Blender 2.8
blender.org
blender.org
This is probably the biggest feature in 2.8! The super non-standard select behavior was a (probably unfairly, but still real) turn off to people trying Blender for the first time. The more Blender can bring its UI in line with industry standards the better for Blender adoption.
Like if some clever game developer suddenly decided to map forward movement to the right trigger and shooting to analog stick up on a gamepad control scheme in a FPS.
It's one of these things which you won't be able to measure, but they will certainly have lost thousands* of people trying to switch to blender by this very simple default setting. This right here is a UX lesson - take note folks!
*probably, maybe
This change also has received some backlash from the existing userbase, albeit you can configure the behavior.
New users don't know how to fix the behaviour. They just leave.
The thing is, however, Blender is more than just a Maya/Max replacement. It can do a hell of a lot more. It has After Effects capabilities like compositing and video camera tracking, 2D animation tools, render outlines to SVG, video editing and python scripting. It’s a bit of a jack of all trades, master of some.
I find it very off putting that suddenly all existing tutorials and manuals might become bogus.
Pretty much the only tool where I have custom bindings is Vim.
I won’t deny that it’s complex software but so are all professional 3D applications. Try and use Solidworks or (shudder) Creo/ProE or Maya or Max and selecting a cube will be the least of your issues.
All of these tools require some degree of training that’s part of the landscape.
The controls in Blender are so terrible for me I've basically always given up in frustration within an hour or so.
The reason I didn't customize the controls is because I shuddered at how awful the UI for doing that probably was, and feared other lurking UI terrors were I to invest in adopting the app.
Personal anecdote:
The first 3D software I used was Cinema 4D. I couldn't be bothered to watch a tutorial, but in a good 10 minutes of clicking around, I could already do more than half of the most common operations. I tried using Blender several times before and after that, but after the same amount of time, I couldn't do literally anything. Not even move the cube! After switching to Linux, I finally forced myself to watch a few Blender tutorials. I can now do things better and more efficiently than I ever could in C4D. But the moment I switch to another tool (Unreal/Krita/Inkscape...), I see just how non-standard Blender is. There's always the Blender way and the everything-else way.
2.8 is a huge step in the right direction. Maybe one day multi-select will make sense and then there will be no more reasons not to use Blender.
So I wouldn't say that Blender's controls are inherently obtuse or more difficult than others, but that other popular software follows conventions that are more familiar to people with a subset of similar experiences.
That said I'm completely blown away by the quality of blender. It is among the most well polished applications I've ever had the fortune of using. And an open source software at that, and multi-platform at that.
Truly amazing.
It is better than most commercial offerings on OSx, and yet, everyone still threats it as a poor hack by mangling the UI by default.
Give blender a "copy after fx UI" default already.
ZBrush UI is also alien and counterintuitive, but after you learn it it begins making sense and feeling convenient, not so in blender, here I have to fight it for no reason.
It's like with Emacs and its defaults. It wasn't breaking any convention originally, because there were no conventions back then, and it made sense for this particular case. Right-click selection was born before Blender, in Traces for Amiga. It was 1988 and the "standards" of today weren't established yet. Traces didn't become Blender directly, but this particular behavior has been carried over to it. Years have passed, and another convention won.
Maya, another software with quite a legacy, also has a lot of things considered archaic today. None of that is right-click selection tier, though.
Because they wanted to develop Blender for Blender users.
But god damn I’ve never even gotten close to being comfortable using their interface. Every tutorial online seems to be flawed in some way, so that you have to look up another tutorial to find some feature. I really can’t follow the logic they use to organize things. Is there a feature where you can type the name of a function into a search and it just pops up? If so I’d probably save 80+% of my time spent in the program.
I think my favorite thing about Blender (I still love it) is the objectively god awful user interface. It's a good learning opportunity to show what happens when a community designs a GUI (hint: never ever let it happen). Almost every single possible GUI design decision is wrong or backwards. I'm excited to try this new interface to see what terrible UI gems lie in wait for discovery. It's weird and exciting that Blender is so useful and feature filled and yet so poorly visually designed.
It’s interesting that features can probably be coded by committee and volunteers (as both programs are featured packed) but UI seems to require a unified vision.
I'm reasonably fluent with modern tools (Photoshop, Sketch, Figma, etc.) and consider GIMP to be an incredible accomplishment. But as much as I'd like to use GIMP, I find it too painful to use even for simple tasks.
I wish someone would start a "sister" app leveraging the GIMP codebase as much as possible, but with an entirely different user experience and name, starting with Apple Preview-level MVP functionality and building from there.
Granted, I'm not a professional designer and the things I do are well suited for the GIMP. I usually manipulate bitmaps that will ultimately be displayed on a computer screen. This is not to say that all of the tools and workflow in the GIMP is good (the text tool, for instance, is horrible as far as I can tell). I'm just saying that there is a considerable bias when you start with one complex tool and evaluate another similarly complex tool that has a different UX.
The GIMP sucks for discoverability IMO, but I too find it comfortable because I'm familiar with it; and have found other apps crazy hard to pick up (Photoshop some years ago; Corel Draw clicked fine for me though).
I think graphics can be a bit of a grab-bag to some extent so logically connecting methods to put then in a menu hierarchy can be tricky.
Because it's not an imp.
Because it's wholly unrelated to the Gnome project.
In fact it predates GNOME by three or four years.
It's the GNU Image Manipulation Program, though most people find that to be too much of a mouthful; hence "GIMP".
How is Gimp less of a mouthful than Imp; would it not be worth the change.
I've used it for about 20 years, have tried to recommend it to people and always feel embarrassed to do so: similar to if they called it "shit-head". Not so bad as if you were recommending someone try Brainfuck.
When blender was in it's earliest forms, I was into 3D modeling as a hobby (a tv show called Eye Drops had me hooked) and recall quite well people who used blender and used it well being looked up with awe as if they were Moses coming down from the mountain, lol.
I stuck around with it long enough and now I make fun little gifs https://66.media.tumblr.com/6257d4052e4212e770fd5eb819c7688c...
It is a very powerful tool to be able to create anything you can imagine, visually with 3d. Especially back in the day it seemed like magic. And those 3d tools have quite a steep learning curve so it wasn't for nothing.
Software is our modern day alchemy. You can conjure up anything you imagine with it. It should be revered!
Are you my systems design instructor? My systems design instructor said the exact same thing in college
Happy holidays, friend!
I rather think it is software combined with material science ... and 3D printer etc.
Then again you could say the same of keyboards in general…
Also the OP is right from an objective POV, the Blender UI is absolutely brutal. I use a lot of tools in this industry for my job but my job is not specifically 3d work, so I am not expected to have deep mastery of any of the tools nor does it even help me, really. This is where a decent UI that is intuitive and helpful is important, and Blender for my colleagues and myself is practically unusable out of the box.
It is, however, a great piece of software, as you all say. I totally agree there. But good lord the UI is horrific.
You are confusing beginner friendly with user friendly.
User friendly UIs are most often terrible for experts and expert UIs often have some learning curve.
That said, I can not name a single application that has a better user interface than Blender. It is a masterpiece and I am in complete awe of whatever process and the people that created it.
I’m not convinced that there is one.
Essentially it is about the path-of-resistance between you and your goal. A beginner friendly UI might do X, Y, and Z. But complex tasks like scheduling X, Y, and Z, automating them based on other events, or even performing them rapidly in sequence, are likely to be given a higher path of resistance.
To put another way, it probably takes a couple minutes to learn and be proficient in windows notepad, and a couple months to learn and be proficient in vim. However, for a task that may take a couple months in notepad, it might take a couple of minutes in vim.
I take beginner-friendly to be a more specific form of user-friendlyness. The usefulness of the concept is that it's common to see a UX and say it's not user-friendly, because it's not beginner-friendly. However, not all users are beginners. To someone that is proficient in both vim and notepad, vim is more user-friendly than notepad, because it is more friendly to him, the user, since it allows the completion of any task far easier.
You don't have to choose one or the other, it just takes time to make it right for both.
Word is a good example example. You want to type some text? It's easy. You want to format it? Click the icons that look relevant. You do it often? Keyboard shortcuts are available for everything. You want to do typesetting? Styles are available, but not enforced. You want to automate things? Integrated programming environment is waiting for you. And almost every action has its own page in the manual.
Simple things are simple, tooltips and icons provide discoverability, and you can head to the manual for expert content.
This is totally not how blender pre-2.8 works where the discoverability almost doesn't exist.
But I don't really know what the equivalent of "just type some text" would be in Blender.
I don't doubt Word is more discoverable, partly because of Microsoft's resources and partly because word processing is fundamentally more accessible than 3D modelling. But by the metrics you're talking about, Blender is maybe 75-90% as good. Which I don't think is the same as "discoverability almost doesn't exist".
I'd strongly dispute the "fundamentally" part, though this may only be obvious when using a VR-native 3D modelling program rather than a desktop one.
Both Vim and Blender are very hard to learn and discovery is extremely poor. There is just no way to figure it out without reading the manual. Even after you read the manual, you have to practice it frequently to get good at it. After that it's a dream.
I don't really like characterising a UI as "good" or "bad" in a one dimensional perspective, because whether I will choose an easy to use or an easy to learn application depends entirely on what I'm going to be doing. For example, with video editing (and also code editing), I'm doing the same actions over and over and over and over again. I'm also combining actions in different ways and I want a kind of "UI grammar" that lets me efficiently express myself without searching around for some drop down or macro. I use these tools for hours on end, day after day. I don't really care about ease of learning -- I only care about easy of use and efficiency.
For other things, I really care about ease of use. For example, I make New Years cards once a year. I want some software that helps me make a mailing list, print an image without screwing about, etc, etc. I don't want to spend more than about 30 seconds setting it. It needs to be intuitive. If anyone knows of such a thing for Gnu/Linux, I'd be very happy ;-).
Frequently ease of use and efficiency are at odds with ease of learning. Best if you can do both, but often you have to compromise. Both Vim and Blender compromise a lot, but they are aiming at a particular niche. Not everybody likes them, but those that do love them. Some other applications compromise in other ways, and at least for my applications I don't find them appropriate. YMMV.
However, I don't think designing an interface that is good for both is fundamentally difficult. The problem comes from evolution. In early versions, with only a few features, none of this requires a ton of thought. As features are added, it's rare that an overall UX re-design is undertaken, for a few reasons.
For one, the people working on it and using it day to day are incrementally learning changes, and have time to adjust. In some cases they probably don't even notice the UX learning curve problem as it takes time to become apparent.
For two, existing and power users will freak out if a new release changes shortcut keys or otherwise "moves the cheese". Think of the outrage if vim were to announce "we're changing all the commands to be fully consistent with each other, but it means every command you've spent years memorizing is now incorrect.
Even for the most UX-focused team it's impossible to predict the feature set a product will have in 1, 2, or 5 years, so of course by the time you get there, the UX has issues.
This was the design goal for Blender 2.8. Both of your comments seem to be based on using earlier versions of Blender.
It was a decent design for the original context.
There is no conflict between usability and power. You can have very powerful interfaces that don't require a manual to use.
You can max out on discoverability and consistently, but the user ultimately will have to learn, through reading or experimentation, how to use the program.
Why would you think that is infeasible? Blender has even started improving on that front - after like 10 years of waiting it finally has tooltips!
In what way are tooltips "infeasible for advanced software"?
They aren't, and Blender has them. I think it's had them since I started using it, about three years ago I guess. Although they've definitely improved in that time.
Looks like proper tooltips were added in 2014. Blender was first released in 1998! 1998! 16 years to add tooltips!
I find it hard to believe that any UI theory says you can't have complex software that is intuitive, usable and discoverable without a manual. Link?
That is, like, your, very rare, by my objective consensus, opinion, man.
Honestly. Blender’s existence is a miracle. That it can exist at all, or has a serious user base compared to its commercial alternatives is baffling at best. I praise each and every one of the clearly dedicated developers who make it happen, and just because the following is true does certainly not mean I do not fully respect every ounce of effort that goes into it.
Prior to this one, minor change, the UI/UX is actually one I display to my students (I teach UI/UX design on the side) as the single worst design in software history. The mouse click being one of the first of literally dozens of examples of undoing basic behaviour I’ve seen, practically ever.
Case in point: I have seen at least a dozen of my students visibly cringe when they see the default UI/UX operations.
Blender’s back-end is incredible. To call it’s front end a disaster would be far too high praise for it. It’s not awful, you’re right. It’s arguably the worst design in recent software history.
In fact, I’d urge you to show me a worse-laid-out piece of widely-used software, so I may use it as the example instead.
Almost every single paragraph you wrote stems from your personal opinion. Not a single claim you made was substantiated by any sort of supporting data. Have you even preformed studies beyond "I don't like it and saw some students dislike it"? Have you studied how proficient users use it? As it stands, your comment is a long winded complaint that blender's interface design doesn't conform to your personal tastes.
I, like GP, think Blender's interface is excellent given what it enables. The interface is consistently designed and well thought-out (mostly). The vast functionality of what blender can do is never one or two keystrokes away thanks to pan focus. Information is also grouped consistently and laid out clearly and logically. Pans allow you to easily arrange and rearrange your workspace according to the task at hand. Even menus and controls are (or can be) laid out clearly instead of being hidden deep somewhere because authors thought they wouldn't be used frequently. The interface was designed for serious long term users. It was not designed for casual or one-off users.
I just hope you are also as eager to teach your students about interface design requirements inherent to heavily-used complex software as you are to share your objective opinions.
While it may have it's own merits, none of which I've personally had the benefit of experience, I'd argue encouraging certainly some of the most counter-intuitive UI/UX behaviour from the outset is certainly a great way to isolate any initial potential users.
That's not my opinion. It's a whole ton of folks opinion who happen to disagree with you.
And yes, I love to show my students complex, yet well-laid-out software like Logic Pro X or Final Cut X, which are usable to the casual user, yet offer a profound amount of control over highly technical aspects, while retaining a simplicity, expectability, and reasonable nature of a user experience. Logic and Final Cut are what I would call 'extremely well-designed yet highly technical' pieces of software.
Blender's UI/UX is absolutely, almost inarguably from a fundamental design perspective, compared every other piece of software I use in my work flow, that is inexcusable. There's no other word for it. Any amount of forethought into it's basic UI/UX operations would result in a better piece of software.
As much as I support FOSS, I'd pay for 3DS Max or Maya in half a second, because even as convoluted as their UI/UX is - at least they actually seem to understand there's a human being who is using it at the end of the day.
And a whole ton of folks do (see blender's userbase growth). Anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal.
Unless you support your assertions with some sort of objective measure, your assertions are subjective by definition, and will remain so regardless of how many time you insist on it being otherwise.
> As much as I support FOSS, I'd pay for 3DS Max or Maya in half a second, because even as convoluted as their UI/UX is - at least they actually seem to understand there's a human being who is using it at the end of the day.
Funny you say that, because Blender's user interface is also designed for humans :o)
I'm curious, what specifically about blender's interface irritates you so much? Perhaps there might be something to merit such passionate hate.
Now that, I fail to believe.
I will admit somethings are horrible in the UI, like a hotkey available but not a menu item. Or the Keyframe Type being in the Timeline but only viewable in the Dopesheet. (I argued with the developer to no avail.) But the idea of the interface, with non overlapping windows just works.
And to add to that remember a large part of your user base may not be hners and have completely different tastes and challenges and delights with the UI
What about non amateur work - what's missing? Asking as a curious amateur.
Much of the 3D work for Man in the High Castle is done in Blender, as Barnstorm VFX is a Blender shop. While not used widely, there are pros using it in big productions.
I wish there was an open source CAD/CAE application that would copy a few of Blender's workflow ideas (integrated REPL, 3d view, node editor, text editor, high level language API).
All Blender is missing is 64-bit vertex storage and 2D data plotting and it would also be the perfect dashboard bridge between the physical engineering/design and data science worlds in addition to its primary audience of 3D content creation, but it's hackable enough to work around those few limitations.
And I am not sure about your statement that everything is wrong and backwards. I think it's the result of thinking how to do things right so the user can be productive.
Also: Ton has a very strong voice in the project. I don't think it's all undirected community work.
That’s not to say that there aren’t great features in Blender’s UI, but I think it’s a good example of how not to design a user interface.
Blender spent the first 7 years of it's life as closed-source commercial software.
I'm reading what you say again, like maybe I misread, but are you being serious?
The new real time eevee renderer is an incredible achievement for the open source community and, I believe, its direct compatibility with the Cycles path tracing renderer is an industry first. (Your materials and textures just work between the two).
The grease pencil tool and new 2D features are also some of the best. I once used 2.7* on a video conference call to annotate parts of a CAD model to finalise changes and it helped considerably.
Really looking forward to the full release this year.
Andrew Price did a great set of videos on some of the changes in this release [1] for anyone who's interested in trying it out.
This thread offers some hope, but there is still no definitive roadmap: https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-Decem...
If Blender is going to continue working on MacOS at all it is probably going to be through a wrapper like MoltenVK (if Blender eventually moves to Vulkan).
Apple is being actively hostile to cross platform software development with their graphics APIs so I will not be surprised if a lot of projects drop Mac support entirely when they finally remove OpenGL.
Annoying but not fatal.
Would love to read more about how things get organized behind the scenes to accomplish such a complex and polished piece of open source software
Edit: I can't remember the details but I vaguely recall Blender 2.8's headline new realtime renderer EEVEE was a by-product of a GSoC project, or something along those lines.
So maybe more like €48k gross for devs?
I guess their accounts are out there somewhere?
Back when I used to hack on the low-hanging Blender fruit my impression of the core devs was they did it for the love of doing it, any one of them could've gotten a job paying a lot more but they always stuck around because they liked it. And that was when they could only afford a couple fulltime devs who I imagine weren't making a whole lot.
Also, they couldn't pay anyone enough to mess with the spaghetti code of the old builtin renderer...
I'm not familiar enough with the API, so I switched back to 2.79. I didn't want to go back, because the human interface is vastly improved... So, I'm really looking forward to the 2.80 release.
Commercial products tend to avoid this, because, in that state, sales of the product drop as customers wait for the new model.
The Blender API has changed incompatibly, too. I'm holding off on porting my personal add-ons for now. 2.8 looks great, but not fully here yet.
Gimp and Inkscape still give me a little bit of dread whenever they start. They're functional and work well - but they aren't a joy to use. I hope the Blender-vibes start rubbing off.
Seriously, I know it's (really really) hard and I don't know how Blender managed to pull it off, but hats-off to them!
1: https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/tree/H...
The current iteration of Blender looks amazing. How does it compare to commercial 3D tools from Autodesk?
But seriously: don't let the price fool you. This is production ready software.
There is also a lot of professional support available like training by certified trainers.
It trails behind the leading edge in many regards, but if you're not pushing the limits it's actually really great. If you don't need that 20% you won't even notice.
Blender can do almost anything Maya can do, but it can often take longer or a ton more fussing because of a lack of tools. It's like using a really great IDE for coding versus being stuck with vi. Both get the job done, but your workflow might be easier in one.
For example, Maya can do a lot of things for animation with driven keys but Blender's equivalent is really weak. It "works" but it's quite clunky.
Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, they all can do the same things in the end.
Maya does a few things that are great that Blender should totally steal, and one of them is having really easy driven keys.
(Except it's not, because it hasn't been released yet. Still in beta.)
And a max of 10 minor versions per major version (2.70-2.79)
2.4x branch, 2.5x branch, 2.6xbranch, ...
Every time they move the first digit after the comma something major changes.