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Blender 5.2 LTS

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Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#191

Post by cosmic_cheese »

mghackerlady wrote: post #184
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, Adobe suite peaked somewhere around CS1/CS2 (which ran happily on my single core 2Ghz iMac G5) and it’s been downhill ever since. A variant of CS2 that’d been feature frozen (aside from smaller technical improvements like wide gamut support) and ruthlessly optimized and bug-fixed up until present day would be vastly preferable to the trainwreck that is CC.

I feel like a project to make an adobe CS competitor, limited in scope to those early versions like CS1 or 2, could really get off the ground. I suspect for 99% of users, things added since the CS1/CS2 days aren't really used enough that not having them becomes a dealbreaker

Fully agree.

I think this is true of a lot of software, really. Very few people need more out of their office suite than what’s available in MS Office 2000 for example, which is somewhat validated in the sheer popularity of GSuite (with e.g. Docs being little more than WordPad/TextEdit with collaboration bolted on).

In general I also think that fixed-feature projects are a woefully underexplored space in the FOSS scene, which is a shame because they’re structurally more sustainable than projects that endlessly add new features.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#192

Post by uncivilized »

pilaf wrote: post #165
uncivilized wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure kicking around and putting it between the posts is easy enough, now try it with full power in a specific corner.

Blender is much easier to use than the pre 2.78 days, but that doesn’t mean one can just build animation without developing skills.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#193

Post by uncivilized »

another-dave wrote: post #174
uncivilized wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

that feels like the opposite analogy though - filleting a fish to the precision of a Michelin starred kitchen might be hard, but knives in general are easy to use, even for a beginner.

Using your analogy, creating work in Blender would be like the chef whereas using something like an image viewer would be like using a knife to cut tape on boxes.

If knives were easy to use you wouldn’t see as many kitchen mishaps as we do.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#194

Post by socalgal2 »

10000truths wrote: post #135
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…

A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. 3D modeling and animation are just very complex series of tasks, you can't condense the options much without sacrificing functionality for some critical workflow. The only way to satisfy both: a) Having lots of options b) Making those options discoverable for beginners is with some kind of nested categorization scheme. Any UI you create to render that w…

> A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental.

I believe this is false. I believe we just haven't figure out how to do it. I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options.

I'm not saying I have the answer. I learned 3DSMax in 1995 and write extensive plugins for both 3DSMax and Maya (and PowerAnimator). I think someone just hasnt't figured out the better way and eventually they will.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#195

Post by swordsith »

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…

I'd bet your issues with blender could be fixed with configuration or rebuilding the program with older graphics renderers available, it being open source makes alot of the preference issues with blender resolvable imo.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#196

Post by shawn-furyan »

socalgal2 wrote: post #194
10000truths wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. 3D modeling and animation are just very complex series of tasks, you can't condense the options much without sacrificing functionality for some critical workflow. The only way to satisfy both: a) Having lots of options b) Making those options discoverable for beginners is with some kind of nested categorization scheme. Any UI you create to render that w…

> A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. I believe this is false. I believe we just haven't figure out how to do it. I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. I'm not saying I have the answer. I learned 3DSMax in 1995 and write extensive plugins for both 3DSMax a…

That exists. It's called ZBrush (https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush). But ZBrush can't replace Blender.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#197

Post by sm-silversight »

embedding-shape wrote: post #46
sm-silversight wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Blender inches closer to Houdini Yeah but the distance is crossing the atlantic. I saw this as a blender user who glimpsed houdini a bit. Damn that's a cool program.

> Yeah but the distance is crossing the atlantic Indeed, a far way to go. But I also remember discussing the Blender UI/UX with people back in 2.5 days, and we were all like "Yeah, the UI is something else, but it is what it is, maybe some day" and look at it now, it's a night and day difference. I have no doubt in Blender's ability to continue iterating over decades to reach something amazing, they've already proven…

I agree.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#198

Post by 10000truths »

socalgal2 wrote: post #194
10000truths wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. 3D modeling and animation are just very complex series of tasks, you can't condense the options much without sacrificing functionality for some critical workflow. The only way to satisfy both: a) Having lots of options b) Making those options discoverable for beginners is with some kind of nested categorization scheme. Any UI you create to render that w…

> A lot of those options are necessary complexity, not incidental. I believe this is false. I believe we just haven't figure out how to do it. I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options. I'm not saying I have the answer. I learned 3DSMax in 1995 and write extensive plugins for both 3DSMax a…

> I know it's not the same but if you give a sculpture a piece of clay they do not need 10000 options to mold it. Even a carpenter or wood smith don't need that many options.

The digital equivalent of those disciplines are only a tiny subset of what people do with Blender, though. If all I need to do is shape a 3D model, I could boot up SketchUp (or a similarly "easy" modeling program) for that.

To extend your analogy: if the sculptor makes a career out of creating hour-long 60-FPS claymations with perfect interpolation between key poses, grandiose scenery, and every frame fully painted in detail, be absolutely assured that the sculptor will have an entire workshop filled with jigs, armatures, robots and any other specialized tools to speed up the process and automate everything that can be automated.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#200

Post by unsignedint »

pilaf wrote: post #165
uncivilized wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way I've come to think about Blender, and to some extent other tools in the same space, is that being a master of the tool as an operator and having the artistic ability to create meaningful work are two different skills. The best artists often have a good balance of both, but plenty of people are much stronger in one area than the other.

Since Blender is free, I think it's attracted a lot of people whose strengths are heavily weighted toward one side or the other.

Going back to the soccer analogy, you might be incredibly good at kicking the ball, but playing competitively and making meaningful plays on the field requires a completely different set of skills.

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