thats the C-Key(commercial) Version of 1.68 it had the super special radiosity calculator that i couldnt afford
They were good days. I remember watching the blender FTP night and day for new builds. The thing you have to give to blender is it offers a legal accessable option for kids to get into 3D
The thing you have to give to blender is it offers a legal accessable option for kids to get into 3D
I think its great that blender gives people the option of using 3D but in reality I imagine that as soon as said kids/people really get seriously into 3D they will wish they had learnt max or maya or something that is actually used in the industry instead of having blender written on their resume?
uhh...damn...I've been reading this thread since past 6 pages and all I observed is that people expect soo much for free.
So far I've seen that blender which DOESNT COST YOU 4K is offering you more than enough if you think about it.
For starters who do not wish to pay or be shocked by the fact that professional tools are great but they worth 4k+ Blender is good for them to start off with. Once they are good at it they can either stick with it or move on to the professional tools you guys speak of.
Seriously blender was found because many teenagers (and adults) demanded to learn 3d modeling for free.
And you can not expect soo much from the free 3d modeling tool.
Sorry, I couldnt resist. Please continue your srs discussion on "how bad the Free Blender tool is and trying hard."
This is a board of mostly do game art for a profession, everyone's perspective is different, but most people here can't see blender replacing their current software.
Also, Autodesk is offering pretty much all of their software free to students, so blender is competing against autodesk in that regard.
I think its great that blender gives people the option of using 3D but in reality I imagine that as soon as said kids/people really get seriously into 3D they will wish they had learnt max or maya or something that is actually used in the industry instead of having blender written on their resume?
Seriously blender was found because many teenagers (and adults) demanded to learn 3d modeling for free.
Actually, if you read up on it you would've known that blender was an tool developed by NAN to be used inhouse at first.
But other than that, this thread moved away from all that a few pages ago, now we're discussing potential improvements that could be made in 2.5, and other stuff.
is that agreeing/ disagreeing with the question I posed? anyway I was just going to say that autodesk is doing all that free student stuff now http://students.autodesk.com/ so it makes sense for people to learn the industry standards instead of blender.
Im not saying that blender is bad, Im just trying to be realistic here, Ive never seen a job advertised with "must know blender" in the required skills section but Ive seen lots with max and maya there.
Im looking forward to 2.5 and the interface enhancements as thats the one big problem I have with blender, other than that it is so full featured that it has more than some major commercial apps.
sorry, what I ment is, I've taken the time to cover the basics in all the other programs, just to be on the safe side, and other than knowing the basics, most employers will look for your raw talent and experience first.
I know alot of people out there who had to go from knowing maya to use max full time in the office. it works.
Which is why I'm still a bit happy about having chosen blender as my native program of choice, I can always wherever I am use it to do the heavy lifting, whatever the pipeline looks like, and lift the end results into the choice app of the studio.
I think I started back in the 1.4 days, just before they popped the game engine in, and NAN was going to make it big!.
What a crazy world that would be.
Actually, if you read up on it you would've known that blender was an tool developed by NAN to be used inhouse at first.
But other than that, this thread moved away from all that a few pages ago, now we're discussing potential improvements that could be made in 2.5, and other stuff.
Yes, developed by NeoGeo and NaN. I am not a big fan of Blender, but I dont have the right to crit anything that is right there, free to use to produce a good Art.
I've used Blender enough times to know that whatever it is providing the public is more than enough and it is free.
Absolutely, there's alot of room for improvements.
Yes but improvements are needed in many 3d modeling tools.
I meant I dont have the right to crit something that I got for free (Or it would make me feel bad).
Seriously, it is 5:30am and my third post trying to get the point across =S
I know alot of people out there who had to go from knowing maya to use max full time in the office. it works.
yeah I dont doubt that a skilled blender user could migrate to other software fairly quickly but its one thing learning a new app and another thing entirely learning to use that new app as efficiently as all the other professionals out there. They dont want artist A whos 40% slower to produce the same stuff as artist B,C and D simply because artist A spent thier time learning blender and will only be fully up to speed in 2 months.
I guess its a risk we all take by devoting time to one software but I feel blender users dont always realise how much more of a risk they are taking by not choosing an industry standard as a starting point. I know you know about this eld as you have already got a grounding in other apps, its all those newbies that Im concerned about.
I meant I dont have the right to crit something that I got for free (Or it would make me feel bad).
yes you do its not your choice wether they offer it free or not, its thier choice to offer it free so you can say what you like. its like being offered a turkey sandwich and finding a cockroach in it and saying oh well I got it free so I cant complain. Plus Im sure alot of the improvements already in blender might have started out as complaints that got some attention
Yes but improvements are needed in many 3d modeling tools.
I meant I dont have the right to crit something that I got for free (Or it would make me feel bad).
Seriously, it is 5:30am and my third post trying to get the point across =S
Ofcourse you do have that right, even if you got it for free, That's the whole point of making it improve to something better.
The blender community suffers a bit from the "you may not crit", which shows quite clearly with the durian project, every time someone crits the project there's a meatwall of people that clearly state that people should not crit it.
yeah I dont doubt that a skilled blender user could migrate to other software fairly quickly but its one thing learning a new app and another thing entirely learning to use that new app as efficiently as all the other professionals out there. They dont want artist A whos 40% slower to produce the same stuff as artist B,C and D simply because artist A spent thier time learning blender and will only be fully up to speed in 2 months.
Same goes for maya <-> max, or xsi -> maya, well you get the point.
Only difference is that I can be at fullspeed the first day, since unless the company is very anti-blender, I can download it and start working, while at the same time getting up to speed in the studio app of choice.
And the grim honest truth is that only a small tiny percentage will ever get to the skill-level of working professionally in film and games, regardless of what program they use, and if they do they usually won't have a problem learning new programs.
I love how many ill informed people keep coming into the conversation making sweeping claims about something that they have never sat down and properly learnt.
I think one of my favorite sayings applies here "correlation does not imply causation", mostly in reference to lack of use in professional circles and art output.
Lamoot: Thanks! thats exactly what i was looking for!
No I am not, and I cleanerly stated that in my post . The quote you posted was my least assumption before any hassle to go look at the Blender's history because I am lazy.
I am not a big fan of blender, I've stated that as well, but I do use it sometimes.
I love how many ill informed people keep coming into the conversation making sweeping claims about something that they have never used .
I think one of my favorite sayings applies here "correlation does not imply causation", mostly in reference to lack of use in professional circles and art output.
Lamoot: Thanks! thats exactly what i was looking for!
one of our goals is to be on every artists desktop, even if not as their primary tool, certainly to fill the holes of their primary tool.
Of course for many artists I think soon that Blender will meet all of their needs.
I talked with Ton about some of the issues and weaknesses identified and we will look into those as things to target after Durian is completed (a todo list for winter/fall).
The bigest problem is that Blender doesn't allow you to customize the shortcuts. The tools are there...but it's very hard to get to them in an efficient manner.
The bigest problem is that Blender doesn't allow you to customize the shortcuts. The tools are there...but it's very hard to get to them in an efficient manner.
In 2.5 you can customise the shortcuts for pretty much everything
You can even add new shortcuts for functions. Basically anything that's related to python (I think) can now be called as a shortcut. Since almost the entire program is now exposed to python, that's just about everything. That's my understanding of it anyways.
You can even add new shortcuts for functions. Basically anything that's related to python (I think) can now be called as a shortcut. Since almost the entire program is now exposed to python, that's just about everything. That's my understanding of it anyways.
every operator is being exposed to python apparently. meaning if you can do it in blender you can control it with a script.
Blender 2.5x you can customize short cuts, menus everything.
r_fletch_r,
every operator is being exposed to python apparently. meaning if you can do it in blender you can control it with a script.
Yep pretty much. Anything written as an operator will be exposed automatically. There are a few tools that have hardcoded shortcuts remaining (mostly those that have to respond to user events while they are acting and thus the internal keycommands aren't customizable) but the number is quite small.
I've got a question for anyone that knows, lets say I go through the hassle of setting up everything how I think it should work and a new release comes out, will I need to redo all that work or is there a way to transfer it forward? At least with Max/Maya that only happens once a year but it seems like every few weeks with Blender? Maybe it happens automatically already I don't know?
Will there be a way to load and save different UI schemes? If one person goes through the hassle of setting it up it would be nice if that could be shared. The community might come up with some really handy presets.
A custom UI won't help much if it gets destroyed often or can't be managed quickly... If thats the case then it would seem like "here you complained we did it, but its easier to do it the blender way so suck it up" which is more of the same attitude outsiders have always gotten. =/
updates shouldnt break anything providing they dont start randomly changing the python API.
Thats why people are holding out until the python API is set in stone.
You definitely can share your setups, and they should be forwards compatible (they always have been, up to the jump from 2.49 to 2.5). The easiest way I'd recommend is, once you have a default scene set up (ctrl+u to save it as your default), save it out as a .blend file (just by saving the scene), and share that file. When someone wants your layout, they open your file (making sure "Load UI" is checked on the left hand column), and then use ctrl+u to save as default. Basically it's as easy as saving and opening a scene.
If that doesn't work for whatever reason (I'm not sure if keysets etc. are actually saved as part of the file in 2.5), you can share your .blender directory found in your installation directory. That one should work.
Not sure if someone saw my post at page 6... scrolling down a bit this following page you can find a Max-Maya similar style interface for Blender: http://www.pepeland.com/
Not sure if someone saw my post at page 6... scrolling down a bit this following page you can find a Max-Maya similar style interface for Blender: http://www.pepeland.com/
Hope it helps, sorry if you saw it already.
Heh, that's pretty much exactly how I rearranged Blender's interface when trying to model with it last summer.
Quad view in 2.5 can be done via the NKey>display panel>toggle quad view or Ctrl-Alt-Qkey
Any changes you make can be saved and generally should be forward and backwards compatible. (The forward/backward compatibility broke with 2.5x from 2.49 due to the massive changes under the hood, but generally it is the case).
i'll post that since there seems to be some interest. i feel like a lot of people making arguments at the moment are kind of in the dark about the UI and features.
Those are just layouts not UI's. It looks a bit more welcoming but in the end all the tools work the same making the changes purely
cosmetic. What I think Vig was asking is if you go to the trouble of scripting a workable UI will it break everytime a new point release of blender comes out.
metalliandy: ctrl+arrow keys ftw . thats one thing i love about blenders UI. being able to define custom layouts is super easy
Well as my first post here at poly count to get the mods to read it and veryify and all that jazz i must say that im a avid Blender user...
in fact i love blender so much, you can pretty much put me into the camp that really is NOT liking the 2.5.2 interface...
i have max and maya (both a gift from a friend during college), and every time i try to learn it etc, the only thing i can ever think of is, man i can do that in Blender in about half the time or steps.
I currently use max in my pipeline in helping with a mod, i use it for backwards compatibility with other team members when exporting to crytek. My pipeline consists of modeling/texturing in blender, then cleaning it up in max after the export, then export to crysis.
As for Blenders UI, i well love it, not liking 2.5 but thats saved for a blender forum all together...but 'abstract' it is not and here is my reasons..
for me to 'move/grab' a object in max, i have to hit 'w', to rotate i have to hit 'e' and to scale oddly enough i have to hit 'r', the other tools also are oddly 'hotkeyed'. Sure i can customize it, but that even takes more time...
now i go to blender, for me to 'move/grab' i hit 'g'. Now that makes sense g for grab, for me to rotate i hit r, again r for rotate. What about scale? thats simple 's'. Then you move on to Extrude and hey what do you know its hotkeyed to 'e'. and there are many more tools that make sense. Plus almost all the tools that you will use for modeling, a good 80%+ is all available to the left hand. I never have to look around the screen for the extrude button etc etc (although with 2.5 i can see that direction and im not liking it one bit at all, i also hate vertical bars like in max/maya and now 2.5 seems to love them agghghhhh!)
Right now im focusing on using maya because it is a industry standard, but playing around in blender is so easy and fast, that its hard to transition. Plus i do love the uv editing, makes much more sense than max/maya to me, but ill learn those apps one day...
But in the end it all comes down to the artist, and if a artist can speedmodel in blender in 1hr and have some crazy good results, i highly doubt its 'broken'. Needs cleaning up? sure, but far from broken.
also did you guys ever figure out what you were trying to do with normal baking...
i saw that you were trying to make flat parts of the image or at least get hard edges am i correct and you were getting smoothed edges instead? If your still wondering how to do it i might have a answer for you. That is if i understand correctly what your trying to do...
Those are just layouts not UI's. It looks a bit more welcoming but in the end all the tools work the same making the changes purely
cosmetic. What I think Vig was asking is if you go to the trouble of scripting a workable UI will it break everytime a new point release of blender comes out.
Yes but nobody is complaining about how the tools work. They work fine.
On the original topic, here's a compositing shot that is a WIP currently. Be sure to read the blog post as there are several important things missing from the shot to be aware of before critique.
for me to 'move/grab' a object in max, i have to hit 'w', to rotate i have to hit 'e' and to scale oddly enough i have to hit 'r', the other tools also are oddly 'hotkeyed'. Sure i can customize it, but that even takes more time...
now i go to blender, for me to 'move/grab' i hit 'g'. Now that makes sense g for grab, for me to rotate i hit r, again r for rotate. What about scale? thats simple 's'.
QWERTY strikes again! :P
Its really a matter of comparing whats more important, all similar functions being grouped in one area or all functions being tied to their first letter, to me the former makes more sense.
You can easily just make up a "name" for each short cut to help you learn it.
I remember in some tutorial I watched in XSI they called T - "Tagging points" just to remember that its for vertex selection, a little goofy, but it works. After you learn it and dont' have to look at the keyboard it doesnt' really matter, but I live to believe having keys grouped makes it easier and faster, like if you miss click scale instead of rotate, you automatically realize you need to scoot 1 or 2 keys over, if you camera resets when you are trying to scale, you kinda go, WTF did I just click.
Replies
They were good days. I remember watching the blender FTP night and day for new builds. The thing you have to give to blender is it offers a legal accessable option for kids to get into 3D
I think its great that blender gives people the option of using 3D but in reality I imagine that as soon as said kids/people really get seriously into 3D they will wish they had learnt max or maya or something that is actually used in the industry instead of having blender written on their resume?
So far I've seen that blender which DOESNT COST YOU 4K is offering you more than enough if you think about it.
For starters who do not wish to pay or be shocked by the fact that professional tools are great but they worth 4k+ Blender is good for them to start off with. Once they are good at it they can either stick with it or move on to the professional tools you guys speak of.
Seriously blender was found because many teenagers (and adults) demanded to learn 3d modeling for free.
And you can not expect soo much from the free 3d modeling tool.
Sorry, I couldnt resist. Please continue your srs discussion on "how bad the Free Blender tool is and trying hard."
Also, Autodesk is offering pretty much all of their software free to students, so blender is competing against autodesk in that regard.
What a crazy world that would be.
Actually, if you read up on it you would've known that blender was an tool developed by NAN to be used inhouse at first.
But other than that, this thread moved away from all that a few pages ago, now we're discussing potential improvements that could be made in 2.5, and other stuff.
is that agreeing/ disagreeing with the question I posed? anyway I was just going to say that autodesk is doing all that free student stuff now http://students.autodesk.com/ so it makes sense for people to learn the industry standards instead of blender.
Im not saying that blender is bad, Im just trying to be realistic here, Ive never seen a job advertised with "must know blender" in the required skills section but Ive seen lots with max and maya there.
Im looking forward to 2.5 and the interface enhancements as thats the one big problem I have with blender, other than that it is so full featured that it has more than some major commercial apps.
I know alot of people out there who had to go from knowing maya to use max full time in the office. it works.
Yes, developed by NeoGeo and NaN. I am not a big fan of Blender, but I dont have the right to crit anything that is right there, free to use to produce a good Art.
I've used Blender enough times to know that whatever it is providing the public is more than enough and it is free.
Ofcourse there are improvements need to be made.
Yes but improvements are needed in many 3d modeling tools.
I meant I dont have the right to crit something that I got for free (Or it would make me feel bad).
Seriously, it is 5:30am and my third post trying to get the point across =S
yeah I dont doubt that a skilled blender user could migrate to other software fairly quickly but its one thing learning a new app and another thing entirely learning to use that new app as efficiently as all the other professionals out there. They dont want artist A whos 40% slower to produce the same stuff as artist B,C and D simply because artist A spent thier time learning blender and will only be fully up to speed in 2 months.
I guess its a risk we all take by devoting time to one software but I feel blender users dont always realise how much more of a risk they are taking by not choosing an industry standard as a starting point. I know you know about this eld as you have already got a grounding in other apps, its all those newbies that Im concerned about.
yes you do its not your choice wether they offer it free or not, its thier choice to offer it free so you can say what you like. its like being offered a turkey sandwich and finding a cockroach in it and saying oh well I got it free so I cant complain. Plus Im sure alot of the improvements already in blender might have started out as complaints that got some attention
Ofcourse you do have that right, even if you got it for free, That's the whole point of making it improve to something better.
The blender community suffers a bit from the "you may not crit", which shows quite clearly with the durian project, every time someone crits the project there's a meatwall of people that clearly state that people should not crit it.
same with blender itself.
Same goes for maya <-> max, or xsi -> maya, well you get the point.
Only difference is that I can be at fullspeed the first day, since unless the company is very anti-blender, I can download it and start working, while at the same time getting up to speed in the studio app of choice.
And the grim honest truth is that only a small tiny percentage will ever get to the skill-level of working professionally in film and games, regardless of what program they use, and if they do they usually won't have a problem learning new programs.
Wow you are clearly not a Blender historian.
I think one of my favorite sayings applies here "correlation does not imply causation", mostly in reference to lack of use in professional circles and art output.
Lamoot: Thanks! thats exactly what i was looking for!
No I am not, and I cleanerly stated that in my post
I am not a big fan of blender, I've stated that as well, but I do use it sometimes.
Read the last line before dissing. Thanks
I'll clean them up and post them in the techtalk forum when im done.
great news , I really miss the context sensitive awesomeness and cut functions that silo offers
as regards to competing with commercial software
one of our goals is to be on every artists desktop, even if not as their primary tool, certainly to fill the holes of their primary tool.
Of course for many artists I think soon that Blender will meet all of their needs.
I talked with Ton about some of the issues and weaknesses identified and we will look into those as things to target after Durian is completed (a todo list for winter/fall).
In 2.5 you can customise the shortcuts for pretty much everything
every operator is being exposed to python apparently. meaning if you can do it in blender you can control it with a script.
LetterRip am i right on this?
Blender 2.5x you can customize short cuts, menus everything.
r_fletch_r,
Yep pretty much. Anything written as an operator will be exposed automatically. There are a few tools that have hardcoded shortcuts remaining (mostly those that have to respond to user events while they are acting and thus the internal keycommands aren't customizable) but the number is quite small.
Will there be a way to load and save different UI schemes? If one person goes through the hassle of setting it up it would be nice if that could be shared. The community might come up with some really handy presets.
A custom UI won't help much if it gets destroyed often or can't be managed quickly... If thats the case then it would seem like "here you complained we did it, but its easier to do it the blender way so suck it up" which is more of the same attitude outsiders have always gotten. =/
Thats why people are holding out until the python API is set in stone.
If that doesn't work for whatever reason (I'm not sure if keysets etc. are actually saved as part of the file in 2.5), you can share your .blender directory found in your installation directory. That one should work.
http://www.pepeland.com/
Hope it helps, sorry if you saw it already.
Heh, that's pretty much exactly how I rearranged Blender's interface when trying to model with it last summer.
Any changes you make can be saved and generally should be forward and backwards compatible. (The forward/backward compatibility broke with 2.5x from 2.49 due to the massive changes under the hood, but generally it is the case).
i'll post that since there seems to be some interest. i feel like a lot of people making arguments at the moment are kind of in the dark about the UI and features.
Some of us have laptops
All is not lost!
Emulate Numpad to the rescue ^^
In 2.4x go to Preferences> System and OpenGL and enable "Emulate Numpad"
In 2.5 go to Preferences> Input and enable "Emulate Numpad"
It allows you to use the standard number keys in the same way as the numpad.
ftw!
cosmetic. What I think Vig was asking is if you go to the trouble of scripting a workable UI will it break everytime a new point release of blender comes out.
metalliandy: ctrl+arrow keys ftw
Thats one of my fav shortcuts tbh. great for UVing or if you are feeling fruity, just the 3d window ^^
in fact i love blender so much, you can pretty much put me into the camp that really is NOT liking the 2.5.2 interface...
i have max and maya (both a gift from a friend during college), and every time i try to learn it etc, the only thing i can ever think of is, man i can do that in Blender in about half the time or steps.
I currently use max in my pipeline in helping with a mod, i use it for backwards compatibility with other team members when exporting to crytek. My pipeline consists of modeling/texturing in blender, then cleaning it up in max after the export, then export to crysis.
As for Blenders UI, i well love it, not liking 2.5 but thats saved for a blender forum all together...but 'abstract' it is not and here is my reasons..
for me to 'move/grab' a object in max, i have to hit 'w', to rotate i have to hit 'e' and to scale oddly enough i have to hit 'r', the other tools also are oddly 'hotkeyed'. Sure i can customize it, but that even takes more time...
now i go to blender, for me to 'move/grab' i hit 'g'. Now that makes sense g for grab, for me to rotate i hit r, again r for rotate. What about scale? thats simple 's'. Then you move on to Extrude and hey what do you know its hotkeyed to 'e'. and there are many more tools that make sense. Plus almost all the tools that you will use for modeling, a good 80%+ is all available to the left hand. I never have to look around the screen for the extrude button etc etc (although with 2.5 i can see that direction and im not liking it one bit at all, i also hate vertical bars like in max/maya and now 2.5 seems to love them agghghhhh!)
Right now im focusing on using maya because it is a industry standard, but playing around in blender is so easy and fast, that its hard to transition. Plus i do love the uv editing, makes much more sense than max/maya to me, but ill learn those apps one day...
But in the end it all comes down to the artist, and if a artist can speedmodel in blender in 1hr and have some crazy good results, i highly doubt its 'broken'. Needs cleaning up? sure, but far from broken.
also did you guys ever figure out what you were trying to do with normal baking...
i saw that you were trying to make flat parts of the image or at least get hard edges am i correct and you were getting smoothed edges instead? If your still wondering how to do it i might have a answer for you. That is if i understand correctly what your trying to do...
Yes but nobody is complaining about how the tools work. They work fine.
Also, regarding the UI breaking, probably.
http://durian.blender.org/news/sintels-cabin-sneak-peek/
[ame]
QWERTY strikes again! :P
Its really a matter of comparing whats more important, all similar functions being grouped in one area or all functions being tied to their first letter, to me the former makes more sense.
I remember in some tutorial I watched in XSI they called T - "Tagging points" just to remember that its for vertex selection, a little goofy, but it works. After you learn it and dont' have to look at the keyboard it doesnt' really matter, but I live to believe having keys grouped makes it easier and faster, like if you miss click scale instead of rotate, you automatically realize you need to scoot 1 or 2 keys over, if you camera resets when you are trying to scale, you kinda go, WTF did I just click.