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I still don't "Get" it, but once someone told me it was a "modal gui" (as a vim user) it clicked a bit more for me, that helps, but I don't have an artistic bon

I still don't "Get" it, but once someone told me it was a "modal gui" (as a vim user) it clicked a bit more for me, that helps, but I don't have an artistic bone in my body, and fail to pick up blender once a year. (that said, I have no reason to use it, save maybe toying with 3d printing meshes)

bayesian_horse 9y ago
Another good reason to use Blender is video editing. You can edit the videos, and even create 2D graphics to lay over the video.
- nannal 9y ago
  I sure hope I can create my name but on fire with smoke effects, it'll look great at the start of all my youtube videos.
- neves 9y ago
  As the other open source video editing software were so bad, and Blender had a so good reputation, I tried to use it to edit my family videos. But the interface were so weird for a casual user that I quit. This was one of the reasons that I came back to Windows after decades.
  - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
    I'm not sure what software you've tried, but I've found Kdenlive to be pretty good for video editing. It's best if you can use a recent version though, old versions that some LTS distributons picked up were not great. https://kdenlive.org https://kdenlive.org
    - j_s 9y ago
      The issue I ran into with Kdenlive was that I couldn't figure out how to cut within a clip without saving to a separate file. I don't have much experience with Kdenlive or video editing in general but am looking for an Audacity-like tool that can slice out useless portions of longer videos (and also mute sections of audio). For now I use ffmpeg on the command line, but wrangling timestamps is cumbersome.
      - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        When I need to trim part of a clip in Kdenlive, I just use the Cut tool on the timeline and delete the portion I don't need. This doesn't create a separate file, it just tells it to only use a portion of the original file. It's been a while since I've used it though, so there might be an even easier way. For muting you can apply the Mute audio effect for the required portion of the video.
        ConfucianNardin 9y ago
        You can also just drag the edges of the clip in the timeline.
        Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        Nice - I forgot about that!
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        j_s 9y ago
        I think I was expecting cutting to work with a selection (a click + drag to select a range) rather than clicking to cut at the start, then again at the desired end, and finally removing the newly segmented portion. Appreciate the help as I learn how to properly use this tool!
      - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
        Have a look at avidemux, which can even cut videos without re-encoding.
        Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        Avidemux is a great tool, but it would require creating a second file I believe. My workflow is usually to use Avidemux to do a rough trim of a clip (e.g., to take a five minute clip and trim it down to about a minute with the interesting parts in it) and get it into the format I want, then I use Kdenlive for the finer work.
  - jacoblambda 9y ago
    I find that lightworks does a great job
  - nickrio 9y ago
    There are NO good Open Source video editing software made for Linux, and I'm pretty confident about this. I'm currently using shotcut, it's buggy and just work, not great. With it, you can crop the video, change color, do some easy compose it etc, but that's almost all. If you have a good computer, you can try DaVinci Resolve. Though it's not an open source software, but it will give you After Effect+ level experience. I had some experience with 3ds Max & After Effect, and I tried Blender few days ago (For Editing Video and 3D modeling). What I found is that the UI of Blender is a chaotic torment even for people like me. It even cause some hard time when all I want is just to "close" (Or Shrink) a panel. I'm not saying Blender is a bad software, I just hoping Blender can have a more organized, focused and solid UI. Then it will be friendlier for greens who want to learn it.
    - skykooler 9y ago
      OpenShot is pretty good. Good enough that when they finally ported it to OSX I switched to it from iMovie.
      - mkl 9y ago
        I tried it the other day and couldn't find a way to make precise cuts. You can move frame by frame, but I didn't succeed in cutting at the current position. I switched to AviDemux. The video editing I've done in the past has been mostly with ffmpeg, i.e. command line and scripts.
    - cschmittiey 9y ago
      Wouldn't Resolve be closer to Premiere than After Effects? Having barely used resolve (my computer wasn't strong enough to mess with the 4k video I shot, and davinci didn't like the codec it was originally shot in) and with probably 25 hours in Premiere and After Effects, I could totally be wrong, but Premiere and Resolve felt more like editors, while AE was more for post effects and such.
      - nickrio 9y ago
        Well, I don't have any experience on Premiere, After Effects is only one I can use for this comparison. So.
  - bayesian_horse 9y ago
    To use it as a video editor you really have to understand too much about computer graphics in general, and how Blender does things in particular.
- ben-schaaf 9y ago
  Having used blender for video editing well after I became familiar with the tool, I actually found it incredibly intuitive and featureful than most open source alternatives. Turns out editing video and audio is incredibly similar to 3d animation.
pasta 9y ago
I think you should first learn the hotkeys and shortcuts. That is what helped me a lot. There are a lot of cheatsheets online that you can use. The GUI is easy to learn, but the keys are the key to blender.
- H1Supreme 9y ago
  It's all about the hotkeys. I'd say that you have to learn them in order to learn Blender with any sort of efficiency.
neves 9y ago
Aren't "modes" in UI a recognized bad practice? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Mode_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Mode... or read Jef Raskin writings. How can a modal interface be "better" than a modeless one?
- asgeir 9y ago
  I think it's more of a separate workspace layout for different tasks. i.e. one "mode" for modeling another for rigging and yet another for animating.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    It's not just a workspace layout, it does have those but they're separate from the modes. Different modes (object mode, edit mode, sculpt mode, texture paint mode, weight paint mode, etc.) all have different hotkeys and in many cases have functionality that aren't available at all in the other modes. There are some conventions shared across modes, like G/R/S hotkeys for move/rotate/scale, or X to delete things. But the majority of blender's operations are mode specific. If you're in one of the painting modes, F is the hotkey to change brush size. But you can't add faces in the painting modes. If you're in edit mode, F will create a face from the selected vertices or edges. The concept of a brush doesn't exist here. If you're in object mode, F doesn't do anything. For another, I is "Inset Face" in edit mode, but "Insert Keyframe Menu" in object mode. This one is a bit different, because the keyframe menu is actually available in any mode and it just doesn't have a hotkey unless you're in object mode. But like the other mesh editing tools, Inset Face only exists while you're in edit mode. Screenshots for reference: Modes https://i.imgur.com/nmKeP2f.png https://i.imgur.com/nmKeP2f.png Workspace layouts https://i.imgur.com/7g61twc.png https://i.imgur.com/7g61twc.png
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  Blender is definitely not modal in the Raskin sense. It extensively uses "quasimodes", but so do Raskin's own designs. That or the different view layouts mentioned by another commenter may have caused the confusion.
- 9y ago
dragontamer 9y ago
Step 1: Create a bunch of simple primitives that represent a sculpture of your model. Generally speaking: squares and triangles. Step 2: Add colors and textures to the model. Textures are 2d images mapped to the squares and triangles you made in step 1. With proper care, you can make triangles and squares look "smooth and circular" with proper shading effects. Step 3: Simplify your model into "bones", which can deform the model with fewer control points. For example, you can create a "neck" bone which moves all of the polygons that represent the head. Bone modeling is itself a very intricate process that takes a lot of practice. Step 4: Bone models are far easier to animate. Move bones around, instead of polygons. Instead of selecting the "head" each time, you simply select "the neck bone" to move things around. Step 5: Lather, rinse, repeat for every object in the scene.
- abledon 9y ago
  Also, great artists steal: Find a work of Kandinsky or Picasso you like and try to transfer it into blender using the same geometry shapes the artist is using. Then add your own twists , extra light nodes / special displacement textures / flying haiku texts going across screen at appropriate times hah
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    Or more seriously, use "MakeHuman" to make a base human model, and then modify it to fit your needs. http://www.makehuman.org/download.php http://www.makehuman.org/download.php There's lots of ways to "steal legitimately". In this case, the human model and bones model are all set.

bayesian_horse 9y ago

Another good reason to use Blender is video editing. You can edit the videos, and even create 2D graphics to lay over the video.

nannal 9y ago
I sure hope I can create my name but on fire with smoke effects, it'll look great at the start of all my youtube videos.
neves 9y ago
As the other open source video editing software were so bad, and Blender had a so good reputation, I tried to use it to edit my family videos. But the interface were so weird for a casual user that I quit. This was one of the reasons that I came back to Windows after decades.
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  I'm not sure what software you've tried, but I've found Kdenlive to be pretty good for video editing. It's best if you can use a recent version though, old versions that some LTS distributons picked up were not great. https://kdenlive.org https://kdenlive.org
  - j_s 9y ago
    The issue I ran into with Kdenlive was that I couldn't figure out how to cut within a clip without saving to a separate file. I don't have much experience with Kdenlive or video editing in general but am looking for an Audacity-like tool that can slice out useless portions of longer videos (and also mute sections of audio). For now I use ffmpeg on the command line, but wrangling timestamps is cumbersome.
    - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
      When I need to trim part of a clip in Kdenlive, I just use the Cut tool on the timeline and delete the portion I don't need. This doesn't create a separate file, it just tells it to only use a portion of the original file. It's been a while since I've used it though, so there might be an even easier way. For muting you can apply the Mute audio effect for the required portion of the video.
      - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
        You can also just drag the edges of the clip in the timeline.
        Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        Nice - I forgot about that!
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - j_s 9y ago
        I think I was expecting cutting to work with a selection (a click + drag to select a range) rather than clicking to cut at the start, then again at the desired end, and finally removing the newly segmented portion. Appreciate the help as I learn how to properly use this tool!
    - ConfucianNardin 9y ago
      Have a look at avidemux, which can even cut videos without re-encoding.
      - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        Avidemux is a great tool, but it would require creating a second file I believe. My workflow is usually to use Avidemux to do a rough trim of a clip (e.g., to take a five minute clip and trim it down to about a minute with the interesting parts in it) and get it into the format I want, then I use Kdenlive for the finer work.
- jacoblambda 9y ago
  I find that lightworks does a great job
- nickrio 9y ago
  There are NO good Open Source video editing software made for Linux, and I'm pretty confident about this. I'm currently using shotcut, it's buggy and just work, not great. With it, you can crop the video, change color, do some easy compose it etc, but that's almost all. If you have a good computer, you can try DaVinci Resolve. Though it's not an open source software, but it will give you After Effect+ level experience. I had some experience with 3ds Max & After Effect, and I tried Blender few days ago (For Editing Video and 3D modeling). What I found is that the UI of Blender is a chaotic torment even for people like me. It even cause some hard time when all I want is just to "close" (Or Shrink) a panel. I'm not saying Blender is a bad software, I just hoping Blender can have a more organized, focused and solid UI. Then it will be friendlier for greens who want to learn it.
  - skykooler 9y ago
    OpenShot is pretty good. Good enough that when they finally ported it to OSX I switched to it from iMovie.
    - mkl 9y ago
      I tried it the other day and couldn't find a way to make precise cuts. You can move frame by frame, but I didn't succeed in cutting at the current position. I switched to AviDemux. The video editing I've done in the past has been mostly with ffmpeg, i.e. command line and scripts.
  - cschmittiey 9y ago
    Wouldn't Resolve be closer to Premiere than After Effects? Having barely used resolve (my computer wasn't strong enough to mess with the 4k video I shot, and davinci didn't like the codec it was originally shot in) and with probably 25 hours in Premiere and After Effects, I could totally be wrong, but Premiere and Resolve felt more like editors, while AE was more for post effects and such.
    - nickrio 9y ago
      Well, I don't have any experience on Premiere, After Effects is only one I can use for this comparison. So.
- bayesian_horse 9y ago
  To use it as a video editor you really have to understand too much about computer graphics in general, and how Blender does things in particular.
ben-schaaf 9y ago
Having used blender for video editing well after I became familiar with the tool, I actually found it incredibly intuitive and featureful than most open source alternatives. Turns out editing video and audio is incredibly similar to 3d animation.

pasta 9y ago

I think you should first learn the hotkeys and shortcuts. That is what helped me a lot. There are a lot of cheatsheets online that you can use. The GUI is easy to learn, but the keys are the key to blender.

H1Supreme 9y ago
It's all about the hotkeys. I'd say that you have to learn them in order to learn Blender with any sort of efficiency.

neves 9y ago

Aren't "modes" in UI a recognized bad practice? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Mode_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Mode... or read Jef Raskin writings. How can a modal interface be "better" than a modeless one?

asgeir 9y ago
I think it's more of a separate workspace layout for different tasks. i.e. one "mode" for modeling another for rigging and yet another for animating.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  It's not just a workspace layout, it does have those but they're separate from the modes. Different modes (object mode, edit mode, sculpt mode, texture paint mode, weight paint mode, etc.) all have different hotkeys and in many cases have functionality that aren't available at all in the other modes. There are some conventions shared across modes, like G/R/S hotkeys for move/rotate/scale, or X to delete things. But the majority of blender's operations are mode specific. If you're in one of the painting modes, F is the hotkey to change brush size. But you can't add faces in the painting modes. If you're in edit mode, F will create a face from the selected vertices or edges. The concept of a brush doesn't exist here. If you're in object mode, F doesn't do anything. For another, I is "Inset Face" in edit mode, but "Insert Keyframe Menu" in object mode. This one is a bit different, because the keyframe menu is actually available in any mode and it just doesn't have a hotkey unless you're in object mode. But like the other mesh editing tools, Inset Face only exists while you're in edit mode. Screenshots for reference: Modes https://i.imgur.com/nmKeP2f.png https://i.imgur.com/nmKeP2f.png Workspace layouts https://i.imgur.com/7g61twc.png https://i.imgur.com/7g61twc.png
andrewflnr 9y ago
Blender is definitely not modal in the Raskin sense. It extensively uses "quasimodes", but so do Raskin's own designs. That or the different view layouts mentioned by another commenter may have caused the confusion.
9y ago

dragontamer 9y ago

Step 1: Create a bunch of simple primitives that represent a sculpture of your model. Generally speaking: squares and triangles. Step 2: Add colors and textures to the model. Textures are 2d images mapped to the squares and triangles you made in step 1. With proper care, you can make triangles and squares look "smooth and circular" with proper shading effects. Step 3: Simplify your model into "bones", which can deform the model with fewer control points. For example, you can create a "neck" bone which moves all of the polygons that represent the head. Bone modeling is itself a very intricate process that takes a lot of practice. Step 4: Bone models are far easier to animate. Move bones around, instead of polygons. Instead of selecting the "head" each time, you simply select "the neck bone" to move things around. Step 5: Lather, rinse, repeat for every object in the scene.

abledon 9y ago
Also, great artists steal: Find a work of Kandinsky or Picasso you like and try to transfer it into blender using the same geometry shapes the artist is using. Then add your own twists , extra light nodes / special displacement textures / flying haiku texts going across screen at appropriate times hah
- dragontamer 9y ago
  Or more seriously, use "MakeHuman" to make a base human model, and then modify it to fit your needs. http://www.makehuman.org/download.php http://www.makehuman.org/download.php There's lots of ways to "steal legitimately". In this case, the human model and bones model are all set.