blender 2.48

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-248/

Great! I am waiting for this

grease pencil ftw!

cool update. will check it out when uni's over in a couple of weeks.

julz

Which sites do you visit? They didn't mention that on the official Apricot blog!

DVD goldmaster is ready! It still needs several weeks until it reaches the purchasers!

I'm observing the project since February with excitement, although I realistically should continue developing with 3DGS, because I'm familiar and faster with it.

Hi

When I tried running the 2.48 version (zip download, put in folder, not installed) it asked for VS C++ redistrib files. I tried installing them but I don't have admim rights on the college PCs. With the previous version, 2.47 I had no problem.
Is there a solution for me whereby I can install the C++ files somewhere else and point to them. I assume it is trying to write to protected directories on the college PCs.

Any ideas please

Thanks

Yeah BLender is incredibly great free 3D complete 3D tool.
I've tried Retopolgy ; works great , I'll try the new scuplting functions.

The game engine has evolved a lot, but i don't think it is as fast as pure 3D engines, but can be good to prototype and
see hwo looks your 3D caracters and scene in action.

Didn't install it myself yet, so didn't know any help.
Now, I found this:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=138076&page=5

Hiya.

Huh. Cool. Love the feature set of Blender. Lots of awesome capabilities for this thing. ... Its a shame it's virtually impossible to learn and use if you already know how to do 3d. Blender shows that it's been written by 50 different people, none of which speak the same language. Too bad. Maybe when 2.5 comes out with its supposed "GUI re-work" it will become a force to be reckoned with...but as of now, it's one of those "WOW! It's got all the features that $6000 packages have...and it's FREE! Too bad it makes *no sense at all* to 99.9% of people out there."

Ex: Crtl-S isn't save in Blander...Ctrl-W is. Why? I'm sure in some language "W" is the letter for whatever word means "Save". Just my guess...

So, Blender is still one of those "COOL! ... but..." programs. Like having a free Lamborghini in your driveway...but to open the door you have to go the the back of the car and pull on the license plate. To start it you have to engage the parking break, turn on the stereo...to AM...insert the key...and turn the key at the same time you release the parking break. Of course, the manual only mentions putting in the key and releasing the parking break. To find out about the stereo you have to look under the topic "Recommended tires".

Haha, Paul_L_Ming, this was a great post. Thanks for putting a smile onto my face in the morning.

haha, that was great, a little over dramatic (the whole post) but still hilarious.

Thanks Pappenheimer,

I looked at the posts and they were interesting

Cheers

Drac.

@Paul_L_Ming

They key is to not give up after the first two weeks of studying blender .

OMG!1! i can't use an application where ctrl-s isn't save. i will have to get max. :p

btw, whats wrong with write ??

anyhow you made a funny post

I like Blender because its easy to use, he consumes little resources,gui in Blender better what in other programs, and he is FREE.

*Cough*

Blender isn´t really harder to use than any other comparable software.

Sorry but i have another opinion here. Problem starts with comparing it. It has a fixed hotkey UI. And that is basically it. This is awful. There is no other software out there with just a Hotkey UI. For good reason. Not everybody is made to work that way. I am one of them and have finally also given it up to wait for the since years promised UI improvements. What happens is that with every release the whole stuff becomes even more cluttered.

Blender is hard to learn and hard to use. This is my very own opinion and experience. Based on years of tries and battles with the hotkey UI of Blender. I would've given up 3D when Blender would be the only choice.

Good news is of course that Blender is powerful once you can master it. But that is the problem ...

the problem is approach. use the blender tutorials! noob to pro! they don't teach you how to model, they teach you how to use blender, and they'll get you there in no time whatsoever (i found myself very comfortable with the layout and window system in minutes).

easy to learn and use. this is my very own opinion and experience.

julz

Err. I know very well how to model, texture, render and animate. I do that long enough. But even with that knowledge and years of 3D experience i am in heavy trouble to find my way into Blender. Does that sound easy?

Hey, it is absolutely possible to have no pain at the evening from pressing the hotkeys. There is also no need to look into the manual for every little poop. Buttons have tooltips. Try that with hotkeys. And wow, you can even customize hotkeys and complete UI's in other software. How cool is that

Blender UI is love or hate. This software is not made for everybody. It has a very steep learning curve. It is the opposite of intuitive. Nearly not customizable. Hard to learn and hard to use

Blender does not use Windows GUI, but I think that this is a big plus.If you are accustomed to use the max, maya, then will be difficult for you to use Blender. Just have to get used to Blender to use it.
Blender is not a standard project, which I think are doing wonderful people.

My experience from university is that people who are new to 3D don´t have more problems with blender than with maya, max, lightwave or whatever.

When switching from one software you are very experienced with to another one there often is a lot of cursing involved though. But this also isn´t a blender thing and usually nothing that can´t be overcome with some weeks of patience. There is no user interface standard in 3D software. All of them are very different.

You get pain from using hotkeys? Do you have some problem with your hands or something?

I do not dispute that, in some cases difficult to use Blender, but not always. For example, I was hard it was to learn 3Dmax, 3Dmax this Professional Program, to study all of its possibilities I will take years, but Blender can learn for months, I needed a program that was able to -
to work on my weak computer (3Dmax is a great resources eater),work with the geometry, do UV unwrap, make animation , save the model in mdl7, Blender coped with all this,easy and fast, more than I did not need.

LOL, i just have waited for that question. I think we have them all now. I am too dumb, have no clue about 3D, am not willing to learn and not healthy enough to use Blender

Nope, all healthy and fine. It's just when i press hotkeys the whole day i get pain in my neck. You would too. I don't have that trouble with using my mouse for that job though.

And to prevent another misunderstanding, no, i have absolutely nothing against hotkeys. I use them too - where they make sense.

I have to disagree that there is no UI standard in 3D. They all have a somehow working Button or Icon UI, they nearly all are customizable. They nearly all tend towards the Windows UI too. Which is a big plus in learning and using.

What do you think why the big players creates such highly customizable UI's? It's all about the useage. You come from Maya? Then customize Silo to look like Maya. Big workflow plus. Big learning plus. You are in trouble to remember more than 10 hotkeys because you already know 100 from other software and would mix them permanently? Then just use this ten and use the button UI for the rest. Big workflow plus. Big learning plus. Under good circumstances you don't even have to touch a tutorial or the manual. You don't use the software permanently? Then you are lost with just hotkeys. You will have forgotten them when you come back. A hail to the icons and tooltips then that makes you remember what is what.

This is missing in Blender. You have fixed hotkeys, and that's it, besides a totally cluttered button UI. And they don't have a tooltip to explain the tool. They don't even have an icon to make you remember its function. Which means to have a steep learning curve before you can even do basic stuff.

Fact is that Blender has a weak UI. Even Blender makers knows that. And promises improvements since years. They always implement new tools instead though. Brings more fame.
Fact is also that i am not the only one who is in trouble with Blender UI. It is too special. I know enough who tried it and have given it up very quick.
Problem is, nearly just hotkey lovers stays with Blender. Rest migrates. And they don't really see anymore that the rest is in trouble with the UI.

No, I really don´t get neck problems from using hotkeys all day. You must sit in a very unergonomic way or so.

houdini:


maya:


lightwave:


XSI:


blender:


modo:


...and many others...

I don´t see any standard there. Also under the surface. They all are very different and they all are a lot more complicated than the typical office application.

Sure, the blender user interface has weaknesses (of course the others aren´t perfect either). The work on 2.5 is in full progress now. I think they aim for a release in mid 2009.

But blender already is great nevertheless and everyone should give it a chance. If it works for what you do then it will save you a lot of money and licensing trouble.

Congrats for not having problems:)

And again, no i am healthy. No it is not me. Yes, i sit in a economic manner. It is Blenders Hotkeys. I have no problems in other software, but became problems in Blender. Fact

May i suggest to have a look at the top of every software? There resides everything file menu. Except in Blender. Half of the file menu is somewhere in the middle of the software. Parts even hidden until you enter a mode. I have spent days hunting for one special tool and had to ask a Blender user in the end. Very intuitiveParts are so hidden that you will never reach them without help. Who pulls an invisible handler at the top for example.

May i also suggest to have a look left and right of the software. Nearly every software has Buttons with Icons and Tooltips. Except Blender ...

May i also suggest to have a look at the customization posibilities. Every shown software is highly customizable. You can define your own hotkeys, you can customize your toolbars. Except Blender ...

It is out of question that you and lots of others are comfortable with it. Nothing bad with that. Blender has some very neat features. I don't complain about that. That is not the point. But i cannot reach them because the UI is in the way. I simply cannot agree that Blender is easy. It is not. I have tried it. Again and again. It is one of the hardest to learn and hardest to use software i know of.

I have over years again and again wasted my time with trying to learn Blender. I know it since 2000. I have spent complete Weeks with reading through tutorials and looking at videos. And everytime i gave up the hunt for the missing tools at one point because it became too much. It killed the fun. I am not made to learn 300 hotkeys. Yes i know, most Blender User talks about 20-30 for the mainwork. But even that is too much. I personally would give up 3D when i had to use Blender. That's for sure

Blender also has a file menu and buttons and icons with clear and concise tooltips. These icons are not at the left or right of the work area but at the top, bottom, left and right.

I'm not a modeler, and I don't see much difference, and I took the time to go through the tutorials and learned it well enough to get around. I think I agree with you about the heavy use of hotkeys, but I also would think you could do everything with the mouse too if you knew where the appropriate button was located. That's what the excellent tutorials are for. Even so, the next version supposedly allows those customizable UIs, so it's simply a matter of time.

half of that is in fact wrong. blender does have tooltips, it does have a mouse clickable gui, and you can set your bars up to do basically whatever you want them too. the only downfall you said that i agree with is the fact that you cant reset the hotkeys to your own settings, but once you learn them anyways its not an issue. and come on its logical-
e-extrude
g-grab
s-scale
r-rotate
e-edgetools
k-cut
u-unwrap toolz

xyz-transform on [key]'s axis.

it all makes sense.

I'm still new to blender, but when I decided to write down each use of a feature or a set of keys in one text file, I got a grip on it.
Each session I open blender and this text file, so I can read anything that I forgot. And, when I use an additional feature, I write into this text file how to use this feature.

I use the VLC media player to play the blender tutorial videos in higher speed to get an idea whether they are about something that I want to know. I learn by a combination of looking the videos, trying different buttons in blender, which open lists of tools. I learned so far importing, exporting, splitting the areas, open the uv view, adding image, marking seams, layout uvs, render to texture ambient occlusion, switching between the different modes like object mode, edit mode, texture mode, sculpt mode, and use them, moving the view with the middle mouse button in combination with Ctrl, Shift and Alt, editing with the right mouse button, confirming the change with the left mouse button, undo with ctrl+z, and - a year before I didn't believe it - but I get sort of used to it!

Thanks to ventilator, who never got tied to make plugins for blender and acknex, and who advertised this free tool with words and a tutorial!

****
Just want to add that there is a book coming about the game engine part of blender, and the old book about the bge (blender game engine) is available as a .pdf for download.

http://www.yofrankie.org/

Again, do hotkeys have tooltips? No, they don't.

Yes. Blender does have a button menu and tooltips. But you loose yourself in finding the right tool here. The button menu is totally cluttered. And i disagree that it is customizable enough. It is not. You cannot rearrange the menus. You cannot union the important parts to one toolbar. And you loose yourself in digging in the submenu of the submenu of the submenu. Means when the menu item is there. And not hidden in another mode.

The method to handle Blender is to use hotkeys therefore. The learning videos are made using hotkeys. The manual is made using hotkeys. It is the official way to use Blender. And then we are back at the point above. Hotkeys do not have tooltips.

One last question. How comes that so much people try Blender and fail at it when the UI is so great as everybody tells me here? All dumb?

Anyways, i know that this discussion is useless. Others simply leave it alone and never discuss. And that is what i do now too. I don't use Blender besides some small conversion jobs. And so i don't really mind about this software. It's just that i can never agree when somebody calls Blender easy, it simply isn't.

why does every little newbie age 14 seem to have 3ds max and doesn't know how to make a box and export it to fbx/3ds? the answer is: no one likes manuals. people expect from technology that it does what you tell it. instantly. but it doesn't. no big 3d suite does. you'd be as helpless in max as you are in blender without a manual/training. but "blender" isn't cool enough to dig into, so they crack max and think it'll make em a great artist. so yes, all dumb, at least the majority. look at maya's ui, look me in the eye and say, "it's cleaner, nicer and less cluttered than blender's". but every week we get several questions from said newbies who try to "export animations to 3dgs from maya" and alike.

i didn't master blender myself, but i recently learned lightwave, so i know exactly what it means to dig into a new tool. i had to buy a book and a training dvd, otherwise i would have probably sold it already.

The way you often take part in blender threads makes me think that you are angry about it or something. I simply felt like doing some counter posts since I can´t agree to the generalization that "blender is hard to use".

Some of your points are right. For example it is the most downloaded 3D program so of course a huge number of people will fail using it and complain about it loudly.

What programs have you used before? Have you ever tried maya for example? Do you find that extremely complex program easier to learn than blender?

EDIT: I agree with broozar´s post!

@Broozar: Which training DVD do you have?

I am going to order this, I hopt it helps me learn Blender better.

http://www.yofrankie.org/?p=605

Thanks, that is what i wanted to hear

I am not angry, i just have another opinion. A opinion that fits to lots of others. When Blender would provide a more human UI more people would stay with it. Blender UI is one of the examples how a UI should not be.

Still, it gets the job done freaking fast. I see nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, i never said Blender isnt good or isn't powerful

I checked a lot of 3d tools. I actively worked with MED, Truespace, Blender, Lightwave, Vue, Cinema4D, ZBrush, Bodypaint, Reflection, Monzoom, an old version of 3d studio and smaller tools like Milkshape, Fragmotion and Ultimate Unwrap.
I tested XSI and some DAZ tools for a short time.

The sad story is: Most of them differ. You need to learn their UI every time. Some of them like ZBrush or Ultimate unwrap are really exotic. Blender is not that strange.
The interface of Blender even looks better than Maya's or XSI's. But all three of them allow to work fast and efficiently if you know them well.

I could get into Blender very fast (with the help of the Blender book). But I realized that my Lightwave is simply better, more powerful, more stable and faster and provides some more options for modeling and rendering. Though Blender is even better in terms of unwrapping and animation.

Most of the time I used books or video tutorials to learn new 3d tools. You have to master it and you cannot get into it in a few minutes / hours.

At the end it does not matter. If you can make a fantastic 3d-model, if you can texture it, paint details and do good lighting and rendering, then you will beat every spammer easily no matter what tool you have choosen. There are fantastic Blender artworks and there are fantastic pictures from all the other 3d tools.
And the best of them are mostly made with the help of ZBrush. And guess what: ZBrush has the most weird and exotic interface of all of them. But this does not hold the real artists back

I agree. of course a lot of it comes down to speed an efficiency but you can get the same results with med (on real time 3DGS models) as you can with any other program. its just a lot of extra work. I think sometime this week im going to start working on a project that uses only med, and gimp just to show that you can most of the time use even very basic software to get the job done.

Blender sucks!

it's a stupid program. but a ready monkey face? now it's really silly.

Wow, this was a qualified and well-founded statement.

But just shows again the weak side of Blender. The UI is simply not made for everybody

the question is if a gui made for the masses is very desirable. :p

Just when you want the masses to be able to use it. That's true

I know this problem very well. This is a trade-off. You have to find some kind of a good way to please both: beginners and advanced users. But both groups need quite different interfaces.

Professionals:
If you are used to a program and if you are skilled user then you want something like the UI from Lightwave: key-shortcuts and much space for modeling. You dont want to have the interface in your way. You dont want to have bright ugly buttons, distracting from your work and your design.
You want a perfect UI with each function on the best logical place, easy to get.
Since modeling differs from text-processing the UI will differ very much from text-processing.
You have to learn something new to become a master.
XSI, Blender, Lightwave and ZBrush are like this. They are clearly made for professionals.

Beginners:
But if you are a beginner, then you want to have colorful easy to read buttons, the more the better. You want your program to behave like another program you know, maybe like a text processor.
This is easy to understand but not efficient.
I think MED and Milkshape are something like that. Even Max and C4D tend to belong to this category. The huge amount of MAX warez-users proves that I am probably right with this assumption.

Later you will understand that it is bad to press buttons again and again for the same task. You will understand that some new concepts and ideas like an edit-mode, a sculpt-mode and similar are new but make much sense. There are no comparisons to the well-known world of text-processing.

I wouldn't call me a beginner. And i am in heavy trouble with just using hotkeys ...

No, you are in trouble if you use the mouse only. Even in a text-processor I use almost only hotkeys. I use hotkeys in my programming environment. It is much faster to press F9 to compile instead to go into a menu and select one of these options there.

In a modeling software I do so many tasks again and again that I simply HAVE to shortcut. I HAVE to use keys otherwise I would need three times or even more time for the same task. I use move, rotate, scale, extrude again, again and again. It would be really dumb to not use hotkeys.

But yes, you can go into menus and call these functions via mouse-click in all these tools (including Blender). But this will take much much longer.

If you really use a tool like that then you use hotkeys automatically. If not then you are not using this tool, plain and simple.

just to throw in there:
i hate Max's overlapping window interface. i had to use it for work experience, so the next day i brought in my laptop with blender on it and did everything on that before exporting to Max. maybe there's something i can do about it, but i will not because i have perfectly good free software that never has that problem and has a very useful and infinitely customisable non-overlapping window interface.

i don't think that it can be argued that blender is less easy to learn. instead, people are just more likely to be accustomed to a different interface, and hence reject blender's.

julz

well, the gui is the only point keeping me with cinema4d. i am used to it, i can use shortcuts there, too. its the same with photoshop and gimp. i am used to photoshop at work and thus am having great trouble when using gimp at home, so i am very happy that i am allowed to do private stuff at my workplace

but i wished i would have the strength (and time) to dive deeper into blender since i'd love to use it for more than just fluids

That's the point. I don't use the mouse only. The UI of my favourite render software is highly customizable. I use a few hotkeys, i use buttons for the rest. I use what makes more sense and what is more comfortable for me.

But yeah, i am no professional. I am not under the pressure to work as fast as possible. I have the time to scratch my left ear with the right hand

Congratulation! But to be serious: Almost all tools allow this. I can change every hotkey, menus and palettes in Lightwave. BUT: I will never do this. I rather learn the existing ones. The reason is easy. I often follow existing tutorials and it would be a nightmare if they talk to press Shift+F and I have to check what that means for my own custom set of hotkeys.

But I work parallel in tools like ZBrush, Lightwave, Bodypaint, Milkshape and Fragmotion. They all have different hotkeys. The same counts for MS Word vs. OpenOffice. But most users can deal with this. It is just a little training.

I have to learn so much Karate techniques, Katas and Japanese words for my other hobby. This fits in my good old brain. So I am sure a few hotkeys will also fit into your younger one

Even more important that the standard UI is as user friendly as possible



But you can be sure that the menu item Save saves your stuff in all cases. See the point?

Yes, i know, the professional way is a bit different. You have to care of the most effective workflow. Time is money. But fastest is not equal best. What's wrong to provide both, hotkeys for the advanced useage, and a good organized button UI for the easy entry? Nearly all software does it.

To say it again, i have absolutely nothing against hotkeys. But in Blender it is a bit too much for my flavour

Always this issue as fast as Blender is mentioned..

If the GUI with buttons and menus with text and icons and click select is the ultimate effective way why have not the grand piano, silver flute or electric guitar manufacturers adopted this god sent gift?

With any instrument you have to spend time and train, if not willing you have to choose a simpler tool.

I'm totally lame on using all key features in Blender, but saying that application is bad is like saying the grand piano, silver flute or electric guitar is a totally mess and completely wrong constructed.

Got the point? If your not willing to spend the hard time to be an artist on the particular instrument, just move on and grab the tool that fit your person.
I have a hard time to grasp all of the key combinations of Blender but I would have had that on the grand piano, silver flute or electric guitar also, so ...

I'll stop here and if anyone think two or three steps further they move on, otherwise I gotcha!


Now on the purpose of the thread, anything useful for Gamestudio users that wasn't before 2.48?

http://www.yofrankie.org/

yay!

bugger that's a slow download.

julz

Because they are not software?

A UI should have both. Hotkeys AND a good button UI. That easy

I, and many others, am not made to just work with hotkeys. In other software that is no problem. Because they have a good working button UI.

Imagine when you would tell all software makers that they would just be allowed to use hotkeys in the future. I guarantee that they loose most of their users.

A sucking UI that is told to be cool has nothing to do with being an artist. When i break my fingers because the software makers have forgotten to implement a human UI then i keep my hands away. I don't use Blender for exact that reason. There is other software around. Which gives me not this massive battle with its UI.

To stay with your analogy, Blender is a flute with strange holes. It is a piano with secret buttons to bring up the keys. This instrument is odd.

You are exaggerating a lot. There are buttons, tabbed pages, menus and more in Blender.

Yup there are buttons, tabbed pages, menus and more in Blender. But not in a useful manner so that a normal guy can work in a comfortable way with it. I cannot.

I simply have another opinion.

Maybe you are normal and other ones are not. Maybe this tool is not for "normal" casual average people. Maybe you have to be a skilled artist to use it.

It is a tool and it does its job.

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-taskforce25/
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5

by the way, the 2.5 development is interesting to follow if you are interested in such things.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=139677&page=13

there are also some nice other projects going on like projection painting. you can already downloads builds from graphicall.org.

there you go, most of the most common used functions all in button form without (excluding grab, scale and rotation)

Just a skilled Blender User. Because Blender is so unique. But that doesn't make an artist. That makes maybe just a Blender User that defeats a bad UI

By the way, can Blender now Ngons? Or is it still stuck to Quads and Tris?

Nice Layout. Would you mind to share?

no, and that's the only real disadvantage of blender to me. that's why i use modo besides blender. while i got used to quad only modeling for a lot of things i still miss ngons.

internally the ngon data structures are already there though and used for some things like beveling. the programmer working on it said that ngons are 90% done but the last 10% always take the most effort in programming. maybe sometimes next year... the release after 2.5 or so...

http://www.yofrankie.org/download/

what do you need? want me to save a file set up like this? or do you want a step by step tutorial to set it up. your more likely to get the first of the two since its much quicker for me to do

wow. i played Yo Frankie!

i was so impressed by how epically terrible it is.

such a dodgy piece of rubbish, with some okay visuals.

so many times i would jump in seemingly friendly objects (such as a tree that appears intentionally bent for me to jump on, or a tree stump that's the perfect height and position to sit on for safety from a charging ram) just to find my character stuck in the "free-fall" pose while he slides around on top.

enemies usually won't notice me, and then if they do the rams follow me for ages, even when i'm beyond their reach, and their attacks work only sporadically.

the spring is knocked around way too easily and jumping off it is shamefully inconsistent. the control method (left and right to rotate, forward and back to move; as opposed to just running in a direction relative to the camera) is hopeless for a platformer, and this especially shows when trying to bounce repeatedly on the spring.

i was given no indication of where my goal was, and after getting there with some spring-work simply to explore the level i found that i was given an end-game sequence that could only be left by leaving the game. playing again, i had to go out of my way to avoid going to the exit before anything else on the upper levels, and that was still without incentive (what's the bone-count thing? no indication of how many apricots or butterflies i picked up), and rats repeatedly killed themselves (even more often than i killed myself) if they were ever near lava.

the gliding system is no fun. maybe it would be if the mechanics were better-understood, but they make no effort to train you in gliding.

who else has thoughts regarding it?

julz

yes, there are many issues but it looks quite nice and brought neat improvements to the blender game engine.

they had a lot of problems with the project. you can read about this on some blender artists forum thread. first they concentrated on crystal space but this didn't work out fast enough and then some people left the team because they didn't get along and at the end they had to come up with something in a very short time.

JulzMighty, you are right with the observations, but I'm sort of "in love" with this project, and I hope that they will continue it, because I like the thought that 'once upon a time' I'm able to make everything in blender when I make a game!

Did you have a look at the tutorial videos, too?

yes, i love blender, and i really hope it did bring a lot of improvements.

but i guess given how much i enjoyed their movie projects, i was expecting something better designed. you could say it's quite robust -- consistently that bad .

i did have a look at videos, and much of the time it appeared they had the same issues i was having.

also, it'll be a while before i get over the fact i wasn't allowed to stand on a waist-high tree-stump.

but i'm glad it was good for blender.

julz

once you get the hang of gliding, it's pretty insane actually. could probably glide forever (as you can see i glide UP in the lava bit at the end). perhaps this was not intended, though; i haven't seen video demos where they glide this much! this is me playing, btw:


julz

How did you achieve that? Do you use a joystick?

nope, just keyboard. there are a couple of angles where you can stay there and he'll float for ages, and making ever-so-slight adjustments allows him to lift up somehow.

i couldn't do anything super in the video because it was getting much less smooth when running video-capture software; but i managed two much cooler things than in that video with gliding:
1. flew around and around in circles while making slight adjustments to lift my character up when he lost height, to maintain flight for as long as i wanted;
2. ya know where you come out of the lava level? i flew from there to the game-exit in one go

so now it's much, much less frustrating. but that's partly because i can work around certain problematic game mechanics: throwing sheep into water and then jumping off them; and jumping off the spring. both are very inconsistent, and the control scheme doesn't allow for much fine-tuning in your jumps. however, i will concede that this control method was practically a necessity for gliding the way they designed (which i like, design-wise, but execution wise could've been much better).

julz

yay! the 3d view has been added back to blender 2.5. it starts to look like blender.

some updates about 2.5 development in case anyone is interested:

http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/blender-25-project/
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/WinterCamp

Thanks, this is indeed interesting.

blender gets a better ui, blender kills some commerical 3d apps.

ok, the 2.48 ui is ok when you get used to but, if it had a better or max-like ui more users d use it.

2.5 looks nice.

max has one of the worst guis i know. horrible. :p they better use other guis for inspiration.

Yes. I agree. I prefer something like Lightwave and Modo. Somebody once told me: There are GUIs for fast learning (Max, MED, Milkshape) and there GUIs for fast working (Lightwave, Blender, XSI). So it probably depends on the point of view. A professional will probably end up with the second ones. But some people are lazy and stay for an entire lifetime with one software because they are used to it.

Isn't that point of view a bit too subjective and emotional?

A professional uses the tool that does the job best ...

define "best"...

working speed is sure makes it better than slower ones. I am no modeller nor i tried all of this tools.(either in long or short term). Machinery_Frank is a modeller or at least works with modellers or at least more into modelling than me.

i tried Max for a short time, at that time it looked nice to me. As a noob in the first sight, max was way more friendly to use than blender or XSI(modtool).

If i were modeller i would try and learn Blender rather than paying that Price to Max. It's clear that it makes the job done,it's free,has a laaarge userbase, and more or less in same quality with Max, even competes with it. Of course quality of the outcome depends on the artist but i didnt see any area that blender is weaker than max.(Blender artists has great portfolios, as great as the <insert any hi-end modelling software here> artists'.)

ok, a lot offtopic now back to topic. 2.5 has nice new features. It's free, considering price and features, it can be counted as better(from the game modeller/developer vision, not much rendering stills and such.).

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

As told, the ones that are not comfortable with the UI simply leave. So sure there are just Blender lovers left ...

But doesn't the fact that so much people are in trouble with the current Blender UI tell you that there must something wrong with it?

and then? if you want to customize your layout some more (more splits, change area sizes,...)? that's cumbersome with an application which isn't designed for it.

max, maya, blender,... had this since their first versions in the nineties.

not really. sure there are problems with blender's gui but not really more than in most other applications. in the 3d-animation classes at my university people new to 3d were in a lot of trouble with houdini and maya too. i guess blender also is much easier to give up on since no money investment is involved with it.

First off I guess the whole problem in this thread is not where Blender's limits and possibilities are but the way people choose their words.


Alright! They are indeed fixed. And that you don't like the layout of the hotkeys is completely ok to me. Though I don't know why you fall back to hotkeys. I was talking of the graphical user interface.


I think here is the place where the confusion comes in. In my point of view menus are not fixed. As you can see I am able to put the menus everywhere I want them.
Most probably you are actually talking of the small movable registers in themselfs. Within these boxes the gui is indeed not customizable anymore.
But I would like to ask you to be more precise in your statement then.
Otherwise it will lead to confusion and mutual statements which are too inaccurate to be able to meet at a point where everyone is satisfied (even when not thinking the same way, except for fanboys) with the others statements.


I want to express here again to be cautious with the words chosen.
This statement is inappropriate as this has nothing to do with modern or old.
It is a way to design a UI.

Maybe you might say something more like "Splitscreen? I prefer windows as they are movable more freely"

And to be on the safe side here. I didn't take your statements because I think you're unable to communicate correctly.
It's more because I have been too lazy to browse back in this thread's pages.
So please don't take this personally ok?

Others did make those mistakes as well, including me as I just noticed, reading my own post

To sum this whole shit I wrote up:
Everybody please reread your own post before posting it if it might be understood in a completely other way you have intended.

greetings
KDuke

As told, i tried splitscreen layouts, and was not convinced

PS: Sorry for this long post! Though as I have learned the theories about communications and their pitfalls I just HAD to analyze one of the posts here ^^

greetings
KDuke

You are right. Let's be a bit less emotional. Sorry when i have harmed somebody's feelings


Hmm, i simply have to disagree here. Too much people who tries Blender give it up very quick. And nearly every novice needs to be convinced first to stay and try again and again. Much more than at other software. Which shows that there must be a bigger problem, not just the standard first user problem. My whole personal experience with the Blender UI is frustration. And it's not that i am brand new to 3D. Anyways, i think we will never reach a consensus at that point. Somebody who is comfortable with Blender may even not longer be able to see the problem. And maybe this problem even disappears with Blender 2.5. We will see

blender gets downloaded several million times a year. i guess this means that it gets tried more than any other 3d-application. of course many people will give up quickly and complain about it loudly.

i can't imagine that you will like blender 2.5. you have totally different idea about what a gui should be like. maybe because you are spoilt by truespace.

It was for a long time the only free 3D alternative. Sure it gets downloaded a lot. And how much stays and works with it then? And how much erases the file quickly ?

Hmm, i use Blender as a converter for some special needs. But i am no Blender "User" ...



I tried again and again since several years. I have wasted weeks and months to battle with the UI. Is that quickly?



Maybe you will be surprised

Well, unbelievable but true, i use more software than trueSpace. I use in fact lots of software. Everybody who makes games does. I am spoiled by the software that does the job. And i am more or less comfortable with them all. Except one. Current Blender UI is the only UI that i really heavily dislike

with spoilt i meant "verdorben". don't know if i used that word correctly.

it's impossible and i think not even desirable to create a gui which is liked by everyone.

...in your like for freely moveable windows you seem to be in a minority since like i already mentioned a lot of popular software goes for non-overlapping guis now.

....hmmm i have downlaoded blender yesterday. and today i have created my first model with it. Shure,... its not easy to use, but after 5 ours reading dokumentation on the blender.org website, i have created a model without troubles.

And today i say: I AM A BLENDER-LOVER. (I also have worked with 3dsmax, maya, cinema 4d, truespace (i don't like truespace), and many other....)

I have understood you very well

As told, trueSpace is not the only software i use ...



But it's very possible to create a more user friendly UI so that also humans can use it :P

You impliment here that i am unique with my aversion against Blender UI, that i am the only one in the whole world that has problems with it. But i am ways not



Congrats, and best of luck with it

I had also a lot of trouble with Blender. I downloaded Blender several times but i could not work with the UI. Impossible.

I worked with Milkshape, gameSpace, trueSpace, Cinema4D, Lightwave and even MED.
No problem. But the UI of Blender is "for me" the hell.

i don't think i implied that. you imply though that blender users are not human. :p

if you look around a bit you will see that truespace is at least as disliked for its gui as blender. i don't think blender is very special in this regard there just seem to be more prejudices because some people find the whole open source software thing a bit weird. it can't be any good so they don't give it as much time as they give their unlicensed max.

Yup, Blender UI is the proof that Aliens exists

I thought it was clear that this was meant as a joke



Yes. That was the old 6.6 UI. Officially completely icon driven. The opposite to Blender, which is officially completely hotkey driven. Two extremes.

You could even there fully customize the hotkeys though. And surprisingly trueSpace is still mentioned as one of the most beginner friendly 3D apps ever. Never heard such a statement about Blender

But i don't want to introduce a Blender vs trueSpace discussion here. Featurewise Blender even wins. But to repeat myself again, i am not only using trueSpace. And have in none of them so massive problems with the UI like in Blender.



That's the problem. Most Blender users aren't longer aware of how special the Blender UI really is. It is VERY special

There was a time when Blender was the only real free 3D alternative. I would've been glad to save the money, i never had this much. But i have nevertheless spent hundrets of bucks for a rendersoftware. And that was not because of prejudices. But because the Blender UI didn't let me do my job. A a bit more userfriendly UI and i would be a Blender User nowadays ...

Maybe we should consider discussions about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity as a waste of time.
(And bandwidth)
Subjectivity goes out of questions.

There will be no consens, you´ll both go round in circles until the sun swallows the earth.

May I use this discussion to ask the wizard of blender2gs whether he cares to release the blend-file of the animated model of his animation tutorial of blender?

I often read stories about users in the Lightwave and Modo forums using Blender as an additional tool in their pipeline e.g. for animating dynamics, water or even characters. Then they save it as point oven and render in Lightwave or Modo.

They do what artists just do: using the tools to create art.

Many users dislike the UI of ZBrush and I understand them. ZBrush is different. But did you realize the word "different"? This is all. This describes it perfect. Just like ZBrush, Blender is well structured, logic but different. And a new user has to learn it. If he/she is not willing to learn it, then it is a loss, a tool less, less possibilities, but no reason to bring up so much affection against a software. It is not a failure of this software, the user fails here.

I just knew that the good ol "you have no clue about anything because you don't bend to the Blender UI" argument will come here in this discussion. It always comes when i discuss with a Blender user. Everything and anything guilty except Blender, heh. Thanks for confirming my prejudices



Indeed. A tool is a tool. And good enough as long as it does the job. Blender doesn't do the job for me because of its bad UI ...

as Frank said,

blender not doing it's job is not it's fault, it's your fault. You cant make it do the job. As for the blender bein able to job, there are plenty of evidence(see some blender artist's portfolio) it can do the job.

Thanks for explanation. I already know that i am too dumb for the world

Should've known that it makes no sense to discuss with Blender users ...

omg, sry.

btw, i dont use it, and hate the ui. But blender is good.

Sorry too. I am simply a bit frustrated that you can never talk to Blender users without the usual result. Arguments? Who cares. The holy grail is under attack ...



That's all i said too. I never said Blender is bad. I just said that the UI is bad enough that Blender is useless for me, and that 2.5 may bring relief here. And whoosh the discussion goes the usual route: Blender has best UI ever, i am too dumb for everything (user's fault) because i say Blender UI is bad, am not willing to learn ...

Alright.

So in nutshell Blender has bad UI because it is splitscreened and has horrible GUI.

Then take some time and make it like in Max, XSI or anything. They have split screens too, at least when I tested Max '09 it had split 4 screens.

The confusion in the GUI comes from the lack of experience. If all of the GUI's would be that customizable, people would be horrified of the basic Windowsian blocky toolmenubars.

Myself? I love it. I can have all the windows I want and need in order and placement I need. There is absolutely zero "cluttering" or being bad. The anti-blenderians are just inexperienced of the GUI-system. At least I haven't seen senior Blender user with having sad face everytime they launch it.

why do you need it? probably it's buried somewhere in my backups (and would take long to find) if i still have it at all.

I never really said that splitscreen is bad, just that i personally dislike it. My software offers me splitscreen too. But not only. Blender though just offers splitscreen when you want more than one window.

Anyways, you have convinced me that splitscreen is no argument for or against. That is indeed a thing of personal flavour. Count me as convinced at that point.

But yeah, the Blender UI is horrible for me.



Nope.

I definitely don`t lack of experience. I've used and seen lots of software over the years. And to repeat myself, 3D is also nothing new to me.

The confusion comes form a UI that follows no standards. Blender has menu items all over the place (parts at the top, parts in the middle, parts left, parts right, parts hidden by mode, and at absolutely curious places ... i talk for example about the settings menu at the top that you can pull down, means when you know that there is a settings menu, or about menuparts that just appears when you have entered a special mode), is officially completely hotkey driven (I am simply not made to use just hotkeys. And NO, i don't have anything against hotkeys, i use them too.) with the limit that you can't even customize these hotkeys, every new tool just gots added over the years where there was free space left, means curious hotkeys and button constellations (there is just the word cluttered for it), i talk about buttons where i don't really know are they active or inactive. I was more than once trapped by this. Is hilighted active? Is it really a this big effort to make a button animation that is pressed down? ...

I also talk about things like the odd DOS load/save dialogue for example. Gives me half an heart attack every time i need to load or to save something. But yeah, Blender is made for Linux. So count that one out when you want.

A button or icon driven UI has buttons or icons, means this UI has in best case tooltips and/or a symbol that can tell you what tool awaits you. This is what i call intuitive.

Hotkeys don't have symbols. Hotkeys have no tooltips. Hotkeys even don't tell you that they are there. Now go figure ...

In Blender we talk about a UI where you have to learn everything from tutorials or manual. Nothing is intuitive. There is no chance to figure anything out by yourself. And you better never ever forget your needed hotkeys. Means the workflow is as follow: starting Blender, starting manual, starting a Blender forum, starting tutorial, and first SEARCH ...

I have for example still not found how you can simply move in the workspace. This is very first basics. Such things should jump right into your face when the UI is good. And even here i get quickly stuck. Middle mouse button at least rotates the workspace, and you can zoom in and out with scrollwheel. Fine, but not enough. I could not model that way. And again i am at the point where i would have to open the manual, or to ask somebody ...

And what is this curious red-white ring with the fadecross good for? And and and ...

That's what i talk about when i talk about the bad UI of Blender. It simply is bad arranged (and that you can put parts to other locations doesn't really help. I don't even know which part does what, so how can i arrange it?), it has a very steep learning curve, is hard to handle, and is counter intuitive. I stay with my opinion, it is an example of how a UI should not be.



*cough*. Not every Windows software has to have blocky toolmenubars. And not every UI has to be this limited than the Blender UI. Give me at least customizable hotkeys, that would help alot ...



I'm fine with that. Best of luck.



We will never have a consensus at that point.



Because those with the sad face have already left. And never became a senior user.

So I was a bit misleading. I meant the experience with Blender.

there is no standard in 3d software guis. if you sit a newbie in front of maya or houdini he will be totally lost without a manual or tutorial. it took me weeks to get somewhat productive with maya. have you ever tried maya or houdini or some other high end software like that? it would be interesting to hear your opinion about them...

i don't think you can expect to learn 3d software just by intuition without ever having to look something up.

when learning blender my biggest problems were the trackball navigation (until i found the preferences - but nowadays almost every tutorial mentions the preferences first so i don't really see the problem with it) and that there were no transform widgets like i was used from maya (transform widgets got added as an option in later blender versions). i didn't have any serious problems with the rest of the gui.

the normal windows file dialog wouldn't really work for blender since in blender the file browser is also meant for browsing into other blender files for appending and linking objects. if you absolutely need a windows file dialog you could open one with a few lines of python and put this python script into a menu somewhere.

they are working on that right now. it simply wasn't feasible to work on it earlier.

With Maya the GUI was not very much of a problem because it is all windoze-like. The hardest part about learning maya is just learning what all the things do.

Kloppt Euch!

I think Vent is perfectly right here.
Frank has mentioned it, too.

It doesn´t matter if you take Max, Lightwave, Maya or Blender.
You´ll need a lot of experience and patience to get along with all bells and whistles.
It´s just a matter of taste, not a matter of different approaches.
I´ve evaluated the demo version of Lightwave, I´ve downloaded Truespace, Sketchup, Blender and other countless modellers.
To me, blender makes the best impression.
Indeed, the learning curve is steep, just like in every other advanced modeller.

Three years ago I switched from Paint Shop Pro to The Gimp.
I had a lot of headaches, but after two months I was glad that I´ve switched.
Now I´ve evaluated the demo version of Photoshop and I was disappointed. It just feels wrong to me.

But you can find a lot of Photoshop users that will bash Gimp.
It just feels wrong to them.

So I tend to say that it is 100% a matter of taste which tools someone prefers.

Don´t blame me for my awkward germlish please.

if buttons or menus look like windows gui elements or not doesn't make much difference to me. there are many things in maya which aren't very likely to be figured out by intuition. the hotbox, mouse gestures, viewport navigation,... just like with blender you have to read some tutorials first. ...and once you got the hang of the basics then maya starts to get really complicated with its DAG node system and so on.

That is out of question. 3D is very complex. And you will always have a learning curve. Even more when you are completely new to 3D. But an edgeloop stays an edgeloop

That there is no standard for 3D software is out of question too. But there is some other kind of standard. Blender is the only software i know that officially completely relys at hotkeys. Which is simply not made for everybody.



Again consensus. Reading Tutorials and the Manual and asking at a forum is part of the job of learning a new software. This is not what i question.

But i can expect that not every new step means to have a massive battle with the UI.



Those are exactly the two i was never able to test. Tried Maya PLE eons ago. That one crashed the first ten minutes ten times. And i have uninstalled it quickly then. I had similar problems with Houdini Free. But here i was even not able to start it. Crash at startup. I haven't even seen the interface. Even after contacting these guys and asking for help we couldn't get it sorted. A pity, i was at searching for an useful bones system ...

I think i had also GMax installed at one point. And got scared by it. But that was this long ago that i am not this sure anymore.

I tried Softimage XSI modtool. No problems with the UI. I tried Poser, i tried Bryce, i tried Art of Illusion, Milkshape, Fragmotion, Wings, etc. etc. . All the stuff you can get for not this much money or no money at all. Always without bigger problem besides the normal first steps hassles.

I had my looks at other software and still have it. Blender stays my all time favourite when it comes to UI problems though. That's simply my personal experience with it.



That's where the discussion started. Let's have a look how 2.5 turns out. Maybe the current discussion becomes obsolete then

Instead, of arguing again and again without much change of the arguments, let's start a thread where blender users help blender users.
Let's collect hints and tricks and simple short cuts which one or another could have missed.

ventilator advertised blender on this forum for a long long time.
And, he offered magnificent tools that helped using blender for 3DGS. I can't praise this too much!

Me, myself, I struggled with blender years ago - and skipped it, because I didn't get a grip, despite the nice tutorial of ventilator (BTW, some links are broken to the tutorial! )!

Years later, I restarted learning blender, and I had successes, small ones, step by step, because there were weird behaviours as well, but they are solvable.

I'm still using blender only for some modeling - I'm still faster with MED in certain cases - and I use it for skin layout, and painting on model or texture and for ambient occlusion mapping.

I still don't got the hang of weight painting (just a start) and animating, and exporting an animated model, applying a second skin, building and exporting a whole level, although I badly want to!

Wanna start an own thread just for blender users for 3DGS?

And, who should start that thread other than ventilator!

Or, is there already such a central point of blender and blender23DGs wisdom?

Well. One of the best places to find general support and help is the great (not just big) community of Blender.

English ones: blender.org, blenderartists.org, blendernation.com

German one: blendpolis.de

Besides that all you need is a way to export in a way MED can read. You can use the mdl export script for example. Which can be found here when you scroll to the end:

http://user.schule.at/go/blender/

The script from Ventilator works great at least for static stuff. Haven't tested animations because i haven't found a way to import animation into Blender nor make animations in it. Maybe somebody else can say a word or two to it.

You're quite informed for a 'non-blender user'!
Thank you!

Guess how i have built my opinion. It's not that i haven't tried

Alright! I got an idea for the hotkey problem!
I happen to know a nice programmable input emulator which supports microphone input!
What about the only button pressing on the keyboard is ctrl(strg für die deutschen)?
The rest would be easy. You literally tell blender what to do! Like you press ctrl and say "scale" and it scales.
You press ctrl and say "move" and it moves?

I think I'm going to work on that today. As soon as I'm finished I'll post it here in the forum!

greetings
KDuke

I think, it is better to have a short cut list to place it near your keyboard. Maybe, sorted by your own preferences.

Many short cuts rely on where your mouses pointer is. For instance, if the mouse pointer is in the 3D view, the short cut u opens the uv options, if it is in the uv view, it calls something different and so on.
Basic orders of short cuts are needed to perform certain actions.

For instance, key_g while the mouse is in the 3D view let you move the selected with the mouse, clicking z or x or y let the move restrict to the directions z or x or y, clicking the left mouse button confirms the change.

Middle mouse button is for moving the camera around a certain point in the 3D view, you can select the certain point and move to to circle the camera around a different place in the view and so on...

It is more about the huge amount of options that you have to discover whether by short or by voice control.

Here we go

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Reference/Hotkeys/Map

Thank you! You are more familiar with blender than I, at least with their websites!

EDIT: BTW:
There are new levels for the game project of blender.
http://www.yofrankie.org/

To be very honest: You already would know Blender in and out if you would spend the same time for reading the Blender book instead of writing all these posts and fight against this software

To be very honest too, you cannot talk a crappy UI good. No matter how hard you try. It stays crappy. It needs a change in the UI to make it better, not arguments

The GUI luminary has spoken. :p If you say it´s crappy it really must be crappy.

It's bad enough that i have stopped learning Blender, let alone using it.

One's for sure, i don't need a whole book to understand the UI of my favourite softwares, nor do i break my fingers while using them ...

You must have awkward fingers

All 3d applications need mouse and fingers at the same time if you want to use them efficiently.
But I still believe your fingers are ok. The problem is just in your mind. If you you stop lerning because of negative energy then it is very sad. It will stop you everywhere. ZBrush is very different too. Bodypaint is different. An electrical screw driver is different too and it also needs both hands to handle it efficiently though you might use the smaller ones with one hand only.

Pleeeeeaaaaase! Noooooo.........

Have to answer, sorry



All fine with my fingers, thanks.



The problem is in your mind. You are not willing to accept that somebody has another experiences and opinions. You ignore all arguments, since pages. Means you are not really able to lead a discussion.

Where you definitely have problems to understand is that efficiency is not everything. I'm a hobbyist. I am not under the pressure to work as fast as possible. I can handle my software onehanded when i want to, just with mouse. I can my software also just use with hotkeys when i want to ...



And again you ignore all arguments and twist words. I stopped learning because the Blender UI was in the way. It is for me unhandleable. Nothing else.

Negative energy arrives when i tell about my experience then. Like in your answer here. Again i get told that i have problems with my mind, have arkward fingers. Next you will again tell me that i am too dumb for 3d and software in general, that i have no clue in general ...

Nothing else than insults, since pages. And arguments gets again totally ignored. Holy Blender grail is under attack. And you will not rest until you had the last word and the attacker vanishes.

Negative energy, my friend, comes from you. This is classic fanboy behaviour.



Well, when Blender would be a screw driver, then i could follow this weird argument. On the other hand, Blender is for my 3D art pipeline equal useful than a screw driver ...

"To be very honest too, you cannot talk a crappy UI good. No matter how hard you try. It stays crappy. It needs a change in the UI to make it better, not arguments"

"You ignore all arguments, since pages."

You won´t take any arguments but you claim that other ones
ignore them. Sounds like a contradiction to me.

You compulsively jump at almost every blender thread and leave pejorative remarks about its GUI. I (and maybe also others?) simply think that it would be a pity if someone didn´t give blender a chance because of your remarks. That´s why I sometimes can´t resist responding to your posts.

Sure i do.

Not every Blender thread

autodesk brins blender-like ui to 3dsmax2010, check it out.

Sorry Tiles, it is not my intention to be ignorant. I even try to be the other way around. I want to help to open your mind. I am no Blender fanboy. I prefer Lightwave and Modo.
But I am talking about everything, Blender, ZBrush, Bodypaint, a screw driver. We should not stop learning.

I just knew that you cannot stop. Now you tell me ignorant and close minded. Thanks man

Being ignorant is not my intention neither. When you follow my answers you will notice that i never doubted the power of Blender. At no point. I have always corrected these assumptions immediately. I also never doubted that the hotkey UI is a quick one, and that you can work with it very efficiently when you get used to it.

Getting used to it, means the UI is the casus knaxus though. We have different opinions here. All arguments are told. Without result. We will never reach a consensus here. I think we should simply stop at that point, respecting the other opinion. I already had stopped.

We can of course go on with isulting each other. I think i have now two or three insultings free

You mean this?

I can still understand what is going on, so I assume it is still not Blender like. Maybe that feature is a seperate addon. Basically, turning on "Blender" interface inverts all text labels on buttons, crams every possible option in most unthinkable places, adds insane amount of keyboard shortcuts with unrecognizale non-industry standard options and finishes it all with killing your cat.

Rated R.

Regarding Max and other tools turning towards Blender: Yes, I noticed this too and as I learned Modo, I realized, that lots of UI features are very similar to Blender and it is nice to adapt the UI as much as you need. So there are different "views" for unwrapping, painting, modeling, sculpting and rendering in Modo. But you can change as much as you want.




No, you don't have. Nobody tried to insult you here. You are a bit too sensitive in this case. You just attacked Blender so heavily that some people (like me) try to correct this point a bit.

The new Blender release sounds amazing to me and I will not spend much energy of my life to beat its UI down, I can learn or ignore it.

But there is no reason to take a software personally.

I like to read your posts. They are so emotional and full of energy. And they sound smart as well. You have some good arguments. But sometimes you get stuck because of this energy. Though I can understand this.

I am still convinced: Nobody should stop learning because of not willing to use the second hand steering through life.

Might I be allowed to guide this whole thread into a form which brings the arguments onto an objective level?

I would propose to list the pros and cons of the blender UI (the power of it's different tools and technical possibilities and inabilities are out of question as I guess because we're arguing about the UI the most time) in a objective way. The others take the list of the previous poster and add arguments which are missing in their oppinion. Though please be precise with your statements in the list. A personal conclusion can be added below the list.

Here's my list.

Pros:

• fast workflow if you know where everything is what you need.
• no overlapping of windows(and information) as it is splitscreen.
• per project savable gui adjustments
• because of the fixed hotkeys tutorials for blender have a standard to build on (newbies don't have to find the icon/menu needed for an action)

Cons:

• fixed hotkeys
• no possibilities to individually put different functions/buttons into a toolbar
• gui not editable on button level
• (for windows users) unaccustomed gui

Personal conclusion:
I like blender's UI because of it's nice workflow as I don't need to be able to customize the UI because I have been (and am willing) to accommodate myself to it's UI.

greetings
KDuke

a nice interview with ton roosendaal: http://vimeo.com/3836064?pg=embed&sec=
and this one is a bit older: http://cgenie.com/articles/130.html

to bad that blender always crashes on my vista 64bit(8gb) when i try to do some more detailed fluids (like 200 render / 100preview detail) .. do the blender developers have any email wher i can send what is happening here all the time??

http://www.blender.org/development/report-a-bug/

do you use a 32bit build or a 64bit build?

see i use 64bit windows, but python never works right for me with the 64 bit blender, so i end up using the 32bit version anyways.

what doesn't work with python?

for most blender scripts no full python installation is needed but if you need a full python installation then i think it has to be 64bit python for 64bit blender.

i am not sure what one anymore, but it was either one of the import or export script, and i tried to set up every thing, tried AMD64, tried x86, tried going back to python 25 (which i had to do even for x86 to not get errors with some scripts)

i have experimented with fluid simulation a bit today and didn't get any crashes with high resolutions (>200).

http://www.graphicall.org/ftp/ideasman42/realtime_ui.ogv

in this video you can see how the gui is based on customizable python scripts in 2.5.

i don't like the dark button style but i guess this all still is temporary anyway.

i found the problem: it was due to a much too large fluid domain

@Ventilator :
Do you know where can we find the dark Style for Blender ?
It is downloadable somewhere ?