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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

I'm totally looking forward to the work that has gone into UI improvements. My prior attempts at using Blender left me puzzled, and I figured it was kindof the vi of 3D modelling eg. made for full-time as opposed to casual work. Though my son told me it isn't difficult if you know the basics. Anyway, I'm used to SketchUp and have a couple of models (no animations), so is there a way to import .skp files? Years ago, I used SketchUp Pro's Collada export with some success, but since SketchUp has changed to a browser-based free version (ugh), it looks like I'll need to use an old SketchUp install.

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If you're used to SketchUp, you might be interested in this.[0] I don't think it'll land in 2.8, but I'm sure it'll end up in the nightlies.

[0] https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1148242297638858752

The recommendation is to go through a few online tutorials (YouTube). Just follow along a donut and coffee cup tutorial and that should teach you most of the basic things you need to use the UI for modelling. Even though 3d software is and looks really complex, the main things used in 3d modelling are pretty simple to learn.

Blender 2.79 does support the importing of some .skp files. I'm unsure if 2.80 supports the same.

I'm in a similar boat. In the past, the UI has been much too confusing for me, so I gave up trying to learn, but the new UI looks great. I'll give it another try when its released, for sure!

The interface is impressively bad. I think it is the only program for which I had to Google how to close a window. I am glad that they are taking it seriously.

Unfortunately, as a casual user (opening it maybe once or twice a month), this release has the side effect of breaking all the interface tutorials out there. It is probably still for the best in the long run, but I've had to keep both 2.79 and 2.80 installed.

> the vi of 3D modelling

> I think it is the only program for which I had to Google how to close a window

Jokes aside, the UI really isn't that bad and they removed most of the little gotchas in 2.8 (e.g. left-click is used for selection now). I would say the UI is quite a bit better than a few other popular 3D modelling applications like Maya, but worse than Modo.

> this release has the side effect of breaking all the interface tutorials out there

All the obsolete interface tutorials. There are plenty of new ones for 2.80.

I felt the same way until I watched some videos (like those by blenderguru, for instance) and once I did that, it all started to make more sense. Just watching someone else use the UI helped me get a sense of the basics.

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