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A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. 3D modeling and animation are just very complex series of tasks, you can't condense the options

A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. 3D modeling and animation are just very complex series of tasks, you can't condense the options much without sacrificing functionality for some critical workflow. The only way to satisfy both: a) Having lots of options b) Making those options discoverable for beginners is with some kind of nested categorization scheme. Any UI you create to render that will naturally converge onto a high-fan-out tree-like menu.

sysguest 2mo ago
well if you looked at blender 2 days, UI was really "user-hostile" level difficult/un-intuitive I think about blender 4? there was a big UI overhaul here
socalgal2 2mo ago
> A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. I believe this is false. I believe we just haven't figure out how to do it. I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. I'm not saying I have the answer. I learned 3DSMax in 1995 and write extensive plugins for both 3DSMax and Maya (and PowerAnimator). I think someone just hasnt't figured out the better way and eventually they will.
- shawn-furyan 2mo ago
  That exists. It's called ZBrush (https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush). But ZBrush can't replace Blender.
  - Bruises 2mo ago
    Right on. And for all people's whining about it's UI and terminology being too confusing, it was designed for traditional maquette sculptors and it was hugely successful in helping them move into working digitally.
- 10000truths 2mo ago
  > I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. The digital equivalent of those disciplines are only a tiny subset of what people do with Blender, though. If all I need to do is shape a 3D model, I could boot up SketchUp (or a similarly "easy" modeling program) for that. To extend your analogy: if the sculptor makes a career out of creating hour-long 60-FPS claymations with perfect interpolation between key poses, grandiose scenery, and every frame fully painted in detail, be absolutely assured that the sculptor will have an entire workshop filled with jigs, armatures, robots and any other specialized tools to speed up the process and automate everything that can be automated.

sysguest 2mo ago

well if you looked at blender 2 days, UI was really "user-hostile" level difficult/un-intuitive I think about blender 4? there was a big UI overhaul here

socalgal2 2mo ago

> A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. I believe this is false. I believe we just haven't figure out how to do it. I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. I'm not saying I have the answer. I learned 3DSMax in 1995 and write extensive plugins for both 3DSMax and Maya (and PowerAnimator). I think someone just hasnt't figured out the better way and eventually they will.

shawn-furyan 2mo ago
That exists. It's called ZBrush (https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush). But ZBrush can't replace Blender.
- Bruises 2mo ago
  Right on. And for all people's whining about it's UI and terminology being too confusing, it was designed for traditional maquette sculptors and it was hugely successful in helping them move into working digitally.
10000truths 2mo ago
> I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. The digital equivalent of those disciplines are only a tiny subset of what people do with Blender, though. If all I need to do is shape a 3D model, I could boot up SketchUp (or a similarly "easy" modeling program) for that. To extend your analogy: if the sculptor makes a career out of creating hour-long 60-FPS claymations with perfect interpolation between key poses, grandiose scenery, and every frame fully painted in detail, be absolutely assured that the sculptor will have an entire workshop filled with jigs, armatures, robots and any other specialized tools to speed up the process and automate everything that can be automated.