In article <4846a690$1@news.povray.org>, jho### [at] northrimnet says...
> kike wrote:
> > Hi!!!
> > 
> > I'm trying to learn how to use blender... I have used Moray, Wings, Pov
 (of
> > course), even 3ds for a while... and my first impression is that it is 
not easy
> > to use... at first the interface is a bit confusing...
> > 
> > Well, the question is, is there an enough big community of Blender-Pov 
users to
> > open a thread on Blender here? I have seen forums on Blender, and I don
t like
> > them very much (I prefer this one, jajaja).
> > 
> > Well, if not, can you recommend a good forum on Blender?
> > 
> > Thanks in advance
> > 
> > 
> Stick with Wings... Blender has a very steep learning curve (I've been 
> using it for a few years now and still don't understand it all...) And 
> besides, Wings has fairly decent POVray support/exporting capabilities...
> 
Yeah. Been fiddling with Second Life and both Wings and Blender have 
"support" for the displacement map feature they call Sculpties. Some 
stuff about Wings bugs the hell out of me, not the least being that you 
can't arbitrarily rotate your view, but have to rely on "aim at", which 
doesn't always work as you want, and "auto-rotate" to control how you 
are looking at something like a cylinder, while trying to edit a path 
around its circumference. But, Blender is complicated, confusing and 
trying to follow a simple tutorial on using it to do the same thing led 
me to not have a damn clue "which" menus I was supposed to be looking 
at, what they where really talking about, or actually ever getting the 
UV map to appear, so I could save and import it. I gave up and started 
looking for something else. lol

I think now, that may have been a mistake, since I have "far" better 
control, and more things I can do in blender, not the least being making 
materials/images to map to the objects, which Wings.. doesn't quite do 
as well.

But, frankly, Wings' problem is that is missing stuff and adjusting 
"where" you are looking and working in the main 3D mode is funky and 
annoying, while "still" being far easier in general. Blender... has 
"design tool disease". Which is to say, its been "designed" to be a 
"design tool" by "designers", who have about as much clue about how to 
rig a sane and uncomplicated interface for people learning, or just 
trying to do things rationally, as a 16th century frigate captain would 
have trying to work out how to build a 21st century aircraft carrier. 
The over all design probably wouldn't be too bad, but having to use all 
the damn ropes and pulleys to run everything aboard the carrier would 
just get a tad annoying after a while. ;)

Its imho a common problem with tools made by the people that "use them". 
All too often how and why they work a certain way drives everyone else 
batty. Want a better example:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/

This is one of the first "official" tools made to let you make sculpties 
in SL... Its a damn nightmare!! You don't paint, the controls for doing 
stuff like rocks are not really "controllable", since you can't pick 
(that I can find) vertexes or faces to adjust, just do other less 
comprehensible things that don't quite produce the result you are trying 
for. Changing modes will actually "reset" your work in some cases, what 
vertex editing you can do works like a spline-path/lathe object, and it 
constantly fight with you if you try/need to place a point "higher" 
than, or "equal" to, the same height as another. Took me 10 minutes to 
figure out that I would go insane before I got it to work right, and 
less than half that time to figure out how to accomplish what I was 
attempting in Wings.

Why is it so bad? Because it "wrongly" presumes that you can "make" a 
sculpted object using a tool that mimic the behaviour of the objects you 
are sculpting, instead of letting you **actually** sculpt. Its function 
follows form type thinking, not form follows function. And while it 
works, it works badly, the way different elements interact isn't *quite* 
what you would predict having used any other tools, and it becomes real 
obvious, real fast, why "many" people don't use it any more.

But, got off track. Point is, Blender kind of suffers from this same 
issue. Too many *wrong* ways to get to what you think you are supposed 
to be doing, a few too many unclear "correct" ways, things that are 
"related" not in the same menus, etc., and the result is, its harder to 
use that it needs to be. Wings, is simple, clean, and its only "real" 
problem is that it may be a bit "too" simple, and clean in same cases 
(like the limitations on how to set where you are looking at things more 
flexibly in the 3D view).

Best advice, get used to using such programs with it first, then try 
Blender. lol

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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