Blender

[NikiOo]

As someone who started 3d modelling in blender and only 2 years later went on to learn maya, I'm baffled at the amount of people calling Blender unintuitive. I find it the exact opposite. The navigation in the viewport is incredibly smooth and easy to get used to, especially the shift F feature which I use all the time to fly around and save a lot of time of panning and rotating. The vertex editing tools are 5 times faster than maya and it loads 50 times quicker. The rest of the interface is considerably well organized imo. In fact I think you can learn most of the stuff through trial and error relatively quickly. Of course the experience is gonna be very different for people who have been using maya or 3ds max or 4d or any other software before trying blender and have to adapt to the different UI and controls.

This is just my personal experience. And I love blender. Only thing I've ever had to use another program for was 3d modelling, where of course nothing can beat zbrush.

[hgn]

I have been using Blender 1/2 of my entire lifetime, so I am excited to see what is going on with investments and such.. I am a big fan of open source software, and for those who do sculpting you should check out the branch being worked on by Pablo Dobarro https://mobile.twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1145336342521556992 . I've testing it out the last few days and it is great.

*Edit: As of 19 hours ago Pablo is now working for Blender.

Also EEVEE is fucking awesome.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Terri

[Interfearance]

@NikiOo I pretty much did the opposite and completely understand what people are complaining about all the time. If you start on the convoluted program you don't really know what you are missing in terms of accessibility. Also, the addons for blender can be useful but most of them are niche gimmicks or absolutely necessary to perform a task. My fav had to be the one where you can use perspective reference photos to create geometry for renders by tracing over the picture. I am still confused who the target audience is. Its a 3D modeling program, not nuke. Then there is the cabinet generator which is probably the reason there are so many crappy inaccurate interior renders that you see in the real estate business. There is literally an addon just to have usable retopo tools. Right now I am looking at an addon that claims to aid blender's rudimentary reference plane tools. The list of tools that try to compensate for blender's lack of functionality goes on to UV wrapping, sculpting, rigging, etc, etc. I am not trying to shit on blender. The plugins ain't that tight tho, and if they weren't free it would be like paying for something that should come stock installed. I'm gonna give blender another chance for basic 3D modeling and see how it goes.

Edited July 29, 2019 by Interfearance

[Zarsky]

Blender 2.80 has been released!

Check out the release notes & download:
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/

Manual:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/

 

@Interfearance Yeah, I agree that there's room for improvement in many areas. If you want to optimize your workflow as much as possible, you pretty much have to download/buy a few plug-ins, but many of them extend the desired functionality ten folds for about 10-50 bucks.

 

[esspho]

I've played around with 2.8 for about an hour now and switched back to the 2.7x input scheme. I wonder if many others do the same out of convenience.

[Serialmapper]

I like the new interface of Blender 2.8 and what is capable of,  regarding modeling, but my major problem is the export posibilities to source engine. I'm sorry but that smd plugin is light years behind of what wallworm can  do combined with 3dsmax. If something similar like wallworm would be created for Blender than i would gladly switch to it.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Serialmapper

[Interfearance]

@Zarsky Sounds better than 3000 a year... I'm in!

[Pampers]

And now 3ds max and Maya are getting free indie versions. Competition is always good

[leplubodeslapin]

@Serialmapper You don't need SMD files anymore, you can compile a model for Source from a .fbx now !

So you don't need that SMD plugin anymore.

You just have to give .fbx files to your .QC, here's an example :

Quote

$modelname "cs_archives\furniture_desk_01a.mdl"
$cdmaterials "models\cs_archives"
$body "Body" "furniture_desk_01a.fbx"
$staticprop
$surfaceprop wood
$sequence idle "furniture_desk_01a.fbx"
$collisionmodel "furniture_desk_01a_phys.fbx"{
$concave
}

 

Personally I was really used to 2.79 (I mean before 2.8).

I tried working on a blend file on 2.80, on the next day I tried to open it with an older version of Blender and it didn't work anymore (makes sense) so I continued working on 2.80 and I'm getting used to it it's great

[Pericolos0]

I've been using 2.8 professionally since last year now, I think it's phenomenal! 

If anyone is interested, I updated my easybake script a few months ago. Makes textures baking quick and easy, with a similar setup to xnormal: https://github.com/leukbaars/EasyBake

Plan to work on it a bit more soon so if you have any feature idea, lemme know

[Interfearance]

Well I followed a basic tutorial to create this ugly sword:

I really like a lot of the 2.8 changes. After taking time to actually figure out how to use blender, its actually pretty fucking simple.

I don't know what anyone (myself included) is complaining about.

-Edge loop tool is awesome

-3D cursor is nice

-Interactive creation + removal of gizmos by default seemed gimmicky but actually works really well.

-Material browser does not try to be substance

-New layers (collections) are a huge upgrade

These were just a few things I liked in a 10 minute period. I get the hype now and I can't believe 2.8 is free. If the uv unwrapping and baking goes well I think imma switch.

 

[Interfearance]

Now that I have used blender to UV unwrap and topologize I have to say I am impressed. Its the same core functionality with little voids. Time to start work on neons for my map.

[esspho]

Oh yeah, I remember that anvil.

That's a great tutorial series.

 

 

[Interfearance]

@esspho You can see that I completely skipped over texturing since I wont do it in blender   Great video, the way he patched up the Boolean seems versatile and easy!

[+Rusty+]

Thats awsome @Pericolos0 and ty for this addon, i really love the ease of use and like that the tools arnt hidden within more lil (pull dwn) sub-menus, really nice keep up the awsome work .