English is not my first language, so sorry if i look dumb. im assisted by deepl translator.
I’m a 3D hobbyist since years. now i’m trying to go game dev.
What i think about 3Dsotware in general : they have all very big flaws.
Not to mention prices, they are either too heavy, too complex, too unintuitive, too poor, or simply bad. What i want is something easy, light, and powerful. I heard about Blender.
I always try my new software blindly, to test its interface. This gives me an idea of the quality of the product.
When I first tried Blender 2.79, I first thought that I had failed the installation, and that it was broken.
Despite the number of buttons and menus, it is impossible to navigate, impossible to select, impossible to edit a vertex on this cube. Am I that stupid? I’ve been using 3Ds max since I was 15, something’s wrong here.
I open manual, I open tutorials, and I discover that the workflow with Blender is mainly shortcuts. mainly many shortcuts. noooooooooo!!! why so much hate !?
So I understand that developers impose a right click to select, and a left click to… what is this thing? Can I hide it? NO. I’m beginning to think that Blender developers are taking bribes from the industry to sabotage the software.
Then I read the wisdom of some of Blender’s “gurus”:
-“Right-click to avoid making a wrong click with the translation tool”.
Hmm, okay, but have you seen all the inconvenience this brings? pay attention to your selection and there you go… or just separate the selection and translation tool… The left click is not even a context menu. It’s just moving something boring always to the middle of the screen.
Do you realize this? The selection button, the thing you use dozens of times a minute, is replaced by something much less used, and unknown to new users.
You are given a car, the steering wheel rotation is used to adjust the mirrors.
You turn the wheels with the buttons attached.
The seller explains that “you will have less movement to do.”
But hey, you can’t complain, it’s a free car…
-“shortcuts speed up the workflow, you have to learn them”
Okay, but I don’t have 10 years of blender experience behind me, I just want to create a little model to test the possibilities, … and ■■■■ it! I don’t like shortcuts! I like well-designed interfaces!
Impossible to go any further, the interface is a nightmare. the dozens of buttons and menu displayed are not very useful. the useful functions are to be memorized on the keyboard.
It’s now official: blender 2.7 is unusable. and the devs seem stubborn. Too bad, it looks powerful and light.
It’s also a pity for blender himself: free software relies only on the support of the community. If blender doesn’t adapt to simple humans, he will die.
I go back to 3ds max, frustrated, with this image in mind.
GIF blender (i made this)
At the end of 2018, I read somewhere that blender is trying a new interface.
I am in the process of developing my game, and I am looking for a legal way to model my assets. I’ll try again.
I download and launch Blender 2.8 beta.
MIRACLE JESUS EXISTS!
I can select the cube WITHOUT THINKING!!! and the right click… OH, MY GOD, A CONTEXTUAL MENU.
this annoying 3Dcursor is still there. Can I hide it?.. YEAH, OH MY GOD, EVERYTHING LOOKS SO NORMAL IN THIS 3D VIEW!!!
and this minimalist, dark look is just sublime.
I can FINALLY test roughly blender without reading tutorial pages.
Sure, i look like an injured person who is learning to walk again, but it’s better than swimming in sand, or climbing a wall with his fingernails.
I test the menus and tools, some are ok, some are weird.
One of the first things that strikes me is the naming. The names of the blender functions are sometimes non-standard, as if to want to make a difference.
The first example is the “revert” of the files menu. The tooltip indicates that it is the “reload” function.
Okay. But why not just name it “reload”? This kind of strangeness makes me relive flashbacks from 2.79.
Shortcuts: I made the effort to learn about ten main shortcuts. it’s true that it’s good, especially the transformations. But I’ll never learn ALL the shortcuts, or even half of them. I’m not autistic, the doctors told me so. In addition they change according to the versions. I always use the mouse to the maximum, I prefer 2 quick clicks in the menus rather than remembering, moving both my hands, and looking for the keys. In any case, almost all tools require additional manipulation with the mouse.
I discover the link system. it’s scary at first but in fact it’s okay, it’s easy and useful. but there are some flaws: The garbage collector: it’s very strange to let blender decide what we want to keep or not. Even stranger that the save function is associated with automatic data destruction. The user only has control of a strange icon, an associated number, and a “fake user”. it’s ugly, weird, and it doesn’t seem very useful. I see better a complete data management only in “Outliner”, and without GC.
The option panels are inconsistent. Sometimes a little there, sometimes a little there…
The panels of the properties also seem to be inconsistent. some are always open, others only with a selected object, or remain present even after a deselection. the trick of the “last selected” often plays a role depending on the context, it is not always easy to understand.
Some tools are too complex and not very intuitive, others are too poor, others are absent.
The “skin modifier” too often give bad results, the fast randomization of a mesh is not very configurable, the proportional edition could have a customized curve, with an addition of parameters (curve+random+connected…) the video game part seems too much, and not very optimized.
A use of procedural texture-oriented nodes would be nice, with dedicated 2D rendering (like 3DSmax with materials). maybe i didn’t see it.
I have only played with the modeling part, and a little material nodes, but overall I am very happy.
I can finally model on a simple and powerful 3D software. my old laptop is also happy not to have to start the big ass of 3ds max anymore.
This is a big step forward towards the user, congratulations to the developers.
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
edit minor things
