Why is blender so poorly designed and hard to use?

[Whirled Peas]

Here's the thing with blender, yes its interface can be a bit difficult to learn at first and may not be the most erganomic, but really that's about the only downside that I can see to it really. It's flippin' free, has no licensing issues as a result, I remember once that I had to literally download a crack for softimage 6.5 just to get my legally purchased version of it to work due to a bad dongle, and you know what, it was actually easier and more simple that way.

For the great price of FREE it can do everything that the top end packages can do, with the small exception of the fact that it isn't setup for large scale pipeline production like Maya and Max and all them are, but the open source nature of it (along with the IMHO easy to use nature of python) means that it shouldn't be too much of a task to customize it in that way.

As far as stability goes, it is hands down the most stable package I have ever worked with(and I've worked with all the big names except for C4D). I have NEVER had a crash, EVER in blender, granted I've not used it for nearly as much stuff as say Maya or Softimage, but even those will crash in what would be considered otherwise rather simple and nondemanding scenes.

Then there is the sculpting tool which while not nearly as capable as sasy mudbox or zbrush is still quite a bit of something, and the fact that you don't have to migrate models between packages to do your sculpting is huge.

As far as exporting and importing and importing goes, I will admit that it can be problematic, but you kind of just have to do a "pick yourself and try again" approach and you'll get the result you want. Compared to some of the render babysitting some of my college friends had to do when they went off to Sheridan and had to switch over to Maya, it's a trade off I'd take any day.

I can't speak for anyone elses experiences, but for me Blender is far and away the best bang for the buck around.

[Lonesome Ducky]

I agree, blender is amazing, especially after 2.5. But if you think it's completely stable, you haven't tried v2.56 yet I'm getting a crash near every half hour.

[jibblesmgee]

I use the 2.56 beta and it hasn't crashed for me yet (And I have windows 7!). The old 2.4 versions did, but I think that was mainly because the python version was oooold. I think my favorite feature is that you can find a tutorial for anything you want to do with it. I really recommend the "Johny Blender" Tutorial on youtube for character creation, it's long as hell, but each section is well labeled and it covers about everything and how to do it.

Sorry about the unneccesary sarcasm earlier, I was trying to be funny. I probably would use 3DS Max if I could bring myself to afford it, but Blender is just as functional, even if it is a little slower to get the job done. I know there are cracks and warez, but you can't really trust those, plus I think stealing is wrong even if a product is rediculously overpriced. I wouldn't steal a Lincoln Navigator either, even though it's just a Ford with some extra crap on it to break.

[blenderfan]

What do you all think about Blender now?
It has improved drastically

[CuteAlien]

It certainly had some time to improve - you're reviving a thread of the ancients here which had been fast asleep for a decade!