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Blender 5.2 LTS

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Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#161

Post by raincole »

socalgal2 wrote: post #125

I love that Blender exists and I donate to it at a high-ish $$$ level monthly. That said, I can't help but feel something is wrong with 3D asset creation in that becoming an expert at Blender or 3DSMax, Maya or literally any other 3D creation software, it's a multi-month if not multi-year project. There are 1000s upon 1000s of options buried all over in nested upon nested options. Maybe AI will solve this. You ask fo…

> It (3d asset creation) practially hasn't changed much since ~1995.

I disagree. In the past ~20 years, more and more 3D assets have been created as very high-poly models and high-res textures first (via sculpting, photogrammetry and baking) and the optimization process was pushed to much later stages. I'm quite sure it was not the case in 1995.

It's just like programming. We do have better tools and abstraction layers. But Jevons paradox got us.

Or perhaps I don't understand how things were done in 1995 as much as I believe?

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#162

Post by scotty79 »

diamondtea wrote: post #141
socalgal2 wrote: post #125

I love that Blender exists and I donate to it at a high-ish $$$ level monthly. That said, I can't help but feel something is wrong with 3D asset creation in that becoming an expert at Blender or 3DSMax, Maya or literally any other 3D creation software, it's a multi-month if not multi-year project. There are 1000s upon 1000s of options buried all over in nested upon nested options. Maybe AI will solve this. You ask fo…

As both a Photoshop and Blender expert (used both professionally for many years), almost all of it is heuristic/technique (memorizing what/where things are) not unlike learning kitchen utensils and the locations of the drawers they’re in. So it’s 1) knowing what you even need to do in the first place to make the sphere, or swap the texture, or delete the lights, or etc. 2) where that tool is and how it works Then lat…

> not unlike learning kitchen utensils and the locations of the drawers they’re in.

The problem is it's someone else's very messy kitchen where nothing is where you expect it to be.

It matters where things are. Photoshop vs Fireworks, CAD vs Sketch-Up.

The problem with this software is that you can't make it yours when you enter it.

I think AI will solve this, by searching where the utensils are and putting them where it is convenient for you specifically.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#163

Post by raincole »

agumonkey wrote: post #116
raincole wrote: post #115

As someone who spent quite some time (>1000hr) in Houdini, I really wonder what's the secret behind Blender's rendering engines and why SideFX failed to catch up. Cycles are so much faster than Karma on my machine. Eevee can get impressive results in real time while Houdini's real time viewport is bare bone.

Interesting, maybe major customers are insisting on other features ?

I suppose that's the main reason as Houdini's real customers are those who can afford huge render farms. Even before Karma, Houdini's renderer (Mantra) wasn't known for its speed.

That's quite a bummer for me, an indie user. With the foundation Houdini has established, they probably could've released a real time viewport composition before Blender. But at the end of the day it doesn't make a lot of business sense for SideFX to care about users like me.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#164

Post by zeratax »

arvinsim wrote: post #155
jamesfinlayson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad it's not just me - I do game modding in my spare time and I figured out how to use Hammer to make maps - it took a day or two but I figured it out. I wanted to make some models too but when I downloaded Blender and looked at a tutorial to create a cube and I just thought... why is this so complicated? It looks easier now (I was probably looking at doing it close to 20 years ago) but back then it seemed crazy…

I created a whole Counterstrike map back in the day in a few days. Meanwhile, I can't get anything substantially done in Blender in a week. I just gave up.

i mean blender has to support a lot more than a mapping tool for a game. it seems pretty expected to me that it would be more complicated to have complete freedom to do whatever you want vs the strict limits that such a tool imposes on you.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#165

Post by pilaf »

uncivilized wrote: post #130
socalgal2 wrote: post #125

I love that Blender exists and I donate to it at a high-ish $$$ level monthly. That said, I can't help but feel something is wrong with 3D asset creation in that becoming an expert at Blender or 3DSMax, Maya or literally any other 3D creation software, it's a multi-month if not multi-year project. There are 1000s upon 1000s of options buried all over in nested upon nested options. Maybe AI will solve this. You ask fo…

Why does it have to be easier? It’s like asking for soccer to be easier so you can play in the World Cup.

Soccer is hard because it's competitive though. Kicking a ball around and putting it between two posts is easy enough, but it gets hard as soon as you have someone trying to do the same in the opposite direction better than you.

Tools should be as easy as they can afford to be without making serious compromises. I have no idea how much room Blender has for becoming easier, but if there is any it should be taken.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#166

Post by greenknight »

raincole wrote: post #115

As someone who spent quite some time (>1000hr) in Houdini, I really wonder what's the secret behind Blender's rendering engines and why SideFX failed to catch up. Cycles are so much faster than Karma on my machine. Eevee can get impressive results in real time while Houdini's real time viewport is bare bone.

The thing is, Cycles is fully open sourced... so there is no real secret behind it!

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#167

Post by greenknight »

jambalaya8 wrote: post #41
cheschire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done. I was feeling bad for saying how often I used blender without paying a cent not 20 seconds earlier in this very thread. Then I saw your message. The fact that Apple Pay is an option made it take only another 20 seconds for me to throw some money at a great project.

One of my adopted "kids" I taught years ago picked this up at 17. He is 26, now. He "borrowed" the software to start (fair enough; it was a friend's license and not used at the same time), and didn't pay for a copy of Blender until he had a career path in mind and used Blender regularly. A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They o…

> A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They ought to make the entry for paying a bit less heartburn-inducing, though.

Thats exactly what they do. They dont charge at all even if they do make loads of money.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#168

Post by kroaton »

amelius wrote: post #119
bob1029 wrote: post #86

Nothing feels better than mastering a specific workflow in Blender. After using visual studio all day, it's like a breath of fresh air to click through a scene and have the tool respond like it actually cares about UX.

> Nothing feels better than mastering a specific workflow in Blender. But nothing feels lousier than coming back after a few months and finding out that you've forgotten how the workflow goes.

And that's when you learn Houdini and open up a workflow from 2008 and it still works the same, despite SideFX pushing out an insane amount of features every release (look at their SneakPeaks).

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#169

Post by kroaton »

raincole wrote: post #115

As someone who spent quite some time (>1000hr) in Houdini, I really wonder what's the secret behind Blender's rendering engines and why SideFX failed to catch up. Cycles are so much faster than Karma on my machine. Eevee can get impressive results in real time while Houdini's real time viewport is bare bone.

They've been investing heavily into this over the last 2 releases, but it's just that SideFX is a really small company. I think they have 50 people or so right now. Karma is way more accurate than Cycles, but slow. Karma XPU is a mixed bag.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#170

Post by summarity »

raincole wrote: post #115

As someone who spent quite some time (>1000hr) in Houdini, I really wonder what's the secret behind Blender's rendering engines and why SideFX failed to catch up. Cycles are so much faster than Karma on my machine. Eevee can get impressive results in real time while Houdini's real time viewport is bare bone.

The question is why don’t they integrate cycles? I mean I have a random app for home planning on macOS and even that comes with Cycles as the rendering engine. Can’t be that hard.
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