Blender free, why?

#21

Does this have to turn in to another interface discussion :slight_smile: For those that don’t like the old interface - we have a new interface that many find is more approachable. For those that don’t like the new interface - things are a lot more configurable - so hopefully an interface more appealing to you can be designed - ie I think some dedicated interfaces for single use could be quite useful. Also you will probably be able to make things look pretty similar to your own custom interface/preferred interface.

Regarding addition of Blender to the pipeline. Only in the recent past has Blender become a tool with the feature depth and breadth needed by professionals in the field, and only recently has Blender offered advantages asside from free over its competition. So if an artist or studio already has time and money invested in another pipeline it has not made sense to add Blender to their pipeline except in special cases. Training costs are non-zero and can often exceed the sticker price of the software, so an unfamiliar interface/steep learning curve is an expense that studios rightfully don’t want to incur.

Now however Blender is a mature and feature rich tool with solid workflow and advantages for fast workflows in a number of areas. The interface improvements have made it easier to migrate, and there will be more changes before 2.50/2.6 final to make migration even easier. In addition there will be a large amount of commercial training, books, dvds, and training videos of high quality that will be released around the same time as the final version.

LetterRip

#22

We could debate endlessly (and pointlessly…) about why Blender wound up in its present status.

We can debate whether it is “the future” (if you really enjoy flame wars, which I don’t). Talk of “evil empires” and “knights in shining armor” grow very old, very fast.

The most sensible way to approach this aspect of Blender is: take advantage of it. Here is a professional grade 3D package, entirely suitable for many forms of video work, that is constantly being maintained by a very active community of software professionals. And, it costs you nothing. It costs schools nothing. If you want to use a particular 3D technique, even a very advanced one, Blender probably supports it now.

As it happens, my (semi-)professional 3D work uses video and DVDs, so guess what tool I use. Blender. (At least for generating the components.) Could I use something else? Sure. Will I? Maybe. But, “Blender is the devil I know,” and I’ve got a workflow going, just like everyone else does.

If you are learning, to enter the industry, then obviously you will need to learn about more tools … e.g. the tools-of-use in whatever CG segment you’re targeting. (And you ought to make it your business to self-learn about new tools anyway…) But Blender has earned its unique position … and not by price alone.

#23

It’s not as different as you might think. The mouse chords are different, but the two packages have a similar set of tools between them to some degree. Also, both apps are menu-based so you can click through menus and find the function you want, as opposed to Blender which had a lot of functionality only on hotkeys the last time I looked (which has been a while). If Blender has an interface you can click around and can reasonably find the functionality you are looking for, then it will be a lot easier for existing professionals to pick up. And artists aren’t going to switch packages for the most part; but they are willing to ADD a package to their arsenal if it isn’t too difficult to do so.

I agree that many people may judge Blender as unusable (or not worth the effort) if they can’t just load it up and poke their way around with some degree of success. This is why following some basic user interface conventions (menus which list hotkeys for the commands in them, remappable hotkeys, etc.) can help. Blender has a ton of functionality built into it, and I’ve been impressed with the results I’ve seen from artists that use it.

As for the original purpose of this thread, I think that a lot of people are perplexed by Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) when they first encounter it, if they have only ever been exposed to the proprietary software world. How could something worthwhile be given away for free??!?!?! But then in time you can see that there is a lot of high quality software out there that is free (Linux, Gimp, Blender, Inkscape, myPaint, etc.) and you realize that not everyone writes software with the intent of selling it in a store. Sometimes software development is a “means”, and not an “end” unto itself.

Cheers,
Michael

#24

Blender had a one time price of 100.000 euros. For that money everybody was offered an unlimited client access license with free updates.

But the last year there is a trend that many new Blender development is donation based (smoke sim, cloth sim and others). The Blender Foundation sales are used to drive development. In contrast to commercial apps, a big chunk of the price is to increase shareholders value and maybe a couple of percents is routed to R&D.

All in all, it is not as free is you might think because I donated a great deal and bought a couple of books and DVD’s to help further its development.

#25

Why do these things always turn into a conversation about the interface? I thought 2.50 would finally make people shut their pie whole and stop their bitching.

#26

Why do these things always turn into a conversation about the interface?

Why do you think?

What I’d love to see is some form of solid documentation (and no, tiny buttons popups or a bunch of random tutorial videos strewn across the web are not documentation). I realise there are books people can buy, but as far as I can tell there isn’t an honest to goodness, updated manual.

Open source software changes fast, and docs that aren’t properly updated are like a nail in the coffin of any program. When I buy a program it comes with a manual. If the program gets an update, so does the manual. Where do I need to go to learn that program? Nowhere- the details of how the thing works are in the manual. I personally found Blender quite easy to use, right up to the point where I wasn’t sure how a few of the more in-depth areas worked, and then I found myself trying to scrape together reliable information for the version of the program I had, as old tutorials kept telling me to go to entirely the wrong places. Learning the program past the common 3D basics was a lesson in frustration.

But anyway, that’s just a little rant of mine. Carry on.

#27

Concerning ‘solid’ documentation, Blender don’t work that way. There is no up to date manual for the daily addition of features (which comes once in a blue moon for commercial apps). You have to accept that you treading Opensourceville and here you get you’re info by Googling it up. In youtube there are tons of mini tuts, there is the community at Blenderartist, you can even contact the devs on IIRC. There are BOOKS on Amazon too and DVD’s (Mancandy FAQ, Creature workshop etc which are all common creative license).

So in short, the reason you are stuck is because you are looking for a manual. That’s old school thinking. There is tons and tons of info out there.

#28

Concerning ‘solid’ documentation, Blender don’t work that way.

I know it doesn’t work that way. That’s why I wrote about it.

There is no up to date manual for the daily addition of features (which comes once in a blue moon for commercial apps).

No, it doesn’t come once in a blue moon. If you want regular bugfixes and support, you pay for maintenance. It’s an entirely different thing. But, no one could rightly expect an updated manual with every nightly build. I’m talking about proper releases.

So in short, the reason you are stuck is because you are looking for a manual. That’s old school thinking. There is tons and tons of info out there.

Blender is one of the hundreds of apps I use- 2D, web, 3D, game dev… being a generalist I know how to learn a program without a manual. My point was that it’s a crappy way of trying to learn a program. I mean, heck, why redesign the UI if the backbone of the learning process is broken? You can’t blame that on ‘Opensourceville’. That’s a silly excuse, unless your goal is to do a half-hearted job and ignore any serious use of the program.

As I said before, the online resources, despite all good intentions, are terrible. Most tutorials lack details about which version they’re made for, so half way through the process of learning something you suddenly realise a chunk of the UI the guy is teaching about isn’t in the program anymore, or he’s using some obscure plugin that the author abandoned a year after. Sure, you sometimes get that with commercial software too, but as I said, at least there’s this magical thing called a manual to fall back onto. As mentioned, the best Blender has in the way of manuals and books are outdated tutorial books and even more so technical manuals. The online wiki is a mess.

Maybe you like living in the ramshackle that is Opensourceville, but I and a huge amount of other people don’t. If the inhabitants of Opensourceville want to work on software and see it adopted by the majority for both casual and professional use, perhaps the town should be cleaned up a little.

EDIT: For some reason I wrote Google instead of Blender. I don’t know what that means :smiley:

#29

Blender is rather nice, especially post 2.5.

The GUI is a lot more intuitive, and if you’re familiar with Max, Maya, and other 3d applications, the low level ideas cross over quite nicely, you just have to figure out what button/menu has what you need.
:wink:

#30

R10K,

Open source software changes fast, and docs that aren’t properly updated are like a nail in the coffin of any program.

It is not really a ‘nail in the coffin’ but it does slow commercial adoption. Rest assured that a fully up to date manual with each release is in the plans. It won’t happen with the 2.6 release, but the release after that or so it should begin to happen.

LetterRip

#31

Yes, sorry, I was thinking of something else when I said, ‘nail in the coffin’ :wink: You’re quite right it’s not for Blender. As with any program is just causes issues.

#32

Besides, a nail in the coffin expression is meant if something or someone who is near its end. And for Blender it is the other way around. Although I don’t have hard numbers, Blender is continuing in popularity.

#33

not really thinking that, just asking you to define what it means,
so everybody here would have a clear idea for the sake of the discussion.

#34

I’ve always taken the philosophical view that blender cost 100,000 euros which i didn’t help pay for (I didn’t discover blender until late 2004) and as suchother people payed for it.

I’ve purachased a couple of things from the Blender Foundation so i don’t feel like such a cheapskate :p.

#35

I am new to Blender just this past month. I have been a Lightwave user for the past >13yrs. I was a little leery about getting into Blender; after all I was raised to believe you get what you pay for. I learned using 2.49 and then jumped to 2.5 Alpha 2. Let me just say that Blender is the bees knees. The interface was a bit convoluted in 2.49, but going to 2.5 was wonderful. The layout is great. And compared to Lightwave? Lightwave is like a turd, and Blender is like a sparkling jewel. Doing ANYTHING in Lightwave left me with a big knot in my stomach every time I worked with it. Rigging characters was like pulling teeth, hoping that your rig wouldn’t blow up, saving endless versions of your work every 20 seconds. The only thing I’m using LW for right now is the renderer, and usually I’m only using Fprime (love that real-time feedback). Put something like FPrime in Blender and it’s doubtful I will touch LW again. I still can’t get over that it’s free. I intend to donate to those hard working guys over there, and thank them greatly for putting out a wonderful program - IMO.
Oh, by the way, the reason I went to Blender after all this time is as I have been waiting for the complete rewrite or LW, aka Lightwave CORE, I kept seeing people posting on the forums that Blender already has this, and already has that. So it seemed logical I take a look at Blender. Thank goodness I did. I can finally get some projects off the ground, and unfinished ones finished that I have been dreading to do with LW.

#36

I kept seeing people posting on the forums that Blender already has this, and already has that.

Not to disregard the stuff you mentioned in your post (those are fine reasons) but I get a little ticked at people who say that kind of thing. Blender has a lot of stuff Softimage has, but I can tell you I sure as heck know which one has the more mature implementation 95% of the time. I know what your point is, but the potential for Core to blow Blender out of the water (if you know what I mean) is most certainly there, even if Blender has had the same ‘feature’ for years.

#37

That’s true, and I’m keeping my eye on CORE. The interactive render viewports are great. But thus far Blender is far and away better than LW. At least for my needs. I was able to rig (create a skeleton, assign wights, and set up IK) in about 1/2 hour in blender my first time. Every time I do that in LW it’s much longer, and a headache. Everything in LW is a tacked on solution, nothing works well with anything else. And of course CORE has the potential to “blow Blender out of the water”, it’s a completely new program, it could do almost anything :slight_smile: However, I’m still gonna have to pay $500 to upgrade my LW and I will have to pay nothing to upgrade my Blender :slight_smile: Plus I’m looking to teach a 3D course at my sons school - a private school with limited funds. Blender is the perfect choice :slight_smile:

p.s. I also have Softimage XSI (when they were still owned by Avid). I didn’t dive as far into Softimage, but Blender was much easier for me to learn and implement. Maybe it’s because I’m used to the clunky LW interface :slight_smile:

#38

I take it that you don’t know the scope of the current 2.5 redesign of Blender.

Changes in user interface often require deep changes in the code or they create more problems than they solve. I think that the developers made the correct decision - you should read about their design decisions at <http://www.blender.org/>

This reminds me of when I worked at Penn State in a unit that helped faculty use computers in the classroom; part of our task was to take proposals from faculty to develop software for them. One professor created a detailed time line for a very complicated program and left only 2 weeks for programming time. :slight_smile:

#39

Lol, 1 week for turning hes design into something sensibly manageable,
and then 1 week to figure out and layout the basic framework,
then 3 months to devel… oop, wait, too late, it’s summer break. :slight_smile:

#40

Bah!

It’s due in a week? On day-one you stay up all night hacking, get it all done, but don’t tell anybody.

Then, you spend the next six days drinking :beer:.