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Blender represents both the triumph and tragedy of open source software. I've been vaguely following its development since the late 90s, periodically making att

by nkoren 13y ago

Blender represents both the triumph and tragedy of open source software. I've been vaguely following its development since the late 90s, periodically making attempts to learn it, and failing until I finally made a more serious push earlier this month. Once one has gotten over the very steep learning curve, it's an amazing piece of kit. On a feature-by-feature basis, it handily outcompetes many commercial packages, and once one has learned the keyboard shortcuts, I can see how the interface would actually become a pleasure for daily users. However for beginners and casual users, the UI is a disaster: stupidly opaque and pointlessly obtuse. It is obtuse in ways which aren't necessary to support the power-user workflow, but seem to exist for no other reason than to maximise the "WTF?!?" factor for new users. For example: object-selection is done via a right-click, requiring the user to break their muscle-memory from literally every other GUI program they've ever used. WTF? And where are the contextual menus? And why are the all-important keyboard-shortcut tooltips scattered so haphazardly through the UI? Making things worse, the defaults and documentation assume a three-button mouse and a full keyboard with a numeric keypad etc., and the most basic navigation functions -- panning, zooming, dollying, orbiting -- all rely on inputs from these devices. Working on my 13" Macbook Pro, it took me about 15 hours of banging my head against the software until I found a combination of settings which allowed me to pan and zoom etc. using only my trackpad. (I had asked the Blender forums for help, and the advice I received was to buy another computer). Now it's working quite well for me, but only because I was willing to endure a few days of pain to get there. 3D software doesn't need to be this difficult. In my day, I've been highly proficient at 3D Studio, Lightwave, Cinema4D, Form•Z, and various other platforms, and none of them embody UX anti-conventions the way that Blender does. Heck, even basic things like its click-drag mechanics are just wrong (click-drag to initiate a drag, at which point the object or control point becomes "sticky" to the cursor, even after it's released; a second click is required to end the drag), requiring the user to comprehensively retrain their muscle memory in order to use the software. WTF?!? The Blender community, unfortunately, seems to largely be a self-selected cabal of people who have survived this pointless hazing ritual and are determined to make sure that everyone who follows in their footsteps does the same. Although a small minority of the community "gets it" and is making earnest and well-thought-through proposals about how to fix the situation (see: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ScPMbHv8WRCU2znB7IU2l-W9hH-NLs5weQKLkjqmgpA https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ScPMbHv8WRCU2znB7IU2l-W9...), they don't seem to have much traction, and are continually derided / ignored by the rest of the community. Thus even the very simplest lowest-hanging fruit -- such as enabling "select with left mouse button" by default (it's already an existing setting, buried deep in the preferences where no noob will ever find it) -- aren't implemented. It's a sad situation, because with a bit more polish on the UI/UX, Blender could be a genuine player in the 3D industry, rather than an intriguingly powerful assemblage of missed opportunities.

michaelbuddy 13y ago
I realize you have strong feelings here, but what you are saying isn't really a tragedy. Blender is hard to learn, so are 3D graphics in general. You can accomplish a lot but it's difficult to do so. That's it. not a tragedy. the community is pretty helpful too. Every artist community is pretty critical when presenting your work, blender is no exception but Iv'e gotten help at various times over the year in forums and IRC with sure the occasional snark (that's everywhere). I bet more people ask for feature requests of big complex commercial software and don't gain traction either. People get used to the UI and come out of the woodwork when noobs want to change it. Another comparison, without having owned it but just through seeing and hearing demos, Maya is barely usable for projects without 3rd party plugins (my understanding anyway). How is that a good setup for a new user?
- nkoren 13y ago
  I know that 3D graphics aren't trivial to learn, but the tragedy with Blender is that it is arbitrarily difficult. The difficulties aren't intrinsic to learning 3D. A lot of people -- both beginners and professionals from other platforms -- are turned off Blender when they can't even figure out how to do basic functions like select an object or pan across a view without watching tutorial videos. That's really unreasonable, and I'm sure that Blender loses a substantial portion of its potential users due to completely unnecessary UI anti-conventions like this. It wouldn't be difficult to fix: simply enabling "Select With: Left", "Orbit Style: Table", "Zoom to Mouse Position", and a handful of other existing defaults would make Blender vastly more approachable out-of-the-box. I'm sure that something as simple as this would produce a measurable increase in its rate of adoption, perhaps on the order of 15% or 20%, without compromising the advanced functionality in the slightest. Other measures such as consistent tooltips across the UI and contextual right-click menus would give another significant boost in adoption. The tragedy of Blender is that the community is highly responsive to feature requests from established users, and has developed some superlative advanced capabilities as a result -- but is blind to the needs of beginning users. If Blender were a commercial product (maintained by people who think not only in terms of features, but in terms of market penetration) then these kind of simple issues would have been addressed a decade ago, and the good efforts of the Blender developers would now be reaching a much much wider audience.

by nkoren 13y ago

michaelbuddy 13y ago

I realize you have strong feelings here, but what you are saying isn't really a tragedy. Blender is hard to learn, so are 3D graphics in general. You can accomplish a lot but it's difficult to do so. That's it. not a tragedy. the community is pretty helpful too. Every artist community is pretty critical when presenting your work, blender is no exception but Iv'e gotten help at various times over the year in forums and IRC with sure the occasional snark (that's everywhere). I bet more people ask for feature requests of big complex commercial software and don't gain traction either. People get used to the UI and come out of the woodwork when noobs want to change it. Another comparison, without having owned it but just through seeing and hearing demos, Maya is barely usable for projects without 3rd party plugins (my understanding anyway). How is that a good setup for a new user?

nkoren 13y ago
I know that 3D graphics aren't trivial to learn, but the tragedy with Blender is that it is arbitrarily difficult. The difficulties aren't intrinsic to learning 3D. A lot of people -- both beginners and professionals from other platforms -- are turned off Blender when they can't even figure out how to do basic functions like select an object or pan across a view without watching tutorial videos. That's really unreasonable, and I'm sure that Blender loses a substantial portion of its potential users due to completely unnecessary UI anti-conventions like this. It wouldn't be difficult to fix: simply enabling "Select With: Left", "Orbit Style: Table", "Zoom to Mouse Position", and a handful of other existing defaults would make Blender vastly more approachable out-of-the-box. I'm sure that something as simple as this would produce a measurable increase in its rate of adoption, perhaps on the order of 15% or 20%, without compromising the advanced functionality in the slightest. Other measures such as consistent tooltips across the UI and contextual right-click menus would give another significant boost in adoption. The tragedy of Blender is that the community is highly responsive to feature requests from established users, and has developed some superlative advanced capabilities as a result -- but is blind to the needs of beginning users. If Blender were a commercial product (maintained by people who think not only in terms of features, but in terms of market penetration) then these kind of simple issues would have been addressed a decade ago, and the good efforts of the Blender developers would now be reaching a much much wider audience.