Blender should adopt industry user interface standards

[LetterRip]

joeri,

Strange example for maya being better, as maya comes in only one language.

I wasn't claiming Maya was better, I was pointing out that there are reasons that improved visability of preferences might be useful.

As for blender to become more uniform with other 3d apps.... Why?

Transfer of domain specific knowledge. Of course I think the biggest point is using terminology that is common where it makes sense and allowing users to use their prefered interface (ie how Silo and Wings3D can choose different sets of bindings, and how the major 3D apps allow keybinding options that match those in the other major apps).

LetterRip

[joeri]

In general I think Joetainment's comment is on how blender's interface could be better* for him* in a comment using words as world standard and intuitive. But without any arguments as to why his assumptions would be general true. ( Q,w,e,r is not an industry standard, give me the ISO number to proof I'm wrong ).

I have no problems and much prefer user definable keybindings.

Not only to adapt settings to stop mixing up with my maya settings, but specialy to create personal shelfs and automations.

However this is not a miracle drug towards less steep learning curves.

When implemented wrongly it will even make things worse.

Documentation still needs to be according standard settings or will need some smart keyswapper routines on the server side.
This is specialy an issue when people start a splitoff gospelling they own the one truwly (industry standard) setting.
And the forcasted interactive tutor needs to take the keybindings into account. It will create lots of confussion when your tutor tells you to use "W" when in your setting it's "G". Specially when people with weird settings start to create tutor files.

[joeri]

So, when you are bored then:

Blender should adopt industry user interface standards:

What industry user interface standards? The Apple, Adobe or Microsoft ones?

Blender is .. non-standard, .. terminology that .. standardized across .. 3D packages,
Ideally,... Blender UI .. reflect industry standards more closely.
...Benefits.

-Users will learn to use Blender, because interface elements will look and behave the way they are used to.

You are confusing me.
Industry standard 3d applications like Maya, Xsi and Max also have (os / other app) non-standard gui.

-Novice and advanced users will be able work more quickly, because the interface will be intuitive. Even features that users have no experience with will be more self explanatory.

I don't believe this to be true, Workflow will not be intuitive because a button looks like the os.

-By having strong user interface guidelines, new UI components can be designed by referencing guidelines, resulting in more consistent design for new interfaces.

As far as I know there are already strong user interface guidelines.

-The UI will have an look that is self consistent, and similar to the rest of the 3D application community.

GUI has a look, UI does not. Again, did you have a look at the rest of the 3D apps?

-Users of other 3D software, especially high end software, and major studio professionals, will take Blender more seriously, because its interface will reflect the fact that it has been designed in accordance with common industry workflows and standards.

Major studio professionals take online support serious, they don't care much about the package used as long as there problems can get fixed.
Currently this means asking questions at elysiun (I rest my case).
What major studio is this anyway? Pixar et al? They need transparent connection to their render farm (ever seen screenshots of the marionette software they use?)

What follows are several suggestions for improvements, and the beginning of a proposal to make Blender more user friendly, and more similar to other standardized ways of working.

Still assuming standardized is better, although you did not bring a single proof for that.

Obviously, Blender does some things better than other packages, and nothing here is meant to imply that Blender should become a carbon copy of anything else. However, we should search for useful standards, and professional ways of working, and when we discover useful trends, we should make Blender fit with those trends.

Other software consulted for these proposals includes: -3dsmax -Maya -Softimage 3.9 -XSI -Wings 3D -K3D -Modo

? Strange, I see lot's of different GUI when I open each of those apps, and lot's of different UI. All different from O.S. and other apps like Word, Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop.

Every other 3D app uses Blenders "turntable" viewport navigation as the default setting. Blender's View Rotation > Turntable should be active by default.

Maya does not have a blender camera, if they did I'm sure that would be their default.

The default mouse button for selection should be changed to being LMB. The fact that it hasn't already been changed is a sign that consistency for older users is being prioritized over good, consistent, intuitive, interface design.

Almost every program, 3d or not, uses the LMB to select things.

Forcing a brand new user, who doesn't even know where to find the preferences, to use RMB to select things is a bad plan. Experienced users who like using RMB to select will know where to go to change the preferences.

This is dogma over intellect. The action used most should be the easiest to access. If that means selection I'm all for it, but more likely it should be context sensitive (as in modo). Other software does not do much more then selection with the mouse (Apple even thought one button would be enough) so obviously thats under the first mouse button.

In general, a change in philosophy is needed for the Blender User Interface. In order to fix it, from feeling "weird" compared to other software, the defaults should be changed, so that Blender, out of the box, feels normal to someone who has never used it.

How does this compare to other 3d apps. Does Xsi not feel weird or Maya?
I know some friends who saw me using modo and said: "wauw, cool, can I try?" Only to be trowing away the mouse after a few moments.

This is more important than. If you want to maintain setting for old Blender users, have some sort of preference to set everything to the old method, perhaps even an option included in the installer.

So what changes are you talking about then? If it's still possible to keep the "old" settings. Does this involve even more work just to maintain two interfaces? Or are the changes only cosmetic?

In default, you don't want the old bizarre way of doing things to remain the default just because people are used to it. Inconsistent user interface design should be considered a bug. Just because people are used to a bug, that doesn't make it any less of a bug.

It doesn't make it a bug by using the word twice in one sentence.
Just because something is weird does not mean it's a bug.

I think more than anything else, this frame of thinking has to be adopted for Blender to make more sense to ordinary people,

Ordinary people?

and especially users of other industry standard software.

Nonsense.
Software like blender needs to be conceived from a vision, a vision on how a workflow should look like and that vision needs to be implemented. If that means breaking "industry standard software" then so be it. If "ordinary people" don't understand it, so be it. I don't think they will be creating an Elephants Dream soon anyway, with or without a "weird" interface.
Most creative and successful (professional) people create their own tools anyway. Most of those tools are result driven, not "ordinary people" compatible.

[edit]Relocate the preferences
Put the preferences somewhere sensible where a beginner can find them:

The preferences in Blender are in the strangest place I can imagine... above the menu bar.

Sure. That's where Maya has it.... Hmmm.... So much for

They should be relocated, maybe under file (or edit) > preferences,

So? What is the industry standard? File or Edit?

or even a preferences section in the buttons window.

It's getting silly. What do you think the Preference option in the header popup of the button window stands for?

If it is important to maintain a "panel" for the preferences, I suggest having an option in the menu that switches to a screen layout which shows the preferences, and in addition, an obvious button to get back to the previous screen layout.

Blender is based around the "as much areas as you want" and the "the area can be anything you want" system. Sure this is non-standard and gives to much freedom for people who are used to their industry standard apps. More and more apps are coming to this system. Flash, dreamweaver etc now have detachable functional areas that one can put where one wants. Still no more then one of each them, so if I want two views on my lib then to bad, but maybe soon they will adopt this as well.
Maya can change any area into one of the functions, but only the views can hold multiple instances. Pity. Blender is far better with letting all the areas give me any view (in any zoom) I want.
No dumb, "Let the computer control the input flow" issues.
"First give me the bla, then the bla then the bla, thank you" might be very "easy to understand" but dumb down the user.

Right now its nearly impossible for someone who has never used blender before to guess where the preferences are. Most people aren't familiar with paneled applications, and even in many paneled applications, preferences are not shown in such a panel.

So what? Now it nearly impossible for someone who has never used a car to drive in traffic. Make all cars easier dumber is not the solution.

This is made even more serious by the fact that preferences in Blender need a lot of changing for the software to become usable/intuitive for beginners or users familiar with other 3D apps.

RTM.

Selection should be the default tool.

One major source of frustration in Blender is the bizarre method of selecting things. The "b" hotkey needs to be pressed to draw a selection marquee. And to draw lots of marquees, the user has to keep pushing "b". This is very frustrating.

At least it's a non-modifier. Meaning I don't need to hold it as long as I'm doing a selection. Less stress on my hand. Other apps should adapt this system.

Mostly, this stems from the fact that select is not the default tool.

If no other tool is being used. The selection tool should be active, it should be possible to click to select an object, and drag to draw a selection marquee.

I like the placement of the 3d cursor.
This means I can add objects in the 3d space it needs to sit, and not being moved from origin to it's correct spot.
I think the 3d cursor could do more.

As a good example of how standardized this is, it even works in firefox (selecting text). It works in open office, it works in GIMP. It should work in Blender.

As far as I know the LMB places the cursor somewhere, (you can try it in your reply, that thing that looks like |, click any where in your response box and see that you've move the cursor. Just as in blender. Selecting is activated ones you start to drag.

As another example, other software also follows this pattern. In most 3D programs, when no other tool is active, the selection tool is active. See the following applications:

-Maya -XSI -3dsmax -Wings3D -K3D

Almost true. In maya selecting is a tool. (if you set your preferences to "everything is a tool") just as move, scale and rotate. On startup this tool is default selected. But after choosing a rot, scale, move tool you need to set Maya in selection mode yourself, while in blender selection is always possible, no matter what. Let's keep it that way, it's a far superior system.

Hard and Soft Edges
This might be more of a feature request than an interface thing, but it is a place where Blender diviates from standardized methods of working.

Hard and Soft edges - most programs use hard or soft properties per edge to determine object smoothing. Blenders set Smooth and Set Solid buttons seems to affect the whole object. I think this is a very important part of functionality missing from Blender. Its one of the most fundamental aspects of modeling, and something people just assume is present in evey 3d package. (3dsmax uses perface smoothing groups instead, an inferior method, but giving the same kind of control.) Perhaps this exists in Blender somewhere with a name I don't understand? Just thought I'd mention it anyway.

I'm all for buttons cutting up the model for you, but let's not pretend smooth/hard is much more then a copy of the vertices of hard edges. Very easy to do in blender. And more to the point ass well. Just cut the faces you need to be hard.
Maya's interface towards normal treatment is hardly industry standard.
It's by far silly. I suggest you all ( game programmers and 3d low poly model makers) move away from this way of working. Stop saving a face normal of all connected faces in a vertex... It's a waiste of memory space.

Terminology Changes
Below, the Blender word comes first, suggested change and explaination follow.

Edit mode - Component mode. "Edit" itself isn't very meaningful, since in Blender were's always editing things. Universally, verticies, edges and faces are known as components of objects. Some people also call them subobjects, but I think component is clearer and more standardized. Also, its useful as a noun because I can say, "scale that objects components to be larger" but it sounds stupid to say, "scale that objects edits to be larger". Component is an easy way to refer to verts, edges, and faces collectively.

Except it now applies to all areas of blender, not only the 3d objects.
Edit is very meaningful, it's an action. It just does not fit the other mode words.

"Rem Double". - Weld verticies. Every other package calls this function "Weld Verticies" or "Merge Verticies". Either name would be fine. Now, I did notice that "Merge" was present in the actual menu, which is good, but it hasn't been fixed in the button window. Remove doubles should probably be renamed "Merge verticies by distance", "Merge by threshold" or something similar.

I think maya should change "Merge vertices by distance" to "remove doubles". It's intended to remove vertexes that sit on the same 3d space.
Merge vertices is for user selected vertexes where ever they are.

lamp - should definitely be renamed to light light types - the regular type should get a name such as "omni" or "point" In most software, standard light types are usually omni/point, spot, directional/infinite and hemilight/skylight.

Lamp is the object, light is the action.
Camera is the object, picture is the action.
Frankly, other 3d apps should adapt to blender to be more consistent.

Relative Vert Keys - two possible terminologies... Morph animaton, morph targets, etc, or Blend Shapes, Blend shape target etc... Morphing or Shape animation are the common words used to discuss these types of effects.

What's your point here, there is no industry standard is there?
Common used? Nonsense, Maya uses one, Max uses another, Xsi has yet a third. Relative vertex keys is just fine. You made vertex poses, you have keys that uses the poses relatively. As apposed to Absolute vertex keys who move from key to key.
Why does Maya call absolute object keys 'keys' and relative object keys
'Parent weighted'? How is that intuitive and why should blender comply to that?

IPO - this has to be one of the worst names in Blender. I don't even know what it stands for. Animation Curve, or Function Curve are both fairly standard names. I prefer animation curve.

Now I get it, it's the worst because *you* don't know what it stands for.
Are you aware that computer animation in contrast to handmade animation lives by the graze of keyframe interpolation?

Location - should be position (or translation, but in general, I reccoment position because its a bit more user friendly. Most other software packages use position or translation, not location. Even Blender itself is inconsistent in this regard, since many python commands exist like getPosition(). In general, when something has a name, the interface should attempt to always call it the same thing.

Size - Scale. This needs to be changed badly.... because scale is so much more correct in describing what this does. Every other pakages uses the word scale.

Center - Some software uses the word center... but it can be inconsistent and unclear, since it can refer to either the physical center, or a user specified pivot. I would personnally suggest changing this to "pivot" which has a very clear meaning in most software, being the user defined pivot point, and not just the geometric center of an object. Also, the Centre, Centre New and Centre Cursor button shoud be relabled and made more clear. "Pivot to Object Center". Also, there is a pivot menu already in Blender, two buttons to the right of the "object mode" button. To be more specific, we might want to specify between object pivot point, and important property of an object, and the tools pivot point, which is generally a temporary thing used for editing.

LSCM mapping - Pelt Mapping or Unfold mapping. I prefer pelt mapping, popularized by 3dsmax and quickly becoming a word industry people use a lot. I like the fact that Blender mentions the actual scientific name, but it isn't very friendly. I would suggest mentioning the LSCM name in the tooltip or something.

I don't have a real opinion about this. Except apparently it's okay to use a wrong name as long as most people use the wrong name.

Hotkey and Interaction Changes
A lot of the hotkeys in Blender seem to be very poorly thought out. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that no individual has ever sat down, and truly, "designed" the hotkeys to work well.

No, we did all our work standing, because in the Netherlands there are no chairs.

When new features get created, the hotkeys typically get "tacked on", probably because you don't want to break compatibility with existing hotkeys.

At some point in the future, a major hotkey overhaul should occur, probably at the same time that the UI overhaul you mentioned will occur.

It's no use creating another set of hotkeys (other packages call them shortcuts) making everybody who is happy with the set to learn the new set. Better is to wait untill the hotkeys get user definable.

Also, if flexible hotkeys are allowed, then you can still keep an option to use the old hotkeys instead, also, anyone that doesn't like the hotkey layout can use the other ones.

For certain things, certain hotkey standards have started to emerge. Whever possible, standardized hotkeys should be used.

q,w,e, and r are the most important standard
hotkeys.

In Maya.

They should be q - select tool w - move tool manipulator e - rotate tool manipulator r - scale tool manipulator

I already stated why I'm against selection as a tool.

Other software that has adopted these hotkeys: Maya 3dsmax XSI - not the default setting, but XSI has an easy option that allows users to choose this mode. K3D

Xsi has assignable hotkeys, so a maya setting can be made.
Then again in Maya and Xsi the blender settings can also easely be made.
Modo does not default to qwer, as it defaults to lightwave settings.
And I guess you do not have a french keyboard?

The idea behind the qwer hotkeys is that they are all together under one hand, and perform the most frequently used operations, second only to viewport navigation, (which ideally, should require no keyboard use). Also, with fingers on qwer keys, the shift, ctrl and alt keys are readily accessible, as well as tab, spacebar, esc and the function keys f1-f4. The qwer hotkeys are very well thought out and exist for good reason.

So did you find out the T already? I'm not sure how these are intuitive though. Seems like "learning" to me. I would think it makes more sense that R rotates and S scales. Just as O Opens a file and U does an Undo.
So,... if Maya moves away from intuitive than it's okay,... this doesn't gives you a strong case on the 'weird' interface part of your story.

If you think about the Blender hotkeys, q, w, e and r, they don't do anything important.

"q" for example is quit. As a general user interface rule, an unmodified hotkey should never be used to quit an application. Its too easy to accidentally hit. If you accidentally follow a "q" press with an enter press, or even a mouse click, you are screwed, and will loose a bunch of work if you haven't just saved! Q should obviously be changed.

"w" is Boolean. How commonly used is a boolean? Not very. One of the first things you learn in most modeling programs is too avoid using Booleans whenever possible, because of the generally messy geometry produced, and the Subdivision surface unfriendly geometry they create. Boolean isn't important enough to justify an unmodified hotkey.

"e" doesn't appear to do anything by default in object mode, and is extrude in edit/component mode. Extrude is definitely less important than rotate, so the extrude hotkey could be moved elsewhere.

Thus, since all these keys could be easily changed, adopting the standard qwer layout should be easy.

Even more importantly, standardized hotkeys, like ctrl-c and ctrl-v should always be used, instead of strange combinations like alt-c and alt-v.

As "easy" as breaking all current documentation, that most people who really want to learn blender do read.

[LetterRip]

joeri,

Strange, I see lot's of different GUI when I open each of those apps, and lot's of different UI. All different from O.S. and other apps like Word, Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop.

There are differeinces but as far as 3D programs go, you can generally expect to find the following

4 buttons which have the obvious functions of

panning, zooming, rotating, fullscreen.

a 3d manipulator

right clicking revealing a context menu, left clicking doing selection

a menu in the upper left corner that has a menu entry of preferences or similarly obviously named file.

Here are the interfaces for comparison

Maya
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... ya_7-0.png

3DSMax
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... dsmax8.png

XSI
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... enshot.PNG

Houdini
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... Itemid=205

Cinema4D
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... nglish.JPG

Lightwave
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... eler83.png

Modo
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... hot102.png

ZBrush
http://209.132.69.82/zbrush/zbrush2/ima ... reroom.jpg

LetterRip

[pong]

blender looks good itself,
noneed to change or compare to other Software.

i'm a new user. i take times to understand Blender Basic.
and now you will rearrange all of them?
means you must remove all tutorials and creat new.?



just improve to add many more great features.

[LetterRip]

Joeri,

( Q,w,e,r is not an industry standard, give me the ISO number to proof I'm wrong ).

I'm sure you are fully aware he wasn't claiming they were industry standards in the ISO sense, but instead in the 'common practice' sense.

Major studio professionals take online support serious, they don't care much about the package used as long as there problems can get fixed.

Actually the package matters in a couple of different aspects in addition to both technical and user support there are considerations such as

1) How many existing artists know this software if we lose some people or need to add more bodies to make up time?

2) Does it integrate well in our existing pipeline

Maya does not have a blender camera, if they did I'm sure that would be their default.

I suspect that most 3D packages allow a free rotating camera, but default to turntable. Personally I think that a 'first run' wizard or such would help for this sort of thing.

Sure. That's where Maya has it.... Hmmm.... So much for

Mayas are in Window>Settings>Preferences from what I can find on the net. However a point against joes arguement is that you can also find the User Preferences by changed the 3D view to a User Preferences window, which is a discoverable process. (Although it is a bit odd to find them there).

So? What is the industry standard? File or Edit?

Industry standard is a bit strong phrase - but you can almost universally expect to find the preferences by browsing the menus at the top of a 3D program. I think you are partially being contrary for the sake of being contrary.

RTM.

While reading a manual for something as complex as blender is to be expected, the degree of 'paradigm shift' is pretty substantial and does take a lot of retraining to get used to. A completely new user to 3D learning Blender is only moderately steeper than other 3D apps (barring the problem with out of date documentation). Most 3D users can become pretty rapidly productive in any of the major 3D apps after being familiar with one, but migrating to Blender seems to be far more difficult for most users.

Now I get it, it's the worst because *you* don't know what it stands for.
Are you aware that computer animation in contrast to handmade animation lives by the graze of keyframe interpolation?

While I don't care for his phrasing you are being a bit rude. IPO as an abbreviation of InterPOlation isn't obvious. While interpolation is descriptive, IPO is fairy meaningless without knowing in advance that IPO is the contrived abbreviation of interpolation. Of course once an animatior sees a window with curves obviously they'll have a pretty big clue what there purpose is.

No, we did all our work standing, because in the Netherlands there are no chairs.

The early set of hotkey bindings probably had a design, but the time since open source has been fairly ad hoc.

Better is to wait untill the hotkeys get user definable.

Agreed.

In Maya.

QWERTY as a standard bindings set is common across quite a few 3D packages I think not just Maya.

As "easy" as breaking all current documentation, that most people who really want to learn blender do read.

Wiki docs are easily updated, and a note can be made in release notes. A unified copy paste is on someones todo already I think.

LetterRip

[joeri]

Nice shots letterRip.
I see they are all Windows.

None of them have uniform icons, buttons or button locations, nor tab functions, value entering, etc. etc.

"4 buttons which have the obvious functions of
panning, zooming, rotating, fullscreen. "

In the Max picture I could not find the panning, zooming, rotating nor fullscreen. Also I see alot of words that might make sense, but certainly will not to newbies. "Relax" , "Sgs>Mat ID", "Paintella" to name a few.

Xsi seems to use S,R,T for Scale Rotate and Transform if I see correct.
And sees Select as something else as a Transform.

So I hope it's clear that joetainment can strike out any "Industry standard" from his post, leaving his improvements as personal preference.

"right clicking revealing a context menu, left clicking doing selection"
I believe you on your word, except I know that maya pops a direction widget.

I'm not against changing this, since all 3d software seems to be doing this.
"Apply tool on LMB" and if the tool happens to be selection, then yes, LMB is selection. This will break all documentation.
But don't tell me that LMB selects in all software, it's just not true.
LMB sets the cursor. Dragging selects. And I serious doubt that dragging should be default be selecting in 3d space.

"a menu in the upper left corner that has a menu entry of preferences or similarly obviously named file. "
None of the preference settings make any sense to a new user.

First learn that blender is object based, then that the workspace is object based, fullscreen and totally yours, use and create the setup you want, then start to use this space. And please remove that stupid "File, Add, Timeline nonsense, why would I want to move my mouse all the way there? It's all under the spacebar"
Why would we want to dumb that all down?
The 3 easy steps can be learned in 1/2 hour and give thousands hours of freedom and speed that none of the other 3d apps can give me.

[Youssef|3d]

I don't want to start a "blender versus all the other 3d tools" thread, but lets think about why other 3d tools are so successful in the industry

in my opinion it's the dynamic that those tools have

for example: - all functions has an optionbox and it offers more possibilities

- you can change your hotkeys or your way to select or deselect things

- create a primitive and you will see different options on your tab, where you can change the cuts of your primitive or to move it by typing coordinates and many things more

- you can creat your own tab with functions that you use a lot

well thats just some examples, but the main thing what I want to say is dynamic is important
the user have to be able to use blender how he wants.

in a production where they use other 3d tools for years, it would be nice to change blender's UI and hotkeys and not to think what blender's loop selection hotkey is

[artisanicview]

"Silo and Wings3D can choose different sets of bindings, and how the major 3D apps allow keybinding options that match those in the other major apps." Why not this wonderful option in Blender?

And one more: ICONS.
Blended have NO ICONS! All the intuitive interfaces have Icons for a large set of functions and tools. Please make ICONS for Blender. And a more configurable interface. In Cinema4D you can configure and create the toolbars in the way you want. Cinema 4D is one of the most intuitive and configurable interfaces for an 3D program. So, I think this can be a reference. Is so easy to use the C4D interface. Please take a look at C4D interface. Download the C4D demo and wath at it.

Please make the Blender interface more intuitive and configurable and full of ICONS.

If you need an artist to make the ICONS, I will help!

[LetterRip]

Blender has an api refactor planned that will allow configurable hotkeys, menus, icons, etc.

LetterRip

[artisanicview]

Oh, I forgoted something:

The old Blender users is screemeng and protesting about a new User Interface beacouse they are used the use the old and current UI. But please think a little wide. A better UI will attract new users (newbies). And new users will make Blender more powerfull and maybe more rapidly developed (more people working in developing team). Think on this.

[Mohij]

Blender has an api refactor planned that will allow configurable hotkeys, menus, icons, etc.

LetterRip

Where can I get more information on this?
Greetings,
moHiJ

[LetterRip]

Mohij,

you can't

LetterRip

[alt]

And one more: ICONS.
Blended have NO ICONS!

IMO this a feature, not a lack of one.


Just for the sake of it I present 3d packages in order of UI crap-factor:

Gold: 3dsmax. So bad it makes grown engineers cry. Shows things in one place but does not allow to change them. In order to change something it has to dragged out of endless jungle of nested menus in an order which defies logic.

Silver: Maya. A huge pack of ugly, uninformative icons sitting in a row and eating screen estate. Cursor must be slowly moved over them to figure out what these little images may stand for. Unnecessarily complex menus and UI that tries to stop you cold, but still way better than 3dsmax. Needs configuration to wrest out it's better side.

No other prizes are given because XSI has excellent, clever system which shows well-thought method for doing things without any kind of UI clutter instead of listing all the things "just in case". No cryptic icons anywhere, just clear, arranged text, simple hotkeys and menus that intelligently show just the thing you wished for. Someone has actually been seriously thinking about workflow and technology in this one.

Blender has good hotkey-driven environment, clear menus and no icon clutter, though panels would need to be restructured for simpler/faster workflow. The flying, collapsing things eat real pixels without that much additional value and some things are not listed in context menus or otherwise are half-hidden.

I would want to see some clever menu that could figure out what I'm trying to do and present possibilities in quick, logical way similar to XSI's context menu. "W" -key is very nice, but it could be extended.

[franzrogar]

aoe2bug,

there is no need for a beginning user to need to find the preferences

The language is changed via the preferences, which is rather important, espcially for new users who don't have english as a first language.

LetterRip

Sorry for not adding links to each note, but my PC burned last week

That's a good point, at least, for the work I did trying to make a PO to translate the GUI. BUT (there's always a 'but') prior to make any i18n, the l10n support must be *real*. I mean:

- There're two known bugs (a nice discussion if they were or not bugs) that don't let you make a proper i18n. I refer to: resize buttons (and the translated string dissapears and appears the english one) and some (well, many) boxes can't be translated due to some strange uses of gettext.
- Ton doesn't want to i18n buttons.
- Some weird issues when compiling new po files (shows the file info instead of the translated msg).

Till Blender's not free of this annoying bugs, using Blender in non-english lang is unuseable. That's my opinion.

Sorry for being so shocking but... that's the truth