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Comment by biocomputation | Hacker News Reader

I know that it's not really something that can be changed on a whim, but I feel like Blender's UI is deeply strange and often quite dreadful.

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Before 2.5 I hated the UI. But after 2.5, I realized I could work so much faster once I learned the keys and layout. I have used 3ds Max for years and even knowing a lot about that software, I still find myself exporting to blender so I can do something. Usually I can do something in blender with only a couple key presses where in other software I have to click a few different buttons in various popup windows, etc.

I do think some of the UI needs to be a little more logical, but aside from that I honestly want to see their UI in more.

it's basically the vi of 3d modellers (:

I wouldn't call it vi. I'd call it the Windows API of 3d modelers.

vi is easy. Type vi file.txt

1. To delete, type x. 2. To insert, type a. 3. To save and quit, type ZZ. 4. To move up, down, right left (in "classic" vi), use "KJLH"

There. You can be productive.

Not fully, but enough to get basics done.

To use blender's relatively basic tools, say to draw a glass wall, you need a step by step guide, using quite obscure commands.

Reminds me of Windows API (or GIMP, by the way)

It is very close to vi/vim's philosophy - different modes for different task, key bindings are mnemonics, you combine basic commands to more complex tasks. Even window manipulation is the same with the hierarchy of content->splits as viewports->layouts.

It is harder to do work without understanding these concepts in blender because editing text is simpler, though.

> To save and quit, type ZZ

I've been a 100% Vim user for ... man, 6 years? Including partial vim usage for another few years before that? And `ZZ` is entirely new to me haha.

This is a weird problem for me with Vim. I love it, but it's an issue of "i don't know what i don't know".

I really need to setup a Vim "key combo of the day" or something. Preferably something that has a JSON API so that i can pipe it into my vim-startify.

Yeah I remember the big switch from 2.49 to 2.5 with the UI redesign. Took some getting used to but honestly it's quite well thought out, pretty good looking, and productive. The modal aspect is a little weird especially if you're not used to vim, but it's definitely one of the better designed UIs IMO.

Main problem is that buttons are reallly all over the place, without some logical consistency. Maybe menus or even a command line would make more sense

They are all broken down into nice tabs and subcategories, if you can't find something use the spacebar menu to search all commands.

A commandline is also available using the python console.

it's true, but when you figure it out, you wouldn't have it any other way. I remember how much I hated the UI, but like with any tool the more you use the better you get at it.

For example, I find the left/right mouse buttons completely natural now.

Totally agree. I use 3ds Max a lot for work and I have modified as much as possible in those settings to work like blender. It baffles everyone else I work with.

Exactly, it's like most of my programmer co-workers getting baffled when they see somebody using a keyboard/command-line-oriented linux setup instead of a mouse-oriented mac.

How does one define deeply strange? It's right to say it's not what we're used to. But I think if there was some fundamental wrongness with it, I'd have problems switching between Blender and other software with similar uses. e.g. I often use Blender and Unity in tandem and I don't find myself trying to use each the wrong way when I switch between.

OTOH, I disable the left-click to set the cursor because I find it distracting and very rarely want it - only when I want an arbitrary pivot for transforms, or to align vertices from different meshes. It irritates me deeply that there's no way to hide the cursor without also hiding e.g. the selection outline and the grid.

Good UX means to make simple thing simple, but permit complicated workflows.

What I want is to make simple things (basic modeling, materials, colors) to be a simple one click away.

Honestly I haven't seen a 3d tool like that. Perhaps it's just the nature of the beast and I should be glad that in Blender at least the complicated workflows are smooth once you get past the "bootcamp" stage.

It's been a while, but the trueSpace UI (the "classic" version that went back to Caligari on the Amiga) would be a pretty good match for that. It got a bit hairy with deformations (which is why a different UI mode was added to later editions), but basic geometry, extrusions, lathing, booleans and bones were a breeze either numerically or by click-and-drag. Simple things really were simple.

Modo gets pretty close at times! Dealing with materials and lighting is super smooth -- probably the easiest of the 3D packages to jump in on (which probably explains its popularity in the architecture community).

Slightly unrelated, but for all its pros I had to abandon Modo because it was too unstable - it would crash on me every hour or so. Blender, on the other hand, has been rock solid in my experience.

Cinema 4D is quite easy to grok in my opinion, coming from a Adobe-heavy background.

> Honestly I haven't seen a 3d tool like that.

Perhaps SketchUp comes close?

Not a click, but in default keymap, hit the spacebar while in the viewport, and start typing in whatever you want to add (ie Cube, Sphere, etc...)

That's the easy part. Now how would I make it into a brick wall?

Right -- you won't find a 'brick wall button' in the default Blender, because that isn't a simple idea, and there's variations of brick walls one could make. You can probably accomplish a brick wall by stretching out a cube, putting an array modifier on it with some kind of offset (maybe duplicate it and then offset that). There's probably some Python-Addons that will do this too.

But honestly, if you're looking for software that ship with presets, get something like Bryce3d.

>because that isn't a simple idea

But I can find a whole bunch of step-by-step procedures to make a brick wall. Why can't it be automated as a button (or at least a plugin)?

What would be more interesting if it would be turned into a pure "engine" so people can skin it.

Actually, you can. Blender allow it's user to have custom feature via python scripts. You can have a button to create a brick wall.

The only problem I really have switching between Unity and Blender is using the viewport controls in Unity. It makes me use the mouse! Blender's keyboard focus is a curse to newbies but a blessing once you get used to it.

So true, I once had to use a specialist 3d package (Daz Studio) for a project and was overjoyed when I discovered that I could tweak its basic navigation controls so that they are exactly like Blender's.

At least the Python API is deeply strange. Stuff is undocumented to out here, uses different units for input from the UI even though function name is the same, and API actions in a script depend on mouse focus...

But despite it's flaws, I love Blender.

Andrew Price would complain about the UI in his podcast. I guess the community eventually wore him down. Here's one of the episodes:

https://www.blenderguru.com/podcasts/podcast-jonathan-willia...

https://www.blenderguru.com/podcasts/podcast-interview-with-...

He followed up with a actual UX designer, who pretty much told him that his proposal was the wrong way to think about it (objectively, not subjectively). He admitted that his proposal at the blender conference was more of a discussion about the way of the future -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw

After that, he stopped pushing so hard on the UI/UX problems of blender. I believe he is still part of the UI committee, but isnt pushing it as hard in his podcasts as he realises he doesn't have the answers.

Don't think he thought that he had the answers. Simply that the UI was bad and it needed to be fixed. He wanted to have a discussion.

This was his suggestion to how to fix blender -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWacQrEcMHk

So, people just told him he was wrong? End of story.

When someone throws out their ideas, people get to shoot them down then the status quo continues. I listened to all his podcasts. It was meant to be a conversation.

Not at all true. He was wrong, but he wasn't shot down in the slightest. One of the main focuses in development right now is the workflow/UI.

https://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-re... https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/

I haven't used blender in years, so don't know about recent UI. But I totally loved the interface of the first opened version. It seemed optimized for power users, not casual users. So, steep learning curve but very rewarding/powerful if you invested time to learn it. Reminds me of vim.

It seems like no one commenting here knows anything, so I'll just leave these here:

https://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-re... https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/

Right now, the main focus is in the (already fantastic IMHO) UI.

It's something everyone knows about, and nothing can be done.

As I heard, it's almost a full rewrite.

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