5 ms·

The Blender dev team never ceases to amaze me with their incredible iteration speed. It's crazy how much you can get done when you assemble a team of highly ski

by mkaic 5y ago

The Blender dev team never ceases to amaze me with their incredible iteration speed. It's crazy how much you can get done when you assemble a team of highly skilled, organized, and passionate people to all work on what they love full time. Blender is hands-down my favorite piece of software I've ever used. I use it for professional purposes semi-regularly, and with each new update just keeps on getting better and better. Excited for the 3.0 releases!

Wistar 5y ago
v2.7 was, for me, the version that got me to slowly move from 3D Max to Blender. Now, I can hardly remember 3D Max.
- can16358p 5y ago
  I'm not professional or anything but I find 3ds max UI and way of doing things/UI/toolbars/working with geometry and keyboard shortcuts MUCH more intuitive than Blender. Everybody says Blender is awesome and I respect that, but seriously, no matter how hard I try I always end up saying "this is much easier in 3ds max". Any recommendations?
  - hrnnnnnn 5y ago
    There's a fork called Bforartists which recreates this workflow in Blender. https://www.bforartists.de/ https://www.bforartists.de/
  - Wistar 5y ago
    Probably to stick with 3D Max. I really like 3D Max a lot. It was my tool of choice for about 18 years but, as I stopped doing much 3D professionally, I just decided to give Blender a shot and, once I got over some of the weird UI, most of which is now fixed, I found that I liked it a lot.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      How did you get into doing 3D Max professionally? Have you used any other packages like Maya, Lightwave, or Alias's offerings way back when?
      - Wistar 5y ago
        I started using 3D as a lark. I am a long-time on-line editor and VFX compositor and had access to 3D in the various studios I worked when commercial 3D packages became a thing, starting in about 1983 or so. More importantly, I had access to some amazingly good animators, modelers and 3D engineers of whom I could ask questions and who I could watch work (and annoy). They had a lot of downtime to talk because of rendering time. Several of these people are, today, legends in the field. In 1995 I started my own 3D animation, design and VFX studio. It was a Softimage house on SGI with a DEC Alpha render farm but I had a couple seats of 3D Max as well as Side-Effects Prisms and, later, Houdini. I have used Cubicomp 3D, Bosch FGS-4000, Vertigo, Wavefront, Alias|Wavefront, Softimage, Prisms, Houdini, Maya and 3D Max packages as well as the Rhino 3D Nurbs modeler and several other long-gone packages including a 3D solids system whose name I cannot recall. A 3D guru I am not, though. I regularly see stuff today that I just cannot imagine how in the hell was done and the insane skill levels involved in doing it. I will point out one thing that was common among the really good 3D practitioners: most of them are really good musicians in addition to being outstanding fine artists. The character animators generally had a drama background. Now, I just mostly play around, doing the occasional explainer video/animation pieces and elements, usually having to do with automotive and aviation technologies. My old-ass brain can't keep up any more.
  - Phrodo_00 5y ago
    Have you tried it after 2.7? I'm not familiar with 3d modeling, but I heard a lot of people praising the UI changes for that release
    - Wistar 5y ago
      Yes. 2.8 was the big UI change which made it a lot more familiar to folks used to the "mainstream" 3D suites/apps.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      Yup, it was actually after 2.8 which changed UI a lot as I read (don't know how it was before 2.8)
      - Wistar 5y ago
        Very much its own UI that didn't follow (the admittedly somewhat loose) established conventions. Right-clicking to select and other weird stuff. I got used to it but it really required a lot of playing around to begin to associate the user-model with my prior experience in 3D software-land. I remember thinking at the time that, had I had no prior experience to build on, I probably would have given up on it.
ahaferburg 5y ago
Probably very much depends on what you do with Blender. I've been trying to port my exporter plugin from Maya to Blender, and it has been nothing but frustrating. It's been quite a while since I wrote it for Maya, but I remember the Maya API (C++ and MEL) to be well documented, well structured, and quite pleasant to work with. I was always amazed at Maya's basic architecture: Every UI action maps to a command that is run by the interpreter. This makes scripting very easy. Blender's Python API on the other hand is very poorly documented, and - to me - seems poorly thought out. It's not really designed as an API, it's just exposing the existing C++ code, and usability is not a concern. It feels tacked on, leaving lots of gaps. Somewhere I've seen a quote by Ton Rosendaal that Blender is for artists, not for coders. If you want Blender to be a competitor for Maya that seems very short sighted. The one thing that impressed me though, was the speed by which the Blender devs react to tickets. Hats off to them!
- agumonkey 5y ago
  that would be pretty telling, I expected python to be big advantage for blender but if the internals/model are fluffy, and fluffier than good old maya i'd be worried
- prox 5y ago
  Another problem is that the code changes from version to version, so a big chance that example you found no longer works. While annoying it’s not insurmountable, but a good doc would help a lot indeed! Perhaps with the LTS release that’s a thing to solve.
  - rguetzkow 5y ago
    Unless the example is from 2.79 and earlier it shouldn't take any or only minimal adjustments. There have been some API changes between versions since 2.81, but they usually wouldn't affect a lot of add-ons or are very easy to change. All the API changes are also documented in the release notes [0] and the API docs allow to view the Python API for each version [1]. What change between versions caused you problems and what parts of the API docs were lacking? [0] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes [1] https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html

by mkaic 5y ago

Wistar 5y ago

v2.7 was, for me, the version that got me to slowly move from 3D Max to Blender. Now, I can hardly remember 3D Max.

can16358p 5y ago
I'm not professional or anything but I find 3ds max UI and way of doing things/UI/toolbars/working with geometry and keyboard shortcuts MUCH more intuitive than Blender. Everybody says Blender is awesome and I respect that, but seriously, no matter how hard I try I always end up saying "this is much easier in 3ds max". Any recommendations?
- hrnnnnnn 5y ago
  There's a fork called Bforartists which recreates this workflow in Blender. https://www.bforartists.de/ https://www.bforartists.de/
- Wistar 5y ago
  Probably to stick with 3D Max. I really like 3D Max a lot. It was my tool of choice for about 18 years but, as I stopped doing much 3D professionally, I just decided to give Blender a shot and, once I got over some of the weird UI, most of which is now fixed, I found that I liked it a lot.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    How did you get into doing 3D Max professionally? Have you used any other packages like Maya, Lightwave, or Alias's offerings way back when?
    - Wistar 5y ago
      I started using 3D as a lark. I am a long-time on-line editor and VFX compositor and had access to 3D in the various studios I worked when commercial 3D packages became a thing, starting in about 1983 or so. More importantly, I had access to some amazingly good animators, modelers and 3D engineers of whom I could ask questions and who I could watch work (and annoy). They had a lot of downtime to talk because of rendering time. Several of these people are, today, legends in the field. In 1995 I started my own 3D animation, design and VFX studio. It was a Softimage house on SGI with a DEC Alpha render farm but I had a couple seats of 3D Max as well as Side-Effects Prisms and, later, Houdini. I have used Cubicomp 3D, Bosch FGS-4000, Vertigo, Wavefront, Alias|Wavefront, Softimage, Prisms, Houdini, Maya and 3D Max packages as well as the Rhino 3D Nurbs modeler and several other long-gone packages including a 3D solids system whose name I cannot recall. A 3D guru I am not, though. I regularly see stuff today that I just cannot imagine how in the hell was done and the insane skill levels involved in doing it. I will point out one thing that was common among the really good 3D practitioners: most of them are really good musicians in addition to being outstanding fine artists. The character animators generally had a drama background. Now, I just mostly play around, doing the occasional explainer video/animation pieces and elements, usually having to do with automotive and aviation technologies. My old-ass brain can't keep up any more.
- Phrodo_00 5y ago
  Have you tried it after 2.7? I'm not familiar with 3d modeling, but I heard a lot of people praising the UI changes for that release
  - Wistar 5y ago
    Yes. 2.8 was the big UI change which made it a lot more familiar to folks used to the "mainstream" 3D suites/apps.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    Yup, it was actually after 2.8 which changed UI a lot as I read (don't know how it was before 2.8)
    - Wistar 5y ago
      Very much its own UI that didn't follow (the admittedly somewhat loose) established conventions. Right-clicking to select and other weird stuff. I got used to it but it really required a lot of playing around to begin to associate the user-model with my prior experience in 3D software-land. I remember thinking at the time that, had I had no prior experience to build on, I probably would have given up on it.

ahaferburg 5y ago

Probably very much depends on what you do with Blender. I've been trying to port my exporter plugin from Maya to Blender, and it has been nothing but frustrating. It's been quite a while since I wrote it for Maya, but I remember the Maya API (C++ and MEL) to be well documented, well structured, and quite pleasant to work with. I was always amazed at Maya's basic architecture: Every UI action maps to a command that is run by the interpreter. This makes scripting very easy. Blender's Python API on the other hand is very poorly documented, and - to me - seems poorly thought out. It's not really designed as an API, it's just exposing the existing C++ code, and usability is not a concern. It feels tacked on, leaving lots of gaps. Somewhere I've seen a quote by Ton Rosendaal that Blender is for artists, not for coders. If you want Blender to be a competitor for Maya that seems very short sighted. The one thing that impressed me though, was the speed by which the Blender devs react to tickets. Hats off to them!

agumonkey 5y ago
that would be pretty telling, I expected python to be big advantage for blender but if the internals/model are fluffy, and fluffier than good old maya i'd be worried
prox 5y ago
Another problem is that the code changes from version to version, so a big chance that example you found no longer works. While annoying it’s not insurmountable, but a good doc would help a lot indeed! Perhaps with the LTS release that’s a thing to solve.
- rguetzkow 5y ago
  Unless the example is from 2.79 and earlier it shouldn't take any or only minimal adjustments. There have been some API changes between versions since 2.81, but they usually wouldn't affect a lot of add-ons or are very easy to change. All the API changes are also documented in the release notes [0] and the API docs allow to view the Python API for each version [1]. What change between versions caused you problems and what parts of the API docs were lacking? [0] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes [1] https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html