there are at least as many people who find the truespace gui horrible and unusable as there are people who think the same about the gui of blender. i would try both and see which fits you more.

I started with gameSpace and trueSpace. The GUI is not the problem. The problems are rigging and animation. Dont do this with trueSpace (or gameSpace). It's the hell.

If you dont want to pay for a modeling package then use blender. And a GUI is always a question of learning.

Well, Blender has some features that trueSpace lacks of. Like fluid simulation. And Blender lacks of features that trueSpace has. N-Gons for example. In the end featurewise Blender may even have more than trueSpace. But what's the best feature worth when you cannot reach it because the UI doesn't let you? And who needs a fluid simulation for low poly game content? Featurestuff is all about if you need it or not. And i don't miss anything, featurewise.

The main issue for me is clearly the interface though. trueSpace is highly customizable. Blender not. It misses a working GUI, it has fixed hotkeys instead. I learn the first 10 hot keys. And when i learn the eleventh hotkey i have forgotten the first one.

I am a very visual person. Gimme an icon and i will remember for what it was. Gimme hotkeys and i will always need to check which hot key was what. Searching what hot key is what costs lots of time. Especially with double and triple combinations as it happens in Blender. Close to fourhundret features are hotkeyed when i remember right. Which means close to fourhundret hotkeys that you need to know. Which costs lots of time to learn.

Hotkeys are also slower to me compared to a button driven interface. Because i always need to look down to the keyboard. And that breaks my workflow.

Not to forget that my neck starts to pain after ten minutes working with just hotkeys.

Don't get me wrong. I also love hotkeys, and i have also setup some hotkeys in TS. But just hotkeys is too much for me. A just hotkey driven UI might not be this bad when you just use one software. But i use lots of software. And then a GUI is a gods gift

That was the past. The new bones system is very powerful and easy to handle.

you don't have to remember 400 hotkeys. most of blender's functionality is also accessible per menus and you will learn the hotkeys for the functions you currently need the most automatically. there also is a system behind the hotkeys. for example ctrl is always for creating something (ctrl-p -> create parent relationship) and alt always for deleting something (alt-p -> remove parent relationship).

i agree that it's a disadvantage that you can't redefine hotkeys but this will be fixed soon. after siggraph they will continue to work on 2.5.

you are much faster by using the keyboard and the mouse at the same time and that's why almost every 3d program is set up for working like that. if you don't like this way of working it's great that alternatives like truespace exist.

...
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=99
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=105
by the way, you will find the torrents of those two training dvds now (look with google). they aren't step-by-step tutorials for absolute beginners though. it's more a looking over the shoulder of experienced blender users thing.

So you say it is stable now? No more crashes during animation? No more crashings when I use chamfer tool or similar?

I used to work with Truespace / Gamespace like Wicht did. And both of us changed to Lightwave later. TS is a fast modeler after you learned the icons. But it takes time to learn them. You need the same time to learn Lightwave, XSI or Blender. I can tell you that learning Bodypaint or ZBrush is even harder than learning Blender.

These tools are complex, sophisticated and powerful. You really have to read manuals and tutorials otherwise you are lost. The alternative is MED and I am sure that a beginner has much problems there too if he decides to not read the manual.

All these tools have advantages and disadvantages but it makes no sense to beat one tool down while praising another one. The only important point here is to use legal software, learn it well and then make good art with it. Dont use pirated tools, they will not make a better artist. You still have to learn a lot about architecture, anatomy, tricks and workarounds. Becoming a good artist is much harder than becoming a programmer. You have to learn much more tools and gather a lot of experience and knowledge for that.

So just pick up any tool of your choice and start learning. It will take you several years from now and it will never stop

Okay, let's say 50. Still too much.

Ah, the menu. Right. There are indeed buttons. I have spent two days with googling and reading through tutorials and whatelse just to find out that the menu item i search just appears when i am in a special mode. Now go figure

I try since years to find my way into Blender. I fail at the simplest things because i don't find the tools. The UI is simply not made for me



That's a myth in my opinion. You are fastest when you are comfortable with your UI. No matter if hotkey driven or button driven. Well, that said, and with a fully customizable interface like in TS, for me personally the fastest method is a mix of both.

The real reason why Blender misses a GUI is that a GUI needs lots of development time. Time that the Devs of Blender have spent to the tools instead. I remember an article where a better GUI was promised. Was around 2002 ...

Another reason is that the GUI would increase the size of Blender. With just hotkeys Blender is pretty slim.

Fact is, it slows me down and breaks my workflow to work just with hotkeys. I have to look away from the screen down at the keyboard. I have most of the times to use both hands to access the hotkeys. My neck starts to pain after ten minutes. And i don't even count the time you need to find out and learn the hotkeys. Personal experience

The biggest problem with just hotkeys is that you don't see the feature. With buttons you have an icon or even the name of the tool. And you know there must be a feature behind. In Blender you don't have this visual hint. And that makes the learning curve very hard. Blender is the opposite of intuitive.



It's great that Blender exists. It was the only fully featured useful 3D alternative before trueSpace became freeware. And it is very powerful. I just wish its interface would be a bit more user friendly so that also normal users are able to reach the powerful features

There are still lots of issues, unfortunately. TS is still in transition from the old architecture to the new one. So bugs are still there and crashes still happens. But shouldn't happen at the most used tools. Haven't had a single crash at one of the modeling tools so far



Yeah, you never stop learning, no matter with which software

blender has a gui. it's no command line tool.

the reason why everything is hard coded in blender's gui is that it started as an inhouse tool and the users sat directly next to the coders and told them what hotkeys and gui they want. the coders fullfilled their wishes in the fastest way (hard coded) and didn't think of ever releasing blender into the wild.

this was an oversight and changing this now means refactoring hundreds of thousands lines of code which is no fun to do especially for the blender coders who only work on it in their free time. it's more fun to work on shiny new features.

3d work on a computer isn't intuitive and blender for sure isn't harder to learn than the complex beasts like maya or houdini which i learned at university.

i also prefer [hard to learn but easy to use] to [easy to learn but hard to use].

i use a mix of both too but more like 80% hotkeys and 20% gui buttons. constantly having to move and aim your mouse to different gui elements on the screen most of the time is much slower than using your left hand to press some keys on the keyboard and leaving the mouse where it is needed for modeling or animating.

Agreed. But you know what i mean



Mine is more 10% hotkeys and 90% GUI buttons