blender vs 3dmax

[ThoamsC]

hi all..

I am frankly stunned and sadened that 3dmax is SO pervasive in open source discussion.

How many of you claiming to use 3dmax actually have a valid license ? <G>

If you dont have one...why not consider 'participating' in the open source community and taking pride in using 'blender'..you know blender is more than capable of doing anything ( or dain close thereof) that 3dmax can..and if you really find it can't I'm willing to bet that a quick question to:

irc.freenode.net | #blender will acquire the help you need.

I just think if we're going to preach using OSS then we should step up to the bat.

cheers
TC
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[RoundSparrow]

I agree!

I wish there were some blender models that were suitable for demo in ogre. Anyone want to give us a few styles of trees, some grass? Show how they should come out in Ogre.

[RyanN]

looks like it will soon move to SoftImage|XSI........

PS. I use 3dsmax and yes, we have a valid licence (despite how damn expensive it is)

[genericplayer]

Alot of people find blender's interface to be very unintuitive. If people have to spend time learning how to do basic things that should be obvious, they tend to give up and use something else.

[ThoamsC]

I agree!

I wish there were some blender models that were suitable for demo in ogre. Anyone want to give us a few styles of trees, some grass? Show how they should come out in Ogre.

---------
the sky is the limit ..all you have to do is load up the ogre2blender script ( or whatever its called) and boom you've got your ogre model..the other things hopefully some blender expert will help us out on BUT I can tell you that there are some AWESOME blender plugins like:

blender.org > Projects: makehuman , lsystem

for starters )

there are also hair plugins and stuff..its really pretty amazing..

cheers and have fun!
TC

[monster]

The fact of the matter is that 3dsmax is what the majority of commercial modellers use, and wannabe commercial modellers. If Ogre were to say "3dsmax isn't OSS so we're not going to produce an exporter for it" then that would be cutting off it's nose to spite it's face.

It's hard enough to get artists to contribute free models at the best of times, if we restricted them to only Blender then that would make the "art-drought" even worse.

ThoamsC, presumably then you've got a huge library of free Blender-created objects that you'd like to contribute to the community?

[Clay]

I don't wish to start a debate, but I personally think this is a wrong-headed aproach to the matter. I'm a huge OSS user and contributer, but I still use and will always continue to use commercial software whenever the commercial software is superior.

I don't know much about modelers, but I do know a bit about photo editing. Take a look at GIMP vs Photoshop. If you like the GIMP's interface and functionality, great! More power to you, and keep in mind that the rest of this paragraph is personal opinion. I simply cannot stand the GIMP's freefloating windows and asinine toolbar layout. The former clutters up my taskbar needlessly, and the latter annoys the hell out of me every time I go to do anything with it. Photoshop, on the other hand, has a clean, well designed interface that is as intuitive as a program of that power can be. Until the GIMP changes these properties I will never use it. I'd be willing to bet that's one of the primary problems with blender as well.

I just think if we're going to preach using OSS then we should step up to the bat.

I think this is the primary problem that's faced with open source. If the software is good enough, you shouldn't have to preach about it. Look at firefox. Sure, it took a lot of work to get the word spread, but people don't sell firefox based on the ideals of free and open software. They use it and recommend it because (IMO) it's a superior browser. The same thing goes for Linux in the server market. My boss would laugh at me if I told him the reason to use Linux for our servers is the freedom of software. Instead he went with Linux because it's cheaper and (arguably) better than Windows servers.

I think that any Open Source developer should strive for the highest standards. No matter if he or she is working on a library, tutorials, documentation, or the very difficult user interface, Open Source software will never succeed without doing a lot of hard work to actually please its users.

In GIMP's case, I think if they would allow an option to use MDI instead of free floating windows, and the ability to rearange the toolbar, I'd switch in less than a heartbeat. Even though I can't specifically speak about Blender, people have already complained in this thread about its user friendliness. I think that this should be a top priority if they want to attract any new users.

We shouldn't preach about the qualities of OSS. We should instead use OSS to make high quality software that wins over users based on functionality and usability, instead of abstract ideals.

Edit: One other thing.

How many of you claiming to use 3dmax actually have a valid license ? <G>

You would be suprized. A very high percentage of freelance modellers have valid licneses. I worked with two modellers on a side project a while back. I was suprized at the time to learn they did indeed have their own licensed copies of 3DS and Maya respectively. This isn't uncommon though. 3DS licenses for students are reasonable, and a professional modeller will have to have a license to sell his work.

Sure, you can pirate it, but you run a big risk if you actually release your work. A lot of projects will not accept work from you unless you do have a valid license, and that's the simple fact of the matter.

[temas]

I just think if we're going to preach using OSS then we should step up to the bat.

I just want to make a point that OGRE is largely agnostic to the choices a developer is going to make. Yes, we provide a fairly high quality engine under an open source license, but we made a point to support commercial usage. We are not preaching only open solutions for development in any way. That's not to say we don't think the entire toolset and library choices could be open source, because the multimedia side of the open world is rapidly maturing.

[Xinc]

I think Clay nailed it. OSS is great, but productivity comes from usability. And usually usability depends on the user-interface and how efficiently an individual using that program can get things done. Also lets not forget the degree of flexibility a program offers and whether or not it has similar features and UI of other competing applications so that the user feels at home (whether it be working on 3DMax or Maya it should only take an hour or so to adjust to the new layout; steeper learning curves tend to bore/scare new comers). Because remember, the end-user could careless about all the hard work and months of programming and the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have gone into a project; for them, it should "just work".

So I think Clay has put it well in saying that OSS developers need to concentrate just as hard on the visual and graphical side of things as they do on the backend of it. And personally, I've tried both Gimp and Blender. Gimp I would say is on the right track, a few minor changes to the UI and Gimp would be an awesome product. However Blender though, has a really unique and different interface from most of the 3D apps I’ve worked with in the past (Cinema4D, 3DMax, Maya..etc All have similar interfaces; which doesn't take too long to get used to if your going from one app to the next).

Its the same thing with Dev C++ (and other IDEs) vs Visual Studio. Microsoft has invested millions of dollars into research on its user interfaces (along with various other tidbits) and has refined, and re-refined it. Refined it's ease of use and its layout (and you can see all that as you progress from the DOS-based IDEs to the latest VS2005). And let me tell you when your there at 3 o'clock at night, with your eyes and brain about to explode, your almost thankful that MS went the distant they did to make life much easier. I for one, like many others, support OSS. Infact that’s how I pretty much taught myself programming from the early years -- downloading source, and going over it to see how it worked...etc. So today, I'm in-debt to OSS and to the good people like sinbad and the team who make high quality, commercial grade OSS available to others to raise the bar even higher. But even so, in many cases OSS aren’t always "Ogre". They lack some form ability. Thus personally I'll take convenience over "free" any day as long as I can increase my efficiency and feel much more comfortable using the commercial software. After all, that’s why they charge you money right? For the higher quality content, otherwise if OSS was just as good, why would someone waste their money? However most OSS have got a few years to go till they comes to par with commercial software; but surly with constructive criticism and the willingness of the developers, they will eventually get there.
Well, Enough garbage from me...

[ibrown]

all you have to do is load up the ogre2blender script ( or whatever its called) and boom you've got your ogre model

Is there actually a utility to convert .mesh (or the XML equivalent) into blender files? I was thinking about trying to make a python script to do this - but if one already exists that would be much better
If it does exist, where is it?

Ian

[ThoamsC]

all you have to do is load up the ogre2blender script ( or whatever its called) and boom you've got your ogre model

Is there actually a utility to convert .mesh (or the XML equivalent) into blender files? I was thinking about trying to make a python script to do this - but if one already exists that would be much better
If it does exist, where is it?

Ian

---------
my bad sorry..I just meant the blender plugin for ogre... ;(shrug...


cheers
TC
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[walaber]

not that I know of. you can of course export to .mesh from blender thanks to the fantastic exporter, but I know of no way to go the other way...

[semicolon]

Hi all,

First of all, I need to say that I am very new to blender. The first time I have tried it is very different from any 3D packages that I've known. But I do agree with ThomasC that blender is powerful. I am also interested in using Blender for production. However, since the total of blender still needs some time to be familiar with, I am also still want to pay for commercial packages. By the way, blender do have some unique features that will sooner or longer be one of the standard 3D package.

Semicolon

[machinimist]

in my opinion blenders weakness isn't its user interface. it's its biggest strength (besides python scripting)! in the meantime i prefer blender's interface over most other applications.

some weaknesses of blender (especially for game development):

- no possibility to set hard/soft edges
- no real n-gons -> would make modeling easier (non-destructive changes of topology,...)
- inflexibility of display modes -> i would like to have the option to see textures while in edit mode,...
- no possibility to display tiled textures in the uv editor
- the uv edit mode is a bit confusing and should be merged into edit mode in my opinion
- doing animation is difficult and it lacks some important features
...

most of these issues are being worked on though as far as i know. the problem is that blender has very few active developers compared to the big boys who employ hordes of full time programmers.

[IoN_PuLse]

Um what do you mean by setting hard/soft edges? If you mean how they are shading, it can certainly do that.
There are n-gons in the latest version.
UV edit mode makes a lot of sense once you've gone through the LSCM unwrapping tutorials, which is a simply amazing feature.
I don't know what part of animating is difficult, or what features it's lacking, but so far I've been able to complete a character model from an artist's rotations, and another guy has been animating it...haven't really run into any issues yet.

I've also UVunwrapped it and had no problems exporting everything from blender into Ogre...

[nfz]

I concur with IoN_PuLse.

[machinimist]

you can set faces to be flat or smooth shaded but this doesn't provide enough control. it doesn't make sense at all that control over shading is face based (only if smoothing groups were provided but they are horrible workflow-wise). it should be an edge setting. for high poly modeling smoothing isn't that important because you can work with subdivs and edge creasing. in reality there are no 100% hard edges anyway.

n-gons currently are fake and not very useful but someone is working on implementing the half edge mesh structure already.

yes, uv-mapping in blender makes sense i just think that some things are a bit more cluttered than necessary. same about animation... and even the blender developers admit that they are about 10 years behind with animation features.

[ThoamsC]

you can set faces to be flat or smooth shaded but this doesn't provide enough control. it doesn't make sense at all that control over shading is face based (only if smoothing groups were provided but they are horrible workflow-wise). it should be an edge setting. for high poly modeling smoothing isn't that important because you can work with subdivs and edge creasing. in reality there are no 100% hard edges anyway.

n-gons currently are fake and not very useful but someone is working on implementing the half edge mesh structure already.

yes, uv-mapping in blender makes sense i just think that some things are a bit more cluttered than necessary. same about animation... and even the blender developers admit that they are about 10 years behind with animation features.

----------------------
well sure 'overall' you can't terriby well compare a PAID st aff working on maya/3dmax and blenders oss community. Not across the board anyway but the blender devs are very good regardless of their salary requirements <G>

anyway I have a URL for you if interested::
http://wiki.blender.org/pub/Requests/An ... oposal.pdf

check it out

anyway..I use blender for two reasons:

I If I expect MOD makers to use it so should I ( I mean as in those making MODS for our upcoming game
its free ( I simply can't afford $3500/$1800 for either maya OR max
blender provides what functionality I need and the HUGE range of plugins is enormous..and blender is getting better all the time ;-0)

anyway what about animation are you having trouble ?

cheers
TC
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[Jerky]

Actually, Blender's ui IS very intuitive. It just doesnt look like it at first because it is NOT conventional. I also use 3dsMax and ZBrush, but I use Blender as well. Blender is very good, especially considering that it is free. For anyone who wants to be legit and can only do that through Blender (ie. no funds), they really need to do the tutorials. The video tutorials are the best way to learn the interface. Otherwise, ZBrush is only $460-490 and you can get a yearly subscription to 3dsmax for only $440. Yes, this is a yearly fee, but it includes addons and future versions. Why anyone would pay $3500 is beyond me. There are plenty of ways for an artist to be legit, he just has to look for them, instead of taking the easy way out (piracy).

[monster]

... is very good, especially considering that it is free.

The sooner OSS people stop putting in this disclaimer the better. It's like saying; "it's a bit crap, but it didn't cost you anything so, hey, what do you expect".

Not that I'm saying Blender (or any other specific bit of OSS) is a bit crap. It's just that that seems to be the standard get-out clause. Strive for perfection in everything you do, if it's not perfect tell people why and let them know how they can help make it better, don't use the fact that it's free as an excuse.

As Clay and Xinc say, it's gotta be good, regardless of price, or I won't use it. Of course if it's good and it's OS then that's perfect!

[IoN_PuLse]

I've used Maya, 3dsmax, and a few other commercial modelers before - I prefer Blender.

I also prefer it because it starts VERY quickly and I can run it just by unzipping the ~4 meg zip! Very convenient. But hey, these are just my opinions.

[genericplayer]

Actually, Blender's ui IS very intuitive. It just doesnt look like it at first because it is NOT conventional.

You are contradicting yourself. The very definition of intuitive is that you get it at first without having to learn it. It behaves the way people expect it to. I am not saying blenders interface is *bad*, I don't do modelling besides basic filler crap to use during development, so I am really not qualified to say if its good or bad. But I can say that it isn't intuitive. Without any training or time spent learning, I can do simple junk models in 3dsmax, but I have to spend time learning how to do even the simplest things in blender.

Also, I am not saying that blender should change its interface, I don't know enough to say one way or the other. Some times things need to be less intuitive to be more powerful, and you just need to take the time to learn. But most people don't take the time to learn, they want to just start doing, so I do think this is one of the reasons blender is used less often.

[IoN_PuLse]

I think the word he was going for was efficient, because once learned I find it is

[Phantom]

Just because blender doesn't work exactly like other 3d aps means it is bad. I mean, Linux isn't/wasn't anything like windows and people still started using it because of it's power.
If everything has to work like it's predeseccors we would never have anything new like zbrush.

By the way, blenders interface took me about 2 days to learn, and I love it now. It is SO much better than any other app I've tried.

[genericplayer]

I mean, Linux isn't/wasn't anything like windows and people still started using it because of it's power.

That's a bad analogy. Linux has nothing to do with windows, it was created to take the place of an educational unix kernel in order to run gnu software. It isn't anything like windows because it has nothing to do with windows. It is however alot like every other unix, which is where all of the early adoption came from. If linux had been substantially different from unix, it never would have gotten the popularity it has now. Most of the people switching from windows now aren't doing it because of "power", they are doing it because its free, and its less insecure and buggy.

By the way, blenders interface took me about 2 days to learn, and I love it now. It is SO much better than any other app I've tried.

Like I said, it doesn't matter how powerful an interface may be, being unintuitive will hinder its adoption. Look at how many people don't use vi because they would have to learn how first. Vi has an excellent and very powerful interface, and I cannot live without it. However, it is most certainly not an intuitive interface. If people spent the time to learn some things, they might be better off in the long run, but not everyone wants to spend the time. That's their choice, not everyone has to use the same tools.