Blender 2.46 Released 182
The Penguin Man writes to mention the latest release of Blender, the popular open-source 3D graphics suite was officially launched today. You can download it from Blender.org. The culmination of half a year's work has resulted in many new features including a new particle system, approximate AO, the new cloth simulation system, and much more!
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firstpost!
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Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:4, Informative)
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Nice work! And thanks for the link to your notes, as I'm intending to begin learning Blender and it looks like those will come in handy.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, I've never found the interface too much of a problem. Sure, it's different but it has been designed well (mainly for speed). A 3D suite isn't something that's really meant to simple anyway.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Interesting)
While that is true for "real" use of it, if say a kid wanted to make a quick 3-D model of, say the solar system for a school project, they won't have time to learn all the interface commands. A "simple" view which lets someone create things, manage them, recolor them, and move them would be nice and an "advanced" view which would be the same or similar to the current layout which would allow you to do much more advanced things.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Insightful)
For what it's worth, my daughter (10) tried blender just recently, and it wasn't the interface that made her give up, it was a lack of tutorials that matched the current version.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are very few F/OSS programs that would fill that gap (if there are any at all) and by implementing a "simple" mode which wouldn't take too long and wouldn't bloat the binary, it could fill that need, and it wouldn't just be limited to kids, adults who want to make simple 3-D models without spending hours reading tutorials and dealing with an unfamiliar interface would also help make it be popular.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Definitely worthy trying out.
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maybe, just maybe, Blender isn't for kids that just want to make a quick model of the Solar system for a school project.
But there are very few F/OSS programs that would fill that gap (if there are any at all) and by implementing a "simple" mode which wouldn't take too long and wouldn't bloat the binary, it could fill that need, and it wouldn't just be limited to kids, adults who want to make simple 3-D models without spending hours reading tutorials and dealing with an unfamiliar interface would also help make it be popular.
Good, let me know when you've finished this project of yours. It sounds interesting, and it shouldn't take too long. Then you can start releasing patches to allow people to model things apart from the Solar System.
Here's the trick: modeling isn't easy. This is true whether you're doing 3-D modeling on the computer or physical sculpture. It's not just about learning the software interface, you have to learn how to actually do the task. Modeling is a set of skills that has to be cultivated. But certain
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"For Kids" == not quirky interface? (Score:2)
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Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:4, Insightful)
For a start - what's a "buggy whip"? I know that Buggy is an americanism for Carriage, but what does the whip have to do with it, and what makes it a useful analogy for anything?
Also, using blender is easy. very easy, because the interface has been carefully designed to be productive. But if you've got a preconceived idea about how it should work, then maybe it might take reading a tutorial to get started. But if you're an experienced user, then you'll understand that every tool does things differently, and learn how Blender does things, or if you're not, then you'd need a tutorial anyway, so what's the problem?
Why should they cripple a productive interface so that the first five minutes are a little easier for someone who doesn't want to RTFM?
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So, basically, Blender is like Lisp.
/duck
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If the whole "tab to switch to vertex mode" or "don't use the menus dummy, use hotkeys" mindsets were what threw you off 2 years ago, they'll still throw you off today.
Most of the improvements are technology related (and are big ones at that), the basic UI is unchanged.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Interesting)
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The price does make it an attractive consideration, though I don't have the hardware available to try distributed rendering.
I think if you can get around the interface hurdles (much as I love the Blender interface, I'm sympathetic to people's complaints, it took me months to get comfortable) it'
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So cheap, it's afforable by hobbyists.
Also, there's the BURP project - distributed Blender rendering using the BOINC infrastructure.
It has some serious render power, but the output is copyrighted by the project and released under a very limiting (but probably not enforcable) license.
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Personally I really like the non overlapping windows. The older dos based 3d software was similar as is real flow now (Blender in the NaN days was even weirder back then, but even faster than today).
Frankly I hope devs don't hand in the t
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Google SketchUp [google.com] is intuitive -- you can produce something useful with within a few hours without prior 3d skills. Amazing.
And I wouldn't for a moment belittle that achievement. Nevertheless, the tool has inherent limitations in how it approaches modeling. It's built around the idea of making surface extrusion/sliding and related operations (scaling, rotation, etc.) very simple - which is great for certain kinds of shapes but totally inadequate for others. In particular, it's not well-suited to defining compound curves and detailed organic shapes. As far as I can tell it can't do animation, apart from simple show/hide or c
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gimp, whatever other peoples complaints about the interface, I can at least do things and come back with a product that, if not professional quality, I can look at with some pride and pleasure, and try to do something slightly more sophisticated using new features each time I work with it it. Am I good - Probably not. But I can *do* things with it.
Blender has never gotten to that point with me.
"Oh, look I made a cup in Blender!" - {G}
Pug
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Like MS Paint? which can't do anything *but* jump in and work with it a little?
If you want to get across the street you walk. If you want to get across the ocean in under two hours you fly a jet plane -- which takes a whole lot more skill to pilot than just walking across the street.
It would be very nice if an incredibly powerful program could have an intuitively obvious interface, but I don't think tha
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Blender is way easier to use than any other 3D app if you know what you're doing, you're simply used to proprietary apps and their demonstrably bad existing interfaces. You need to unlearn that.
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't argue whether or not it's effective from the perspective of a person that "knows what they're doing", not being an artist myself.
I can argue though that I managed to pick up 3D Studio Max, install it, and punch out a relatively simple spaceship model for a game I was working on. I'd even say it was slightly better than typical programmer art, but that's me. I did this in about an hour. I did this without tutorials or having really touched 3DSM prior to that point. I had the option to try it and I did. I won't say the interface is brilliant, but it was at the very least obvious for basic things.
It took me a good part of that same hour just to figure out how I would achieve this in Blender because Blender's way is not obvious. I have to say I like Blender for what it is, I like the push to try something new, but not being an artist, I don't want to spend more time becoming familiar with something than the amount of time I'm actually going to spend using it.
It may be stupid, but there's something to be said for a program that's so dumb that even a person completely unfamiliar with the field can use it to do what they want without training.
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If I didn't spend 10 hours a day making user interfaces for profit, I'd probably be more excited to sit down at night and in my free time to improve the open source interfaces out there.
Of course, as I noted earlier, Silo3D probably has the absolute best interface for modeling out there. It doesn't do animation (yet), but for ease of use and power for strictly modeling and uv mappi
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Complaining now, or complaining five years ago?
Gimp's interface used to be pretty dodgy. Not because it wasn't Photoshop, but because it was simply crude. It's improved a lot. People complaining about the Gimp's interface now haven't used it recently.
Blender's not in the same category at all.
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That's unfortunately unlikely to change because it's copying what Photoshop does. But the big problem with the Gimp wasn't the multiple windows, it was what went on inside them. The part of the user interface that the artist actually interacts with. That used to be less like editing an image and more like "you have to have a CS degree to figure out what th
Re:Looks like they've made some improvements. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about "in crowd" it's about responding to the ACTUAL demands of someone who uses the program day in and day out.
I'm not going to say any program has a fantasic interface but that's partly because when people talk about "interface" they aren't talking about the button layout-- they're talking about the workflow. How the user moves from one task to another, how the program responds to actions you take, how a user can review and revise multiple versions, how a user can arrange data to their particular needs. These questions and solutions extend far beyond where you put a button or how a button is pressed. These are solutions that are largely determined by people who UNDERSTAND how the application is supposed to be used.
How you 'use' the application is the interface and that is why people complain about Gimp and Blender. The interfaces seem to be designed by people who don't understand how their program is used to create greate art.
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Don't fall for MS trickery (Score:3, Interesting)
Blender Devs Said No (Score:5, Informative)
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It's amazing how far pj has fallen since SCO.
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Speed (Score:2, Insightful)
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True, there's nothing worse than having to wait ten seconds before being flummoxed.
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Blender... (Score:4, Funny)
Blender: Once you get to know how it works, it's super intuitive!
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You mean, like typing?
Intuition is not the same thing as "easy to use". Read "The psychology of everyday things" for a good study on intuition.
The catchphrase is a play on meanings: If something is intuitive, one should not have to "get to know how it works". Classical examples of intuitive devices are:
Hammers: There's a handle, a smashy end.
My play on this is that, however easy blender may be... It's not easy to use right after opening it up, as compared to say a hammer.
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If only they made the metal handle easier to grasp and that wooden smashy end less prone to breaking ....
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Hammers: There's a handle, a smashy end.
And here is why the term intuitive is as good as meaningless. Using a hammer well is not easy, simple or intuitive. My old wood shop technician could hit 10 pin nails in to a board of wood with a single blow each, not bending one and faster than one per second.
Me and all of my class mates tries for ages to match this or even get close. None of us got anywhere near. If a simple hammer is this hard to use, then what hope does
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But they're not misusing it. The very point is that "easy" and "intuitive" are not the same thing. A hammer is indeed intuitive. Its use it totally obvious and anyone can use it. Now, it may take some experience to use it with great precision, but that's not an issue of intuitiveness.
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A hammer is a very intuitive device, as previously indicated it's got a handle and a smashy end, and while if you presented a hammer and a nail to someone who had never seen either before they might not work out how to use it(though if you gave someone a hammer and told them to go ou
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Nipples are intuitive. Best user interface ever!
If anyone ever invented a nipple user interface for computers, they would not suck.
Wait...
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My twelve year old learned to use it.
Its a good thing someone did some beginners tutorials.
http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/ [blender.org]
Enjoy,
Blender vs The World (Score:2)
Well, I bought Sculpt 3d on the Amiga back in 198-something, and it was pretty easy to work with. It took hours to render, but only a few minutes to set up.
And Bryce II was funky but well designed.
Wings 3d is really primitive, and fairly unpleasant, but still much easier than Blender.
In fact, I can't think of any 3d app that wasn't much easier to learn than Blender.
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Perhaps, but I'm not comparing Blender to 3DS, I'm comparing it to three other 3d applications that I've used, all of which were orders of magnitude better than Blender, and all of which have a fair number of differences in the user interface from each other. My point is that it's not just that Blender is different from 3DS, so there's a learning curve going both ways, it's that Blender is hard t
Slow Down! (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't forget to support Blender (Score:5, Informative)
Or consider preordering Apricot [blender3d.org] the game that is currently in development that is based on the Big Buck Bunny movie. You can see the development reports here [blender.org].
Or you can donate here [blender.org].
Thanks for your support and we hope you enjoy the latest release,
LetterRip
Re:Don't forget to support Blender (Score:5, Informative)
When I can use it, I'll support it. (Score:2)
rendering could use gpgpu / cell support (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe, I dunno.
Re:rendering could use gpgpu / cell support (Score:4, Insightful)
What I mean is, I just finished my senior seminar on CUDA a little less than a month ago and it's meant for doing what GPU's don't already do easily; they're already very good at graphics. Multiplying huge matrices on a Core 2 Duo can take 10 minutes whereas the same operation on a Quadro 5700 with my (not very good) CUDA kernel takes 30 seconds. That's some serious horsepower when applied properly, it's just that it's not the right thing to use very often. Also, CUDA kicks Cell's ass all day long on SIMD, especially on very large datasets.
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People always complain about UIs (Score:2)
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Not unless you're going to argue that Sculpt-3d, Wings-3d, and Bryce II are somehow magically similar to each other. Maya? Do I look like I'm made of money?
Gimp? The user interface isn't really the issue with the Gimp any more. If it would do deferred rasterizing of text as well as Photoshop, and import Photoshop files with channels, I don't think that I'd really have a complaint with it. Gimp used to be bloody awful to use,
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is it because you guys are instinctively comparing it to what you are familiar with? Photoshop-GIMP, Maya-Blender, etc.
Nope. I'm not experienced in 3D.
I recently tried Sketchup on Windows. I immediately got creating 3D scenes, very easily.
I have Blender open on Linux right now. I have no idea how to achieve anything at all in it. Even the save dialogue is weird and non-standard. What's wrong with a standard GTK or QT save dialogue? Why am I seeing all the hidden files in my home directory? Do they think I'm likely to want to save the file in ~/.klamav? Why does it assume I want to save in JPEG rather than PNG?
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Use some standard interfaces already, saving, loading and importing is so painful.
Cue the "their interface sucks" posts (Score:2)
Now that that is over, we have yet another batch of great features! Go Ton and crew!
Those who say Blender is hard (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, at least I found tutorials on blender and in 2 minutes I was navigating the screen with easy. Once I learned that it was frustrating as hell to do the equivalent with Maya, at which point I got up and did something else.
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Having learned 3D modelling using Blender, I find using other packages' interfaces very strange.
Especially Cinema4d's.
3D tools and weird custom interfaces (Score:3, Insightful)
I always thought this had to with the history of some of these tools in X-windows and the lack of standard widget toolkits, and maybe also because this makes porting the tools to other platforms? I'm curious why this is so prevalent in so many of these tools
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Also, these tools are very specialized. Very often, a desktop environment's standard widget set won't provide all the widgets the tool needs.
Besides, try looking at the default Blender interface and imagine all those buttons
The f*sking interface argument again (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two camps:
1. People who want 3DS MAX/Maya/Lighwave for FREE and Blender happens to be the closest thing... so take that an MAKE IT MAYA.
2. People who have been using Blender for many, many years and have come to either appreciate or at least get used to the speed that the interface allows... ONCE YOU KNOW IT!
Given that the interface HASNT changed much in all this time... perhaps its time for the GIVE ME MAYA FOR FREE crowd to go and write their own FOSS 3D app.
PS. For all those Blenderheads out there who haven't already seen it... check out www.indigorenderer.com for photorealism.
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NPRs been around for so long, why doesn't anyone make one compatible with Blender?
Are they so hard to make?
Re:Sorry, but I gotta ask ... (Score:5, Funny)
Only... 8... minutes..
Instead, Anonymous got it this time. And now anonymous will get all the glory.. again.
Re:Sorry, but I gotta ask ... (Score:5, Funny)
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It's right next to the 'any' key.
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I prefer "blitmyshinymetalass". I'm not sure why you missed one E, but here the omission is intended.
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Sure, its open source, and free, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the UI just flat out sucks.
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And yes, very few companies rely on just one application. I myself use modo, Maya, Silo, Mudbox, among others. Of all the people I've worked with, no one has used Blender.
Of all the people I talk with regularly, sites I visit, etc, it's the same thing. Blender is rarel