6 ms·

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

by isaiahg 11y ago

Silhouette 11y ago
In my case, it's a "misconception" based on being the guy who has to orchestrate a production pipeline from start to finish and pay the bills for everyone along the way. Blender's UI may be many things, but like any tool in this field, simple is hardly one of them. In any case, a significant problem in practice is that Blender's natural ways of working don't always match what is used by just about everyone else. Sometimes it's got just the right feature to model something in a certain way, but you then incur a disproportionate cost to adjust that asset so it's useful as part of your overall pipeline, and while the UI for the handy feature might be decent, the overall process is glitchy and error-prone.
Animats 11y ago
Here is the Blender hotkey chart.[1] All 9 pages. With the different hotkeys for each of 12 modes. Any questions? [1] http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyReference.pdf http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyRefer...
- zanny 11y ago
  3d modeling is not a consumer activity. You can start a Blender tutorial and start putting cubes or spheres together in an hour, or you could make 3d animated movies of the same quality as any major animation studio. The complexity involved is not a mistake, it is inherent to the artform. Blender does a fine job of layering the tools and UI so that as you need more complicated features they are there for you.
  - stan_rogers 11y ago
    I'm not so very sure about that; before TrueSpace (or Caligari going back to the Amiga) was mangled to look and act like everything else on the market (the move that killed it, as far as I can tell, since it coincided with its decline), it was both immensely more intuitive and more dimensionally accurate when necessary than anything I've used since. No, it wasn't Crayola simple, but it doesn't have to be nearly as hard as Blender either.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Sure, and here's a 13 page list of AutoCAD command shortcuts: https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Shortcuts.pdf?1357794242 https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Sh... This is software with a learning curve. It's set up so that you can learn it and then be very productive. From the number of Linux CLI people on here, you'll find a lot of people who are sympathetic to that. If you want a friendly UI there's always SketchUp.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Addendum having just looked at the blender "hotkey chart" you linked: That's not a hotkey chart. That's a detailed description of every command with a hotkey. If you added similar descriptions in the AutoCAD commands list it could probably hit 100 pages. Besides, if your finger memory hasn't picked up all of blender yet, tap spacebar for command search. As long as you remember vaguely what something's called you'll find it in there.
- PeCaN 11y ago
  Blender's UI is like Vim. If you don't put the time in to learn it, it makes no sense, but if you do it's the most efficient thing ever.
  - return0 11y ago
    It is not like vim at all. Vim is predictable and has consistency in the way keybindings work. Once you understand that escape mode exists, you 're already there. Blender is a chaos of multiple window panes, buttons and options in unpredictable places, UI messages all over, inconsistent behavior of tools, and an ever-confusing window splitting mechanism. I write faster with vim. I doubt anyone builds faster with blender.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      > I doubt anyone builds faster with blender. I've spend a healthy amount of time in 3ds Max, AutoCAD, and blender. In my opinion: • 3ds is most discoverable / easiest to learn • AutoCAD is most precise (owing to its object snaps and UCS controls) • blender is the fastest to build in
    - DiThi 11y ago
      For box modelling and poly by poly modelling, Blender is the fastest of all applications I've tried. Blender is weird but predictable too. For example the keys GRS (grab, rotate, scale) works in different areas (3D, UV, animation, NLA, video editor) where it makes sense (in some there's no rotation). The UI overhaul of 2.5x moved stuff in a more logical order. If you understand the concept of "data blocks" and "users", you'll understand most of Blender.
- DiThi 11y ago
  > Blender 2.36 One needed all that to learn to use the old Blender. Since the 2.5x version, it got much better. UI got reorganized, keys are remapeable, and most important of all, you can search for any operator by pressing the space bar.
JeremyHerrman 11y ago
Back in 2011 if you googled "blender is ", you get these autocompleted options: blender is slow blender is too hard blender is hard to use I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today. Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these: blender is hard blender is damaged blender is confusing blender is free blender is slow In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to work with the Blender community to point out why so many people have difficulty with Blender's UI. Check out the video & transcript here: http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-why-its-broken/ http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-wh... Despite being a thoughtful and very patient man who made a great case, Andrew was met with a lot of pushback from the community that already thought Blender's UI was easy and usable. Unfortunately in the years since not a whole lot has changed (some improvements like tabs, context menus, and not assuming users have a numpad and 3 button mouse). Blender tries to be everything to everyone - a game engine, a sculpting modeler, a mechanical CAD modeler, a video editor, and a dozen other things. What you actually get is a mess wrapped in a UI that is alien to everyone except for the initiated. There's a reason why Autodesk and others have so many individual products catered to industries and use cases - it's because there's simplicity in specialization.
- matheweis 11y ago
  They should fork into multiple products: BlenderCore -> BlenderCAD -> BlenderEnginer -> Blender3D -> BlenderVideo etc. ... but if Andrew met resistance before, that's probably a non-starter. :(
- greenknight 11y ago
  Andrew price went on to say that his proposed UI was wrong -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw Since then there has been a UI team, which has tackled the low hanging fruit... the bigger design changes probably will come over the next year or so during their 2.8 revamp... where they tackle the bigger issues with blender.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 11y ago
return0 11y ago
I have a hard time believing that. Literally every time i had to do something i had to search google for it. Blender buttons are all over the place with no rhyme or reason about how they 're grouped. There are very few menus and in general no way to find what you re thinking about. If anything it's the definition of counterintuitive. If you 're not working with it every single day , it's quite impossible to grasp the interface, because you simply forget where everything is hidden. It's really really bad.

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

by isaiahg 11y ago

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

In my case, it's a "misconception" based on being the guy who has to orchestrate a production pipeline from start to finish and pay the bills for everyone along the way. Blender's UI may be many things, but like any tool in this field, simple is hardly one of them. In any case, a significant problem in practice is that Blender's natural ways of working don't always match what is used by just about everyone else. Sometimes it's got just the right feature to model something in a certain way, but you then incur a disproportionate cost to adjust that asset so it's useful as part of your overall pipeline, and while the UI for the handy feature might be decent, the overall process is glitchy and error-prone.

Animats 11y ago

Here is the Blender hotkey chart.[1] All 9 pages. With the different hotkeys for each of 12 modes. Any questions? [1] http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyReference.pdf http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyRefer...

zanny 11y ago
3d modeling is not a consumer activity. You can start a Blender tutorial and start putting cubes or spheres together in an hour, or you could make 3d animated movies of the same quality as any major animation studio. The complexity involved is not a mistake, it is inherent to the artform. Blender does a fine job of layering the tools and UI so that as you need more complicated features they are there for you.
- stan_rogers 11y ago
  I'm not so very sure about that; before TrueSpace (or Caligari going back to the Amiga) was mangled to look and act like everything else on the market (the move that killed it, as far as I can tell, since it coincided with its decline), it was both immensely more intuitive and more dimensionally accurate when necessary than anything I've used since. No, it wasn't Crayola simple, but it doesn't have to be nearly as hard as Blender either.
wlesieutre 11y ago
Sure, and here's a 13 page list of AutoCAD command shortcuts: https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Shortcuts.pdf?1357794242 https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Sh... This is software with a learning curve. It's set up so that you can learn it and then be very productive. From the number of Linux CLI people on here, you'll find a lot of people who are sympathetic to that. If you want a friendly UI there's always SketchUp.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Addendum having just looked at the blender "hotkey chart" you linked: That's not a hotkey chart. That's a detailed description of every command with a hotkey. If you added similar descriptions in the AutoCAD commands list it could probably hit 100 pages. Besides, if your finger memory hasn't picked up all of blender yet, tap spacebar for command search. As long as you remember vaguely what something's called you'll find it in there.
PeCaN 11y ago
Blender's UI is like Vim. If you don't put the time in to learn it, it makes no sense, but if you do it's the most efficient thing ever.
- return0 11y ago
  It is not like vim at all. Vim is predictable and has consistency in the way keybindings work. Once you understand that escape mode exists, you 're already there. Blender is a chaos of multiple window panes, buttons and options in unpredictable places, UI messages all over, inconsistent behavior of tools, and an ever-confusing window splitting mechanism. I write faster with vim. I doubt anyone builds faster with blender.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    > I doubt anyone builds faster with blender. I've spend a healthy amount of time in 3ds Max, AutoCAD, and blender. In my opinion: • 3ds is most discoverable / easiest to learn • AutoCAD is most precise (owing to its object snaps and UCS controls) • blender is the fastest to build in
  - DiThi 11y ago
    For box modelling and poly by poly modelling, Blender is the fastest of all applications I've tried. Blender is weird but predictable too. For example the keys GRS (grab, rotate, scale) works in different areas (3D, UV, animation, NLA, video editor) where it makes sense (in some there's no rotation). The UI overhaul of 2.5x moved stuff in a more logical order. If you understand the concept of "data blocks" and "users", you'll understand most of Blender.
DiThi 11y ago
> Blender 2.36 One needed all that to learn to use the old Blender. Since the 2.5x version, it got much better. UI got reorganized, keys are remapeable, and most important of all, you can search for any operator by pressing the space bar.

JeremyHerrman 11y ago

Back in 2011 if you googled "blender is ", you get these autocompleted options: blender is slow blender is too hard blender is hard to use I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today. Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these: blender is hard blender is damaged blender is confusing blender is free blender is slow In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to work with the Blender community to point out why so many people have difficulty with Blender's UI. Check out the video & transcript here: http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-why-its-broken/ http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-wh... Despite being a thoughtful and very patient man who made a great case, Andrew was met with a lot of pushback from the community that already thought Blender's UI was easy and usable. Unfortunately in the years since not a whole lot has changed (some improvements like tabs, context menus, and not assuming users have a numpad and 3 button mouse). Blender tries to be everything to everyone - a game engine, a sculpting modeler, a mechanical CAD modeler, a video editor, and a dozen other things. What you actually get is a mess wrapped in a UI that is alien to everyone except for the initiated. There's a reason why Autodesk and others have so many individual products catered to industries and use cases - it's because there's simplicity in specialization.

matheweis 11y ago
They should fork into multiple products: BlenderCore -> BlenderCAD -> BlenderEnginer -> Blender3D -> BlenderVideo etc. ... but if Andrew met resistance before, that's probably a non-starter. :(
greenknight 11y ago
Andrew price went on to say that his proposed UI was wrong -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw Since then there has been a UI team, which has tackled the low hanging fruit... the bigger design changes probably will come over the next year or so during their 2.8 revamp... where they tackle the bigger issues with blender.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
11y ago

return0 11y ago

I have a hard time believing that. Literally every time i had to do something i had to search google for it. Blender buttons are all over the place with no rhyme or reason about how they 're grouped. There are very few menus and in general no way to find what you re thinking about. If anything it's the definition of counterintuitive. If you 're not working with it every single day , it's quite impossible to grasp the interface, because you simply forget where everything is hidden. It's really really bad.