What's wrong with Blender?
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25 notifications! I've unleashed the Kraken... lol
Love it when you say something raw people become opinionated and expressive. Ok, i'll adress a couple of comments i saw coming by.
Why Blender should get a forum while Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, Cinema4d etc doesn't? Because Blender bridges the gap for amateurs and serves as a supporting platform for Daz3d content. Those who use other 3d software are often schooled professionals and have access to a higher grade of learning materials. Blender for the most part exists on community content for learning bits and pieces and expanding skills, kinda like Daz.
Just wanted to turn on advanced view, but it's already on, so that's advanced as it gets. (personally i think keyframes belong to basics, maybe curves can be considered advanced, maybe?)
Wolf359 said: "If you wish for more complete animation tools, within Daz studio,youreally should purchase the graphmate & keymate plugins as Richard suggested."
I could, but i have complete animation tools outside of Daz for free wich are even a little more advanced, i think it is something Daz should want to implement for themselves. Blender is the complete package, technically no other software is needed (except for audio). What makes Daz interesting is it simplifies character and scene creation with pre-made content from the store. Now that is a big pro with alotta appeal, but it does hinges towards being a glorified character creation tool with the option to make pictures.
On a side note, i already spent much more on Daz content then i ever have donated to Blender, this does kinda put things a bit in perspective for me.
nonesuch00 said: "Do you have any of your Blender animation to share?? as an animated filmaker myself I am always interested to see what other animated film makers are producing"
I have some renders on my currently dead pc, will retrieve them when i get it to run. They are a sporadic variety of test renders, much of it is very stylized and void of characters because my character creation skills are mehh.
That's why i pointed out "The Movies", it's not designer software, it's a game with props, sets, animations, camera angles... and still to this day the most fun i had ever creating anything at all. It resembles Daz when it comes to character and scene creation, but the fact you could create complete animations with music and sound effects all based on presets made it awesome. If Daz went that route, then keyframes are not necessary at all, but if it's going to be keyframed regardless then just make them available to the user.
Ivy said: "I only know one professional animator that has a IMDb listing."
Sad but true, Hollywood is a bit biased against the people behind the computer screens, 3d modelers, animators, compositors don't get the credits they deserve in the movie business. But the love for CGI is still felt by those who are working with it.
Silver Dilphin said: "I use Blender but the interface is a unbridled mess. "
lol, it's not. It just has alot to offer and you need to know where to look, like Daz you can change the layout to your liking. Every program looks like an unbridled mess at first sight, i still get that everytime.
wolf359, you need to understand the following:
So, by definition, anytime a new technology comes out it's totally super awesome and it erases all the old stuff that's, by definition, useless and ridiculous.
Thank you KK :)
Just thought i'd throw in my two cents.
I'm an animator myself, with my current tool of choice being Source Filmmaker. You can find examples of my animation work on my Youtube channel, TheNathanParable: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7bTBZ1MeKBZxO1bFS9xfrQ
With that out of the way, i've been slowly learning how to use Blender for a while, and honestly I really like it. Once you get past the quirky interface, it's actually really easy to use, not to mention very powerful.
For me personally, as much as I love Daz Studio, the one thing that really stops Daz Studio from being a viable animation tool is the lack of reliable IK controls. The pinning system in Daz Studio can be unreliable, especially when it comes to the hands on Genesis 3 and 8 (the pinning system doesn't seem to play nice with the arm twist bones). If this is something that is solved with an addon, then I would be really interested to know.
Blender is amazing, but its also got a massively steep learning curve. I've tried twice to learn it. Bear in mind, I come from a scale modeling and CAD background so you'd think I'd have half of a brain cell and be able to handle it. Nope... The interface is hard to learn and it isn't intuitive, making the workflow choppy, and no one like to waste their time. I realize that Blender is a free, more or less open source product, but if the Blender community really wants to increase the product's popularity, they need to make is somewhat easier to use, or at least not so confusing. Just my two cents.
Blender has a spline graph editor, a Dope sheet
and a nonlinear motion clip system
Daz studio has the optional paid spline graph editor
Dope sheet and a free nonlinear motion clip system
as do most animation packages.
This the exact reason I use Reallusion Iclone Pro for my body animation.
If DAZ would just lease the MayA human IK system from Autodesk ( as Reallusion Did years ago),
Then Daz studio would be a much better Character animation tool.
That is a brilliant animation!
IMO I find Graphmates is a little more refined graph editor than what the built in graph editor is in animate 2 . though i use the built in animate 2 graph editor more than graphmate add on .
But natively daz does not have a graph editor without the licensed version of the animate2 plugin, you can't access the graph editor in the included free version of animate lite until you buy the full license either, so really that is third party support. The built in native daz timeline is really limited in its abilities for animation , and is really only good for short cycles, I would not try animating a scene in the native timeline.\ it be impossiable. But its very do able in animate2. I also want to add that the puppeteer works great for creating cycle animation for 20 or 30 keyframe motions & animate pose presets that can be used and refined on the timeline. but its not much good for anything else IMO. The puppeteer has no floor to work from other than the daz floor. and somethings things just do not translate well either..
I do have some issues I wish daz would address which are kind of frustrating even while just posing characters. For example, when using the active pose tool with/or editing aniblocks and then suddenly character jumps across the screen from its original position. GRRRR! or the need for a hard surface pinning tool to keep feet and toes & fingers from dipping below hard surfaces. But hey we just got deforce so things are looking up :)
. there are a few more things Id like to fix as well But I don't mind buying 3rd party animation plugins for daz if it makes using daz all that much easier. if you have maya you will want to buy 3rd party plugins as well to make the software more usable so I see no difference.,
But sometimes people for get after all, Daz is FREE and not open source. Blender is Free & open source so you can contribute to making changes to blender if you understand the coding. Other wise we use what they got or move on to something better or easier to use. ( which is subjective at best as I bang my head on wall trying to grasp learning carrara )
I can't do animations, as my computer is... well, not good enough. It would take several days to do a lengthy, basic animation. I did a simple blinking animation which was five frames. It took ten hours. With Daz, shaders can be changed with one click. There are lighting presets etc.
I do like Blender, but I've only ever used it for rendering in cycles. And I had to do A LOT of digging on the net to work out how to get the best out of it.
...I love your work because there is always a story there.
...
The problem is pre'cisely your background. Forget everything you've learned before starting. Blender has it's own philosophy and if you get it you can end up modeling quicker than in other 3D apps.
I don't think Blender need more user and it's already one of the most popular 3D app. Intuitivity and usability debate is just wrong imho. You just have to look at some "more intuitive" apps : carrara, lightwave, hexagon, sculptris, wing3d. Are these more popular than Blender ? I don't think so. What make Blender popular are features which are demonstrated through all blender movies. What you need to understand is that Blender's development cycle is triggered by the tools needed to make a featured movie and beginners are clearly not in that scope. As Blender's ressource are limited, I'm more for deveopping features than UI (but there are already UI changes for the upcoming blender 2.8)
What is wrong with Blender is that it is a complete 3D app that is too cheap and lots of beginners think that cheap = little software that should be intuitive/easy to use
IMO, there is no excuse whatsoever for making a non-intuitive software. Nobody should have to forget everything they've learned before starting. That's just an excuse for developers who don't know how to (or care to) design UI's that recognize basic things that most users find intuitive. A UI which, for years, made you select with the RMB? There is not excuse for that. No other software on the planet does that. The list of counter-intuitive stuff with Blender is very long, and IMO inexcusable. And Blender isn't the only app out there with that disease.
That being said, at this point Blender is so user-adjustable that IMO the whole counter-intuitive argument is getting less and less relevant. Everything is accessible via menus. The emphasis on the annoying keyboard shortcuts has all but died. And with the new interface options/addons, most users can probably find an intutive avenue.
To be fair I have to ask: by what standard are you deciding what is "popular"
Blender is open sourced freeware so it would be no surprise
that more people might actually "own" a copy.
How "popular" is blender with professional VFX companies??
Other than those excellent team created short films what is
Blenders film credit list in the world of Hollywood VFX and Television compared to Newtek Lightwave 3D??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightWave_3D
While DS isn't open source, the SDK is free (as is script development kit), so people with the relevant skill set coudl make plug-ins to add the desired features (as witness KeyMate, GraphMate, and AniMate - or, scripts for the most part, the many offering from Casual). Daz has supplied the hooks necessary for people who want to develop animation tools, and of course it's possible that the addition of dForce will prompt Daz to develop their integrated tools further.
As for the Blender discussion - while we realise that people have strong views on the UI please keep the expression of those views civil, and be careful to address comemnts to the matter in hand rather than the people making countervailing points.
The problem, I see, with leaving vital competitive animation features to third party "cottage industrialists" and not making them a part of the core program, is that they can easily be broken by a DS update or not updated by the vendor for various reasons including the vendors Death.
This happens quite often with Maxon C4D where people become dependent on some third party plugin that is adding some critical missing functionalty and Maxon releases new version that breaks it.
This just happened this past week,with the release of C4D R20 on August 1st.
While ( as an Iclone Pro user) I am not really affected by the weakenesses of the DS tools, however I still think
Daz inc should seriously consider implementing their own native spline graph editor and Dope sheet.
as well as a proper Human IK system with foot & hand contact solving as part of the core of Daz studio.
People have been asking for years for dynamic clothing (non-Optitext) and DAZ finally delievered Dforce. I think they saw an opportunity to increase the sales of clothing and introduce new types of clothes for sale. If they see the same business pay-off for animation tools/real functioning IK I think we might see those added to DAZ Studio. It seems like animators are a minority of DAZ customers though so I wouldn't hold out too much hope.
I have to disagree. having used most of the modeling apps out there. I am sure that if you have never modeled before and Blender was your first app to learn and you stuck with it, like any other first app, then it would be no different than learning any other app. I can respect the fact that for some it makes sense and is the next best thing to sliced bread, really happy for them, But if you are one of those users don't dismiss others difficulties in trying to learn what came easily for you, that is just wrong. I want to learn Blender, I really do. It is installed right now along with Carrara, Hexagon, Max, Rhino and a couple of other small modeling apps and gets opened at least a couple of times a month with the thought of maybe this will be the day it clicks.,If I was able to change the UI to that of Max, I would one of the fanboys in this thread also, LOL.
the main reason Blender if popular is because it is free. If there was another free modeling app that was as powerful, yet easier to navigate, then that one would be more popular than Blender.
...and as I understand, dFroce clothing can also work as normal fitted clothing for those who don't have the system horesepower to drive the sim.
It is as simple as breaking down barriers. Obviously tools have existed for years, but many such tools have been expensive and required extreme hardware and knowledge. That is changing.
Just look at Daz Studio. It has taken off a bit in the past couple years. It is niche, but it appears to be growing. Why? What changed? I think we can all point to addition of Iray as being Daz's big breakout moment. Daz has been around for quite a while, too, but these past 3 years post Iray have been a resurgance. Iray came along and gave "regular" people access to GPU enhanced physcially based rendering. A game changer. So you have both software and hardware making things possible that were not so easy before. Plus Daz is very happy to sell you a preset for almost anything. There's nothing wrong with that, I've bought plenty of preset kinds of things from shaders to poses, ect. But it is how easy it is to obtain and use presets that makes things much easier for the user.
Another great example of tech making things available, Youtube and other sites have created whole new places for people to post things. Nothing stopped them before from filming or animating or whatever, but without Youtube few people would see such indie productions. Youtube now gives people the chance to find and watch all these things that have been created. If Youtube and other video sites did not exist, would there be as many people making videos today? I very highly doubt it. This idea that all the people who would be animating are already animating is rather short sited. There are many people who feel there is just no way they can accomplish their dreams. Income and time dictate a lot. A lot of times, people have to see that it is possible before they try. Maybe that is sad, but lets face it, it is largely true. And going back to Daz Studio, Iray made people take notice of what was possible on a desktop.
Speaking of gaming engines doing real time, I also believe we will see a huge up swing in gaming engines driving animation. There are already numerous projects that have been made with Unity and Unreal. And they are only getting better. The next generation of GPU will introduce more features specifically for real time ray tracing, and real time ray tracing software is advancing as well. These elements will combine to allow people to create far more realistic visuals than before, and on a consumer grade desktop. Both Unity and Unreal also have robust online stores that sell all sorts of content that give users the ability to create. Again, all of these things will combine to reduce the barrier of entry. Just like Daz Studio Iray broke a barrier for more realistic rendering, real time ray tracing is set to do the same for animation in Unreal and Unity. Real time ray tracing is going to make people take notice of what a game engine can do, and that in turn will inspire.
Inspiration and empowerment are powerful things.
The uniqueness of DAZ Studio is the ease. I can make a fully kitted out scene : models, texture, pose, lighting under an hour (or faster depending on your experience) The power is the shop... you can an have an idea in the morning, and fully finished result before the day is over.
Now there might be other packages with asset libraries, but nothing as easy as DAZ.
Blender is for a totally different audience. All the power of DAZ Studio is there (and more) , but with a considerable longer upfront time investment.
PS you can switch right/left mouse button in Blender preferences,as well as number of other compatibility changes.
Also 2.8 of Blender will have big UI overhaul, including a 101 interface persona.
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...income can play a major role
...Vue is one with a dedicated content shop (Cornucopia). For Poser, Rendo is pretty much the best though SM still also offers Poser content.
Yeah for me it's the time investment that is also why I don't use Blender as one pretty much has to model everything from scratch, I have a fairly large investment in Daz and Poser content as well as am learning how to tweak surfaces, morphs, and model items like props, vehicles, and structures. That is enough skillets on the stove for now.
Right-click select is about separating selection and action, which speeds things up. Video with explanation/examples here https://vimeo.com/76335056, though I sense some have made their minds up it's a Bad Thing no matter what.
My experience is you are better not to fight the way the designers/developers intend you to use their software - it tends to make your work exponentially harder. So I learned to use the right-click to select. It's just muscle memory. Anyone who, like me, has to regularly switch to using the mouse with their non-dominant hand to avoid incipient RSI will realise it doesn't take that long to learn to use the other hand just as well.
As the right-click select was built in to the very core of Blender from the off, and switching to left-click is a 'hack', it's not well implemented and can cause odd behaviours, which you will then curse Blender for!
Standards are good, but sometimes the best ideas come from not following the standard way. Imagine what we wouldn't have in art and science if people hadn't decided to depart from the 'correct' way to do things.
At least I see where they're coming from. I do still fundamentally diagree with this though. If fixing one issue means you need to throw out a convention that has existed since the mouse came along, and not just in other 3d software but in pretty much all of computing, then there's probably a better solution out there.
Honestly I cannot remember ever having a problem of accidently deselecting something because I couldn't separate-action select through a tool handle or whatever. Even if that did occasionally happen, big deal... hit undo and try again. Say this was a real issue, software could still fix it in numerous ways. Sticky key to temporarily hide the tool handle? CTRL-click to select through? There's probably dozens of ways to address something like that without setting a command that is used as often as selection on the unergonomic right mouse button. I have RSI in the arms, I avoid (and use AutoHotkey to force my away around) anything that puts very often used commands on the right and especially middle mouse button. I love Modo/Mari style navigation that only uses the left mouse button and the other hand (that otheriwse just sits there and occasionally hits some keyboard shortcut) is used to switch between rotate/pan/zoom. It's so comfortable and a huge relief to your mouse arm that is already abused enough by clicking and dragging all day long when you model.
So beside the obvious breaking of a very fundamental convention, I know from experience that it is also entirely unergonomic. Selecting verts, edges, polys... the bread and butter of modelling, done thousands and thousands of times a day. With the right mouse button? Hurts me to even think about it.
Then switch buttons, it is an option.
Yup, that's what I'm doing whenever I try Blender. I understand it has consequences though, like some draggy tool actions are now suddenly on the right mouse button? I really don't want that either
In 2.8 they are adressing this with their industry standard keymap, right? They're going with Maya style navigation though, but 'emulate 3 button mouse' is exactly what I described above. Hope they will keep that around.