> notably a lack of UI refinement
That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.
That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.
blender is slow
blender is too hard
blender is hard to use
I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today.
Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these:
blender is hard
blender is damaged
blender is confusing
blender is free
blender is slow
In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to work with the Blender community to point out why so many people have difficulty with Blender's UI. Check out the video & transcript here: http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-wh...
Despite being a thoughtful and very patient man who made a great case, Andrew was met with a lot of pushback from the community that already thought Blender's UI was easy and usable. Unfortunately in the years since not a whole lot has changed (some improvements like tabs, context menus, and not assuming users have a numpad and 3 button mouse).
Blender tries to be everything to everyone - a game engine, a sculpting modeler, a mechanical CAD modeler, a video editor, and a dozen other things. What you actually get is a mess wrapped in a UI that is alien to everyone except for the initiated. There's a reason why Autodesk and others have so many individual products catered to industries and use cases - it's because there's simplicity in specialization.
But, pretty much all 3D software is hard to use and takes several weeks to understand. I spent at least 3 weeks on both Maya and 3DSMax just going through the manual a chapter at a time and working through the tutorials back in the day. There's just too much to do in current 3D software and there's no escaping that all of them are huge huge apps.
Maybe VR or AR will finally fix this?
Note: I'm not apologising for Blender's strange UI. It put me off Blender for years and I'm sure it still puts people off. That said, a few months ago I tried it again and found the "Maya" option which at least meant I could click on objects to select them and have the camera controls match. The rest is still overwhelming but that's true with all top end 3d packages.
Since then there has been a UI team, which has tackled the low hanging fruit... the bigger design changes probably will come over the next year or so during their 2.8 revamp... where they tackle the bigger issues with blender.
BlenderCore -> BlenderCAD -> BlenderEnginer -> Blender3D -> BlenderVideo etc.
... but if Andrew met resistance before, that's probably a non-starter. :(
Sorry, that's not what I'm getting, I'm getting
Blender is free
Blender is slow
Blender is better than maya
Blender's UI may be many things, but like any tool in this field, simple is hardly one of them. In any case, a significant problem in practice is that Blender's natural ways of working don't always match what is used by just about everyone else. Sometimes it's got just the right feature to model something in a certain way, but you then incur a disproportionate cost to adjust that asset so it's useful as part of your overall pipeline, and while the UI for the handy feature might be decent, the overall process is glitchy and error-prone.
[1] http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyRefer...
https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Sh...
This is software with a learning curve. It's set up so that you can learn it and then be very productive. From the number of Linux CLI people on here, you'll find a lot of people who are sympathetic to that.
If you want a friendly UI there's always SketchUp.
If you added similar descriptions in the AutoCAD commands list it could probably hit 100 pages.
Besides, if your finger memory hasn't picked up all of blender yet, tap spacebar for command search. As long as you remember vaguely what something's called you'll find it in there.
The complexity involved is not a mistake, it is inherent to the artform. Blender does a fine job of layering the tools and UI so that as you need more complicated features they are there for you.
One needed all that to learn to use the old Blender. Since the 2.5x version, it got much better. UI got reorganized, keys are remapeable, and most important of all, you can search for any operator by pressing the space bar.
I write faster with vim. I doubt anyone builds faster with blender.
Blender is weird but predictable too. For example the keys GRS (grab, rotate, scale) works in different areas (3D, UV, animation, NLA, video editor) where it makes sense (in some there's no rotation). The UI overhaul of 2.5x moved stuff in a more logical order. If you understand the concept of "data blocks" and "users", you'll understand most of Blender.
I've spend a healthy amount of time in 3ds Max, AutoCAD, and blender. In my opinion:
• 3ds is most discoverable / easiest to learn
• AutoCAD is most precise (owing to its object snaps and UCS controls)
• blender is the fastest to build in
If you 're not working with it every single day , it's quite impossible to grasp the interface, because you simply forget where everything is hidden. It's really really bad.