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Live-Coding Blender with Hy

mccormick.cx

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#21
post #15

Hy Lisp is a really awesome and exciting project. And programming 3D stuff in it is really cool. Huge props to the author for a fun video. But I'll go against other commenters here who are saying that blender is an amazing piece of software. For a long time I was really passionate about CG, and even worked as a 3D artist in a few stuidos, and guys, if you want to start learning 3D - do not start with blender. If you…

"it is like linux/emacs/lisp of CG world"

Actually, Blender is like Linux of the CG world, and I agree - Blender is a horrible mess!

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#22
post #19
post #15

Hy Lisp is a really awesome and exciting project. And programming 3D stuff in it is really cool. Huge props to the author for a fun video. But I'll go against other commenters here who are saying that blender is an amazing piece of software. For a long time I was really passionate about CG, and even worked as a 3D artist in a few stuidos, and guys, if you want to start learning 3D - do not start with blender. If you…

> Compared to these packages - blender is a horrible mess Which version of blender you are referring to? pre 2.5? I get the feeling that most people got a bad impression in 2.49 and below and never came back. The UI improved a lot since then (there was actually a full rewrite of the UI code, all in Python). The UI discussion is always controversial in the blender community, though.

That's right, Blender has made a lot of strides in recent years. I was a Blender sceptic, having tried it many years ago. But recently I tried it again and had my socks blown off! I've since started using Blender exclusively for all my modeling/rendering needs (I don't do animation, so I can't vouch for it), whereas before I had to rely on several packages (e.g. Softimage for hard surface/ZBrush for organic) and never looked back.

If you only know Blender through its older versions, I highly recommend taking another look and even doing some tutorials - it's become an amazing piece of software!

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#23
post #15

Hy Lisp is a really awesome and exciting project. And programming 3D stuff in it is really cool. Huge props to the author for a fun video. But I'll go against other commenters here who are saying that blender is an amazing piece of software. For a long time I was really passionate about CG, and even worked as a 3D artist in a few stuidos, and guys, if you want to start learning 3D - do not start with blender. If you…

Add Mathematica to the list of Houdini alikes. I wonder why it is not more famous, it's such a masterpiece (a tiny bit above that old friend Maya).

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#24
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of advice: I found Blender really hard to understand (I think they based it on GIMP :).) Something that helped a lot was figuring out how 3D graphics work first. Specifically vertices, faces, and meshes, then coordinate systems, vectors, and transforms, then lighting and cameras, and lastly textures and UV coordinates. I did that using three.js to display things in a browser with a bit of javascript. Once I'd…

I'd really love to play around with three.js to pick up some of these ideas. Any suggestions on the best way to approach teaching myself those concepts?

I tend to learn best by example, so I learnt from;

https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/

http://learningthreejs.com/

https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-j...

There are a few books about WebGL but the tech moves so fast they're largely out of date already. There's a tutorial series on Youtube too if that's your thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sD...

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#25

Blender is fucking amazing. I recently rediscovered it. You probably know it as a 3D editor / renderer. What it actually is is a fully programmable environment. You can program EVERYTHING in Blender. You can run it in a command-line mode, while still being able to program everything. Give it a try. A new version just came out a couple of days ago.

Not to discredit Blender but FYI, Maya has been a programmable environment since it came out. Effectively Maya is a core program written in C++ that then executes ~1500 Mel scripts to implement itself. Everyone of those mel scripts is editable. Every command can be scripted. Every command goes through it's command line. You can see them being executed as you choose features in Maya.

I don't know where Maya got it's inspiration but I'm guessing blender got theirs from Maya. Maya is still heads and tails beyond blender AFAICT.

PS: Just tried the latest version of blender yesterday. All I wanted to do was make a cube, scale it to the shape of cereal box, apply the transformation, then texture the 6 sides. It took > 1hr to figure out how to move UVs. The supposed keys listed in whatever 6 tutorials I found didn't work.

I don't believe it's that unintuitive in pretty much any other modeling package. In most you just pick some vertices and a gizmo shows up letting you manipulate the vertices. That's true in 15+ other modeling packages I've used. Using Blender feels like using some 1980s modal modeling package. It would be nice if they graduated to the mid 90s at least yet it's 2015

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#27

Blender is fucking amazing. I recently rediscovered it. You probably know it as a 3D editor / renderer. What it actually is is a fully programmable environment. You can program EVERYTHING in Blender. You can run it in a command-line mode, while still being able to program everything. Give it a try. A new version just came out a couple of days ago.

Not to discredit Blender but FYI, Maya has been a programmable environment since it came out. Effectively Maya is a core program written in C++ that then executes ~1500 Mel scripts to implement itself. Everyone of those mel scripts is editable. Every command can be scripted. Every command goes through it's command line. You can see them being executed as you choose features in Maya. I don't know where Maya got it's i…

>Effectively Maya is a core program written in C++ that then executes ~1500 Mel scripts to implement itself. Everyone [sic] of those mel scripts is editable. Every command can be scripted. Every command goes through it's [sic] command line. You can see them being executed as you choose features in Maya. I don't know where Maya got it's [sic] inspiration but I'm guessing blender got theirs from Maya.

Sounds like Maya took inspiration from Emacs!

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#28
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to these packages - blender is a horrible mess Which version of blender you are referring to? pre 2.5? I get the feeling that most people got a bad impression in 2.49 and below and never came back. The UI improved a lot since then (there was actually a full rewrite of the UI code, all in Python). The UI discussion is always controversial in the blender community, though.

That's right, Blender has made a lot of strides in recent years. I was a Blender sceptic, having tried it many years ago. But recently I tried it again and had my socks blown off! I've since started using Blender exclusively for all my modeling/rendering needs (I don't do animation, so I can't vouch for it), whereas before I had to rely on several packages (e.g. Softimage for hard surface/ZBrush for organic) and neve…

I know that Blender is great, but does it really replace ZBrush? I've used it only for the tasks you would normally use 3dMax for or something like that, but ZBrush is quite specific. Is it actually possible to efficiently emulate ZBrush workflow in Blender?

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#29
post #28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, Blender has made a lot of strides in recent years. I was a Blender sceptic, having tried it many years ago. But recently I tried it again and had my socks blown off! I've since started using Blender exclusively for all my modeling/rendering needs (I don't do animation, so I can't vouch for it), whereas before I had to rely on several packages (e.g. Softimage for hard surface/ZBrush for organic) and neve…

I know that Blender is great, but does it really replace ZBrush? I've used it only for the tasks you would normally use 3dMax for or something like that, but ZBrush is quite specific. Is it actually possible to efficiently emulate ZBrush workflow in Blender?

yes, it is: http://blendernews.org/xe/Feature_Articles/8524

Re: Live-Coding Blender with Hy

#30

Blender is fucking amazing. I recently rediscovered it. You probably know it as a 3D editor / renderer. What it actually is is a fully programmable environment. You can program EVERYTHING in Blender. You can run it in a command-line mode, while still being able to program everything. Give it a try. A new version just came out a couple of days ago.

Not to discredit Blender but FYI, Maya has been a programmable environment since it came out. Effectively Maya is a core program written in C++ that then executes ~1500 Mel scripts to implement itself. Everyone of those mel scripts is editable. Every command can be scripted. Every command goes through it's command line. You can see them being executed as you choose features in Maya. I don't know where Maya got it's i…

I suppose they both owe their inspiration to AutoCAD, which has been using AutoLISP well since the 80s.
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