Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The fundamental difference between Blender and Gimp is that Blender started life as a commercial product, designed by 3D professionals for other pros. Yes, the interface was different and the learning curve hardcore, but it had an internal logic that enabled fast workflows when you’d mastered it.

Gimp was designed by open source hackers with no input from professional designers, or seemingly even any interest in their input. It never gathered any kind of momentum as a credible Photoshop replacement for professionals.

And that’s why Blender is getting donations: it’s become a serious part of workflows for all kinds of companies who have a 3D content pipeline. Meanwhile Gimp is still the awkward collection of hackers’ image processing pet projects piled into a clunky GUI that does nothing to enable the things that designers actually use Photoshop for.

View on HN

I'm not convinced. The UI in early Blender was as arcane as any I have ever seen, worse than GIMP's by a mile. Contemporary commercial 3D software did not have the same quantity or quality of weirdness. (Remember SoftImage?) The commercial version of Blender failed in the marketplace, and after it was open sourced, it was not taken seriously again for quite a few years.

Blender's dogfooding efforts were a powerful force in both proving that the software was good enough (to make movies) and demonstrating how it could be better (for the animators who made the movies). I'm not aware of any such efforts for GIMP. What I have seen is roadmaps of what improvements they know they need, and timelines of years to improve core infrastructure to the point that their actual goals are within reach. Meanwhile, other software projects (both FLOSS and commercial) race past them and move on to more exotic and exciting features.

> The UI in early Blender was as arcane as any I have ever seen, worse than GIMP's by a mile.

That's just not true at all. GIMP's UI has no redeeming workflow. Even if you master it, you must still constantly navigate it's clunky menu of features.

Blender 2.x had an intentional UX flow. When you mastered it - which really wasn't nearly as difficult as whatever work you were doing with it - you could be very productive.

Blender 3.x didn't really change that flow. It only added some optional visual interface for the people who don't already know the keybinds.

GIMP's UI is perfectly fine to me. I frequently use it for editing, design, and even drawing, and I have no desire to use other programs instead. What's so bad about it specifically?

Every time you want to do a thing with the GIMP, you have to go find the specific thing-doer. That's not a really big deal, so long as you can remember where it is or what it is called; but it's really not good tool design.

To contrast, Blender has neatly organized every feature contextually. There are specific modes for organizing objects, editing meshes, sculpting, UV painting, etc. that each present their own smaller tailored UX. Everything that is an option (something you would edit with a text box) is under the properties window, in a contextually-organized tab. The entire structure of Blender's UI/UX is organized to match the conceptual UX of the tools it provides.

For me, I find that modality in Blender annoying and confusing.

Yet you would make it more like GIMP.

There was a lot of completely esoteric design software for workstations in the 1990s. Softimage was a paragon of user-friendliness, so it’s a high bar for comparison. (I still miss Softimage XSI and resent Autodesk for buying and then killing it.)

The Blender dogfooding effort is a reflection of the team’s background in actual 3D production and their commitment to a long-term dialogue with this userbase. Gimp never had that.

> (Remember SoftImage?)

I loved Softimage's look ! Flat and minimalist zen design way before ! Then I got the credits for that course and moved on to different pastures.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com