You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the simple 
trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely unobvious. 
Sheesh.
-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the simple
> trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely unobvious.
> Sheesh.

since you've already forgot it, why not try the new 2.5 build?  Vastly improved
interface, possibly far more intuitive to n00bs.

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the simple
>> trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely unobvious.
>> Sheesh.
> 
> since you've already forgot it, why not try the new 2.5 build?  Vastly improved
> interface, possibly far more intuitive to n00bs.

I'm mean, it's probably more productive to complain about the new 
interface than the old legacy one. ;)

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nemesis wrote:
> I'm mean, it's probably more productive to complain about the new 
> interface than the old legacy one. ;)

Heh, yes. I'm trying to get used to Wings, which seems a lot easier until 
you screw up the geometry, and then you're pretty much hosed as far as I can 
tell. What do you do when you have a face where points are connected when 
viewed from the top of the face and not when viewed from the bottom? I don't 
even know how I manage such a thing. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:

> You go back to it after a couple months not using it, and even the simple
> trivial stuff like making a box bigger is once again completely unobvious.
> Sheesh.

True! I'm working on something, and it seems I'll need good ol' Blenda for
some of the more intricate geometry in the scene. I'm trying to remember
how to extrude along a curve and BOY the interface isn't helping a bit.

I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
who must now use a new interface...
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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> Heh, yes. I'm trying to get used to Wings, which seems a lot easier until 
> you screw up the geometry, and then you're pretty much hosed as far as I 
> can tell.

I had that problem too.  I always seemed to end up with some weird situation 
where a triangle or line would be in totally the wrong place (ie not 
physically possible) and it would seem there isn't enough flexibility to fix 
it without destroying half your model.

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:4af78e04@news.povray.org...
> nemesis wrote:
>> I'm mean, it's probably more productive to complain about the new 
>> interface than the old legacy one. ;)
>
> Heh, yes. I'm trying to get used to Wings, which seems a lot easier until 
> you screw up the geometry, and then you're pretty much hosed as far as I 
> can tell. What do you do when you have a face where points are connected 
> when viewed from the top of the face and not when viewed from the bottom? 
> I don't even know how I manage such a thing. :-)
>
> -- 
>   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

The tricky thing about Wings is that it can't have orphaned edges or 
vertices, and it only works correctly when every edge is touching exactly 
two faces. If you delete some edges, or loop cut an odd shape away, or some 
such, Wings is going to merge the faces that used to be separated by edges 
into a single face, often leaving it severely non-planar. However, it's 
still going to ask the OpenGL engine to draw the face, and it will look 
really odd from different angles. Most of what happens in Wings I find to be 
really intuitive (I love its interface better than any other modeler) but 
this one thing takes a lot of getting used to.

What I find I have to do is visualize what I want the geometry to have 
looked like, then select the right vertices (usually rotating the model so I 
can see the parts I want) and connecting them to make new edges.

I used Blender for about a year and never got the hang of it, but I was 
making models in Wings inside of two weeks. I am planning to look at the 2.5 
interface when it comes out for general use... I've been using C4D for about 
six months and I see a lot of similarities, so I'm thinking I might be able 
to pick it up again. I'd like to be able to do fluid simulations without 
having to spend another wad o' case. :D

--
Jack

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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
> harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
> who must now use a new interface...

I hope existing Blender experience will /not/ translate at all, because 
my existing Blender experience is way deep in the negative realm :-P

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Captain Jack wrote:
> Wings is going to merge the faces that used to be separated by edges 
> into a single face,

Personally, I'd classify behavior in a modeler that let you corrupt its 
internal structures as a "bug". :-) I mean, really, doesn't an edge need a 
point at either end? How do you end a face without edges all the way around?

> really intuitive (I love its interface better than any other modeler) but 
> this one thing takes a lot of getting used to.

Yes, this is cool.  After having done some modeling with Blender and H:AM, 
Wings makes much more sense than it did when I tried it as my first modeler.

> What I find I have to do is visualize what I want the geometry to have 
> looked like, then select the right vertices (usually rotating the model so I 
> can see the parts I want) and connecting them to make new edges.

If you can fix it, it's not that bad. I just usually have no idea what I 
just did wrong. :-)0

> I used Blender for about a year and never got the hang of it,

I managed to get a few things working OK. The more sophisticated stuff is 
too buggy for me to want to use, and it's all mostly undocumented, which is 
what drives me nuts. Wings has the benefit of coming with a manual telling 
you how the thing works and what each option is.

I do enough G**D*** exploratory screwing around with the software at work. I 
don't want to spend 20 minutes on google learning how to find the button 
that adds a vertex to an edge when what I really want to be doing is putting 
a window in a wall.

Actually, I think the real problem with all the modelers is they all want 
you to do operations that fit well with their internal data structures, and 
they all treat solids as connected surfaces. So, for example, you can't take 
a cube and drill a hole through it. You have to first add vertexes to edges, 
connect them, then delete the faces in the middle, and etc.  There's CSG, 
but that's still not quite the same thing, methinks. It's not like clay 
where you can say "here's a block. Here's a cylinder. Stick the end of the 
cylinder to the block."  Wings comes about closest with things like Intrude 
and "Lift" and such, where it adds the extra faces it needs.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> I wonder if the upcoming 2.5 revamp is going to make it much easier or
> harder, and how well existing Blender experience will translate for users
> who must now use a new interface...

I must say, I was quite amused how one video talking about it said how very 
cool it was that you could right-click on a button and tell it to show you 
the documentation for it, like this wasn't technology back in Win3.1. :-)

Even more amusing was the person going on to say "I won't do it, because it 
doesn't work yet, but..."

Yeah, it'll probably help once people get around to filling in what all the 
buttons do on the right pages of the Wiki it references. I just think 
Blender isn't quite ready to be used by someone uninterested in contributing.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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