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".

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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. ;)

Post a reply to this message

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".

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

> 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.

Post a reply to this message

"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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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".

Post a reply to this message

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".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:
> 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?

Well, there's a difference between modellers what they consitiute geometry:

Wings 3D insists that real geometry needs volume. Other modellers are 
often happy with just the surfaces.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> Wings 3D insists that real geometry needs volume. 

I have no problem with that. But it shouldn't let me delete an edge or 
vertex that would cause the geometry to not have volume.

That's like saying "my word processor insists text is always in a specific 
character set, but I let you delete the character set indicator from the 
document file."

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:
> clipka wrote:
>> Wings 3D insists that real geometry needs volume. 
> 
> I have no problem with that. But it shouldn't let me delete an edge or 
> vertex that would cause the geometry to not have volume.

Actually Wings 3D's model is not /fully/ volume-aware, because volume is 
really difficult mathematically to handle; instead, it "only" insists on 
objects being topologically "closed" surfaces.

And yes, Wings 3D /does/ enforce this. There is no way whatsoever to get 
it into an inconsistent state from /this/ perspective.

The display engine might not be able to cope though with all possible 
configurations that are valid with regards to this model, which is 
what's causing you problems.


The most common "visual inconsistencies" in Wings 3D, from my 
experience, are polygons folded over one another, and edges of virtually 
zero length.

The latter can easily be eradicated by selecting all short edges and 
collapsing them to points (use a very small value, and visually verify 
afterwards that the points created this way are all where you'd expect some.

As for the former, look out for edges that, when highlighted, seem to 
"span" multiple vertices. They're a bit of a hassle though.

Post a reply to this message

On 11/8/2009 4:10 PM, 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.

One day Blender, The GIMP, Inkscape and Wings3D will all be great 
programs. Maybe on par with Firefox and Thunderbird.

Mike

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> 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

Tee hee - right on! Mine too. I've got even bigger problems - I find myself
regularly scaling when I want to pan or translating when I want to pan when
using Moray nowadays - all down to "wiring" done in my subconscious by
Blender use.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> 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. :-)

That's the thing! Read on their site the other day that the core Windowing
system is based on some Atari ST (!) GUI library of twelve or fifteen years
ago... so no surprise that such modern GUI features aren't there yet.
 
> Even more amusing was the person going on to say "I won't do it, because
> it doesn't work yet, but..."

Ouch!
 
> 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.

Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. But its textures and
materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. Never
mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG stuff
with it. I was blown away by the sheer quality of Elephant's Dream and Big
Buck Bunny, but then, as you say, it was basically core contributors that
did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> 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

I agree - the few times I've played around with blender, the first thing
that irritated the hell of me was not having "Pov-like" CSG that works
well. Probably did something wrong, but trying blender CSG always seems
to "shatter" vertices around the interface point, making it neigh
impossible to do anything else with the object after the difference was
applied - it turned -black- with all the thousands of vertices generated by
the boolean op.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

SharkD wrote:

> On 11/8/2009 4:10 PM, 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.
> 
> One day Blender, The GIMP, Inkscape and Wings3D will all be great
> programs. Maybe on par with Firefox and Thunderbird.
> 
> Mike

Yeah one day... I think it might also be typical "internal tool" sickness
that runs like a thread through the entire Blender app. I. e. Blender was
never intended to be publically usable or distributed, it was developed as
an internal animation tool for specialized use, by people and for people
who were assumed to already be very knowledgeable in how (and why) it
works, and what it does. If you had a question, you just shouted across the
hallway for the guy who -wrote- that function or feature, thus obviating
documentation. Of course, the public does NOT have this recourse, and from
there all the UI troubles.
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
> mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
> hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. 

Yeah. It's actually not too bad in the drag-around-the-vertecies kind of 
development.

 > But its textures and
> materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. 

Yep. I think the real trick is that it doesn't really target the procedural 
texture stuff at all. It *wants* you to take photographs and slap them on 
there - that works well!

> Never
> mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
> animation is completely indecipherable. 

It really wasn't too bad. But again, it doesn't seem to target that. 
Hash:Animation Master, for example, does a much better job with rigging and 
assigning vertecies and handling skin deformation and lip sync and stuff 
like that. (Not that H:AM has usable documentation either, mind. Even the 
help files are generations out of date with the software, let alone the 
printed text it comes with.)

> But then, I've not really invested
> REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. 

It doesn't take years to get the basics. I did the stuff on my youtube 
channel (dnew) in just a few days of screwing around with it and following 
the tutorials. It literally took me longer to find decent documentation than 
it did to get comfortable with the elementary workings of the program by 
following the documentation.

Not that it looks good, mind, but that's my lack of artistic rather than my 
lack of ability to manipulate the program.

But the cloth sim sucks, the fluid sim is broken, the character animation 
stuff sucks compared to H:AM, the materials suck compared to POV, the Python 
interface is broken, etc.  It tries to do everything, and does it all 
half-assed.

Nevertheless, it actually does manage to do half an ass of everything, so I 
really wish it would be easier to learn for when I want to put together a 
walk-thru thru a textured building with moving lighting or something.

> it was basically core contributors that
> did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

Yeah, it's always easier to get good output from a program when you say "I 
need fur, so I will implement exactly what I need."  I think that's how half 
the features got in there, which is why they're all so half-assed. They only 
work well enough to generate the output the author needed at the moment. 
Mind, nothing wrong with that in FOSS; it just makes it less useful to *me*, 
because I'm not willing to contribute the time it would take to fix it.

It's a shame all the free and cheap modelers and animation packages only 
either handle a small portion of the job or suck so hard at a broad base of 
things. I'd love to play around with animations, but I can't justify 
thousands of dollars for software to fiddle around.

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

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
> I find myself
> regularly scaling when I want to pan or translating when I want to pan when
> using Moray nowadays - all down to "wiring" done in my subconscious by
> Blender use.

I find myself often typing :wq to quit notepad.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> 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. :-)
> 
> That's the thing! Read on their site the other day that the core Windowing
> system is based on some Atari ST (!) GUI library of twelve or fifteen years
> ago... so no surprise that such modern GUI features aren't there yet.

Funnily enough, it seems Microsoft Excell 2009 doesn't show offer you 
Help among the options when you right-click any of its "ribbon" buttons. 
  BTW, pretty much all 3D modellers are not based on overlapping windows.

> Hmm... never thought of it like that. I've used it a little bit and find it
> mostly useful and easy for constructing simple, odd geometry that would be
> hard or impossible (for me) to do with Pov code. But its textures and
> materials system I find -extremely- confusing and hard to understand. Never
> mind the "NLA" editor, and the real hard-core stuff like rigging and
> animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
> REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
> more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG stuff
> with it. I was blown away by the sheer quality of Elephant's Dream and Big
> Buck Bunny, but then, as you say, it was basically core contributors that
> did that, and were real hard-core blend-heads.

Here's an animation done by a brazilian Blender n00b:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_FMYYcbnsM
http://www.blender.com.br/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=10&func=view&id=8822&catid=5&limit=10&limitstart=0

yes, it's ugly for today's standards, but I myself can't even start to 
imagine how he did pull it off...

here's a much nicer one, from another brazilian guy:
http://www.epifania.art.br/

See Subtitled Short.

Point is that enoughly motivated people can do wonders with Blender if 
they just sit to learn to use it rather than complain of perceived 
limitations.  Isn't it true for everything we do, actually?  C 
programming, anyone? short code Povray?...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Funnily enough, it seems Microsoft Excell 2009 doesn't show offer you 
> Help among the options when you right-click any of its "ribbon" buttons. 

I was referring to the little "question mark" icon up next to the minimize, 
maximize, and close buttons that used to be there. That's exactly how that 
icon is supposed to work - click on it, then click on what you want help for.

>  BTW, pretty much all 3D modellers are not based on overlapping windows.

I think the output is fine. It's the input that's a PITA with blender. :-)

> yes, it's ugly for today's standards, but I myself can't even start to 
> imagine how he did pull it off...

Having used Blender, it's not incomprehensible. Lots of character animation, 
lots of physics. That's the nice thing about blender, is it puts all that 
together.

> Point is that enoughly motivated people can do wonders with Blender if 
> they just sit to learn to use it rather than complain of perceived 
> limitations.  Isn't it true for everything we do, actually?  C 
> programming, anyone? short code Povray?...

Well, it's not "perceived" limitations. It's real live everyone-agrees 
limitations. Just because you can build a pyramid with enough slaves doesn't 
mean that other tools couldn't be better.

I *did* learn Blender, enough to consistently run into bugs in Blender that 
aren't in other packages that do the same sorts of things. The interface is 
awful, it's mostly undocumented, and it's *still* the most powerful package 
out there for the sorts of things I want to do. It's just a shame that if I 
stop modeling for six months I have to start over from scratch on the 
learning curve for a program that I haven't changed.  And *that* is 
objectively a sign of a bad UI.

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> I *did* learn Blender, enough to consistently run into bugs in Blender 
> that aren't in other packages that do the same sorts of things. The 
> interface is awful, it's mostly undocumented

I disagree.  It's probably much more documented than most other free 
tools out there, thanks to tons of community generated tutorials, 
video-tutorials, wiki entries, wiki learning trails etc.  "Manual does 
not come with the software" is not meaningful in this day and age when 
the every PC comes with "the internet".  And the proper links are just 
there in Blender's Help menu.

>, and it's *still* the most 
> powerful package out there for the sorts of things I want to do. It's 
> just a shame that if I stop modeling for six months I have to start over 
> from scratch on the learning curve for a program that I haven't 
> changed.  And *that* is objectively a sign of a bad UI.

or a sign of way too much features.  Kinda like C++... :) (it's a joke, 
Warp)...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Darren New escreveu:
>> I *did* learn Blender, enough to consistently run into bugs in Blender 
>> that aren't in other packages that do the same sorts of things. The 
>> interface is awful, it's mostly undocumented
> 
> I disagree.  It's probably much more documented than most other free 
> tools out there, thanks to tons of community generated tutorials, 
> video-tutorials, wiki entries, wiki learning trails etc. 

I'll have to just disagree. There are lots of tutorials out there, but the 
reference manuals are pretty poor, especially for the more complex stuff. 
Most of the interface is fairly undocumented.

Contrast with (for example) Wings3D or POV-Ray, where there's actually a 
reference manual where you can say "What does this button do" or "how do I 
get reflection to work?"  Figuring out how to make a surface transparent 
shouldn't require 20 minutes of groping around the internet. It should 
require 20 seconds of grepping for "transparent" in the user manual. I mean, 
face it, if the reference material for Blender was good, it wouldn't be an 
exciting selling point that you can get help on what buttons do in the next 
version.

(Yes, I recognise it's FOSS. I'm not saying it's someone's responsibility to 
do this. I'm saying that's the facts, regardless of why. And that's why I 
find blender unusable for even simple things. Maybe I'll try ramping up 
again, one more time, just to see if I can model something simple I want to 
model.)

> And the proper links are just there in Blender's Help menu.

Not really. Again, contrast with POV-Ray, for example.

> or a sign of way too much features.  Kinda like C++... :) (it's a joke, 
> Warp)...

I think they do a decent job of stuffing a whole lot of features into little 
space. The abbreviations are awful, things aren't well explained in the UI, 
etc, but the windowing technology does an OK job of making a whole lot of 
options available, it seems.

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

Post a reply to this message

nemesis schrieb:

> I find myself often typing :wq to quit notepad.

I always suspect that there must be a causal connection between vi use 
and mental ailments... either you must /be/ insane to use it, or it 
/makes/ you :-P

Post a reply to this message

Actually, it looks like I can do the modeling in Wings and pretty trivially 
import it into Blender to do animations or whatever, so that's pretty cool. 
I'll have to experiment with that.

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

Post a reply to this message

clipka escreveu:
> nemesis schrieb:
> 
>> I find myself often typing :wq to quit notepad.
> 
> I always suspect that there must be a causal connection between vi use 
> and mental ailments... either you must /be/ insane to use it, or it 
> /makes/ you :-P

No, the point is that you always bring up your bias towards your 
favorite software when working with another one.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
> Contrast with (for example) Wings3D or POV-Ray, where there's actually a 
> reference manual where you can say "What does this button do" or "how do 
> I get reflection to work?"  Figuring out how to make a surface 
> transparent shouldn't require 20 minutes of groping around the internet. 
> It should require 20 seconds of grepping for "transparent" in the user 
> manual.

20 minutes?  You gotta be kidding!

Blender > Help -> Manual -> Contents -> Materials -> Raytraced Transparency

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Materials/Properties/Raytraced_Transparency

pretty quick and direct to the point.  If that doesn't suffice, google it.

I wouldn't even say the interface itself is an obstacle to that:  you 
have the main 3D view and below quite a lot of buttons organized in 
panels.  Right above the panels there's a menu bar of sorts and 1 item 
is toggled:  "Editing (F9)" as you pass the mouse above it.  You pass 
the mouse among the other options and see "Shading" which should mean 
something to any CG enthusiast -- and if you're not a CG enthusiast, 
what are you doing in Blender then?  So, there the enthusiastic guy can 
see right in front of his eye a Mirror Trans panel with "Ray Mirror" or 
"Ray Transp" options.

Someone can learn most of Blender without ever going through any 
reference manual or tutorial.  It's just a matter of sitting down and 
playing with it.  The most important keystroke to n00bs:  CTRL+x.  Erase 
all and restart anew to learn your way whenever something goes wrong.

> why. And that's why I find blender unusable for even simple things. 

Well, you may find it unusable, but the Blender n00b made some 
impressive animation with it all by himself.

Come to think about it, I've seen some broken but impressive Blender 
physics simulation from you before, but nothing of povray.  Surely 
povray is not that much more unusable, right?

> Maybe I'll try ramping up again, one more time, just to see if I can 
> model something simple I want to model.

Some people can only draw sticky figures no matter the pencil.  You 
either have some talent at a particular area or try to get some formal 
education.  Complaining that the pencil is not as smooth as other pencil 
will bring you nothing except headache.

>> And the proper links are just there in Blender's Help menu.
> 
> Not really. Again, contrast with POV-Ray, for example.

Relevant stuff, I see "Help on Povray" in 3.6.

I see "Blender/Python scripting API", "Getting Started", "Hotkey and 
MouseAction Reference", "Manual" and "Tutorials" among a few others in 
the Blender Help menu.

I don't see the difference behind too-many-stuff syndrome.  The fact 
that neither of these Blender documents are physically local to your PC 
is meaningless.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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nemesis wrote:
> 20 minutes?  You gotta be kidding!
> Blender > Help -> Manual -> Contents -> Materials -> Raytraced Transparency
>
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Materials/Properties/Raytraced_Transparency

> pretty quick and direct to the point.  If that doesn't suffice, google it.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't there back in February when I was looking for 
how to do this stuff. :-)

> So, there the enthusiastic guy can 
> see right in front of his eye a Mirror Trans panel with "Ray Mirror" or 
> "Ray Transp" options.

Yeah, because it's real clear what that means, and what object it has to be 
applied to. :-)  I think I spent most of those 20 minutes trying to figure 
out how to get shadows to cooperate with transparency. I had a transparent 
ball and a pitch-black shadow, and it took a long time to figure out the 
shadow adjustments had to be made to the floor, not the thing casting 
shadows.  Or something like that.  It was overall pretty frustrating.

>> why. And that's why I find blender unusable for even simple things. 
> 
> Well, you may find it unusable, but the Blender n00b made some 
> impressive animation with it all by himself.
> 
> Come to think about it, I've seen some broken but impressive Blender 
> physics simulation from you before, but nothing of povray.  Surely 
> povray is not that much more unusable, right?

I have a bunch of povray stuff. It's more interactive, so I didn't really 
post it anywhere. One bunch is up on sourceforge under the "LOME" project, 
for example.

POV-Ray is hard to use for reasons entirely beside the UI or documentation, 
but because of its inherent nature. :-)

>> Maybe I'll try ramping up again, one more time, just to see if I can 
>> model something simple I want to model.
> 
> Some people can only draw sticky figures no matter the pencil.

Yep. That's me. I shamelessly admit I have no talent along those lines. 
That's why I like architectural drawings - it's pretty easy to get a room to 
be square with any package. ;-)

> Complaining that the pencil is not as smooth as other pencil 
> will bring you nothing except headache.

I'm not complaining. I'm making observations. Complaining would imply I 
expected some result. :-)

> I don't see the difference behind too-many-stuff syndrome.  The fact 
> that neither of these Blender documents are physically local to your PC 
> is meaningless.

That wasn't what I was complaining about. For one, I suspect someone wrote a 
bunch of manual over the summer for Blender that wasn't there when I was 
playing with it before. (The whole "Summer of Documentation" effort sort of 
thing, you know.)

It's also probably, to some extent, the number of things that Blender can 
do. As I said, I got OK-comfortable with it after a while, just fiddling 
around with it. A lot of it was trying to get it to do stuff that's just 
broken, because that's the interesting part for me, since I don't really 
have a whole lot of artistic talent.

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

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Darren New wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that wasn't there back in February when I was looking 
> for how to do this stuff. :-)

Oh, there's the history button.  I see it isn't really substantially changed 
since I was working on it. There must have been something I was fighting 
with, probably shadows, that took me 20 minutes to figure out.

Given there's like 3 kinds of transparency and 5 ways to calculate shadows, 
I probably had the wrong combination and spent a long time figuring out why. 
Probably sitting down and going thru the manual a second time would help too.

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

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"Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
news:4af907c6@news.povray.org...

> animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
> REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
> more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG
stuff
> with it.

I give you this, without comment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5atPfhJ1Zk

Post a reply to this message

"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> "Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
> news:4af907c6@news.povray.org...
>
> > animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really invested
> > REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people (admittedly
> > more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do AmAzInG
> stuff
> > with it.
>
> I give you this, without comment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5atPfhJ1Zk

Limitations seem to push inspiration forward more often than unrestricted
freedom.  That feeling of "I'll show you I can do it" that often comes when we
do some povving...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
>> I find myself
>> regularly scaling when I want to pan or translating when I want to pan
>> when using Moray nowadays - all down to "wiring" done in my subconscious
>> by Blender use.
> 
> I find myself often typing :wq to quit notepad.
> 

Ooo! VI!

:)
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:

> Point is that enoughly motivated people can do wonders with Blender if
> they just sit to learn to use it rather than complain of perceived
> limitations.  Isn't it true for everything we do, actually?  C
> programming, anyone? short code Povray?...

You may be right... I've been playing with Pov for a few years, and each
time I see some IRTC stuff I just realize once again how much I still have
to learn and how far I still need to go. But it is true that the more time
you invest in something, the better you SHOULD get - and hey, for the price
(completely free) you surely can't complain about what you get in Blender.
If you'd paid real MONEY for it though, it can be considered a bit... crap,
I guess.

As I said, it works just fine for my for odd geometry, but not for much
else. I write PHP for a living, so maybe Pov's more "programmatic" feel is
more appealing than the completely visual orientation / bias of Blender.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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somebody wrote:

> "Stefan Viljoen" <pov### [at] polardcom> wrote in message
> news:4af907c6@news.povray.org...
> 
>> animation is completely indecipherable. But then, I've not really
>> invested REAL time (years) to get to learn all of that. And some people
>> (admittedly more dogged, hard-working and / or intelligent maybe?) can do
>> AmAzInG
> stuff
>> with it.
> 
> I give you this, without comment:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5atPfhJ1Zk

! - Well I'll be hornswoggled...

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen schrieb:

> You may be right... I've been playing with Pov for a few years, and each
> time I see some IRTC stuff I just realize once again how much I still have
> to learn and how far I still need to go. But it is true that the more time
> you invest in something, the better you SHOULD get - and hey, for the price
> (completely free) you surely can't complain about what you get in Blender.
> If you'd paid real MONEY for it though, it can be considered a bit... crap,
> I guess.

It's not really free - you still have to invest something: Time!

Question is, whether that time is better invested into something else. 
For me personally, this is definitely the case.

Post a reply to this message

> I disagree.  It's probably much more documented than most other free tools 
> out there, thanks to tons of community generated tutorials, 
> video-tutorials, wiki entries, wiki learning trails etc.

The problems I came across were because the online tutorials I found were 
for versions much earlier than the one I had.  As such some buttons didn't 
do what the tutorial expected, others were in a different place, and some 
just plain didn't exist.  If proper documentation was provided with the 
software, it would be tied to each version and there wouldn't be this 
problem.

Post a reply to this message

> It's not really free - you still have to invest something: Time!

Yes, that is the thing a lot of people forget to take account of.

Mind you, are there actually any decent 3D packages out there priced below 
$5K?  Seems like a market hole for something priced around $100-$500 that is 
halfway between Blender and 3D Studio (or whatever it's called now).

Post a reply to this message

Stefan Viljoen escreveu:
> But it is true that the more time
> you invest in something, the better you SHOULD get

Well, that's exactly what I see happening to me with Blender.  Quit 
povvying for a while and you'll notice re-learning goes slow.  I've been 
out of Blender for quite some months, but it was just like mounting a 
bike again.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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scott wrote:
> If proper documentation was provided 
> with the software, it would be tied to each version 

Oh, you wish!


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

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scott wrote:
> Seems like a market hole for something priced around 
> $100-$500 that is halfway between Blender and 3D Studio (or whatever 
> it's called now).

There's Hash:Animation Master.  They have good video tutorials online and do 
a good job with character animation and such. It was like $300 last I 
looked. It was OK. Doesn't do as much as blender (such as, no 
post-processing, for example), but what it does I think it does better.

Also crappy documentation that doesn't match the release version.

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

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Darren New escreveu:
> scott wrote:
>> Seems like a market hole for something priced around $100-$500 that is 
>> halfway between Blender and 3D Studio (or whatever it's called now).
> 
> There's Hash:Animation Master.  They have good video tutorials online 
> and do a good job with character animation and such. It was like $300 
> last I looked. It was OK. Doesn't do as much as blender (such as, no 
> post-processing, for example), but what it does I think it does better.

galleries look very bland:
http://www.hash.com/stills/

compare to:
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery/

The Hash guys are pros, they should know a good-looking gallery is a 
great way to market a product.  Or perhaps another case of limitations 
actually forcing artists to go wild?  :)

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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nemesis wrote:
> galleries look very bland:

It would seem the character animation is easier, allowing you to do things 
like "move this guy's feet backwards-walk-cycle, but keep his hand attached 
to the doorknob as the door opens."  You can make muscles bulge as he bends 
his arm. You can make skin, or scales, or one other type of 
bits-of-texture-moving that I don't remember, as the skeleton moves. You can 
do stereo and cell-shaded output. The lip sync is almost trivial once you 
get the lip shapes set up, which I *think* is easier than in blender if I 
remember. (I haven't tried to do that in blender, so I'm not sure.) You can 
take motions (walk cycles, etc) from one character and apply them to 
another. The hair is much better and actually works. The physics for cloth 
seemed easier but I didn't really persue it in blender much - maybe it's 
comparable. I don't remember about rigid or fluid bodies.

All stuff that would be hard to show in a still gallery. It's *animation* 
master, after all. :-)

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

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Darren New escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
>> galleries look very bland:
> 
> It would seem the character animation is easier, allowing you to do 
> things like "move this guy's feet backwards-walk-cycle, but keep his 
> hand attached to the doorknob as the door opens."  You can make muscles 
> bulge as he bends his arm. You can make skin, or scales, or one other 
> type of bits-of-texture-moving that I don't remember, as the skeleton 
> moves. You can do stereo and cell-shaded output. The lip sync is almost 
> trivial once you get the lip shapes set up, which I *think* is easier 
> than in blender if I remember. (I haven't tried to do that in blender, 
> so I'm not sure.) You can take motions (walk cycles, etc) from one 
> character and apply them to another. The hair is much better and 
> actually works. The physics for cloth seemed easier but I didn't really 
> persue it in blender much - maybe it's comparable. I don't remember 
> about rigid or fluid bodies.
> 
> All stuff that would be hard to show in a still gallery. It's 
> *animation* master, after all. :-)

True.  I'm not into animations in any case.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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>> If proper documentation was provided with the software, it would be tied 
>> to each version
>
> Oh, you wish!

Guess I'm just spoilt with my $20k CAD software where each new version comes 
with 1GB of documentation and free training :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Guess I'm just spoilt with my $20k CAD software where each new version 
> comes with 1GB of documentation and free training :-)

As opposed to the software I get to use, where the compiler costs $10K but 
they won't sell it to you until you pay another $10K for a 3-day class where 
they read you the manual. They can't give you the manual because (and I kid 
you not) they lost the original file. So all they have left is the copy the 
teachers held onto, having sold all the rest.

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> scott wrote:
> > Guess I'm just spoilt with my $20k CAD software where each new version
> > comes with 1GB of documentation and free training :-)
>
> As opposed to the software I get to use, where the compiler costs $10K but
> they won't sell it to you until you pay another $10K for a 3-day class where
> they read you the manual. They can't give you the manual because (and I kid
> you not) they lost the original file. So all they have left is the copy the
> teachers held onto, having sold all the rest.

They should teach Gillette how to properly market products! :D

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:

> As opposed to the software I get to use, where the compiler costs $10K 
> but they won't sell it to you until you pay another $10K for a 3-day 
> class where they read you the manual. They can't give you the manual 
> because (and I kid you not) they lost the original file. So all they 
> have left is the copy the teachers held onto, having sold all the rest.

At $10K a license, you'd expect them to be able to have one of the 
copies scanned, OCR'ed and proofread...

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> At $10K a license, you'd expect them to be able to have one of the 
> copies scanned, OCR'ed and proofread...

Oh, they did that for the manual for the previous version of the machine. 
They scanned it and packaged up the pile of GIFs into a PDF. Except some 
pages were missing. And some were out of order. And some were crooked and 
half cut off. And it was completely unsearchable because it was just GIFs. 
And all the examples were originally black-on-grey and in the B&W scan were 
nicely black on black. And it wasn't even the final manual, as there were 
hand-written notes in the margin like "I couldn't get the table to come out, 
so it's not in this draft."

It's not like you're going to go somewhere else for the manuals on how to 
program custom hardware. :-)

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

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Darren New schrieb:
> clipka wrote:
>> At $10K a license, you'd expect them to be able to have one of the 
>> copies scanned, OCR'ed and proofread...
> 
> Oh, they did that for the manual for the previous version of the 
> machine. They scanned it and packaged up the pile of GIFs into a PDF. 
> Except some pages were missing. And some were out of order. And some 
> were crooked and half cut off. And it was completely unsearchable 
> because it was just GIFs. And all the examples were originally 
> black-on-grey and in the B&W scan were nicely black on black. And it 
> wasn't even the final manual, as there were hand-written notes in the 
> margin like "I couldn't get the table to come out, so it's not in this 
> draft."

So, to make a long story short, actually they did /not/: They did the 
scanning, but skipped the OCR and proofreading steps...

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