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Blender may be one of the most successful and best run Artistic/Media projects in Open Source. It manages to pack a lot of power in a very small package. And t

by zaphar 11y ago

Blender may be one of the most successful and best run Artistic/Media projects in Open Source. It manages to pack a lot of power in a very small package. And the Open Movie/Open Game projects help to drive the direction of the Application with concrete goals. Personally I think it's one of the media production suites out there for the hobbyist. The power + price (free) can't be beat for the non-professional.

daenz 11y ago
It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used as a creative. It has everything. Just as an example, people are constantly talking about how there's "no good video editors for linux" but not realizing that Blender itself has a built in full-featured video editor. The Python API could use a little work, and takes some getting used to, but it's also incredibly powerful. You can generate geometry from a Python script. You can script movement..anything.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  You can get Lightworks for Linux. It's free, but with limited output options. If you want more, you pay, but it's reasonable. But it's not an easy interface in my experience. https://www.lwks.com/ https://www.lwks.com/
  - wazoox 11y ago
    There's also Da Vinci Resolve, the free version isn't available for Linux though, but the full package isn't very expensive, and ridiculously powerful.
BoysenberryPi 11y ago
Blender also has one of the most god awful UIs I have ever had the displeasure of working with. And it's not even the fact the UI is bad. It's the fact that when you tell someone in the Blender community that you don't like the UI they usually say "well once you understand why it's made that way you'll get it" which is pretty much saying "once you understand it you'll understand it" which is redundant. /rant
- zaphar 11y ago
  Blender's UI is like Vim's powerful but with a steep learning curve. I happen to like Vim which perhaps explains why I like Blender. Blender isn't really designed for the dabbler. It's designed for the serious user. For that type of user it's worth the learning curve since you can get really fast in it. So fast that a common activity is speed modelling. If you only dabble then something like SketchUp is probably more your speed. If you plan to create stuff like this: http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=402981&d=1443955428 http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=... though then blender is well worth the learning curve.
  - BoysenberryPi 11y ago
    You can make that model in pretty much any 3D modeling software so I don't see how Blender is special. Just because a UI is powerful does not mean it has to be unintuitive. Unity is a very powerful game engine and it has a very intuitive UI to the point where if I'm just fiddling around with it I can generally figure out how to use it. Blender is pretty much the exact opposite. It comes down to cost vs time. Do I want to spend time to configure Blender or do I want to spend money and buy something that has a much more intuitive UI and use something that I can just get started with right away? For my sanity I would choose the latter.
    - geoka9 11y ago
      Just curious, are you a vi/emacs user by any chance? Just because a UI is powerful does not mean it has to be unintuitive. Unity is a very powerful game engine and it has a very intuitive UI... Let's not confuse the power of a software package with a powerful UI. Blender is the emacs/vi of 3D software - its UI is very unintuitive for beginners but extremely fast (and intuitive) to power users. Personally, I found that with Blender it's hard to master the basics but easy to learn the advanced stuff, once you have your basics down. With other packages I've used (3d max, Maya, Softimage) it may be easy to do a simple scene, but advanced stuff is very unintuitive to the point that you need a tutorial to do anything you haven't done before in that particular package.
Animats 11y ago
Blender is a commercial product which failed. It had enough users that the users bought the rights cheaply and open-sourced it. It's quite powerful, and good work has been done with it, but has a poor user interface, which open-sourcing has not helped. Supposedly it's become better in recent years. Here's an (out of date) overview of the hotkeys:[1] Some of the hotkeys change in each new release. In typical open source fashion, the "solution" to that mess was to make the several hundred hotkeys remappable: "Important note: the ever changing nature of Blender's development means features can be arbitrarily updated so shortcut keys may be mapped to different functions or be in different locations version to version - this is especially true of Blender 2.50 up to and included the latest versions." If you like EMACS, you might like Blender. From a developer perspective, the Blender game engine is interesting. An idea that keeps coming back is that programming should be done by wiring little boxes together in a GUI. The Blender game engine does that. This leads to giant, messy wiring diagrams. [1] http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/useful-keyboard-shortcuts.php http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/useful-keyboard-sh...
- LifeQuestioner 11y ago
  I drastically prefer the interface over 3DS Max and Maya. Maybe i'm weird.
  - i80and 11y ago
    No, it's not just you. I learned animation in 3DS Max, but I'm far more comfortable with Blender.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    Same. I hate having to use a picky pie menu, or click buttons to do simple things like change the viewport angle.
- 332451b 11y ago
  Blender 2.5 has changed the UI significantly from the original commercial version, and most comments I read about it say that it has improved significantly. Blender the open source project has changed and grown so much bigger than Blender the commercial product that they are totally different. Regarding hotkeys, there were some major changes for 2.5 along with other UI changes, but after that the default have barely changed, just additions and minor changes when the underlying features change. Making hotkeys remappable was in no way a solution to that "problem", it's a standard feature in other 3D software that a lot of users requested, especially those who wanted to make the hotkeys compatible with Maya and 3ds Max.
ris 11y ago
"Blender may be one of the most successful and best run Artistic/Media projects in Open Source." I would go one further and say one of the most successful and best run projects in Open Source. I have always been impressed with the Blender developers ability to just plain deliver. Features get built quicker than you can keep up with them, and they seem to have had the best success integrating GSoC projects & developers into the code & team I've seen. I don't know what their secret sauce is (Ton's enthusiasm?) but I think many projects could learn a lot from them.
lucideer 11y ago
I'm not a 3d designer, developer, nor any standard general user of Blender really, but from my limited trials of usage it's almost certainly the most well made, polished piece of open source software I've ever used. It's UI paradigm in particular is at first somewhat overwhelming and unintuitive, and then suddenly with the tiniest amount of instruction or direction perfectly understandable and infinitely flexible (once you "get" how it works you can imagine them adding any feature and it being just immediately, simply usable)

by zaphar 11y ago

daenz 11y ago

It's one of the best pieces of software I've ever used as a creative. It has everything. Just as an example, people are constantly talking about how there's "no good video editors for linux" but not realizing that Blender itself has a built in full-featured video editor. The Python API could use a little work, and takes some getting used to, but it's also incredibly powerful. You can generate geometry from a Python script. You can script movement..anything.

rogeryu 11y ago
You can get Lightworks for Linux. It's free, but with limited output options. If you want more, you pay, but it's reasonable. But it's not an easy interface in my experience. https://www.lwks.com/ https://www.lwks.com/
- wazoox 11y ago
  There's also Da Vinci Resolve, the free version isn't available for Linux though, but the full package isn't very expensive, and ridiculously powerful.

BoysenberryPi 11y ago

Blender also has one of the most god awful UIs I have ever had the displeasure of working with. And it's not even the fact the UI is bad. It's the fact that when you tell someone in the Blender community that you don't like the UI they usually say "well once you understand why it's made that way you'll get it" which is pretty much saying "once you understand it you'll understand it" which is redundant. /rant

zaphar 11y ago
Blender's UI is like Vim's powerful but with a steep learning curve. I happen to like Vim which perhaps explains why I like Blender. Blender isn't really designed for the dabbler. It's designed for the serious user. For that type of user it's worth the learning curve since you can get really fast in it. So fast that a common activity is speed modelling. If you only dabble then something like SketchUp is probably more your speed. If you plan to create stuff like this: http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=402981&d=1443955428 http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=... though then blender is well worth the learning curve.
- BoysenberryPi 11y ago
  You can make that model in pretty much any 3D modeling software so I don't see how Blender is special. Just because a UI is powerful does not mean it has to be unintuitive. Unity is a very powerful game engine and it has a very intuitive UI to the point where if I'm just fiddling around with it I can generally figure out how to use it. Blender is pretty much the exact opposite. It comes down to cost vs time. Do I want to spend time to configure Blender or do I want to spend money and buy something that has a much more intuitive UI and use something that I can just get started with right away? For my sanity I would choose the latter.
  - geoka9 11y ago
    Just curious, are you a vi/emacs user by any chance? Just because a UI is powerful does not mean it has to be unintuitive. Unity is a very powerful game engine and it has a very intuitive UI... Let's not confuse the power of a software package with a powerful UI. Blender is the emacs/vi of 3D software - its UI is very unintuitive for beginners but extremely fast (and intuitive) to power users. Personally, I found that with Blender it's hard to master the basics but easy to learn the advanced stuff, once you have your basics down. With other packages I've used (3d max, Maya, Softimage) it may be easy to do a simple scene, but advanced stuff is very unintuitive to the point that you need a tutorial to do anything you haven't done before in that particular package.

Animats 11y ago

Blender is a commercial product which failed. It had enough users that the users bought the rights cheaply and open-sourced it. It's quite powerful, and good work has been done with it, but has a poor user interface, which open-sourcing has not helped. Supposedly it's become better in recent years. Here's an (out of date) overview of the hotkeys:[1] Some of the hotkeys change in each new release. In typical open source fashion, the "solution" to that mess was to make the several hundred hotkeys remappable: "Important note: the ever changing nature of Blender's development means features can be arbitrarily updated so shortcut keys may be mapped to different functions or be in different locations version to version - this is especially true of Blender 2.50 up to and included the latest versions." If you like EMACS, you might like Blender. From a developer perspective, the Blender game engine is interesting. An idea that keeps coming back is that programming should be done by wiring little boxes together in a GUI. The Blender game engine does that. This leads to giant, messy wiring diagrams. [1] http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/useful-keyboard-shortcuts.php http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/useful-keyboard-sh...

LifeQuestioner 11y ago
I drastically prefer the interface over 3DS Max and Maya. Maybe i'm weird.
- i80and 11y ago
  No, it's not just you. I learned animation in 3DS Max, but I'm far more comfortable with Blender.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Same. I hate having to use a picky pie menu, or click buttons to do simple things like change the viewport angle.
332451b 11y ago
Blender 2.5 has changed the UI significantly from the original commercial version, and most comments I read about it say that it has improved significantly. Blender the open source project has changed and grown so much bigger than Blender the commercial product that they are totally different. Regarding hotkeys, there were some major changes for 2.5 along with other UI changes, but after that the default have barely changed, just additions and minor changes when the underlying features change. Making hotkeys remappable was in no way a solution to that "problem", it's a standard feature in other 3D software that a lot of users requested, especially those who wanted to make the hotkeys compatible with Maya and 3ds Max.

ris 11y ago

"Blender may be one of the most successful and best run Artistic/Media projects in Open Source." I would go one further and say one of the most successful and best run projects in Open Source. I have always been impressed with the Blender developers ability to just plain deliver. Features get built quicker than you can keep up with them, and they seem to have had the best success integrating GSoC projects & developers into the code & team I've seen. I don't know what their secret sauce is (Ton's enthusiasm?) but I think many projects could learn a lot from them.

lucideer 11y ago

I'm not a 3d designer, developer, nor any standard general user of Blender really, but from my limited trials of usage it's almost certainly the most well made, polished piece of open source software I've ever used. It's UI paradigm in particular is at first somewhat overwhelming and unintuitive, and then suddenly with the tiniest amount of instruction or direction perfectly understandable and infinitely flexible (once you "get" how it works you can imagine them adding any feature and it being just immediately, simply usable)