>> right mouse button click (RMB) - selects
>> left mouse button click (LMB) - changes location of 3D cursor
>
> And I think that there pretty much sums up why people think Blender's 
> interface sucks. :-)

Not really, you can change that one around (as I always do).  There's many 
other things too though that you can't change :-)

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>> Has somebody invented a way of placing points in 3D space even though 
>> you only have a 2D edit area yet?
> 
> Most 3D modellers I've seen allow you to split the edit area into 4, 3 
> viewing orthogonally along each axis, and 1 perspective.  This allows 
> you to place points accurately in 3D, and of course check the "real" 
> look of the outcome interactively (yes all views update together in 
> real-time).

Most of the modellers I've seen *only* work in this way. (Blender 
apparently allows you to rejigger the display any way you see fit.)

It's still surprisingly easy to get "lost" in 3D space, or to draw stuff 
and then discover you didn't draw what you thought you drew.

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>> Also... Blender seems to incorrectly assume that Z is "up" and Y is 
>> "back". (It should obviously be the other way around.)
> 
> It is not incorrect; it is right-handed.

OK, I rephrase: confusing.

>> Interesting how the amount of scaling is apparently completely 
>> unrelated to the mouse movement... (Seems to scale the cube by about 
>> 20% of the distance the mouse is moved.)
> 
> It depends on how far the mouse pointer is from the selection.

Oh, I see. So, what, the mouse position at the instant you type "s"?

>> OK, this one took me a while to figure out. You'd think you extrude it 
>> by dragging the face that you want to extrude... but no. You just 
>> click and Blender places faces at random for you.
> 
> Select faces/edges/vertices, press E to extrude. The newly formed 
> faces/edges/vertices are automatically selected, and by default you are 
> put in Grab mode; move the mouse to move them or right-click to keep 
> them where they are. You can also switch from Grab mode to Scale or 
> Rotate by pressing S or R.

This doesn't appear to match the behaviour I observed. Click somewhere 
and new faces appear. Move the mouse and nothing happens. Click again 
and more faces appear.

The faces aren't random though; it appears that if you click exactly 
half way up the screen, the new geometry is parallel to the existing 
cube. Click slightly below the midline and the geometry is connected at 
an angle. Click lower still and it self-intersects in a way I don't 
quite comprehend yet.

>> F9 doesn't appear to do anything.
> 
> F9 opens the Editing panel in the Buttons window. If the Editing panel 
> was already active, nothing will happen.

Ah, I see.

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> Most of the modellers I've seen *only* work in this way. (Blender 
> apparently allows you to rejigger the display any way you see fit.)
>
> It's still surprisingly easy to get "lost" in 3D space, or to draw stuff 
> and then discover you didn't draw what you thought you drew.

That's why you should keep an eye on the perspective view, and keep rotating 
it around to ensure it looks ok.  As you said, it is very easy to make 
something look cool from one viewpoint, but then when you rotate it around 
it's nothing like you wanted.

If you're designing smooth surfaces it can really help if you turn on some 
specular lighting or even an environment map reflection (if your modeller 
allows it), this allows you to see how "smooth" the surface is better than 
just with diffuse lighting.

Personally I prefer just one perspective view and to keep looking from 
different angles while I'm designing, but maybe I'm just used to that 
because it's how my 3D CAD software works (which I use 100x more frequently 
than Blender).

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Given that Blender is only capable of rendering triangles, is there some 
way to GPU-accelerate the rendering process? (As opposed to nailing my 
CPU to the wall for 10 minutes at a time.)

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On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:31:13 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Given that Blender is only capable of rendering triangles, is there some  
> way to GPU-accelerate the rendering process? (As opposed to nailing my  
> CPU to the wall for 10 minutes at a time.)

For quick test renders, turn off OSA, and perhaps also ray-tracing.

For a quick preview of just a small part of the scene, use Render Preview  
(Shift+P).



-- 
FE

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On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:20:33 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Also... Blender seems to incorrectly assume that Z is "up" and Y is  
>>> "back". (It should obviously be the other way around.)
>>  It is not incorrect; it is right-handed.
>
> OK, I rephrase: confusing.

Confusing to *you* perhaps, because you are used to left-handed systems.


>>> Interesting how the amount of scaling is apparently completely  
>>> unrelated to the mouse movement... (Seems to scale the cube by about  
>>> 20% of the distance the mouse is moved.)
>>  It depends on how far the mouse pointer is from the selection.
>
> Oh, I see. So, what, the mouse position at the instant you type "s"?

Yes.


>>  Select faces/edges/vertices, press E to extrude. The newly formed  
>> faces/edges/vertices are automatically selected, and by default you are  
>> put in Grab mode; move the mouse to move them or right-click to keep  
>> them where they are. You can also switch from Grab mode to Scale or  
>> Rotate by pressing S or R.
>
> This doesn't appear to match the behaviour I observed. Click somewhere  
> and new faces appear. Move the mouse and nothing happens. Click again  
> and more faces appear.

http://blenderunderground.com/2007/08/17/blender-basics-part-3-is-live/



-- 
FE

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>> Given that Blender is only capable of rendering triangles, is there 
>> some way to GPU-accelerate the rendering process? (As opposed to 
>> nailing my CPU to the wall for 10 minutes at a time.)
> 
> For quick test renders, turn off OSA, and perhaps also ray-tracing.
> 
> For a quick preview of just a small part of the scene, use Render 
> Preview (Shift+P).

Sure. I was just wondering, since Blender doesn't do anything a GPU 
can't do, whether there's some way to use GPU acceleration, that's all.

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> Sure. I was just wondering, since Blender doesn't do anything a GPU can't 
> do, whether there's some way to use GPU acceleration, that's all.

You mean the Blender internal renderer?  Umm, that's a fully-fledged 
raytracer with multiple reflections/refractions, ray traced shadows, ambient 
occlusion, all that stuff etc, as you will know from the POV/GPU discussion 
these things are quite hard to do on a GPU, if possible at all.

Of course the editor view in Blender is using the GPU, but the materials 
that are shown are a limited cut-down version of what will appear in the 
render window.

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>> Sure. I was just wondering, since Blender doesn't do anything a GPU 
>> can't do, whether there's some way to use GPU acceleration, that's all.
> 
> You mean the Blender internal renderer?

Indeed.

> Umm, that's a fully-fledged 
> raytracer with multiple reflections/refractions, ray traced shadows, 
> ambient occlusion, all that stuff etc, as you will know from the POV/GPU 
> discussion these things are quite hard to do on a GPU, if possible at all.

I thought ambient occlusion (as opposed to other GI algorithms) was 
specifically suited to GPU implementation?

Anyway, I just thought if you weren't using ray tracing, it ought to be 
possibly to run on the GPU. I guess not...

(What's the point of a ray tracer in a product that only renders triangles?)

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