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Blender 5.2 LTS

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Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#101

Post by robertoandred »

tredre3 wrote: post #98
robertoandred wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t call Blender’s UI particularly great either. The assumption that you have three mouse buttons and a separate number pad is pretty crazy.

Three buttons mice have been the standard for well over 20 years. I'll give you that when blender was first released, three button mice were not common. Those assumptions are only crazy if you're an Apple user or a laptop user who uses a touchpad to 3d model.

Laptops have been outselling desktops for decades, and the idea that Apple users are some quirky tiny minority has been false for just as long.

Blender’s UI just makes bad assumptions.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#103

Post by dagmx »

ksec wrote: post #90

Slightly Off topic: For those working inside the industry, Is the professional space still dominated by 3D Studio Max and Maya? I just checked Lightwave 3D and Cinema 4D is still getting updated. Just found out Zbush got bought by Cinema 4D. And Foundry decided to wind down development of Modo. A lot of these names were big in late 90s and early 00s. I am wondering if everything is still pretty much the same. Speakin…

The commercial Autodesk apps still dominate, as do Maxon apps like C4D for motion graphics and zbrush for sculpting.

The big problems are that license cost doesn’t outweigh the pain points. In production I can get support from Autodesk for specific bugs without rediverting my production resources to fixing it.

Blender has no C++ API and even the Python api is not stable version to version. Studios live by maximizing their competitive advantage and that takes the form of extending the DCCs with custom pipelines and high performance plugins. With blender I’d have to maintain a full fork.

Also blender’s ghost UI system is significantly worse than Qt. It also means I can’t share the Qt tools I built for the rest of the apps with blender.

And while Ton was still CEO he heavily told studios he didn’t want their business. He believed blender shouldn’t be part of a pipeline but be the whole pipeline. These were his explicit words in a presentation blender gave at SIGGRAPH.

For background, I was a lead engineer in the film industry and still am quite involved with industry development while also contributing to blenders code base. My partner also works for one of the big animation studios.

I think blender is great and it’s seeing adoption professionally but there’s a lot of fundamental things that need solving before it displaces the current status quo DCCs.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#104

Post by jijijijij »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #48
jijijijij wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just incredibly powerful software, it's also incredibly fun and intuitive to use (once the UI has clicked with you). There are still some areas where commercial competitors got edge, but Blender covers a wider base, is the more complete/universal software already. Lot's of people prefer Blender's UI. It's also rapidly developing, the competition is not. I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at so…

> I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. I remember people saying this in 2004. Blender is widely used in "the industry" (whatever that industry is). What is has really accomplished in terms of "the industry standard" has, from my POV, been preventing a proprietary system from becoming the standard. That's what happened in the DAW space, where ProTools was the industry standard, and it has t…

You are right, Blender doesn't just serve one industry.

I had the movie industry in mind, because it demands the largest set of Blender's features. I believe Maya still has/had the edge in animation and particle stuff. Though, AFAIK the main reason is integration and custom tooling built on it, which makes switching to Blender less tempting than sticking up with license fees... which are rather negligible compared to overall operating costs.

I believe, Blender is creeping in with smaller studios, especially anime/cartoon kinda stuff.

I think one of Blender's biggest assets is its wide creative tool set. There is even a useful video editor included. Honestly, it's not far off from being the swiss army knife of digital creative work, a creative operating system. Maybe we get a DAW too at some point :D Anyway, I think that's why Blender will dominate. Anyone starting out got everything they need for "free" (with a consistent UI you only have to learn once), but they still won't outgrow the software professionally either, now. That's totally unique.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#105

Post by maccard »

ksec wrote: post #90

Slightly Off topic: For those working inside the industry, Is the professional space still dominated by 3D Studio Max and Maya? I just checked Lightwave 3D and Cinema 4D is still getting updated. Just found out Zbush got bought by Cinema 4D. And Foundry decided to wind down development of Modo. A lot of these names were big in late 90s and early 00s. I am wondering if everything is still pretty much the same. Speakin…

Games are still almost completely maya. At a studio I worked in, we had a handful of people who used blender but would export to maya because of all the tooling we had for maya.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#106

Post by tjoff »

tredre3 wrote: post #93
tjoff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CAD Sketcher add-on adds parametric design to blender. Haven't used it but probably not ready for real use.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92QmjS-xDaI https://hlorus.github.io/CAD_Sketcher/ Though people are so eager to be locked into Fusion 360 I will never understand. Especially when Freecad is so much better than it used to be.

CAD Sketcher for blender is definitely not ready to be used in a real capacity and it's been almost 5 years I think, so I don't have high hopes. I will keep trying it every now and then, however, because I really want this product. > Though people are so eager to be locked into Fusion 360 I will never understand. Especially when Freecad is so much better than it used to be. Because Fusion 360 is that much better than…

Not saying that Fusion 360 isn't a better product. But being at the mercy of autodesk to even be able to open old projects just sounds asinine to me.

And also such a deliberate ploy to try and undercut competition, which sadly has been working unreasonable well. Even after onshape shafted everyone which should have highlighted the obvious risks.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#107

Post by KPGv2 »

viccis wrote: post #88
zuInnp wrote: post #39

I am using Blender since my Master thesis in 2017. It is impressive how much has happened. Also giving some money to them because they don't get that much donations (if you compare it to Thunderbird for example).

I started pre-1.8, in the C-key era. Haven't used it in many years so looking at it every now and then is genuinely shocking to me how much it's progressed. I remember a family member who worked at a triple A game dev studio giving me a tour and when I talked to the 3D modeler guys there and told them I used Blender they stifled a chuckle. To be fair, it was a very rudimentary tool back with UI flows invented by and…

Yes, I remember fumblefutzign around in 2000 or 2001, and I can't believe its current state. I'm a writer, not an artist, so I doubt I'll ever get back into it, but I'm so happy to see where it's at.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#108

Post by jokoon »

Blender is certainly a great software, but there are still remains of bad UI choices, for example how zooming works

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/644/why-does-the...

They improved the UI already, but maybe they could improve it a little bit more. And this is not the only frustration, I constantly have to ask around for little things like that.

Also important to know, but late blender versions don't support old GPU, which is a bit sad: I can't use late blender version on my old thinkpad which only has a graphics chipset.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#109

Post by neonmagenta »

jokoon wrote: post #108

Blender is certainly a great software, but there are still remains of bad UI choices, for example how zooming works https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/644/why-does-the... They improved the UI already, but maybe they could improve it a little bit more. And this is not the only frustration, I constantly have to ask around for little things like that. Also important to know, but late blender versions don't supp…

Blender is one of the most infuriatingly un-intuitive UIs I've ever experienced. It's always having to be used with it in one screen, a myriad of guides/forums/etc on the other.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#110

Post by KPGv2 »

keyle wrote: post #6
phren0logy wrote: post #2

I don't use Blender, so my admiration is from a distance but: Wow - what an impressive project. At least if I understand it correctly, this is a real pro-level piece of free and open software that's equivalent to thousands and thousands of dollars in closed-source commercial software.

Yes, it's had a lot of money put through it since its early days, with quirky shortcuts and quirky features. Imagine if they made Gimp good, this would be what blender became in 3D. They've done it right, with a foundation and it appears to run like clockwork. Feature wise it now rivals with some pretty expensive alternatives. Open source; can win!

> Imagine if they made Gimp good,

I have a vague recollection that twenty years ago GIMP paid some designers to come up with a great UI, but once the design was ready, GIMP was like "nah we don't like that" and kept their bad UI.

I do image stuff so rarely that GIMP is fine because it's free. But its UI is so bad. I don't know about now, but I remember a few years ago someone pointed out that GIMP had over a million dollars in a Bitcoin wallet and hadn't touched any of it in like a decade.

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