Re: artists

[Gregor Mückl <GregorMueckl@gmx.de>]

Am Freitag, 29. August 2003 15:15 schrieben Sie:
> Jan Ekholm wrote:
> > Blender on the other hand... Well, you need to try to learn to use it for
> > a few months before you can even get a single box plotted out without
> > getting lost. It may be capable, but boy does the UI suck.
>
> I've tried to learn blender several times - I've done all of the tutorials
> AND bought and read the book.  I still couldn't model a textured cube in
> it if my life depended on it.
>
> However, a significant fraction of people who try blender find it somehow
> 'snaps' into their brains and they find it the most wonderful, natural and
> efficient GUI on the planet.
>
> I think it's genetic because maybe 70% of people are in my position.
>
> It's rare to find someone who merely 'gets by' in blender - you either
> love it or find it literally unusable.
>

I'm the one you're looking for. I can handle blender somehow (don't ask me 
how), but I don't like it. This has become worse since I actually started 
hacking on it.

> > The UI may be
> > good once you know it, but boy does it suck for the occasional little
> > house or tank model. I remember not even finding out how to save my model
> > (there was of course no menus, no normal keybindings, nothing that was
> > sane with respect to modern usability), and ended up quitting using
> > KILL...
>
> It doesn't help that it insists on running full-screen.
>

starting blender wiht the "-w" parameter will put it into a window. problem 
solved :-)

> > So flame me.
>
> Nope - you are 100% right for 70% of the people out there and
> 100% wrong for the remaining 30%.
>
> The big problem is that the blender developers are in the 30% and
> they can't be made to believe that the remaining 70% of us have
> really made an effort to learn it before giving up on it.  They
> always say "If you persevere, you'll learn to like it." - or - "If
> only people would run the tutorials - they'd understand it."
>
> That's certainly not true.
>

The blender developers are well aware that the interface is anything but 
intuitive. However, the lead developers put a big emphasis on compatibility 
and therefore I do not expect any big changes on the blender interface 
anytime soon. The discussions on the blender mailing lists seem to affirm 
this.

> If I could possibly learn blender, I wouldn't be contemplating
> spending $2,000 on Maya-for-Linux.
>

$2.000 is much. And for me one license wouldn't be enough. It probably would 
have to be at least 3 licenses, which is unaffordable. 

The alternative is to help people out with writing an alternative to blender. 
I've assembled a team who could do it. We're preparing to start coding now 
and might have a first usable version within a year. This tool is desigend to 
scale up to where maya and 3dsmax are now. But the road there is still very 
long. As I said: Any help is appreciated. Visit #moonlight3d on 
irc.freenode.net if you are interested.

Regards,
Gregor