Is Blender intentionally designed to be difficult to interact with at first?

I'm not even saying Blender is better at sculpting. It couldn't be. That's what zBrush was specialized for.
Its not better at sculpting than zBrush, it cant paint textures as good as Gimp. Not that much exp rigging and animating(I dabble) but im not saying its the best tool for the job. I will firmly argue that its a powerhouse(Im not implying you argue against that) and I like the fact that all of it is packaged together with the same ish workflow, and achieves (at least) passable results,

 

There's a long interview with Ton Roosendaal that goes into the history and future of Blender. The main discussion about UI starts 81 minutes in. The plan for 2.80 is that the UI is fully configurable from application templates, which can be task specific ones or mimic other applications etc.

 

Oh, here is those "blender cheat sheets" that I always use these as well as a handwritten set of my most common hotkeys:
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/4iukev/hotkeys/

If you haven't seen those, might wanna fire up the printer

 

zbrush does concepting, block modeling, sculpting, and texturing. There is tools in zbrush for uv layout, decimation, map baking, and a lot more.

 

Right on point!

 

Ahhhhh forgot to select the magic crystal and crouch near the stone wall! Grr!

 

I like in Unity- how you can save your layout - as far as I can tell, can't do that in blender?

 

The screen layouts are available from the Info menu bar, just click + to save a new layout.

 

Also ctrl+left/right arrow to easily switch. I use that all the time.

 

I find many musicians tend to NOT upgrade due to the learning curve and I feel that some software can take an update better then others. For instance Reason seems easy to pickup when they add a new feature simply due to the overall structure of the program feeling like a "Rack" - once you wrap your head around a rack-layout additions are easy to understand. Myself, I tend not to incorporate "new" instruments, effects or features until I've practiced with them to the point where they become second nature.. Heck I know people still running on XP (dealing with latency) just because they feel content with what they are able to produce! yikes!

Great that your wife found something that she likes to work with!

 

It's not just the learning curve. There's a good chance that old tracks may need to be altered for licensed uses (like separating stems for Guitar Hero style games, instrumentals for adverts etc) or remastered for new media types and upgrades can break the ability to pull up the original mix.

 

Just additional time that I was surprised with. Was going into it thinking-" I already know how to model, just going to make up a quick player model to test with" .... whoops

 

THIS

 

The cost of c4d

 

I understand your point. For me however, if I'm jumping back and forth to Unity- it would make more sense to have the same style of controls. For instance - say I'm working on my MacBook (Trackpad and Keyboard), using either visual studio or MonoDevelop for some C# and I'd like to switch over to Blender. Well.. that's not a seamless event!

Quite literally have to leave my spot on the couch next to the wife then go plug in my keyboard with a num-pad/ mouse to use blender effectively. It's quite comical actually..

You know I think she is beginning to resent my modelling endeavour guys!!

Wow thanks DominoM! I missed that option hard!

Thanks for the tip! ^.^

 

I started with 3dsmax and went to maya also used softimage xsi for a bit.. they are all very different, I'd never say any of them are hard difficult, because none of them left me thinking how completely braindead the designers and programmers of such software were, things are pretty self evident in how they work, they don't have interfaces and workflows that stray out of an established industry standard in ways that make you go wtf! That area is left for such programs like Blender, Zbrush, 3DCoat etc..all of which have something useful and given a users dedication to pursuing with the insanity of its awful design they will eventually make it work for them at least for somethings.. Still it's why you see plenty of posts like these come up with users just talking about these problems in general but hard to really pin down anything, because it's just an overall multitude of general infuriating experiences because it really isn't just one simple thing that could be changed to fix it all.. nope its literately a huge overhaul that is required in large parts to how things are done and the tooling or lack of etc.

Except unlike GIMP that is awful in all the ways and honestly you're better off mentioning Krita (lets not give GIMP exposure) as Krita is far closer to a free photoshop beater than GIMP will ever likely be.

Anyway I do see Blender as more of a threat to Autowrecks acquired products and subscriber base than anything else despite finding its current workflow and design in many ways just awful.. Blenders hyrbrid cpu/gpu renderer is pretty good especially for free... While with 3ds/maya you've got buy and learn a third party renderer like vray for gpu rendering etc or buy extra licenses for cpu's/servers for batch etc..If Blender could just have a real overhaul on the UX or at least with some professionals who care about workflow and intuitive software design and good tooling (not just lazy binding of scripts to hotkeys) being a hotkey combo nerd is great for mastering (maya, 3ds etc they all work with hotkeys and allow that level of mastering) but well designed workflow for things matters when you want to provide new and competent users from outside with a learning curve that isn't just ...and now you need to remember all these hotkeys because our interface and ux is garbage. And don't try to do this, because it will screw up and if you try to undo out of that our program will crash because you didn't learn the ways of retarded program and tool design.

Once an artist, designer etc masters a tool they rarely part ways with that tool so long as it never changes and breaks there setup, scripts etc especially when its free.

If the full version of maya or 3dsmax was legally free though and had a cpu/gpu render right now..blender would have an exodus not overnight ofc but it would eventually be a like corpse that continued to twitch about with professional blender hotkey users providing the animation of its living dead carcus. It would carry on because blender users and established artists don't care how bad it is, its bad quirkiness is actually what they like and have overcome.

Slap a price tag on Blender and you'll see what people really think of it though, it will be like eerm err nah this is kinda S*** what else is there at this price range.. because where is the effort to fix the bugs, polish the garbage ux, etc.. at that point community dies off, the things that attracted the open source programmers who jump on board and spearhead some of the tech limelight areas of Blender that are directly competing with other products and features will also drop off. Because the day to day work of just fixing all the simple S*** is an area in Blender where most the contributors for it don't dare touch even when alot of them actually know those are problem areas, it's just their own autists wouldn't like it much.

Which is why I conclude that Autodesks subscription price tag is real driving force of users onto Blender being the best free all round alternative with a growing and active community. Which should actually be scary for Autodesk because it means even less people are even bothering to yknow yaaar pirate ... they should be worried about the next 5 years, at least Adobe are slightly more price aware of things and there position in terms of product vs competition like Photoshop vs Krita etc

 

I am using Maya LT, which is like $10 a month. That is pretty much free. I mean, if you can afford to consider game dev as a hobby, but you can't shell out $10 a month, you should probably find a different hobby.

Maya LT doesn't have a renderer, but what do you need that for as an indie dev anyway? You can do your realtime rendering in your game engine, or a cheap app like Toolbag (which is worth 10x the price for the realtime baking tools alone).

 

ive modeled a fairly accurate allosaur based on realistic profile drawings to use as a template.. i only needed to learn a few basic hotkeys which i learned from looking at a list of keys and their functions, then memorized them.. after getting 1/4 of the way through one model youve pretty much memorized what you need to actually use it. and i like the R + X, Y, or Z for rotating along a specified axis

 

I like Blender. It's definitely cumbersome but my take is, it's an open source tool that feels like an open source tool. It's an artistic tool with UX designed by developers which makes it easy for developers to learn but cumbersome for artists.

That being said, if you think the UX is bad now... you should have seen earlier versions. I avoided it altogether for the longest time until they did a major revamp of the UI.

 

Hey I'm not saying that I can't work with it, I was just shocked at the layout!

Have been watching the Blender Guru as of late to get past the key issue.

 

Pretty much this. I conceptually love everything about Blender, and every time I pick it up I remember why I can't possibly switch. It's like designing left-handed, looking in a mirror. Like Maya, I guess if all you do is work in the program you could learn the keyboard shortcuts and work that way, but that's totally impractical for something that I might need to use only occasionally.

I end up using it for specific things, like decimating a model or generating UV maps. It is highly capable. Really hope the new version has a UI that is on par with other programs out there. Cinema 4D, IMO, has the best interface. It's definitely not great at a lot of things that would be useful in games, but at least I can get things done in it quickly, without constantly searching for video tutorials.

 

Andrew Price (Blender Guru) is also on Twitter. His videos are excellent. I like to watch his critique videos as well. The things he's critiquing are aimed at being high detail or photo real so they're not game oriented but his critiques help me think about the artistic process a bit differently since I'm really a developer and not an artist.

 

I don't know where you live, but in my country the price is at least four times higher. And approx. 400 bucks a year is not just little.
Also even if it is only 120, is it much more than nothing. Blender can get the job done. some things are strange but to be honest, You don't need all the shortcuts. You need the shortcuts for your work flow. When I take a look at the short cut lists I also feel uncomfortable. But when you have an idea and find out how it works in blender you will notice , that you usually use the same 5 buttons all the time.
I also tried to use Maya once but the 2016 version was so buggy that I was not even able to use mirroring correctly. The official tutorials did not work anymore. This state lasted at least 6 month. An absolute no go for me.
But it had its benefits. I learned about pie charts in blender, which made some stuff a little easier in blender.

 

Yeah according to https://www.autodesk.com/compare/compare-features/maya-vs-maya-lt Maya LT is $30 a month, so you're on a good deal but that limitations chart is just painful.. Even at that price I can see why Autodesk removed Maya LT off steam, couldn't have Valve parasiting off the bottom line. I just don't see them getting away with $200 a month per seat for Maya in the coming years though or even now when it's not even taking into account what you even earn from it or total house/studio income, bit like Unity's Pro, Plus licenses, it's simply not that viable for a lot of developers or indies when I can see Blender or a more professional fork of it (I could dream) just removing most the reasons you'd ever pick paying for Maya, they are certainly not innovating enough to justify that price.. as can be seen in Blender have gpu rendering while Maya is still stuck with cpu rendering and additional costs to make it go fast if you have more cpu's. Still I'd rather see Maya continue to get improvements and features and not become like https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/softimage because it is still better than Blender in many ways including its core design and how things are done, but an opensource community support can really close the gap and that is something Autodesks greed and poor management is actually backfiring on them now.

If someone ever made a Blender VS Maya LT feature comparison chart it would be interesting.

Anyway monthly subscription costs add up, for hobbyists, students, free is always going to have a certain appeal especially if it can directly compare on features and end result with just the investment of time..Blender taking considerably more time+early frustration I guess. Personally think ADSK should start looking at other pricing models that work better or die off slowly, I don't really care outside of Maya going open source and kicking ass long into the future or Unity becoming more like Maya in featureset one of them right

 

You're looking at it from the perspective of an individual or small studio. You need to look at it from the perspective of a medium to large studio. Additionally the monthly subscription isn't the actual price most people are paying. An annual subscription is $125 per month ($20 per month for Maya LT).

 

Why do I need to?

 

Because in my opinion Blender and Maya are aimed at different segments of the market. Blender feels like it's intended for individuals and small studios whereas Maya is intended for medium to large studios.

 

Aye, they are quite insightful, also some insight on the whole artist VS non artist thing? I'm not down with the hate or brand loyalty but it's interesting to see the impact it has on prospective!

As long as everyone is able to learn how to use the thing together it could work - depending on your needs. Really you need to work as part of a team if you want to get anywhere. Obviously there are exceptions but hey - teamwork makes the dream-work!

 

Well with thinking like that they are going to run out of people for those large studio's to even hire that even know Maya etc. Then those large studio's will be like.. hmm herp derp looks like most the candidates seem to know Blender, why are we paying for Maya seats.. we can just redo our pipeline with Blender instead.. It will come to that eventually if Autodesk don't see the writing on the wall. Can already see a younger audience for Blender doing youtube training tutorials etc.. far more in content than you will see for Maya or 3dsmax anymore.. ofc those packages have had decades of content and training previously and also don't have a design that is so retarded you need that level of content training to even drag new users through the hurdles of Blender in order for them to achieve anything with it.

 

thats about right
for me as hobby dev, any monthly costs, aren't really appealing
i work full time, so my time spending on dev is limited, there are even months where i don't get to develop anything
so it doesn't really make sense to commit to any pay-to-rent-model. i either buy the software i need, or find software which is free.
if gamedev was my main business i would think different
and i think many hobby devs think similar

 

i don't think this will happen soon
first, the large majority of schools teach max or maya
second, rebuilding the whole pipeline for blender not only costs money, but also a lot of time
many studios don't start from scratch when they start projects, they have a lot of stuff in place to reuse
also, to get every artist up to speed with blender would take a lot of time
and, autodesk has a support you are paying for, if you encounter a problem, phone them and they will support you
this is actually a big thing for companies

 

Barnstorm VFX described it well. There's an article about their use of Blender on The Man in The High Castle where they said...

 

I feel like any experience with 3D would beat out the other guy who doesn't have any experience. And besides the pro guys all use their own versions and will train you if you need to use it right?

 

I mean, that's probably the most intuitive part of Blender, right click on the split between windows and click join then an arrow shows how the windows will join as you mouse over them. If that's unintuitive I am way out of touch.

I found Blender just as easy to learn as 3DS Max and I only learnt Blender in the last few years whereas I learnt 3DS Max when I was in University.

 

Intuitive? Go read this thread and tell that to all of the other people who also couldn't figure it out.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5631/how-to-close-view-windows

 

Just learned how to do that just now- from this ^.^

 

Yeah, if you have trouble with what I consider to be the most intuitive part of blender, you are going to have a bad time.

lmao.

I don't know if you guys are just so ingrained with how other software works specifically and that's why it kind hurts to learn a different interface.

 

i find blender is a lot of technically good tools, bundled together with UX made by people who do not understand the importance of convention. Then a die hard user base that knows nothing about the alternatives to it and insists that blender is better because it has hotkeys and menus that are fast to interact with, when every major 3d package has its own very efficient interaction scheme.

Also some really weird omissions for tools too, like i had to write a script to allow me to set vertex color, per vertex, and i still have not found a way to do custom vertex normals.

 

Oh for sure. No doubt about it.

 

So, you're pissed off with blender? Try 3ds Max and you'll be smashing your P.C. with a baseball bat. Why? Cause-
1. If you use 3ds Max, you need to keep pressing two - four buttons to finally get to what you want e.g. extrude. And in blender, select the object, press E.
2. 3ds Max lags a lot.

 

Coming from 3DSMax to Blender was so easy though...

 

You simply shift drag a edge or face

 

Wasn't shift in 3DS copy? Or is that just object mode?

 

It coppies in object and face mode, and extrudes in edge mode

 

I'd never used any modeling program before using Blender. I had a tough time at first, but over time, it began to feel natural. Oddly enough, when I downloaded a trial for Maya, I could not figure out how to use it.

I'm sure it's absolutely because it's what I'm familiar with, but I rather enjoy working with Blender now, though I admittedly don't do much complex modeling and avoid rigging and animation...

 

Or maybe - 'they' have put in 10 or more years into using a certain software pack - and just prefer working in that as opposed to jumping to an inferior/alternate 3D pack that is free/open source.
I try to support all 3D creation packs, blender has improved extensively over the past 5 or so years. It used to be total crap!

Max and Maya and I guess others also have hotkeys for every action. The difference from what I see is Max/Maya provides UI interface optional to the hotkey or context radial menu workflow. As a Max artist I work in Expert Mode (yes there is a button for that) with the modifier stack open. Max/Maya has nearly 95% of the functions needed in a simple right click radial context menu. I can right click and select a context related function just as fast as I/anyone can ctrl+RMB+E to select edge loops. Made up hot-key.

For all who are avid blender users - consider jumping over to the animation thread to assist in helping out blender users. https://forum.unity.com/forums/animation.52/
About 50% of all the requests related to animation creation are content creators having complications with blender content in Unity.

 

Do you want to manually grab and rotate them like in other tools? Afaik that can't be done yet. But some kind of custom normals via the modifier stack and somewhat complex and unintuitive workflows should be possible by now.

I feel like if you really intensly used any complex software for 10+ years, then there needs to be a hell of a reason to switch because your productivity will tank really hard and you'll feel like you have a knot in your brain for months.

 

Yeah looks like all you can do is edge split, and transfer normals from one mesh to the next. What I was looking for is being able to per vertex change the direction and do stuff like face weighted normals. This has been a pretty heavily requested feature for a long time now too, and it should be basic thing that all apps should have.

Also only being able to paint vertex color is strange I have found no way aside from using a script I wrote to set color on a vertex selection

 

I just set Blender with Maya controls / shortcuts and it's pretty straight forward tbh, where Blender falls down is support and advanced concepts which can be buggy or incomplete. Then on the other side because of it's open source nature it has advanced toolsets untouched by any other DCC (like sculpting), it's a bit all over the place.. I do like it though and I used to hate Blender..

I gotta give Autodesk credit, when I used Maya and Maya LT any issues were fixed in a matter of weeks it was exceptional and the advanced tools for auto rigging / animation etc. has to be the easiest and most intuitive to use so far.

Issue with Maya LT is the arbitrary restrictions and the more advanced the game the more utilities you need that have been ripped.. For simple games bit of a no brainer IMO, full blown Maya is just becoming harder to justify because between Blender and Houdini it's powerhouse not much can compete with, if you can get over lack of resources and / or the learning curve.

I like my DCC's to be all in one package, but I can settle with those two.