Since it was opensourced I've been trying to use blender.
Every time I've been frustrated to the point of just not using it.
I now understand why. It's not all blender's fault, it's complicated...
3D apparently is really really really really...... really, complicated.
For those who think it's easy, you either have IQs of 130 and up
or you're suffering from a sever case of the curse of knowledge.
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/213-the- ... -knowledge
If you can eat sleep and breathe blender at a professional level.
You're one of two types of people:
1.) You are able to change the way you interact with
something so completely and quickly that you probably
get the compliment that you're a genius or a super fast learner.
You have to be of above average intelligence to use a 3D app today.
Therefore you have high IQ. You may be so intelligent that things
simply come easily or with minimal effort to you. Since this is your
natural state, you don't understand what the big deal is with all these
people who don't "get it". You may or may not be as committed as the type below, but your intelligence makes you spend less effort on tasks than most
people have to.
2.) You possess the ability to either ignore mental discomfort or pain
which means you are usually able to stick like superglue to a task and
see it through to the end. You may or may not be more intelligent than the
majority of the population, but you're built like a tank when it comes to willpower.
I mean you guys here are really really really really smart people or you're really smart and very very very very very very determined to finish what you
start.
This stuff is meticulous, I mean, really really really meticulous.
It's not easy at all, not in the least. I can bake a turkey in photoshop
faster than a real turkey would bake in an oven. However when I try
to venture into 3D, all bets are off.
I can get deeper into it with Max, and Cinema 4D but not by much.
In short, with the current 3D tools and the current content creation
pipelines.....
I'm a 3D moron.
What's funny is that I know real 3d,
I live in real 3d, I'm an expert in real 3d.
It's all this translation that messes me up, me and the other 5.8billion people out there.
I fought and tried and fought and tried and then, I just called it quits.
I'm perfectly happy to lay down blender and walk away.
No worries, we're just not meant to work together.
My advice to all the people who are urging the community to change
blender. You'll save yourself a LOT of pain and suffering if you just
walk away now. Obviously the blender UI exists because a certain type of brain/mind works well with it. If yours doesn't, now you know why, it wasn't built
with you in mind. It was built with other people in mind. It wasn't built to exclude you, but your type of brain/mind simply wasn't there when it was built.
And I certainly do not believe that there's some olympian honor
to be conferred to 3D artists as the sole possessors of "creativity".
I mean that very notion is just... In the words of Wolfgang Pauli:
"Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong!"
Does this mean you're not creative? NO.
Everyone is creative, it's just that some of us are more blind to this creativity than others... This also tends to come and go. Nobody is
consistently creative who doesn't push themselves into a place of pain.
I do not believe the blender community is more creative because they're
just like everyone else except that they've tortured and humbled themselves to the point of being able to see things the rest of us don't see.
That would be amazing but the answers from proficient blender users on forums over the years tend to not support such an enlightened community
hypothesis.
To the charge that only real creative people use blender, my answer is:
............[insert sound of crickets chirping]
To the charge that people were selfish and lazy about learning
the GUI, my answer is:
Ok, people are selfish and lazy, yes it's annoying, however, there
are balanced people out there. With 3D graphics, and the complexity it entails, what may come across as selfish and lazy is simply exhaustion from
shear frustration at an inability to survive in blender. But it's a mixed bag.
Does this mean you're not smart enough? NO
Why doesn't anybody help you?
My guess is this type of mind or "the old school blender community" happens less frequently than the rest and so the "rest of the 3D users" have been putting pressure on or "attacking" the community who has managed to survive in blender and they very understandably don't want anyone forcing them to re adapt to a new environment.
This is their home. We all (most of us anyway) have one, and this is theirs.
So please don't come into someone else's home and demand that they
change the drapes....
It all boils down to this.
If your mind is like my mind, welcome!
If your mind is not like my mind, leave us, and blender alone.
I wouldn't want someone knocking on my door asking me to change the drapes from dark blue to a shade of mauve either.
These people aren't bad or mean or [insert derogatory reference here].
They're just wired differently than the majority of the population.
Just face it you guys (most of you are guys), you're either really smart in terms of abstraction and computing or really tenacious and then super stubborn, or a little of both, but that's not a common configuration to be
walking down the street with.
That's great, as long as everyone understands this.
But all the acrimony and fighting is just not helping anybody.
If you still think you're just "normal people" I suggest you do a bit of reading on normal human intelligence and brush up on some sociology and psychology... You're not average folks...
To the average folks:
If you were clueless in blenders past, you'll probably be not much better now. If you were ok, but too frustrated in blenders past, then 2.5 may be the light at the end of your 3D tunnel.
otherwise.
Just give it up. Save a some money, people buy cars all the
time for what max or cinema 4d costs. It's not
that hard to raise a few thousand dollars, plus you'll need money for the tech that's coming up soon.
If you're not old enough to work, even though it sounds disrespectful, I was
15 once and struggled with 3D apps considered primitive by today's standards. Work on the creative fundamentals and don't worry about the
application so much, those change all the time. Blender included.
By the time you learn a new creative fundamental skill, you'll be old enough to work and save up for that copy of 4D or Max, plus you'll have creative design chops which is way more valuable.
The rest of my post may appear whimsical...
In the next 10 years 3D interaction will change sooooo much, that people
will look back on these early years and laugh. What we have now may
seem advanced (I'm referring to the state of the art of 3D, not blender in particular), but it's downright embryonic compared to what's headed our way in a decade's time.
Things like affordable 3D scanning and printing. Will completely change
many aspects of our global economy. (reduced shipping of parts that can just be assembled from object files). Yes there will be DRM and patent battles, yes giant corporations will cry foul and there will be drama.
Maybe it will take 20 years, the point is we'll be here to see it.
Modelling will be like nothing you've imagined. Rigging will become a thing of the past, full body motion recording suits will drop in price to the sub $1000 level. CPUs with over a dozen cores will be commonplace. Rendering will be real-time. It's already real-time, but it will look photo realistic.
You may think, what I'm saying are all pipe-dreams. It doesn't matter, the laws of physics still work whether you agree with them or not, and your brain is constantly trying to hide the really cool stuff from you.
Once we hit 32 cores per CPU on the workstation everything in
that world will be very very different. You may scoff, but think about it for a moment, 32 cores running at 3Ghz is 96Ghz processing power...
Yes it will be affordable, yes Google will own so much processing power that your actions will be utterly predictable to advertisers. Most of them already are. I've already stopped keeping secrets.
How much time would any of you waste waiting for renders if you had a 32 CPU farm? Now imagine that power in one system at market prices and multi threaded to run tasks in parallel. 12 cores for rendering, 2 for each real-time interaction device, another 12 cores for the huge leaps in AI that will make all this possible.
So my advice is to find something to do that involves less pain.
If you're going to suffer anyway, learn how to code, that's what I decided
to do. The power a coder has is really incredible, if you're going to suffer through a learning experience, why not come out of it able to control the
program at the logical level? Plus you'll need some way to order computers around in the future and the principles of programming haven't changed much in decades, the practice changed, but a for loop is a for loop, and if statements are still if statements. Learn how to code instead, it'll help you in amazing ways.
Maybe learn how to draw comic books, or write the script and storyboard your short film ideas. Lay the creative groundwork, it's never wasted energy.
Technology will catch up to the speed of interacting in this world and mimic
it effectively.
I have a feeling blender or one of it's descendants will be around then.
Blender 2.5 is looking really good, but what's coming will need a new name...
I know all these predictions are just thoughts coming from one person.
Yet never once did I suggest blender be like "such and such" program.
You really want Blender to be amazing, then break out of ideas like, "hotkey manager" and start thinking "sensor network" and "character development AI"
I like what I see, I just need to learn python and write more code everyday.
Php is what I deal with in my line of work, it would be nice if Joomla and blender used the same scripting language.
As far as floating down to earth is concerned, I'm practical when it
comes to business. What I want from Blender in 2.5 is this:
An easy to use interface that won't get in my way if all I want to do is
load assets and render them at ridiculously high quality settings.
I want to assemble and render scenes that are already available on turbosquid, and yes I'll pay for them thank you very much.
Load the models and scenes into blender and crank up the render settings.
I intend to put together a virtual asset library of potential "looks" backdrops and ambient settings to use as a base to mine imagery from.
Since it's 3D, I can change angles and move the camera around in a
way that stock photography just can't touch. So my immediate interest in blender 2.5 is learning how to load, surface and render scenes at super high quality. I even have cinema 4D, but I really don't want to spend money on network licenses, I use linux all the time and can put my own farm together or perhaps start off with a render garden.
BTW, I'v used Blender 2.5 and from what I see so far I'm impressed.
It seems the major stumbling blocks have been eliminated.
I can grasp the consistency way better now, I find myself exploring and trying out new things rather than simply fighting the environment tooth and nail just to navigate.
I understand that stability is still shaky due to the alpha development phase.
My biggest concern will be what the field of render engines are and particularly, how I would go about increasing the render speed as fast as possible.
I'm curious as to how the forthcoming AMD Magny Cours will work with blender. This is a 12 core chip folks...
http://blogs.amd.com/work/tag/magny-cours/
Still think I'm crazy?
