Blender GUI is horrible

[elitewolverine]

...snip...
I wouldn't like it at first. I like that i can identify the button by text. But i guess i'd get used to it quickly, and it would save space.

thanks for the reply

i think i was more on a rant there because i was getting frustrated with 2.5, still kinda am...

having to learn where things are like spin dump is at (still havent found it...)

while i agree its 'easier' to read...i dont agree about the placement

i really do like the new text and buttons...

but this is what i fear in 2.5...probably my biggest, because i know you can save defaults and all that, making my gripe a mere user setting issue

is that when i try to move the properties tab to the bottom to mimic 2.49, i get a window that cannot, cannot resize the buttons making it totally utterly useless unless its off to the right or left where i hate it

and you are correct about windows, i was counting the tool bar as a window, and for 2.49 i forgot about the 'uppper' window that is 'collasped'

[luciofulci]

...snip...
I wouldn't like it at first. I like that i can identify the button by text. But i guess i'd get used to it quickly, and it would save space.

having to learn where things are like spin dump is at (still havent found it...)

If you're talking about spin duplicate, it doesn't really work in Blender 2.5 (at least I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted), but there's more flexible solution available with array modifiers and empties.

Here's the video.

[Wol]

@DanielWray

Well thank you so much for your RANT, I fount it most entertaining.

I don't care how blender looks; as long as it's logical and clean, but doesn't
appear to be either, object creation is PAINFULL (vertex pushing ) requiring
about 300% more inputs than other progs , and so easy to destroy hours of work.

Remember:

The perfect GUI requires Zero keyboard use,

A good GUI requires little keyboard use,

Blender requires Extensive keyboard use, hmmm

Anyway that's the end of my rant, I will continue to learn Blenders oddball ways, and will possibly contribute in the future.

PS: Us newbies are not Ignorant, are views are as valid as any Blender user,
after all ; I have solved Gravity; there is no such things as Gravitons and
Quantum Mechanics is a good working model; but so wrong.


Wol..

[stiv]

The perfect GUI requires Zero keyboard use,

A good GUI requires little keyboard use,

Blender requires Extensive keyboard use, hmmm

Anyway that's the end of my rant

That's it? That's your rant? I'm guessing you're a Mac user and have a one-button mouse.

[elitewolverine]

@DanielWray

Well thank you so much for your RANT, I fount it most entertaining.

I don't care how blender looks; as long as it's logical and clean, but doesn't
appear to be either, object creation is PAINFULL (vertex pushing ) requiring
about 300% more inputs than other progs , and so easy to destroy hours of work.

Remember:

The perfect GUI requires Zero keyboard use,

A good GUI requires little keyboard use,

Blender requires Extensive keyboard use, hmmm

Anyway that's the end of my rant, I will continue to learn Blenders oddball ways, and will possibly contribute in the future.

PS: Us newbies are not Ignorant, are views are as valid as any Blender user,
after all ; I have solved Gravity; there is no such things as Gravitons and
Quantum Mechanics is a good working model; but so wrong.


Wol..

i dont understand what your saying takes 300% more inputs than anyother program? what program are you using? and vertex pushing? you can select faces and not just vertexs...or edges etc...

zero keyboard use imo is horrible GUI design for modeling, unless your going for non-interactive GUI..

to swing the mouse from where you want it exactly to hit a 'extrude' button (like in max if you want more powerfull usage of extrude), then manually type it in to get 4 out of it...all the while your eyes are searching the GUI to "look" for something

or to keep your mouse right where its at, with your left hand on the keyboard (where its more likely at). Hit the 'e' key, which any sort of typing class is little to no effort and requires no movement of your eyes. Then simply holding down ctrl with your same hand, while you move the mouse in a direction will let you snap a extrusion of 4...

in the second example, my eyes didnt move, my fingers didnt leave their natural keyboard position, my mouse didnt move from my object, and i was able to snap to a extrusion of 'exactly' 4...with little little movement...

If your modeling you want to look at your model, not the GUI

The less i have to look at a GUI to do things/find things i want in Modeling and animation, the better the program. Of course this is all IMO

as for luciofulci:

thanks for the video, yea 2.5 thankfully is only alpha but i have my gripes hopefully full function isnt taken away from the windows so that i can put them on the bottom....

[FreeMind]

PAINFULL (vertex pushing ) requiring
about 300% more inputs than other progs

Moving vertexes is as easy as pressing and dragging the right mouse button.Then clicking to confirm the position. You can even turn on the "Drag Immediately" in the preferences, so it wouldn't require you to confirm.

But i like the confirming. It's as quick as no confirming actually, but you can cancel your movement.

Extruding is as easy as pressing the "E" button on your keyboard.
These operations actually take a split of a second to do.
No menus, or GUI using is required, which makes it really fast to do.

Remember:

The perfect GUI requires Zero keyboard use,

A good GUI requires little keyboard use,

Blender requires Extensive keyboard use, hmmm

I can't imagine any gui not using the keyboard for efficiency.
I mean, it's WAY quicker to press a hotkey then going through the menus to find your action... What do you prefer, pressing Ctrl+C or go through Edit/Copy when copying stuff?

Blender becomes really very fast once you've learned all the keyboard shortcuts.



Are you using 2.5 or 2.4?
2.4 has a messy and ugly gui. But because of the keyboards, everything still gets done really fast.
2.5 has a beautiful gui.

[zuyuz]

@DanielWray
...The perfect GUI requires Zero keyboard use...

You have got to be kidding me. I love blender's interface. Absolutely love it. I wouldn't have changed it from the way it was in 2.4, actually, but 2.5 is looking okay. Progress FTW.

The extensive keyboard use in blender is one of its best features, in my opinion. I can't stand to use Maya and have to go up to a menu every time I want to extrude a polygon. It's pitiful. Blender has this beautiful way of communicating with me... Everything just flows. But other software... mouse-oriented software... every tool switch is an obstacle. I want to keep my cursor in the workspace. It's not doing me any good flying all over the screen.

By the way, I'm a mac user (Though I'm a fan of Linux, three cheers for the *nix systems). For future reference, Apple no longer makes one-button mice. Not for like five years now.

[animate1978]

Wow are people STILL bitching about Blenders GUI??? Has anyone worked with Lightwave? Want to bitch about a GUI... LW has one of the most complicated GUI's for a 3D app I have seen. I still have LW 7.5 around and have stopped using it for years because of the GUI, Blender's GUI is a hell of a lot better than LW. I still like LW for the learning experience and it is STILL one of the few 3D apps that has stuck through the test of time (of course just barely) but as far as it's GUI goes, that was one of my main gripes with it. Over time it became second nature to me to cruise around and click click click to get something done, however in Blender it seemed to be easier to learn (and customize)... of course it took time to get there as well but the point is : NOBODY learns something instantly and is an expert in it shortly after. Have patience, LEARN THE TOOLS!!!!!

The OP obviously was a troll to get people all worked up, obvious by the reference to the year versioning system of Autodesk, so it kind of seems obvious to me that it's just a Maya/Max fanboy who has never even touched Blender in his life and wants to start a flame war. Congrats dude you did it!!

ANY tool you work with requires you to learn the interface. be it Blender, LW, Maya, Ray Dream Designer, Infini-D, Bryce, Poser, K3D, Ayam etc... ALL these apps have different GUI's, in fact so much that each one I listed has NOTHING in common with the other. I know this because I have used them. The only common thing between them is icons and text, aside from the 3D viewport. Now I may not be a master of each app and each one has their own set of quirks and issues I do not like but seriously is this GUI war needed anymore?

IMO Blender 2.5's interface is an amazing change from the past and even if the GUI was not worked on much - well really it is not so difficult to learn, all you need to do is READ DOCUMENTATION. You need to read documentation for any app if something is not obvious. Hell I have been working with Maya since 2004 and STILL have to go and read up on things that I am confused about - including the GUI (sometimes even in Maya things are not obvious).

[SocalSam]

I work for one of the major software publishing companies, one that is large to have it's own version of O/S, etc.

So I am use to working with definitely architected UIs and logic. Older versions of Blender did have an interesting approach to an UI, which was simple to understand once you understood that your right hand was to be on the mouse and your left hand on the keyboard.

The main problem I had is that the documentation was confusing. Like the company I work for, older versions of documentation would be mixed up with newer versions.

I like blender but would like to see it work with XNA and XBox with real support for DirectX. However, I am also willing to work on making that happen.

As with many Open Source projects two things happen:
1. Vetrans get sarcastic with the new people
2. New people think that the open source software is free

To survive long term Open Source software everyone needs to get involved with improvement. If the GUI isn't good enough for you, then fix it. If you can't fix it, then you need to pay a little money to the organization ($5 to $10) if you are using the application on a regular basis.

Frankly, I don't really care if Blender survives a long time as an open source product if it can't provide a good product. However, it is a good product that needs better documentation.

I plan on trying to help out.

[Twinfun]

The really truth: i've tested Blender 2007 and now 2009. What are the whole programmers doing the last few years?!

The User Interface is so terrible and not intuitive.

Take a look at the $25 Carrarra. You need 5 Minutes to understand what the program is doing.

In Blender all Buttons und text are very small. And you have 3-4 same views und options, buttons ... and no preferences menu, no easy 3D view change, no 3 Button Mouse support at mac etc. etc. etc.


It is so difficult to build a new "User Friendly" GUI? Year for year blender comes with new features and films... but with the same lame GUI. I cant understand the politics. The first thing to a great program is the "GUI". Without a usable GUI every software is trash only. When the programmers will finally understand that easy thing?


Wake up now and work on the right thing ... a great und easy GUI !

I almost disagree with everything here, and I'm only a casual user...

MAC DOES have 3 button mouse support(I just now finished using it).
The interface is most certainly intuitive. Every single feature is accessible by very few clicks, let alone a single hotkey. The preferences menu is available in one drag of the mouse...seems you didn't even look over the newbie tutorial. 3d view change is a single keypress on the numpad; If you need precision, you can use the mouse alone to change your angle and zoom in and out. As you say, the Blender Foundation releases all kinds of complete projects and features, yet you don't seem to grasp that this godsend piece of software costs us all nothing to use.

Long live Blender...

[cheatsguy777]

If you would have read up on the site and the total of developement that has happened since blender went open source, you would not make such a first post.

I quite agree. our school has an old version of 2.3, and I'm amazed at how different the GUI layout is, and I struggle using it since it lacks all my favorite tools (the physics engine, the sculpt mode, vertex paint, etc...)
also, I'm working with 2.49 right now. unfortunately all the tutorials are out-of-date and menus mean entirely different things (like for example, W used to be something completely different than it is now...) also, the first time I used blender, I got frustrated too, since I couldn't figure out why the cube wasn't selecting while pressing the left mouse button ( I LOL at myself when I do/did something wrong) and couldn't figure it out for about a month. then, something finally clicked and I figured it out. also, blender has it's entire hotkey reference under Help> Hotkey Reference.

[ibi001]

I totally agree with you...But what u have forgot...It is all about
money... Complex software cost big money.... Big Money...
Motionbuilder is a great product if u have $4,000 bucks to spend...
Blender is free... Can't beat that... But will it be hard to use...
Of course... That is the nature of the game...Open source Linux
is getting better and better for the GUI interface... I used Linux 10 years
ago it was a pile of crap... The computer geeks back then didn't
want the average user to understand crap... They love using
all their Unix syntax to do simple commands... It takes
hundreds/thousands of hours to get all this stuff done... The
people that volunteer at least are making a small dent in the process...
In my opiniion... There has to be spinoffs of Blender....Or
nothing will get done... We will still have the GUI mess that we see today.
At least there is a Linux version available... They have to
design a new language that is intuitive... So , that a 10 year old
can write something that makes sense and works.... Millions of kids
in schools... All paid for by our tax dollars... Let the schools start
a 3-D project funded by the dam government... Millions of
college and high school kids all over the world... It can be done....
If we have the guts to get on the schools and make changes....

[Konstanty]

All of this whining about the 2.5 GUI would be hilarious if it weren't so ironic. For years, Maya people would come to this forum and complain about Blender's eccentric GUI. And the old Blender hands -- who'd memorized dozens of keystroke sequences for every possible situation -- sneered and told them that they were lazy, stupid, beneath contempt and that they needed to get off their butts and LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

Now Blender has a GUI that's different from earlier versions and doesn't require memorizing tons of keystroke sequences to use. And what are the old Blender hands doing? They're whining about having to LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

Human nature just never seems to change.

[hijothema]

As i've already mentioned many times, there are only a few things that bug me, which are missing in the current interface:

- "Exclusive" mode for lasso tool and border select operators (i hope it's added, they currently work only as "extend" mode)

- Dual-axis transform gizmo handles.

It's usually a good idea to find out by running through the documentation or asking on the fora/chatchannels wether the tools you want aren't already there before you start asking them to be implemented.

I can tell you I really suck (excusez le mot) at Blender. Not because of the interface (which I like) but because of lack of dedication, inspiration, talent, whatever .

I don't know what you mean with this "Exclusive" lasso tool etc.
But even I know that your second request is already there, has been there for ages and hasn't changed in 2.5.

With keyboard: After pressing to get in S (for scale), G (for grab/translate) or R (for rotate) mode, press shift+"axe" to exclude one of the axes. IE: if you press S and then Shift + Z you can scale your object along the X and Y axes simultaneously, without scaling it along the z-axe. With G > Shift+ Y you can move you object along the X and Z axes without moving it along the Y axe

With the transformation gizmo's that you can find at the bottom of the 3d windows: leftclick and hold on the white circle at the center of the gizmo and shift+"axe you want to exclude"l ike you would do using the shortcuts as described above

[sleeve98]

The simple fact is that Blender requires a much heavier commitment to learn and master relative to other 3D production apps than most wanna-bes are willing to make. It's not the steering wheel's fault if someone is unable to drive - one must first learn the rules of the road and then practice operation of the vehicle before they can get a license.

The two key elements of Blender's distinction are 1) it's free, and 2) its data structuring, or the way data is handled and crunched through the pipeline by Blender. That last seems to be an abstract and obscure point, but understanding it impacts usability in a more profound way than newbs get at first.

Additionally, I've looked and looked, and it seems the only significant technologies that Blender does not have* are found in Vue: that "EcoSystem" business is way cool! - if you've got the cash, that is.

Yes, the UI is intimidating. I've been working with Blender for more than a year and I still feel like a first-year cadet piloting USS ENTERPRISE sometimes. But I'm not letting that hinder me. If it's too much for you, use something else.

*I said "significant technologies," not nit-picking, like I did here:
http://forums.blenderunderground.com/vi ... =14&t=3256

[UPDATE EDIT] that above "nit-picking" issue may have been addressed, but I haven't had time to chase it down yet. It still seems that all normal affectations are still geometry-dependent, but, as I said, I haven't dug on it.