Any Blender 3d user in here?

Hey, I was wondering, how many people are using blender 3d in here?
Personally I’ve been using 3d max for years ( 8 years ) and about 2 weeks ago I decided to switch to blender.
I most say the first day was not easy, but after a few tutorials and 2 days of practice, I can now say, I am pretty comfortable with it.
I really enjoy it actually, I think it is super powerful and gosh, it is unbelievable stable!
Love it!

I kinda use it. I'm still n00b, but everytime I learn a bit more I'm more impressed.

Heres the sword I made( using a tutorial on gamedev.net )


The interface is really cool. Yep, I said the blender interface is cool. Sick n tired of people moaning about that :) Just gotta do a tutorial or two, and it all comes to you like a light beaming out of the heavens..

Anyways, its amazing that its free. All in one modeler animator renderer + more. I'd really like to get into it more.

I play around with Blender :)
It's really easy to get to grips with, so I can pull off some fairly nice little renders and fancy physics-based things with it.
Its fantastic community is a great help, too.



In my opinion, the interface wasn't a bad idea... originally.

Now that it's a quickly growing open-source application, though, it is, simply put, The Wrong Kind of Interface.

A tight interface which has hundreds of buttons in very particularly sized windows in very particular places, while potentially pretty nice looking, is for a completely planned program which, when it gets updated, gets completely rewritten to (visually) fit new features.
This does not happen with Blender (though at this rate, I fear that it will have to be done). As a result, we have what can at times be a mess.

An example... Your screenshot is actually one of the better sections of the interface, but we can probably assume that the "No V Normal Fl" button is supposed to be telling us something, right? On my end (1280x1024 resolution), it's completely readable. Any smaller and the button not only looks awful since there is text leaking out the side, but some buttons become completely incomprehensible.
For example... in 1024x768:
Object Menu (Currently F7): "Draw Key Se", "Slow Par", "Offs Ob", "Offs Par" (Followed by a bigger button which says "Offs Particle, thus confusing what one may think the last one means).
We have a little window thing of the right side in Object Mode that likes to bounce around at this resolution... Tabs say: "Constrai", "Effects", "Particle I", "Softbod"
Not messy enough? Let's look at it in 800x600 then.
Wait... let's not. I'd be here all night. An example of ingenuity there, however, is "Offs O", "Catmu", "Set Smoo", and "Sub S".

Meh, I'll just point you to my thoughts on the matter at CW: http://www.codersworkshop.com/viewpost.php?id=66059#66059


Don't get me wrong, I think Blender is great!
It's fantastic to see a free, open-source 3d package doing so well and I understand that the interface has to be cross-platform.

But... I think it's important that the developers begin to focus on a new GUI rather than torturing this one with new features and even messier buttons.
I'm not saying that it's a crappy program; I'm saying that it is going to be in for rough times when more buttons need to be added and I hope that people begin to understand that so we don't end up with a dead program.
The more people that say the strained interface is fine, the less chance there is that Blender will ever have an interface that nobody minds.

Sure, people get used to it, but let's look at other programs... How much trouble is it to get used to the controls in Photoshop, Wings 3d, 3ds Max, or Silo? They're different, they work well, they're big, and they're totally understandable without the need for tooltips and memory.

The gui is actually just there to assist users with bad memory(like me).
The pro users don't even need the button interface since they prefer using hotkeys and the popup menu.
In fact you do need to use hotkeys and the menu sooner or later since all functions aren't covered by the buttoninterface.

One of the things I really like about blender is how easy it is to configure the buttons and widgets around. Since you can scale panels and buttons as needed, screen real estate is really up to each users preference( plus you can store multiple screen setups, so you can set up custom views for the various tasks you have )

That said, I thought the general idea for blender is to be controlled as much as possible by mouse + keyboard. Er, I mean by not having to always go click on everything with the mouse.

Not saying its perfect by any means. If anything in my original post, I was referring to the people who just take one look at it, and automatically shoot it down without putting any effort to learn it.