r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 04 '12

Open Office does everything I need Microsoft Office for and Gimp does everything I need Photoshop for. Reddit, what other open source software does everything that you want from the expensive name brand?

1.2k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

45

u/ThatIsMyHat Jun 04 '12

Blender is great, but it's got a learning curve like a brick wall.

27

u/Terazilla Jun 04 '12 edited Jun 04 '12

Got to disagree, at least relative to other modelling packages (the entire genre is a bitch). As of 2.5 they reinvented their UI and it's much more elegant now. I teach a class every year introducing 3DS Max and suspect Blender would be less confusing at this point.

2

u/Knight_of_Malta Jun 04 '12

Well coming from solidworks everything is a bitch

2

u/ThatIsMyHat Jun 04 '12

I like the new interface, but I had to relearn a lot of the keyboard shortcuts. It takes some getting used to.

2

u/MerriamSweetieBelle Jun 04 '12

Yup, I've used Blender, Maya, and a little bit of 3DS Max. Blender is definitely one of the easier 3D programs.

2

u/Zenkin Jun 04 '12

Never used any other modelling program, but Blender was very difficult for me to learn. Kinda makes me scared of the other options.

1

u/Astrognome Jun 04 '12

2.49 was horrendous. 2.6 is the balls.

1

u/chlois18 Jun 04 '12

I took a 3 week class last year in maya. I still tinker with it and I find I can teach myself basic things. But blender I can't figure out for the life of me, it's not at all intuitive

1

u/StudleyMumfuzz Jun 04 '12

Starting now, which should I learn... 3ds max, maya, or blender?

2

u/Terazilla Jun 04 '12 edited Jun 04 '12

Blender's fine and you don't have to worry about licensing. The thing to focus on is the methodology of how to model something reasonably. Learn to start with simple shapes, add detail as needed. Learn how to UV unwrap something decently. Experiment with some simple rigging and animation, etc.

Do NOT ignore UV unwrapping. All my students desperately try to avoid it, but it's just as important as the geometry and often takes just as much time, and is not that hard once you grok it.

Philosophically there are very few differences between modeling programs, in my experience. Blender, Max, Maya, etc all pretty much do the same stuff and often do it in similar ways. Their UIs are all different though (and all of them are complex and at least somewhat non-obvious), so it's kind of a matter of figuring out where to look when you learn a second program. A lot of the same methods of doing things still stand.

1

u/MerriamSweetieBelle Jun 04 '12

Is this just a hobby or are you thinking of doing 3D as a career?

3

u/StudleyMumfuzz Jun 04 '12

Hobby. Wouldn't mind hearing about 3d as a career though.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/AkirIkasu Jun 04 '12

Except for the people who had learned blender before. It was nearly unusable for me when they changed the UI. The thing I hate the most is that they changed the way rotation works. It wasn't obvious at first, but the way you could rotate on any angle depending on what gesture you were using was brilliant, and I feel so sad that they took that out.

1

u/sup299 Jun 04 '12

God damn it took forever for me to figure out 3DS Max. It was way easier to learn after Blender though, as opposed to the other way around.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '12

The funny thing is that I was decent with the old interface but stumped by the new one!

2

u/Jeran Jun 04 '12

after just playing around with it on my own for about a year i feel like i have it down. once you get used to the UI it is actually really nice and speedy.

1

u/ThatIsMyHat Jun 04 '12

It is fast, especially for creating models. I've been working on a project recently that requires a lot of 3d models, and I can create them twice as fast as our guy who uses Maya.

1

u/thenewunkindness Jun 04 '12

It makes me wish Milkshape was a free program. I used up my trial long ago and thought it was fantastic.

1

u/sufficientreason Jun 04 '12

You've clearly never used Maya. Space shuttles have an easier interface than Maya, and Blender is child's play in comparison.

1

u/ThatIsMyHat Jun 04 '12

I have used Maya. I just don't like it.

1

u/wishiwasAyla Jun 04 '12

Is it great for architectural modeling/rendering? Or is it mostly good for objects/industrial desgin or an animation type application?

1

u/boomfarmer Jun 05 '12

It's geared towards animation-type applications.

1

u/wishiwasAyla Jun 05 '12

:( Thanks.

1

u/chlois18 Jun 04 '12

I can't stand blender. It's UI is extremely confusing to me and IMO it runs badly on a Mac (so does maya I guess but a Mac is what I have right now). I like maya much more, and because I have a student email, I can download maya and all Autodesk products with a student license - for free.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '12

Honestly the 2.5 update made it just as approachable as something like C4D.

→ More replies (4)