big enough to see what i want to see.

You can by the way with floating windows also build a splitscreen layout. That's the point. Other software is highly customizable. You can choose which way you want to work



Hmm, with an a bit more userfriendly UI they may have reached that point a bit earlier. I know lots of people that tried Blender without success and have left it very quick then

It brings simply more fame to implement a video studio or a fluid sim or a game engine instead changing an UI where the current users are happpy with because all the people who are not happy with the UI have long left Blender. Which means they waited as long as possible to do this unpopular step. Up to the point where there was no other choice. Years.

I don't say that Blender Devs are stupid or lazy by the way. They have my highest respect. I just wish i could reach all the stuff they have implemented without the need to have a this massive battle with the UI for even the most basic things as it is now. I personally cannot work with Blender. The UI is killing me.

That may be true, I make 25% of my total income off of tutoring people in 3d design, and most of them start of hating blender..... until they start really working with it. out of the people I've tutor'd I've never had anyone switch back off of blender once they figured it out.

that's very cumbersome.

all applications i know have a [maximize current view] hotkey. but i know... you don't like hotkeys.

no, they didn't wait as long as possible but as long as necessary. 2.5 is a huge amount of work and is only possible now that they have 2 or 3 full time developers (possible also because of the open movie money) and about 50 (more or less) active "free time" developers. some also work on blender as part of their university projects.

It's one click to switch to splitscreen ...



Now they have. Been a while that i have used a splitscreen layout last time ...

I have nothing against hotkeys. But i have a problem to work just with hotkeys