find the UI elements

dejawolf

i was trying to help some guy with materials and such, but couldn't find the material editor in blender. so it got me wondering, how hard is it to find the material editor, and other UI elements in other programs, without reading the manual?
well, i've made a game out of it.

first list the program you're familiar with, then list how much time it took you to find the UI element in another program that you've got limited familiarity with, or none.

ok, here goes:

i'm familiar with 3ds max.

XSI: about 1 minute to find the material editor (was looking at the top row)
silo: about 5 seconds.
blender: still haven't found it.

Joao Sapiro

thats kinda retarded...

dejawolf

Johny wrote: »

thats kinda retarded...

what is.

eld

dfacto

Find anything in Maya. I DARE YA!

dejawolf

hah, suddenly the blender interface makes sense. i thought those things were toggle buttons for mesh editing, and not tabbed panels for everything.
IMO it'd be more obvious if it was something like this:

Vitor

you are overthinking it mate....

dejawolf

i was thinking of making this into some sort of cross-platform reference guide as well,
and hoping people would contribute with the programs they're familiar with.
but, well, polycount.

dejawolf

maya material (editor?)

about 30 seconds:

00Zero

i thought we were supposed to find it, like a game. but the giant red circles made it too easy i think.

eld

I cannot disagree with you on the blender tab thing



but maya, which one of the balls is it??

Calabi

How about the preferences menu. Blender time to find = never.

dejawolf

00Zero wrote: »

i thought we were supposed to find it, like a game. but the giant red circles made it too easy i think.

obama made this game.

Zwebbie

I still think Maya loses for putting it under Rendering. What the hell? Rendering? I expect something entirely different there.


Here's an early version of Blender 2.5, by the way. The idea is that the Buttons Window on the right (you can place this anywhere you want, but the right is pretty handy) only has settings and stuff, but no tools. So once you know that, it shouldn't be terribly hard to find anything there.



And the Preferences menu is placed under File too. Thank the heavens, because nobody could find that menu.

/promotion

crazyfingers

3ds Max: Press "M" for Material.

Win

MoP

Yeah, "Hypershade" is just about the stupidest name for a material editor I've ever heard of. So easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for.

Why don't they rename various commands to match, like call Smooth "Supermesh" or something?

dejawolf

one of the most difficult things to find, and get familiar with in any program IMO, is UVmapping.

Mongrelman

Aye right off the bat finding stuff in blender is a pain, but once you know that for the most part the 'F' keys are for different button windows, you can nip through things very quickly. I believe the materials are either F4 or F5 (been quite awhile since I used materials in blender).

I don't think it actually pops up a name when you hold the cursor over a button does it? Can't remember. That's one of the nice things with zbrush: holding ctrl over a button for more info.

adam

Who the hell clicks buttons any more?!

M = materials!

rooster

yeah that was the first thing I did in maya. M!
fuckin' hypershit