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Blender is not actually that bad. 3D modeling is just a hard job. You have to make a set of 2D tools that are fundamentally conflicted with the 3D work you're t

Blender is not actually that bad. 3D modeling is just a hard job. You have to make a set of 2D tools that are fundamentally conflicted with the 3D work you're trying to do. You cannot realistically use Maya or 3DS Max in a professional setting without also learning a raft of keyboard shortcuts and non-standard UI. I keep hearing this "Blender doesn't adhere to common UX standards", but nobody ever says which particular parts are the non-standard UI elements. They don't use a standard UI toolkit, but that's not the same thing as not using standard UI design. I look at it right now and I see: tabbed documents, buttons, sliders, textboxes, accordion panels, all in relatively easily recognizable formats. You have to right-click instead of left-click to select things. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that initial, small, tiny road bump encourages people to look up tutorials instead of trying to forge ahead without any training. But there are some things that are just not going to be easy. There is a reason why materials are separate than textures. The modifiers interface has actually been drastically cleaned up and things like particle emitters greatly simplified within even the last year. Where it has "non-standard UI elements", it's because there is no standard UI element to do the job. The shader node editor is quite intuitive, if you ask me. So again, if you're going to complain about a specific thing, please cite specifics. So save your money and put the effort into Blender. 3DS Max is not $5000 better than Blender.

santaclaus 10y ago
Right now you can sit down in front of Maya, Houdini, or Modo and, knowing one of those packages, figure out how to navigate the UI in maybe 10 minutes. A few months ago, firing up Blender, I had to go watch some YouTube videos to figure out how the hell the UI worked.
- zokier 10y ago
  Being different does not make it worse. You could argue that emacs ui is bad because vim user would struggle in it, or vice versa, but I think most people would agree that wouldn't make a lot of sense
  - gcp 10y ago
    If there are standard UI interactions that are used by all programs but yours, then yes, being different is worse. For all the bad things you can say about it, IIRC the windows in Emacs (when running on X) behave like normal windows.
    - wtetzner 10y ago
      > If there are standard UI interactions that are used by all programs but yours, then yes, being different is worse. I disagree. You're basically saying the current UIs are the pinnacle of UI design, just because they're popular. Especially for software that will be used in anger day-in and day-out, it's much more important to have an efficient UI than one with discoverability or a shallow learning curve.
      - Pica_soO 10y ago
        No, they are not. He is arguing that you throw away years of user-experience for no apparent reason. Those people don't have the luxury to retrain for a same-function-framework just because some dev can dance. They are part of a pipeline, they have work to do, and insulting them as unwilling-to-learn, is simply missing the point.
        wtetzner 10y ago
        There are plenty of people who are productive using Blender, and prefer its UI. Suggesting that it should be the same as all of the other packages seems pointless. If you want software that works like all of the other packages, just use one of those.
        Pica_soO 10y ago
        I do. Unfortunately some tools i use, only exist in blender. So every once in a while, i have to do the dantes journey thing and venture into the ux-underworld. I wouldnt waste so much time on this, if it werent for this wasting so much of my time.
gcp 10y ago
Blender is not actually that bad. No, Blender is not bad, it's terrible. You need a tutorial video to understand how to close a pane, and even then it's hard. That has got nothing to do with 3D modeling being hard. It could've been a word processor and it would still be terrible. And yes, window panes are very much a standardized UI part which has a completely non-standard interaction design in Blender. For no reason. Edit: Before you downvote this, download Blender and try to close a pane. Just try it!
- astn 10y ago
  >It could've been a word processor and it would still be terrible. Like vim or emacs? >window panes are very much a standardized UI part which has a completely non-standard interaction design in Blender. For no reason. It's called "tiled window management". Lots of people find it more comfortable to use than the classic overlapping windows.
  - oblio 10y ago
    > It's called "tiled window management". Lots of people find it more comfortable to use than the classic overlapping windows. True, but when speaking about "lots", we have to keep in mind that tiled window management for the general public died together with Windows 1.0. That probably puts the percentage of the public who's ever used tiled window management around 0.001% of the total PC using population :)
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > True, but when speaking about "lots", we have to keep in mind that tiled window management for the general public died together with Windows 1.0. And came back with Windows 8 :-) > That probably puts the percentage of the public who's ever used tiled window management around 0.001% of the total PC using population :)
      - oblio 10y ago
        Well, the awesome success of Windows 8 kind of reinforces my point :-)
vvanders 10y ago
> Maybe that initial, small, tiny road bump encourages people to look up tutorials instead of trying to forge ahead without any training. I believe this is what's called "user-hostile". You're basically telling the user to RTFM, which is just going to drive away the creative people that you actually want to cultivate.
- zokier 10y ago
  Newbie-hostile != user-hostile.
swipecity 10y ago
Hi, you seem to know blender quite well, I'm trying to export an fbx file into unity 3d, but when I import it, it's not the rendered model, it's just the solid view model, not animated... :/ I'm trying to import this simulation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyqHzoCxa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyqHzoCxa0) without the camera view and the background image. Thanks.
- valine 10y ago
  You'd probably have more luck asking this on blender stack exchange or blender artists. Here's what I found after a quick google search. It looks pretty similar to your question: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5525/animated-object-exported-to-fbx-does-not-have-any-animation http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5525/animated-obj...
- riskable 10y ago
  The fbx exporter can be tricky... Make sure you have your whole model selected before exporting and also switch from cycles rendering to Blender engine before export. I found those two things fix missing stuff in exports of all kinds =)

santaclaus 10y ago

Right now you can sit down in front of Maya, Houdini, or Modo and, knowing one of those packages, figure out how to navigate the UI in maybe 10 minutes. A few months ago, firing up Blender, I had to go watch some YouTube videos to figure out how the hell the UI worked.

zokier 10y ago
Being different does not make it worse. You could argue that emacs ui is bad because vim user would struggle in it, or vice versa, but I think most people would agree that wouldn't make a lot of sense
- gcp 10y ago
  If there are standard UI interactions that are used by all programs but yours, then yes, being different is worse. For all the bad things you can say about it, IIRC the windows in Emacs (when running on X) behave like normal windows.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    > If there are standard UI interactions that are used by all programs but yours, then yes, being different is worse. I disagree. You're basically saying the current UIs are the pinnacle of UI design, just because they're popular. Especially for software that will be used in anger day-in and day-out, it's much more important to have an efficient UI than one with discoverability or a shallow learning curve.
    - Pica_soO 10y ago
      No, they are not. He is arguing that you throw away years of user-experience for no apparent reason. Those people don't have the luxury to retrain for a same-function-framework just because some dev can dance. They are part of a pipeline, they have work to do, and insulting them as unwilling-to-learn, is simply missing the point.
      - wtetzner 10y ago
        There are plenty of people who are productive using Blender, and prefer its UI. Suggesting that it should be the same as all of the other packages seems pointless. If you want software that works like all of the other packages, just use one of those.
        Pica_soO 10y ago
        I do. Unfortunately some tools i use, only exist in blender. So every once in a while, i have to do the dantes journey thing and venture into the ux-underworld. I wouldnt waste so much time on this, if it werent for this wasting so much of my time.

gcp 10y ago

Blender is not actually that bad. No, Blender is not bad, it's terrible. You need a tutorial video to understand how to close a pane, and even then it's hard. That has got nothing to do with 3D modeling being hard. It could've been a word processor and it would still be terrible. And yes, window panes are very much a standardized UI part which has a completely non-standard interaction design in Blender. For no reason. Edit: Before you downvote this, download Blender and try to close a pane. Just try it!

astn 10y ago
>It could've been a word processor and it would still be terrible. Like vim or emacs? >window panes are very much a standardized UI part which has a completely non-standard interaction design in Blender. For no reason. It's called "tiled window management". Lots of people find it more comfortable to use than the classic overlapping windows.
- oblio 10y ago
  > It's called "tiled window management". Lots of people find it more comfortable to use than the classic overlapping windows. True, but when speaking about "lots", we have to keep in mind that tiled window management for the general public died together with Windows 1.0. That probably puts the percentage of the public who's ever used tiled window management around 0.001% of the total PC using population :)
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > True, but when speaking about "lots", we have to keep in mind that tiled window management for the general public died together with Windows 1.0. And came back with Windows 8 :-) > That probably puts the percentage of the public who's ever used tiled window management around 0.001% of the total PC using population :)
    - oblio 10y ago
      Well, the awesome success of Windows 8 kind of reinforces my point :-)

vvanders 10y ago

> Maybe that initial, small, tiny road bump encourages people to look up tutorials instead of trying to forge ahead without any training. I believe this is what's called "user-hostile". You're basically telling the user to RTFM, which is just going to drive away the creative people that you actually want to cultivate.

zokier 10y ago
Newbie-hostile != user-hostile.

swipecity 10y ago

Hi, you seem to know blender quite well, I'm trying to export an fbx file into unity 3d, but when I import it, it's not the rendered model, it's just the solid view model, not animated... :/ I'm trying to import this simulation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyqHzoCxa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epyqHzoCxa0) without the camera view and the background image. Thanks.

valine 10y ago
You'd probably have more luck asking this on blender stack exchange or blender artists. Here's what I found after a quick google search. It looks pretty similar to your question: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5525/animated-object-exported-to-fbx-does-not-have-any-animation http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5525/animated-obj...
riskable 10y ago
The fbx exporter can be tricky... Make sure you have your whole model selected before exporting and also switch from cycles rendering to Blender engine before export. I found those two things fix missing stuff in exports of all kinds =)