Blender Mega Thread
polycounter lvl 10
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOfdboHvshg[/ame]
As usual I'm impressed with what the blender foundation has come up with..
not bad for a free program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOfdboHvshg[/ame]As usual I'm impressed with what the blender foundation has come up with..
not bad for a free program.
Replies
Cool trailer though.
edit: The result of any artpiece will really be the result of the skillset of those who made it.
So do not view sintel, or the previous foundation movies and games as quality roof of blender, its such a backwards retarded way of thinking.
However the modelling tools and uv-editor has kicked ass for quite some time while I'm still waiting for the big apps to do something about their ca. 1994 uv-editors.
I've been doing published game art for quite some years in blender now, so everytime I see someone say "It's not quite there yet" I just facepalm and wonder if I've been living in a dream world where my art never actually happened.
It's all about the artist, and the blender community might have been lacking a bit in the grand master artist per user ratio, (except for belias, that guy works magic with the canvas)
He who must not be named!!!!
Agreed, though I tried out the alpha of 2.5 and the improvements are astounding. They're significantly improving the interface and they're actually adding customizable shortcuts after all this time, so things are looking good.
Sintel will increase awareness for Blender and more people will think about using it, but i dont think the vast majority will really ever get over the stigma that it has had in the past.
2.5 is definitely a step in the right direction though
I think a lot of people are living in a bubble with this "The application doesn't matter" nonsense.
Obviously good art will present itself regardless, or in spite of, the tools. But that's completely irrelevant.
Who are you making this art for? Are you just making "super zip bang awesome jee wizz" art to put on your site, or do you plan on doing anything useful with it in any reasonable timeframe?
If the tools didn't matter, why wasn't everyone making amazing organic characters before zbrush came onto the scene? Why are so many places using motionbuilder for an animation advantage over the next guy?
if the tools didn't matter, why aren't we all still just making models by creating points in space, then connecting them bit by bit like Steed did for strike commander back in those days?
The tools do matter, the interface does matter, the work flow does matter.
Come on already; Some people are good with and enjoy maya/XSI/MaX, others like Modo and the lot, but don't tell me just cuz they CAN all do the same basic things, that their given strengths and weaknesses somehow become moot.
As a human being, you CAN do what anyone else can, the degree to which you do that thing is what makes you a sport star, a track star, a musical legend. Stop trying to make the use of applications a feel good politically correct ego massage.
Yes! There is a user menual at Blenders.org that no one can understand amirite?
EDIT: Agree with PeterK in most cases and somewhat disagree.
Agreed: Indeed the good tools and its practices matters along with your style of work flow. Most of today's 3d modeling tools have made work a hell lot easier. Today they rely on such softwares as 3ds max/Maya/Motionbuilder/mudbox/etc, and the work in 3d has gone more realistic than before.
Disagree, its not necessary to have a good tool to provide a good art, reason being. Final Fantasy spirits within was only realtime 3d movie that was released long before zbrush even existed and 3ds max/maya and other autodesk tools were at very low version. Same goes for Blizzard cinametics. So that proves that you dont really need all those softwares to produce a good art. (though it is more time consuming)
It's a fully capable tool but people will be judging it as "not done" or "not just there" after they've had a hard time using it due to its interface.
Trust me, its the same mentality in the blender community but pointed the other way.
Blender has had its core tools at the same level as max and maya for quite some time now.
But please tell me when in modelling and unwrapping or rendering how blender just isn't the tool for the job yet?
great stuff peterK!
yiannisK, (awesome overall guy) is along the same lines only takes stance too. ::)
i would love to post this everywhere, together with:
"i'd be a frustrated carpenter if someone told me a hammer and a nailgun were both just tools for the same job (which is true)."... by ralusek.
3dsmax and mudbox ftw!
...oh and Art academy on DSi XD
never the less, truth is that blender guys are indeed trying too hard and they have managed to grow a lot since the first versions of blender although they just are not there yet. otherwise, trust me.. everyone loves an awesome free tool
in fact the whole video gives me a dragon age meets disney feel
Give concrete examples please. Otherwise Im calling shenanigans!
They'd be better off rebranding it as a new tool with a new name and a new interface. The name 'Blender' is synonymous with 'bad interface' even among people who have never touched it. That isn't going to change. Branding is important, sticking your head in the sand and pretending it isn't doesn't help anyone.
Same goes for GIMP, while we're at it.
I've never put any serious work into learning blender, I don't have to. If I get hired by a blender based studio I'll spend a night getting used to the interface. As far as Blender's reputation, I have a gut reaction from seeing all the bad art that's made on it, Weta's blender ray gun contest has a gallery of entries that look like stuff from 15 years ago. It could just be the fact that it's free and there's a larger pool of noobs putting out bad models.
I've never said the interface is godsent, and I welcome the changes in 2.5, but that doesn't change the fact that when you learn the 2.4 "interface" hotkeys, you'll be working at a fast speed, and you're pretty much capable of creating the same things you could create in the autodesk apps.
So there, fully capable, asspain to learn.
You're actually dead on.
I fully agree with Peter. The "app doesnt matter" talk really is BS, and most likely comes from users having no idea what more efficient workflows are about. (no offense!). A friend of mine just tried Topogun today after 2 years of saying loud and clear 'he didnt need it'. Now he understand what he missed and the time he wasted hehe :P
SO, to settle all this ... where can I find a good Blender polygon modeling video, concise and to the point, showing good art, by a technically capable artist, and showing the use of a powerful toolset ? The reason why many of us dont have much faith in Blender is because afaik its nowhere to be found ... whereas the Bay Raitt Nendo/Mirai stuff is almost 10 years old and still kicks ass.
Someone prove me wrong!
Eld : thats one fine example here. Autodesk apps are not equal. Maya forces linear modeling down my throat, yet Max allows non-linear editing of models. Huge difference, overlooked by a vast majority of users stuck in old workflows.
P
You can REALLY tell the guys who have never used Blender...or never made it past learning the interface. It's just the same as ALL the other tools. It's artist friendly to the max.
Now that I think about it, I've never seen any art from you Zac...?
Obviously specialised tools are streamlined for certain pipelines but I wouldn't say that Max is better than Maya or ZBrush is better than Mudbox because its all down to personal preference and what people find most comfortable for them.
For every person that finds a program to be awkward and unintuitive another feels the opposite way.
I am far faster in Blender that i would be Max or Maya because i know the application that much more but i wouldn't decide not to use any program if i felt that it did the job better.
I think part of the reason for Blenders interface being odd is due to the fact that it was designed as an in house only tool that was a primarily hotkey based application and as such the GUI was only used for very minor stuff like tweaking values etc.
Unfortunately as the feature set began to grow the interface started to become a little cluttered as new additions were tacked on.
@pior,
Sebastian König does some pretty sweet stuff
http://vimeo.com/2879397
So what retopo program was he using? 3Dcoat?
You're not wrong. And it's a damn shame.
I'm neither a Blender apologist nor a Blender hater. I think they're doing some good stuff with their latest updates and I think they're on track to put out a really good piece of software. However, those statements are complete and absolute utter bullshit and here are a few reasons why:
- In every 3D program I've used (Lightwave, Max, Maya, XSI, Modo, and several others) except for Blender, I've been able to get up to speed with modeling and texturing in the span of an afternoon of experimentation and a little bit of looking at tutorials.
- In every 3D program I've used, the basic tools like select, move, scale and rotate are pretty consistent across the board and behave in pretty much the same way. Except in Blender, where there are multiple different options to rotate, select items, etc. and they all use different buttons or hotkeys.
- In every 3D program I've used, the mouse and keyboard are used in the same way as any other computer program, except in Blender where you have completely non-standard ways of using the mouse and keyboard. (Right click to select? WTF?)
Part of being artist friendly is following interface conventions that have been in place for over a decade because that's what people are familiar with, unless it makes things faster and easier for the user. The ribbon interface in Office 2007 is an example, though imperfect, of interface design that, while nonstandard, is eventually faster and easier to use in many cases than the previous stnadard design.
Blender enthusiasts like to point to their pet program as being an example of this kind of decent interface design, but they fail to realize that it's bullshit brainwashing. That's why Blender's interface is getting such a massive overhaul at the moment.
I'm hoping you'll be able to find some really good game art somewhere else out there though, that part of the blender community is really bare bones.
Regarding videos ... this timelapse is kinda misleading as there is quite a few popups flashing by, and maybe a lot of clicking and whatnot. I'd love to see a 1x version of that.
I want to use and love Blender so bad actually. But every time it seems to disappoint. Yup, just like the Gimp or Inkscape. Great promises, but really they kinda suck!!
BTW. If someone is, or knows, a skilled programmer able to use the Blender source code and bend it at will ... I would be more than happy to contribute to the design of a dedicated modeling program based on the Blender core, but with standard manipulation schemes and behavior. If Blender is open source, this should be doable, right ? A special branch dedicated to efficient modeling. Anyone interested ?
(oh and Eld, great folio !! Your stuff should be part of the Blender splashscrens ... little things like that alone, could gather a lot of interest for the program!)
And yeah, I'd use piorblender.
and pior, do it.
And Jonatan, your stuff would certainly be enough to sell me on Blender if I hadn't tried it before, keep pushing for it
Cyrael, I just don't wish to see it get the amateur stamp, while I still agree the ui is an unneeded hurdle, but it's getting its first major fix in 2.5.
Simon, you know it, I'm always pushing for blender to become more readily available for more people to use, and I'm especially pushing for its gameart related side, People who come here from the blender communities usually grow way faster here than over there, that's one big problem with that community, very little outside blood, I would've been over there doing their thing if it weren't for polycount
I heard somewhere that the next official 2.5 release is at the end of this month, after which there is a scheduled modelling focus on the development road map.
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/
Should be cool to see what happens
The main difference talking about modelling, is the way of doings things, the philosophy, maybe a little faster or a little slower, who cares?.
Take me as example, I feel confortable working with modo while others not (i know too many modo haters).
This said, i must say i don't like Blender, it's not a "tool by artists for artists" imho. And if you look for work, Blender won't be readed in the requisites. To learn/study a program takes too much time when you are customed to Max for example, and when i see a program like blender... err i say: "better to be used by their creators, it's a waste of time to learn this".
If you like Blender, use it. But Nobody should sell a software as the "ultimate solution" or "something great" because some users did something cool. Why the heck great artists should use Blender? i don't understand that position, that's something that should be replied by the software, with features, perfomance and easy of use. Blender can't be considered a profesional solution right now. You have Gimp, free, and people prefer to use photoshop...
Well, i also think it's the artist that makes the art, and not the tool, but, it's not the same to be working with tools than with TOOLS. Better tools always give you advantage. Too many studios are with Nuke now, and it's for something.
I switched from Max to Modo because Max didn't give me what i needed. In Max, I was frustrated when i wanted to do complex subdiv works, and with modo i saw the light. I could say that it boosted me, because it gave me easiness for too many things. I adapted myself to its philosophy and i ended improving my workflow.
BTW, don't use modo, you will get frustration :poly136:.
Let's begin the blenderitis...
my two cents.
In many ways I should have chosen a different username...to be honest I rarely get to play around with Blender anymore, I use both Maya and Max in my day to day.
What you say is true, but is 's' for scale and 'r' for rotate such a big difference from 'e' for scale and 'r' for rotate? I agree with you about the right mouse button thing, but you can change that. These things should not be defeating you. You are many times the artist I am, and yet you seem to be rolling over at these trivial little issues. Sure, you have your tools that work how you want them, so why would you bother; I agree; but there are some really cool features in Blender, and some of them could speed up your workflow/ add a new dimension to your work (like easy simulated smoke for high-res stills etc) if you would see past non-issues like hitting 's' for scale instead of 'e'.
It baffles me, it sounds so easy to do. With ultra popular apps like Max and Maya, the best thing the masterminds behind Blender could do to attract users is to simply give them an environment they would be familiar with. Thats one of the reason why Mudbox got successful - its authors understood that messing with the muscle memory and habits of their potential userbase wasnt worth it...
Topogun got it right, Draster Switcher and Nex are built around that principle, same for Silo ... so why not ?
Even tho that is, again, a very small thing ... knowing that such a core issue is not being taken care of doesnt give me much faith in Blender as a whole.
So far everything that ive heard about blender is an abstraction from what really is the case. Quite often ive heard the claim that everything is backwards, but so far that really is not the case. The only things strange is how they have a lot of hidden functionality. But if you sit in the blender irc and throw out a few questions when you get stuck you can learn the modelling in an afternoon. I would say after a week of modelling i am already up to 70% of the speed i can model in max.
I do see alot of problems with the interface, but it isnt so much the core design more that you need to know a lot of the shortcuts from the get go. For example to select an element in an object it is mapped to the L key.
I think the best way to look at blender is that its high level functionality is really well thought out and stable, and the low level stuff is a little lacking.
Take the new rigging system for example, they designed it in a way that you can't easily fuck it up once its made, by having a rig as a single object, with the constraints inside it and having a toggleable edit and pose modes. Instead of where in max you just have a bunch of constraints on seperate objects.
I'm still not completly sold on blender but what i have experienced with it is enough for me to actually recommend it to people over 3dsmax, provided that they dont need to learn the program to try and get a job.
But all and all this is just my opinion so i'm going to make a speedmodelling video this afternoon to see if i cant seem to show that it isnt completly backwards
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=72757
If anyone is willing to submit something in that thread their work will be going strait to the developers and probably be included directly in the next Blender release as a drop down option for default control schemes.
Edit: gah, quote is not edit
I won't say that its better than the big-name 3D packages. It probably doesn't have as many features, and it certainly doesn't have as much documentation. However, it is quite easily the best available option for hobbyist modelers who don't have $3000 to lay down for their software. And even if it doesn't have all the same features, it definitely has ENOUGH features. The current version of Blender has...
Standard poly modeling
Nurbs modeling
Splines
UV Mapping
Object Animation
Bone Animation
Shape Animation
Physics Simulation
Fluids simulation
Hair modeling (strands)
Rendering
Composited rendering
Post rendering video processing
Advanced Materials and Shaders
Sculpting
Normal Map Baking and Rendering
Integrated Game Engine
Yep, everything a growing modeler needs.
One important thing to remember is that as an open-source project, Blender doesn't really HAVE to market itself strongly. It isn't actively attempting to compete with any of the big boys. As long as it maintains a devoted userbase, it can continue quite happily with its current pace of development. This thread title is a bit misleading. Efforts like Sindel are used as showpieces to show how useful Blender can be. But until more professional studios start adopting it, Autodesk has nothing to worry about.
Still, you never know...
Nor would I consider maya, max or xsi the ultimate solutions, they're all applications that can be used for the same things, studios pick their solution according to what tools they want to use, and what tools their artists are used to.
the main point however is that blender is the only free solution out of all those, and it's the only open solution out of all those, and thats a great thing considering it has been proven it can be used professionally and fast to do art, just like the other applications.
jrs100000, I think people are just sleeping or away atm, they'll get back to it
And Richard Kain, lets not forget, the things it actually does properly, Uv-mapping that actually uses the same tools as the main modelling interface, every application should be doing it like that, also, the origin of ROADKILL, and the mythological theory of having a 3d mouse pointer that you can do translations around.
However, I do miss the uv-preservation that max has, that's something I'd want in blender.
I completely agree. In the first version of the 2.5 splash screen I saw, you could select from a number of presets (whether they were hotkeys or UI changes I dunno) that included Max, Maya, XSI and believe Modo too. This should definitely be a part of the Blender splash screen. Also there were other options on it too, like opening the most recent file etc...don't know why this hasn't been implemented in the builds we have been given.
I think what they're doing right is exposing a hell of a lot of stuff to python. from what i've read every opeator is going to be exposed to the user interface with python. Seems like its going to be possible to kick out the blender foundation UI and replace it with something sane if your willing to invest the time.
Good luck to em
Not that more people will start using it then... some people will always have an excuse :P There are some who will just always find a reason not to use Blender.
Why don't you start a really rough outline on Google Docs and share it with me, and we'll see what we can knock up.
Anyway, to Quote Ton, Blender's 'father': "blender is for blender users". I also think a lot of you underestimate the hatred hardcore Blender fundamentalists have towards ANYTHING to do with Max. If you even suggest something Max has, there will surely be someone who throws a tantrum over 'turning Blender into max', even if the suggestion is for something optional or even just the ability to customise things. Allowing for 'double-click' to be mapped (BY HAND; in the options) comes to mind, some idiots went ballistic over that one! Sure, these are the people who live on the blenderartist forums and eat, breathe and dream Blender (aka fundamentalist ' freetards') and there are plenty of 'normal' blender-users, but as you know, it's often the most crazy people that shout loudest.
edit @blenderhead:
What: silly excuses like ' almost every company I'd want to work at uses Max'?
It's a reality for a lot of people, and you need to realise that companies aren't likely to switch to Blender; no matter how good it may be or become. They have their pipeline (with export scripts etc...) in which Max sits snuggly, and that's unlikely to change.
the more apps you know!
Not exactly a 1x version but has explanations of working method - http://vimeo.com/2945730
So realise that a lot of designs come from a workflow standpoint, not from an accessibility standpoint. Take, for example, the dreaded right-click select. It's not very friendly if you come from Max or Maya. It is pretty neat in that it dedicates a button to selecting. That's all it does, select stuff. You can't go wrong with it, you can't accidentally deselect (and you don't need empty space to deselect in), works in the UV editor too, RMB is just selectravaganza.
Or take a look at the transforms. It was pretty hard for new users to do exact transforms, because they were hidden in some obscure panel (accessed by the N key). Experienced users could just use the hotkeys. Pressing s, x, 2 scales the model in the x-axis by 2. That's pretty fast, and I didn't need any UI in the screen to do that! 2.5 now has a last operator panel where you can change all that stuff too.