Bforartists 0.9.7 released

#1

Bforartists 0.9.7 is ready. The binaries can as usual be found here: https://www.bforartists.de/content/download
The release note can be found here: https://www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev097

Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3d software Blender. With the goal to improve the usability.

The Bforartists 0.9.7 release brings mainly small tweaks and improvements. All in all we have 100 changes in this release. And it comes with the changes from Blender 2.79b. We have added some missing icons, made some panels more compact, and so on. We have added two new addons. One for the VSE. And one to create a primitive with adjustable subdivisions. See create tab in the tool shelf. Most tools are now in the tool shelf too. And not longer in header menus. The biggest change is the new Full keymap. Now you can use the navigation from Bforartists with most hotkeys from Blender. Big thanks for creating this keymap goes to Draise here. This one took months.

As you may have noticed, we have moved to the Github tracker. As a consequence the release note now not longer contains links to the issues. The listed titles in the release note are the commits.
It’s also a milestone release. We getting close to version 1.0. Most of the initial development goals are reached. What is now missing is some last changes and fine tuning. And this means this version should be functional enough for production. As a consequence this release is not longer marked as Pre Production.

There are surely still some problems around. But there aren’t this much big changes ahead anymore. At least not in this development cycle, Blender 2.8 is a completely different beast then.
Many thanks to the team! And have fun with the software

  • Reiner
#2

Thanks. Downloading now.

Will Eevee make it into Bforartists anytime soon?

Regards.

#3

Hi Skeebertus,

I cannot say how and when we are even start with the Blender 2.8 port. You have to ask the Blender developers when they are done with it. Eevee and 2.8 is currently in an alpha stage, and far far away from a stable version for production. Everything can still change. Makes no sense to port it at this point.

I personally calculate with years here. They promised to have a one year break to finish 2.8. That was 2015. Apparently 2016 passed by without a 2.8 release. And they just start to collect ideas for the 2.8 UI now …

#4

Just tested this release of Bforartists for half and hour. Very nice so far. Quite usable.

The only thing I dislike is Bforartists starting in isometric viewport - perspective viewport would be better I think, because the way things are right now, the first thing a new user has to do is to look around the UI for where you can switch to 3D perpspective viewport. If you are completely new to Bforartists, it may actually take a while to find the relevant menu.

Other than that, very good job. Everything I have tried seems to work well so far. Certainly far more usable than Blender.

As for Blender 2.8, they’ve been talking about a new UI, et cetera for years now.

I knew they wouldn’t deliver on that, so I’ll be watching Bforartists instead. :slight_smile:

#5

I’ve been following Bforartists for a while now, and I do generally prefer the philosophy behind the UI decisions over those reflected in the official release. But the delay between features appearing in blender and later Bforartists, especially with regard to Eevee and the long promised UI changes, has me thinking I’m still going to want to use blender even if I do end up preferring Bforartists (as I expect I would).
Because I had planned on learning blender using the senseiformat plug-in, I have to wonder if I should not use this plug-in with Bforartists as well. As both senseiformat and Bforartists seem to address some of the same issues people frequently have with blender’s UI, would this be the logical choice? If I might find myself moving between blender and Bforartists depending on what I am doing, it would seem to make sense to have them set up as similarly as possible.

#6

Sensei is yet another UI solution. In my opinion you don’t really do yourself a favour to use it in Bforartists. It is a contradicting concept. And yet another solution to learn.

In the end everything working is allowed. And when it makes your life easier, then there’s nothing to say against it. But i would love to know what exactly makes your life easier with Sensei. Then i could change it in Bforartists already, if possible :slight_smile:

#7

I was considering it simply as one of my options… I could try learning Bforartists, but would have to accept that it may lag behind blender official. I could try learning blender with the sensei plug-in as I’d planned to do before discovering Bforartists, but then would completely miss out on the aspects of Bforartists I expect I’d prefer to blender official. Or I could try moving between the two. And sense that seems to be the best choice overall, I was just left wondering whether to use the sensei plug-in with one or both of them. So to clarify, it’s not about thinking sensei is anyway better than Bforartists, but that I expect to use Bforartists and blender alternately.
I think it comes down to, that for me, I learn things one of two ways… I either find the program fun and inviting enough that I gradually make sense of it while making small things, learning as I go. Or I have one thing I need to do and I figure out how to that one thing and then discover other things I could do and learn those. I don’t find blender inviting enough to just play around in, and I don’t have any single simple use for it compelling to invest the time. My assumption is that I’d prefer Bforartists for starting a project from scratch, but then might use blender official to render with Eevee, as I’d only have to learn those specific aspects of the program.
Anyone know if UI changes are still planned for blender 2.8, and what exactly they might include? Maybe I just don’t understand blender enough to ask the right questions… I thought radial menus looked so neat in zBrush that I was excited to seen them added to blender. But then came to understand that they were only there as a way to organize tools yourself and weren’t the radical change to its workflow I’d anticipated.
Sure, I could probably figure all of this out on my own… Maybe I just have option paralysis from trying to keep up with so many programs, and already having so many powerful tools at the ready. The only thing I don’t really have is one general purpose animation suite, and the only one really within my budget is blender. Just a few years ago there would have been several worthy of serious consideration.

#8

My advice stays the same: Don’t do the mistake to learn three different UI concepts to use one software. You don’t do yourself a favour with that. Either learn Blender, or Sensei with Blender, or Bforartists. Learning one of it is more than enough. They all do the same. Just the handling is different. I can’t do the decision for you though which one to learn :slight_smile:

The big misconception here is, you don’t need Blender to use Bforartists. Bforartists is Blender, with a better UI. There is no reason for hopping.

There is no lag. When a new Blender version appears, then also a new Bforartists version appears. Bforartists is usually between one day and one week behind the official releases. That’s neglible. Current Bforartists version 0.9.7 is based at Blender 2.79b, which came out before two weeks or so. And we have even development builds once a week, which brings the actual changes from the Blender master. That’s comparable with the Blender Buildbot builds.

Eevee will make its way into Bforartists too. Blender 2.8 is just not official release yet. It is in heavily development, in alpha stage. The next three months there will be the code quest to do the main development for it. They want to present a first 2.8 release at the Siggraph this year. But this doesn’t mean that it is production ready then. So you will have to use Blender 2.79b / Bforartists for quite a few more months.

We can still not say where the UI journey in Blender ends. They have just started to do the UI changes in Blender 2.8, with most of it still being a mockup and under heavy discussion. Some thought changes are very promising. Some things will never change in Blender. And we all know how UI development in Blender is since years. Implement it half arsed, then happily forget about it. Pie menus is a fine example here. And what stands at the paper doesn’t necessarily make it into the software. So i personally am still heavily sceptical. In the end we have to wait and see what happens. The good news is, they have at least started development in this area again. Which is a great thing, since the UI development was stopped for years.

#9

Many years ago the original commercial version of Blender failed because of its terrible UI. I tried it back then - it was basically unusable.

Since then many good technical features have been added to Blender, but poor UI design/UI philosophy remains Blender’s weak point.

What made things worse is that Blender in recent years became a sort of cult that worships its pretty poor UI as if it is fantastic to work with.

I tried years ago to suggest a few UI improvements to Blender - I was torn to pieces on the Blender forums.

Bforartists with Eevee will be fantastic I think.

#10

Bforartists is fantastic right now! :slight_smile:

#11

I agree. But Eevee would make it even better for my uses. I run Bforartists on a secondary 2.2 Ghz Nvidia 850M laptop right now, and Cycles really isn’t very fast on it.

I’d love to explore the possibilities Eevee offers, while staying in the sweet Bforartists interface, which is very usable in my opinion.

#12

Eevee is not ready yet. It is still in development. Let them finish a first Blender 2.8 version first. Then we can have a look at the possible changes and improvements for Bforartists. Blender 2.8 will appear in its first incarnation at the next Siggraph. Which doesn’t mean that it is finished then. But that’s the earliest date where it makes sense to have a look at what they have done. It’s the fundament. It makes no sense at this point to do anything with the new code. Too much is still changing. And as told, Blender 2.8 and Eevee is not ready yet.

#13

Anyways, thanks for Bforartists as it is - definitely far more usable and easy to learn than Blender. I have yet to encounter any great headaches with Bforartists.

I do hope that we’ll eventually see Eevee in it - maybe a year from now or later - because Bforartists with its friendly, efficient UI would then be amazing for realtime visualization use and similar.

It would be fantastic to be able to stay in Bforartists’s friendly UI, but also be able to have gaming PC and console-level interactive 3D rendering in it.

Stuff like Archviz walkthroughs would be a dream - you’d be able to do it in Eevee at interactive rates AND in Cycles, offline rendered.

Well done to everyone who worked on Bforartists. I hope you guys keep doing what you are doing.