Try not to think of Blender in terms of Max and Maya, it has a very different way of doing a lot of things, and it's harder to learn if you're trying to directly translate that functionality.
I use the Maya 2 blender configuration and keyset which makes it a lot more usable in my opinion. I have to agree though, Blender just isnt there for it to replace better modeling tools. In fact, one of the best modeling tools on the market is free and open source... and its not Blender. Wings 3D is perhaps one of the best pure modeling applications out there, despite its old looking interface.
I actually really like Blender's controls when using a decent 3-button mouse, but then again I switched permanently from Maya about 6 months ago (when 2.63 came out) so I've had plenty of to get used to them (and Maya's whole interface was clunky to begin with; holding alt for everything, going through menus and clicking on things instead of using hot keys).
On the topic of keysets and configurations what I'd really like to know is how (or if) the Sculpt room in Blender could switch to a ZBrush control set. I've tried out the sculpting in the latest release, just today actually, and while the sculpting felt surprisingly good, not being able to rotate in the sculpt room by clicking and dragging in the viewport is a deal breaker.
Now that there's masking, it'd also be nice if ctrl were used for that instead of for doing the inverse of an action (alt would be better for that); oh and holding shift would be great for smoothing, using ctrl shift together for selection lassos, ctrl shift clicking to hide and reveal things... pretty much all the zbrush controls would be glorious...
It'd be amazing to use the same app for everything (at least most of the time) instead of bouncing around, and to have that app be open source and free to download and use for whatever by whoever is just... overwhelmingly awesome.
Emulating ZBrush controls may be pretty hard, but you can definitely tinker. For sculpting, you can use this setting to make viewport nav like Maya (alt+lmb) which works well.
Definitely dig into the the keymap a bit and see what you can do.
OMG ...so much info!
Thanks for the file Monster, I'll try that out later tonight.
BTW I really want to like Blender, just in case my earlier post was misunderstood.
Also my earlier point is that just looking at the interface I had no clue what to do. There is nothing to indicate that pressing spacebar would put you into edit mode. Yes I could have read how to do this, but there should be some clue for the end user on how to use a program without doing so. I'm a proponent of RTFM but some things should be no brainers.
Actually, since you mention spacebar, there's a really handy tool there for learning. Space brings up this search menu with keyboard shortcuts listed next to actions. So if you don't know how to do an action, you can at least try to search for it.
Simpler Default view. (You'll need to add a light if you want to render.)
Simpler Animation view.
Select with left click.
Menu with right click.
Zoom to mouse pointer
Orbit selected object
Ctrl + Right click to set the 3d cursor. (I've still never used that thing.)
Darker color scheme.
Don't load UI with file. (There's an option in the file open window, if you need to.)
Scene camera FOV is 45 degrees.
Hundred other small things.
That is an amazing change, and made the interface super user friendly!!!!
Thank you so much. If Blender had always been this user friendly more people would use it.
I suggest that everyone who wants to try Blender but can't get around the interface try this. Freakin amazing change!
I'd really like for custom orientations to auto clear every time i make another one.Anyone has any use for entire lists of custom orientations ? I mean i know i can manually delete them but it's still too slow, i'd rather have the current one clear when i define another one .
Does anyone know how Instances in Blender work? Can I pose instances seperately, like say if they were characters? Can I use fur with instances? Or do they have to be mesh based.
Antony Riakiotakis (Psi-Fi) has been working on a triangulation modifier which has been coded especially for game artists and requires some testers. http://www.graphicall.org/1013
It doesn't do anything other than what you would expect, but any comments would be cool
Does anyone know how Instances in Blender work? Can I pose instances seperately, like say if they were characters? Can I use fur with instances? Or do they have to be mesh based.
This is a great start to better control of triangulation in Blender, and should go straight into trunk! The only addition I'd like to see is the inclusion of a way to manually alter the triangulation for surfaces and have them locked in direction I chose, similar to the way Max handles it.
This is a great start to better control of triangulation in Blender, and should go straight into trunk! The only addition I'd like to see is the inclusion of a way to manually alter the triangulation for surfaces and have them locked in direction I chose, similar to the way Max handles it.
Yea, I thought that too. I'm not sure how easy that would be, but I will ask Antony and see what he thinks.
Is there any way to export your UI and plugin settings so that when you upgrade to the latest build, you don't lose your custom settings?
Save the 2.64 folder which is found at C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender and then copy or overwrite the files to the same location relative to the new install location (2.65, 2.66 etc.)
Then when you upgrade Blender, run it and press ctrl+U to create a new startup file, then quit Blender and paste your previous version of the startup file over the top.
I was under the impression Blender gave you the option to migrate your settings when you update? When you run the new version, check if there's a 'load previous settings' option on the splash screen somewhere.
Bottom left when opening a file. That tends to bring in the position of layout elements - if you just swap the default UI around that works fine but if you have some custom scripting it won't bring that in (the UI won't appear the same without the 3rd party script being dropping into the correct location before loading). Is that what you were referring to?
Anyone tried dyntopo out? Pretty cool stuff I think! Pity the viewport cant handle really high detail meshes though.
Dyntopo is great!
Also if you disabled Double Sided then you can get much, much better viewport performance for high poly meshes. In my experience this will boost performance at least 4x.
In case anyone is working in a High-Poly Scene and their viewport is slowing to a crawl..
Two methods I've used to increase the viewport's responsivity are:
1)Select your meshes in the scene & Turn off Double Sided Normals (Under the modifier tab)
2)In the user prefs -> System -> Check VBOs
Great. Those are some sexy chamfers. Reminds me of that max plugin that unfortunately costs money. By the guy who has the de-subdivide plugin. That would be a cool feature to see in Blender too.
What would people like the next 'big thing' to be in Blender? Id personally love to see some kind of crowd simulator.
Great. Those are some sexy chamfers. Reminds me of that max plugin that unfortunately costs money. By the guy who has the de-subdivide plugin. That would be a cool feature to see in Blender too.
What would people like the next 'big thing' to be in Blender? Id personally love to see some kind of crowd simulator.
Un-Subdivide is already in trunk Find it with Spacebar > Un-subdivide
My argument against blender is this, just because you can paint a master piece in MS doesn't mean I'd want to. Blender just doesn't seem as artist friendly as the other apps out there, even if it is free.
Cool trailer though.
Blenders problem is the programmer interface, they need someone who knows how to build a software interface. It's one of the reasons things like Sculptris and Zbrush are so damn awesome.
Blenders got a very cool interface, wish people would move on from that. Love how I can hit spacebar and every feature of Blender is right there. You dont get that with Max.
The documentation is what stinks of programmers :P I find it hard to absorb info from glorified text files. Thats why blender cookie is awesome
Blenders problem is the programmer interface, they need someone who knows how to build a software interface. It's one of the reasons things like Sculptris and Zbrush are so damn awesome.
???
did you check out blender recently ? (like in the last year) or are you talking about this ugly as hell interface blender had once, a long time ago
the "new" interface is really good in my opinion. at least a trillion times better than maya
Trunk is the continuously updated repository of files and it was added after the last official stable release so if you want to play with it you will have to download one of the daily or graphicall builds. They run stand alone so you can just unzip into a folder and jump into play with the feature you want to try out.
hm, the un-subdivide modifier doesnt work that great..
i was hoping it would reconstruct the basemesh..
but overall the 2.69 build is running really smooth, no crashes so far
only thing i had recently was that occlude geometry was buggy. it was always off, wheter i activated or deactivated it
Replies
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/08/31/blender-interface-and-navigation/
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/08/31/blender-intro-to-modeling/
2.63 had some big modeling changes, so check this one out:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/overview-of-blender-2-63/
For more advanced modeling, definitely dig into the modifiers. Great site here that goes through them:
http://blenderdiplom.com/index.php/tutorials/item/91-ressource-blender-modifiers-explained
Try not to think of Blender in terms of Max and Maya, it has a very different way of doing a lot of things, and it's harder to learn if you're trying to directly translate that functionality.
Copy this folder:
C: \Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.63a
Empty then paste into this folder (create if it doesn't exist):
C: \Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.64
@Dave,
It's totally worth it.
If you want a more max like experience you can use my configuration. Just paste these contents into the folder mentioned above.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2904948/Tools/2.64.zip
On the topic of keysets and configurations what I'd really like to know is how (or if) the Sculpt room in Blender could switch to a ZBrush control set. I've tried out the sculpting in the latest release, just today actually, and while the sculpting felt surprisingly good, not being able to rotate in the sculpt room by clicking and dragging in the viewport is a deal breaker.
Now that there's masking, it'd also be nice if ctrl were used for that instead of for doing the inverse of an action (alt would be better for that); oh and holding shift would be great for smoothing, using ctrl shift together for selection lassos, ctrl shift clicking to hide and reveal things... pretty much all the zbrush controls would be glorious...
It'd be amazing to use the same app for everything (at least most of the time) instead of bouncing around, and to have that app be open source and free to download and use for whatever by whoever is just... overwhelmingly awesome.
Have you thought about submitting this to be included in the official Blender build? It could really do with an official Max preset.
Definitely dig into the the keymap a bit and see what you can do.
Thanks for the file Monster, I'll try that out later tonight.
BTW I really want to like Blender, just in case my earlier post was misunderstood.
Also my earlier point is that just looking at the interface I had no clue what to do. There is nothing to indicate that pressing spacebar would put you into edit mode. Yes I could have read how to do this, but there should be some clue for the end user on how to use a program without doing so. I'm a proponent of RTFM but some things should be no brainers.
Thank for all the help and links guys
That is an amazing change, and made the interface super user friendly!!!!
Thank you so much. If Blender had always been this user friendly more people would use it.
I suggest that everyone who wants to try Blender but can't get around the interface try this. Freakin amazing change!
thats actually a really great setup you made, but it breaks 6dof device support. I'll be toying around to see what affects it though.
Does anyone know how Instances in Blender work? Can I pose instances seperately, like say if they were characters? Can I use fur with instances? Or do they have to be mesh based.
Antony Riakiotakis (Psi-Fi) has been working on a triangulation modifier which has been coded especially for game artists and requires some testers.
http://www.graphicall.org/1013
It doesn't do anything other than what you would expect, but any comments would be cool
Regarding instancing, you are looking for Dupligroups, Dupliverts, Duplifaces and Dupliframes.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Objects/Duplication
Also, is there a way to add a selection bracket around selected objects rather than the outline? The outline eats the frame rate at high res.
Yea, I thought that too. I'm not sure how easy that would be, but I will ask Antony and see what he thinks.
Save the 2.64 folder which is found at C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender and then copy or overwrite the files to the same location relative to the new install location (2.65, 2.66 etc.) Not that I am aware of
It would be cool though, so if anyone does know how to do this, than please shout up!
Not that I know of either, but you can turn off the outlines via the Viewport Properties (N) in the Display section by unchecking "Outline Selected".
Yeah, I know about that, but then I have to look at the outliner in order to know which object is selected.
Copy the startup.blend file from here:
C: \Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\BLENDER VERSION\config
Then when you upgrade Blender, run it and press ctrl+U to create a new startup file, then quit Blender and paste your previous version of the startup file over the top.
Dyntopo is great!
Also if you disabled Double Sided then you can get much, much better viewport performance for high poly meshes. In my experience this will boost performance at least 4x.
http://www.graphicall.org/1013
Two methods I've used to increase the viewport's responsivity are:
1)Select your meshes in the scene & Turn off Double Sided Normals (Under the modifier tab)
2)In the user prefs -> System -> Check VBOs
(Except when scrubbing through animation.. yikes)
Yeah, it's in trunk. Next release (early Dec according to the wiki) should have it.
What would people like the next 'big thing' to be in Blender? Id personally love to see some kind of crowd simulator.
Un-Subdivide is already in trunk
Couldnt find it. You sure thats what its called?
Any way to freeze the ~&#*~&~&*#* cursor? I never use it but am always left clicking by accident and having it shoot off all over the place.
Blenders problem is the programmer interface, they need someone who knows how to build a software interface. It's one of the reasons things like Sculptris and Zbrush are so damn awesome.
The documentation is what stinks of programmers :P I find it hard to absorb info from glorified text files. Thats why blender cookie is awesome
???
did you check out blender recently ? (like in the last year) or are you talking about this ugly as hell interface blender had once, a long time ago
the "new" interface is really good in my opinion. at least a trillion times better than maya
Looked, cant find it there neither. Hmm
You need to download a recent development build (trunk). You can get almost daily builds for each platform at http://builder.blender.org
Glad you like it!
i was hoping it would reconstruct the basemesh..
but overall the 2.69 build is running really smooth, no crashes so far
only thing i had recently was that occlude geometry was buggy. it was always off, wheter i activated or deactivated it
Release logs
Bevel seems to work really good now. I finally won't have to explain to people stupid work-arounds. :P
Shame we still don't have Cycles baking... but looks like a good update, no show stoppers.
"Vertex group weights can now be transferred from one object to another, even if they have a different topology."
duuddee