My advice: wait for Blender 2.5. Hitting spacebar now pulls up the quick search box, which you can use to search for tools and other stuff (which have all been unified as "Operators") and the UI is leaps and bounds better than 2.4x. And rendering and other CPU-intensive tasks no longer lock up the UI. Check out the vid.

Edit: and you can access online documentation for any button just by right-clicking it. Fully awesome.

I'm trying to learn modeling using XSI SoftImage ModTool. XNA Game Studio premium members (= $99) get the Pro version for free (the download link is on the XNA partners page, though I'm not sure if it's only displayed to developers with a premium membership).

I also bought MilkShape 3D for $25 or something. It's a great tool, my only grudge with it is that it doesn't let you set up your own bones (you can import an existing set of bones, though), so animation wise, it's pretty limited.

I dont get this attitude towards Blender, though it seems prevalent on the internet. I suspect the reason is because it's different from the user interfaces of more popular applications. In my opinion as someone who has only ever used Blender, it has a fantastic user interface that allows for a very speedy workflow.

Quote: Original post by kirsis
I dont get this attitude towards Blender, though it seems prevalent on the internet. I suspect the reason is because it's different from the user interfaces of more popular applications. In my opinion as someone who has only ever used Blender, it has a fantastic user interface that allows for a very speedy workflow.

Unless you forget a hot key...

Quote: Original post by Cygon
I also bought MilkShape 3D for $25 or something. It's a great tool, my only grudge with it is that it doesn't let you set up your own bones (you can import an existing set of bones, though), so animation wise, it's pretty limited.

I've been using MS3D more years than I can remember, for low poly model work (<64k tris), it's basically a Half-life / Half-life2 character editor. The biggest issue with MS3D was that it didn't used to support multiple bone weights per-vertex ... this was added to the format specs, and the editor a while ago. You can also set bone/joint orientations, build skeletal hierarchies, set animation/joint keyframes, visualize vertex weights, zero joints, adjust frame counts, and speeds, etc.

So I don't see how it's limited at all w/features, just in terms of speed/ease of use, but that hurdle can be overcome with years of work, same with any tool. Once you get used to working at the vertex level you can do interesting things, especially if using high res shapes imported from other software as a base [ in addition to the extended primitive plugin that comes with MS3D ], and it imports/exports ~70 model file formats.

What I do for complex 'next-gen' character models which are created for my games - is have my contract artists export them from MAX to the HL2 .smd format [ reference/rig .smd and animation .smd ] so I can then import into MS3D flawlessly, if you go this route you'll be able to easily use MS3D for everything in your games/projects. Especially if you use the native .ms3d model loading/rendering code freely available on their website.

Milkshape3D SDK v184

Only real issue w/MS3D technically would be the 64,000 triangle limit - but for small levels or single game models I've never really had an issue. I also use MS3D for modeling building's interiors, and things like that so I've actually split them into two model files [ soooo hackish, but in years I've only had to do it once ].

Quote: Original post by et1337
My advice: wait for Blender 2.5. Hitting spacebar now pulls up the quick search box, which you can use to search for tools and other stuff (which have all been unified as "Operators") and the UI is leaps and bounds better than 2.4x. And rendering and other CPU-intensive tasks no longer lock up the UI. Check out the vid.

Edit: and you can access online documentation for any button just by right-clicking it. Fully awesome.

So when is 2.5 coming out, I can't help but notice it seems like the 2.4 branch is getting more and more buggy lately.

I've been using blender for about 10 years, and as with every 3d app out there its complicated, i know on the site somewhere there is a shortcut map for all the keys.

with the upcoming 2.5 release you can map the functions and operators to what ever keys you want.
i think the beta for 2.5 is coming out pretty soon with in the next few weeks

as for being a terrible 3d app, i think it is just misunderstood and different and for some reason people don't like things they aren't familiar with.
besides its open source if you don't like how something is done in blender go fix it =p

as an alternative to blender i like light wave or modo both of them are great apps
still on the expensive side though

Blender is fine.

Yes, Blender is a functional 3D tool. You can learn to become productive with its odd interface just as much as you can become fluent in Chinese, if you're willing to spend the time and effort.

As someone who has spent a lot of his career with GUI design I look at Blender as a perfect example of how not to do it. I mean Blender is littered with hidden menus and commands that is only useful to those who already know of them.

A search function helps, but it's merely a band aid on a much bigger issue (and how do find that search function again?). Keyboard shortcuts can be very useful, but Blender relies on them like it's the year 1989. I'd like to believe we've come a lot further in terms of graphical interfaces since the days of Lotus 123.

I think that the biggest problem with Blender is that the UI was designed by programmers, and it very obviously shows. If they would just get a UI design team working on it they would probably have an awesome tool. They don't even have to give up their "precious" keyboard shortcuts.