i don't find the blender interface particularly weird or harder to learn than other 3d software. you just have to give it a chance for longer than a few hours. it is worth it. but it also always depends a bit on what you are used to and have used before. i learned 3d modeling and animation with houdini and maya and in my opinion max and truespace have the most horrible guis and workflow i have ever seen. i wasn't really able to become friends with the xsi gui either.

blender 2.5 will have a more customizable gui which should enable presets which make blender easier to learn for users of other applications.

I try to learn it since years. Without success. And it is not that i don't try it. My problem is to learn the hot keys. How much are available at the moment? Around 300? I learn the first ten ones, and have forgotten the first when i learn the 11th.

When i don't touch the baby for one or two months i have forgotten the other ten too. And this happens regularly. Making games means to stay a month at this end, a month at that end. A Gods gift when the software has a button driven interface then when i open it after a month or two. One look and i am back into business.

And you can't even adjust the key bindings. Makers of Blender totally forgot that not only Blender exists. I use dozens of software. And every software also has hot keys.

The available button interface isn't this much better, as cluttered as it is. Means always digging. And important parts simply disappear dependand of the mode. Now go figure ...

I am a very visual person. That's why graphics interests me so much. Give me a button with an icon and i will remember where it is. And i will remember how the icon looks and what it is good for. And even when not, the button with the icon is there to hover with the mouse over it to have a look what the tooltip tells here. Ever tried that with an hot key?

One more important point is that you cannot model one handed with Blender. It lasts 10 Minutes and my hand pains from holding down the keys. Comeon, holding CTRL all the time just for basic navigation? In my favourite Software i can even use only one hand at the mouse and don't have to touch the keyboard at all when i don't want to.

Don't get me wrong, i don't have anything against hot keys, i use it also regularly. But Blenders GUI is too much based at it, is too unflexible and rigid by that. Which is a shame. Because i would really love to use its features. But i cannot. The GUI doesn't let me. And i am not alone with that.

Nope, I stay with my opinion, current Blender GUI is not made for humans

you don't need to memorize 300 hotkeys for using blender. i know maybe 20 and use menus for the rest or look them up in case i need them repeatedly.

i agree about the customizable key bindings. that was a huge oversight. blender started as an inhouse tool for a team of artists with direct access to the developers and they didn't see the need for it. since this affects the entire code base it was very hard to change afterwards but they will finally do a refactoring of ten thousands lines of code for 2.5 which will enable redefinable keys.

i leave one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse with every 3d software i use or have seriously used before and i love the maya camera navigation for example where you have to press alt all the time. using the mouse only would be way to slow. why only use one hand if you have two?

you don't need ctrl for blender camera navigation. you can also zoom with the scrollwheel.

If you really want to model then it is simple: Pick up a tool that you can afford and start learning it. Blender, Lightwave and XSI use some own ideas for the GUI and they all allow to work very fast and effectively.

If you ask me: I am happy to have a GUI without colored buttons. The Safari browser does not have colored buttons and Lightwave does not have. So they do not distract from your design.

But if you like tons of colored buttons and pure graphical interfaces then you can learn Truespace. It is the king of symbol-buttons and yes: if you learn them you can model very fast with it. I used to model much in Gamespace.

Buttons like in Max, Milkshape or MED are often too complicated, take too much time to go through menus and dialogues and are a break, not a short cut. They take time. Pressing buttons for simple tasks is not a good workflow.
But yes: those buttons are the reason why a beginner can learn and remember such a tool very fast. I understand that.

But if you want to become a pro then this is not important. Then you can work more efficiently with well-thought professional but still affordable tools like Silo, Modo, Blender, XSI and Lightwave.

Hi guys,
The one problem I had with Blender when I tried it was that I could not find a split polygon or a cut polygon tool. Do you know what I mean? Ventilator if you have used maya then you know what the split polygon tool is. I think for me that it would just be a basic necessity to be able to create edges where I want them. Or is this just that I didn't search the documentation enough?

But I love hotkeys, I like to have a hotkey for a lot of tasks.

I also like Blender's navigation and it seems to have a wide level of customization available.

it's called knife tool in blender (shift-k) but it isn't as powerful as the split polygon tool in maya or modo. the reason is that blender doesn't support ngons yet but they are working on that too.

loop subdivide (ctrl-r) can also be useful.

Some usefull features on Blender are the loop cut and loop select
in my keyborad i maintain Alt and clik on a face or edge.
easy , powerfull , incredibly used in modeling for games

Yah Blender interface is not easy, but it has lot lot of features like
place panel : aligned ,free , split vertically,horizontal etc ...
For example i use a lot :
a main upper window in 3D and on the bottom two aligned windows :
one for buttons , the other for texture painting/editing.

I use it alot even if i have Silo that is a great other tool with Modo
I used 3DSMAX in the past , and can say interface not incredible at all !

Try to import or open models in Blender! The file open dialog will make you mad. It always suggests the blender directory and you have to click through the directory structure again and again.
You cannot paste the path from your windows explorer to the file picker dialog.

And if you managed to import the file after minutes then it loads without textures or just crashes with comment that info about crash can be found in a hidden console window.

After a few crashes I just gave it up. I could not get a file properly into Blender, no matter if I used obj, 3ds, lwo or whatever.

The feature-set reads good and I like the Blender book. But the im- and export and the GUI needs indeed heavy improvements.

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it's called knife tool in blender (shift-k) but it isn't as powerful as the split polygon tool in maya or modo. the reason is that blender doesn't support ngons yet but they are working on that too.

loop subdivide (ctrl-r) can also be useful.

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Yeah I had found them before but they always created extra edges. So then when I wanted to go back and delete the edges the whole face disappears. I am curious how you delete extra edges in Blender. If you have used the program for a while I think that you must know how.

Or maybe you could tell me how to put faces back on the geometry after they have been deleted,...how do you do that?

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Try to import or open models in Blender! The file open dialog will make you mad. It always suggests the blender directory and you have to click through the directory structure again and again.
You cannot paste the path from your windows explorer to the file picker dialog

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Yes I noticed that you are stuck in the Blender directory every time also, I assumed that there must be a way to set a preference which would allow you to start somewhere else.(but assumption is always a bad idea) Or as you said if there was a way to copy a file location it would make work a lot better. I think I could live beyond this limitation given the free price of the program, but I don't know if I could live with the program crashes on import. I never got to the point of importing models because I could not get past the modeling limitations.

Quote:

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Yah Blender interface is not easy, but it has lot lot of features like
place panel : aligned ,free , split vertically,horizontal etc ...
For example i use a lot :
a main upper window in 3D and on the bottom two aligned windows :
one for buttons , the other for texture painting/editing.

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I actually like the interface and I don't agree with people who don't like Blender because they won't spend the time and learn it.

My problem is that there is just a lot of things that cannot be done in blender. It doesn't matter if you don't spend the time trying to learn, you cannot learn something that cannot be done

But anyway Blender seems good for the price, and maybe the animation and other features are better, I just have only tried modeling with it.

the problem is you spend time learning each tool with weird interface it never end.