Why is blender so poorly designed and hard to use?

[eye776]

Sorry for any ensuing flaming:

So, here I go with the rant: How can blender suck SO MUCH after 180+ public releases!?

-It can't properly import files (no default settings means every import is a potential surprise from being unable to import, to getting unusable, broken data).
-It can't properly export files. If python crashes (and it does) that's it for your data. Results range from "barely usable" to "no file at all".
-Modeling is a creative shortcut-fest chore. The mouse is almost useless. Like in 1969
-The node system is good, but getting there ... that's the hard part.
-Rigging is HORRENDEROUS even for the CG software level of 1998.
-Texturing only works when it wants to.
-And the interface is a horrible mess to top it all off.

For those defending it, I'm glad that you can work with it, but I'd rather have a 3 - 4 iteration toolchain (obviously free, no max/maya/etc.) that does its job and does it fast, rather than dabble about in blender and break my model every 5-6 minutes.

And a question:
Does anybody believe blender's work paradigm (not the interface itself which is bad but still, learnable) will change for the better sometime in the near future?

Frankly I'd love to have a free, stable, UNIFIED, open source-package of tools that can rival commercial solutions.
Blender is free, open-source and unified.
It's not stable and it cannot even rival, for my purposes, my own workflow (composed entierly of free tools).

When argumenting, please don't point to projects made by people that have spent 7+ months re-learning from the ground up just to get basic usability out of Blender.
It's not reasonable in CG, even for a free package. (Just look at all the independent projects using blender ... )

[Lonesome Ducky]

I'm not exactly a fan of blender either, but I don't really see anything horribly wrong with it. I've seen amazing things done with it, and have heard mostly good things about it. Trying to use it myself, though, went right over my head . I do mostly agree about the interface though, I definitely thought wings3d had a better one (perhaps because I'm simple minded, I'm not quite sure.) The exporters I had little trouble with, aside from .x and .b3d.

[eye776]

Ok, so the .obj, .dof and .dxf exporters work decently but then again, the obj/dof/dxf formats are quite easy to use and frankly it doesn't surprise me.

Every other exporter works ok ONLY IF YOU GET THE RIGHT SETTINGS. (which depend on what keys you accidentally hit while working with the file) The model can look ok in blender, but you'll find flipped normals or inverted matrices (at the very least) when opening it.

I personally use a blend of wings3d, unwrap (the old one), LMM, MM3D and a little custom tool I wrote (which crashes a lot).

[Lonesome Ducky]

Mostly the same here, mm3d is probably the simplest animator I've ever used. I use blender mostly for conversion, and it seems to do its job. I used the Gandalf .b3d exporter, and it worked great. I found most of the settings in the exporters to be self explanatory. And if they came out with inverted normals or matrices, the better exporters gave options for reversing it. The .b3d exporter I used had clearly marked invert normals, flip y, flip x, and flip z.

[eye776]

How do you do it?

When I try to import ms3d into blender (exported by MM3D) with keyframes it crashes.

When I try to import ms3d into blender (again exported by MM3D) withoot keyframes it doesn't crash, but it either doesn't import anything, or a gray boneless mesh (sometimes deformed) appears.

Exporting to anything else after this doesn't even work.

Assume I'm stupid and made a white cylinder with 8 horizontal sections and 2 bones in mm3d. How do I convert to b3d using blender?

[Virion]

-It can't properly import files (no default settings means every import is a potential surprise from being unable to import, to getting unusable, broken data).
-It can't properly export files. If python crashes (and it does) that's it for your data. Results range from "barely usable" to "no file at all".
-Modeling is a creative shortcut-fest chore. The mouse is almost useless. Like in 1969 Very Happy
-The node system is good, but getting there ... that's the hard part.
-Rigging is HORRENDEROUS even for the CG software level of 1998.
-Texturing only works when it wants to.
-And the interface is a horrible mess to top it all off.

- have you ever done any serious import/export work in Maya? its a lot more worst than blender.
- anything that you can do with shortcut can be found with a button. you just never try to search for the button yourself.
- for the node system... have you tried Maya's hypershade?
- what do you mean by "Texturing only works when it wants to". be more specific? was it YOUR problem instead of blender's?
- have you tried the new blender? it has a much better interface.

no one is forcing you to use Blender anyway.

[Ion Dune]

it cannot even rival, for my purposes, my own workflow (composed entierly of free tools).

If I may ask, what is your workflow? I have had similar experiences with Blender and am currently looking for a different toolset to use.

[conallmmcg]

i was like yourself and had continuously tried to use blender for about a year and got increasingly frustrated as to why it just wouldn't work the way i wanted it to. but that was the problem, i was trying to use modeling flows from other modeling packages , but blender has its own way of doing things.
although to be honest, i've never experienced any of the problems you listed in the forms of errors or problems importing/exporting, but im not saying ive used all formats extensively.
when i finally had a chance to sit down and learn blender properly ( tutorials and video tutorials on youtube) i got the hang of it , and a year later i wouldn't change it for a paid for package , i really wouldn't i love all the shortcut keys which most professional modelers set up in their chosen package anyway?
most tutorials i watched for the likes of max and maya etc, they always encourage settings up your own shortcut keys for certain actions to increase productivity.
as Virion said there usually is a button for every action in blender, you just have to look for it and get used to where things are.
as most blender's users will admit it's quite a steep learning curve for most used to other packages but once you get used to it, it's a beautiful system.
also quoting Virion , if you really don't like it
"no one is forcing you to use Blender anyway"

plus i really don't like the way you said how can it suck so much.
that's just silly. blender is a really powerful tool, that a lot of professionals would swear by. fair enough most people have preferences to other packages and that's completely fine, it's their preference.

[eye776]

EDIT: If you want to help me instead of getting defensive how about giving me a hint about my original question.

Assume I'm stupid and made a white cylinder with 8 horizontal sections and 2 bones in mm3d (EXPORTED AS MS3D). How do I convert to b3d using blender?

I said that the node system is good. Getting to use it is convoluted and requires a lot of (what seem to the layman as) unnecessary steps.

Which new blender? For the past 8 versions I've been told the same thing.

Where exactly are the improvements ?
A few shortcuts and button colors changed ?
That small panel rearrangement that makes a bit more sense but is hidden by default?
The lack of a bundled basic user guide ? (there are only web links in the help menu)
The fact that you STILL can't link "editing modes" to interface states ?

Why should I spend 5 months re-learning to model, skin, rig AND use the interface of any software just to use SOME of its conversion abilities?

EDIT:

@IonDune:
It's not really a toolchain yet.
I use:
Mandatory:
modeling - Wings3D
texturing - unwrapuv (the old, free version)
rigging - misfit model 3d (yes, it's a PITA for anything > 3K tris)
animation - not decided on anything, for now misfit model 3d, I only need the keyframes

Optional:
output - custom tool (written in irrlicht) that allows me to edit materials, preserve / cut bones, strip keyframes. It used to have basic auto-rigging too, but the required lib no longer compiles properly (segfault/infinite recursion on runtime) in vs2008.

For editing textures I use a lot of tools, from GIMP to artrage free, dogwaffle, and loads of other BS.

I'm contemplating on adding anim8or (with automation scripts) and getting auto-rigging back on track. Also implement HW skinning.

And finally finishing that damn custom animated model format (somewhat based on .irrmesh).

[Virion]

Where exactly are the improvements ?
A few shortcuts and button colors changed ?
That small panel rearrangement that makes a bit more sense but is hidden by default?
The lack of a bundled basic user guide ? (there are only web links in the help menu)
The fact that you STILL can't link "editing modes" to interface states ?

have you looked into 2.53 beta? you can now SET YOUR OWN SHORTCUT KEY OMG and the interface is more like some other commercial packages now (the devs actually do listen to the user's complaints, unlike autodesk, who don't)

there are tons of tutorials (and even video tuts) on the internetm as i said, you never really go and search for it.

use whatever method you like, rather than saying this sucks and that sucks because its a personal preference. i'm sure you'll come back to blender once you tried Maya.

there is a reason why Blender is more famous than the tools that you're using now. majority people are satisfied with Blender, that's why.

[eye776]

I have actually used maya (though just a bit) before. IIRC MEL was a tad better organized than python is under blender (concerning scene exposing API).
But, seriously, why all the hate for maya?

[Virion]

why all the hate for maya?

because i have been using it in college for 3 years. i'm forced to use it anyway, there is no choice for me so i have the rights to complain.

[eye776]

And you SERIOUSLY prefer blender for "mundane" tasks (modeling, texturing, rigging, animating) ?

I know blender has its own unique features, but frankly, I'm a programmer. I can barely draw proper art. Shitty art skills + blender = not a good pair

OK, so I started on the wrong foot, that still doesn't mean blender is that much easier to use: although custom shortcuts are nice, the seasoned users will still use the "old" default ones, out of convenience; that and the tutorials.

[freetimecoder]

First, Blender can do about everything that the 3k $ professional 3d modeling programms can do. It even had some innovations the other companies put in their programms afterwards (in expensive updates of course)

As for the interface: A lot of functions => a lot of buttons. No difference with the professionals here. Sure, they got a team there working on user friendlyness, blender is primarily focussed on functionality. But once you know blender (I know, not what you asked for, because it takes a while) I think the workflow is better than with the big ones. (Can tell from c4d and 3ds max)

The formats: Well, it was already said that maya had issues, c4d is (or maybe was, since I have not tried the new versions) very complicated to use for exporting as well AND has a very limited list of formats.
e.g.:
obj: model ok, no animation, no texture
3ds: model ok, no animation, screwed up uv texture
x: model sometimes ok, if you're lucky you got some bad animation, texture is screwed up as well
other formats are not or even less usable with games
b3d: only with very old plugin from the community
I don't want to start talking about importing...

Spending 7 years learning blender: What do you expect? Unless you have a very good talent it takes time. You can't get perfect in drawing in a few weeks, even when you only use paper, pencil and rubber (which is FAR less complex than blender)

I don't know what you mean by saying that the mouse is useless. If you want to click, there are always buttons, however, shortcuts make the workflow much easier (that was, what you wanted, right?) To find them can be tricky, I admit that. Blender has very many hidden talents.

Rigging is not that bad. Sure it might not have every one-click function of the professional programs, but it sure has everything you need to make a professional animation.

I also don't understand what you hate about texturing. Works fine. Exept for a little baking bug, but oh well, not that dramatic. If you do not know how to texture, that is not the programs fault. UV mapping can be tricky sometimes, but one gets the logic behind it after a while.

Btw, the complete gui was updated with the new blender 2.5 version (which is still in development, though)

I admit, the interface held me back from using blender the first time I got my hands on it. I used c4d for a while, but every stupid module was another 300$ wasted and blender had it all there. So I finally turned to blender and voila! After the ice was broken Blender became my first choice.

In case you don't know it:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
A full blender book teaching you everything you need step by step.

greetings
and happy blending

[eye776]

@LOL... I didn't mean one-click rigging.

On one hand I can see why the blender devs chose to have a skeleton as a self-contained object.

On the other hand my problem is that you CAN set the state of the skeleton object in an independent manner from other objects (if you're not careful you can f**k a 5 hours-worth rig in 2 keyboard shortcuts and less than 5 seconds).

I prefer the Maya/Milkshape approach better. When you edit animations, you change the state for all the program (i.e.: can't mess up geometry data or worse ... OTHER armatures at the same time)

@freetimecoder:
I didn't know about c4d, but I had some disheartening 3dsMax and maya export issues in the past.

And for the rant to be complete I also consider Truespace's interface as highly ineffective.


LATE EDIT: This just in. I tried the 2.53 beta.
Short review:
+ Improved default camera control/ object manipulation
- Interface is even worse (XSI/3DS mashup, no wait... WTF is this poop, it's even MORE confusing ...)
- The icons are even smaller.
- blender.exe crashed on exit...
- Everything is pretty badly mixed up in the Tool panels.

Ok, I retract my words, the old blender interface was not that bad...

Maybe in blender 2.6 they'll hit the spot with control AND usability

Ahh... screw this... I think the time ranting about blender's animation would be better spent on getting my own 3d animation format to work.