Blender 2.8 project status

https://code.blender.org/2016/11/blender-2-8-project-status/

by buovjaga • 10 years ago

138 75 10 years ago

code.blender.org

I know that it's not really something that can be changed on a whim, but I feel like Blender's UI is deeply strange and often quite dreadful.

melling3• 10 years ago

Andrew Price would complain about the UI in his podcast. I guess the community eventually wore him down. Here's one of the episodes:

https://www.blenderguru.com/podcasts/podcast-jonathan-willia...

greenknight3• 10 years ago

https://www.blenderguru.com/podcasts/podcast-interview-with-...

He followed up with a actual UX designer, who pretty much told him that his proposal was the wrong way to think about it (objectively, not subjectively). He admitted that his proposal at the blender conference was more of a discussion about the way of the future -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aIA2LaB2Iw

After that, he stopped pushing so hard on the UI/UX problems of blender. I believe he is still part of the UI committee, but isnt pushing it as hard in his podcasts as he realises he doesn't have the answers.

foxfired• 10 years ago

it's true, but when you figure it out, you wouldn't have it any other way. I remember how much I hated the UI, but like with any tool the more you use the better you get at it.

For example, I find the left/right mouse buttons completely natural now.

mungoid2• 10 years ago

Totally agree. I use 3ds Max a lot for work and I have modified as much as possible in those settings to work like blender. It baffles everyone else I work with.

parenthephobia• 10 years ago

How does one define deeply strange? It's right to say it's not what we're used to. But I think if there was some fundamental wrongness with it, I'd have problems switching between Blender and other software with similar uses. e.g. I often use Blender and Unity in tandem and I don't find myself trying to use each the wrong way when I switch between.

OTOH, I disable the left-click to set the cursor because I find it distracting and very rarely want it - only when I want an arbitrary pivot for transforms, or to align vertices from different meshes. It irritates me deeply that there's no way to hide the cursor without also hiding e.g. the selection outline and the grid.

dispose134326• 10 years ago

Good UX means to make simple thing simple, but permit complicated workflows.

What I want is to make simple things (basic modeling, materials, colors) to be a simple one click away.

Nition• 10 years ago

The only problem I really have switching between Unity and Blender is using the viewport controls in Unity. It makes me use the mouse! Blender's keyboard focus is a curse to newbies but a blessing once you get used to it.

dispose134326• 10 years ago

It's something everyone knows about, and nothing can be done.

As I heard, it's almost a full rewrite.

semi-extrinsic2• 10 years ago

At least the Python API is deeply strange. Stuff is undocumented to out here, uses different units for input from the UI even though function name is the same, and API actions in a script depend on mouse focus...

But despite it's flaws, I love Blender.

mungoid2• 10 years ago

Before 2.5 I hated the UI. But after 2.5, I realized I could work so much faster once I learned the keys and layout. I have used 3ds Max for years and even knowing a lot about that software, I still find myself exporting to blender so I can do something. Usually I can do something in blender with only a couple key presses where in other software I have to click a few different buttons in various popup windows, etc.

I do think some of the UI needs to be a little more logical, but aside from that I honestly want to see their UI in more.

zem• 10 years ago

it's basically the vi of 3d modellers (:

PeCaN• 10 years ago

Yeah I remember the big switch from 2.49 to 2.5 with the UI redesign. Took some getting used to but honestly it's quite well thought out, pretty good looking, and productive. The modal aspect is a little weird especially if you're not used to vim, but it's definitely one of the better designed UIs IMO.

return0• 10 years ago

Main problem is that buttons are reallly all over the place, without some logical consistency. Maybe menus or even a command line would make more sense

njharman• 10 years ago

I haven't used blender in years, so don't know about recent UI. But I totally loved the interface of the first opened version. It seemed optimized for power users, not casual users. So, steep learning curve but very rewarding/powerful if you invested time to learn it. Reminds me of vim.

thomastjeffery3• 10 years ago

It seems like no one commenting here knows anything, so I'll just leave these here:

https://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-re... https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.8/

Right now, the main focus is in the (already fantastic IMHO) UI.

yowlingcat2• 10 years ago

"Better news: the Blender Game Engine project might be getting a revival. The UPBGE team is very motivated to keep Blender engine work, and help with aligning BGE with the goals we set for 2.8 – at least to use the new viewport and pbr shader system. A new logic system is still undefined."

Very excited about this. I deeply want to use Py with BGE, but I had been worried about learning a soon to be deprecated game framework. There have been a couple tickets open on the main blender tracker about completely deprecating BGE and it seemed like a lot of core developers were in favor of doing that so as to not divert away valuable dev time from core development.

imaginenore• 10 years ago

I feel like Blender Game Engine is a massive waste of dev resources. There are much better game engines out there. I wish Blender concentrated on their core software. Full OpenCL support in Cycles would be nice.

yowlingcat2• 10 years ago

I don't think it's an unreasonable position, and I have read similar arguments on the mailing list. I think you're correct that there are much better game engines out there. But, I like that BGE is open source, I like how well it integrates with Blender, and I like that it has Python as a first class citizen. For that reason, I don't know if it necessarily has to compete with other game engines, especially AAA ones. It could just be something which integrates well with numpy, SciPy, etc.

Waterluvian• 10 years ago

I want Blender and Unity to be like chocolate and peanut butter.

pippy• 10 years ago

100% agree. It would be fantastic to see these developer resources put into tight third party game engine integration. Unity is not the only other engine out there, think godot or any number of HTML5 engines.

JayHost• 10 years ago

The BGE and blender's python api is kind of a mess. The list of quality games is pretty small there.

I use Jython with LibGDX and I wrote a class-loader that lets me run the code on Android too (interpreted so theoretically don't have to compile Dalvik)

I was doing some OpenGl testing here https://twitter.com/JadenHorst/status/787449615503196160

I'd like to see some modular pipeline that allows for quality rendering - Ambient Occlusion / Shadow Mapping without having to learn someone else's GUI.

Godot and some other engines have potential but there just seems to be too much learning curve and lack of "commercial - like" examples / community.

It'd be nice if there could be a "Blender" for Video Games given how many people probably want one.

jestinjoy1• 10 years ago

I am thinking of using BGE for research purpose. If BGE is not there, de we have any better alternatives? I prefer using python for animation.

oelmekki• 10 years ago

This is fantastic news! I use mostly blender for 3d printing, but I expect the 3d scene to get quite frantic when mixed reality will be around. Really hope we may get an opensource alternative to Unity3d (even if Unity is great by itself, but you know, competition never hurt users).

qwertyuiop9242• 10 years ago

The opensource alternative to Unity is Godot. The 3D isn't great yet, but they're working on it.

philipov3• 10 years ago

The open source alternative to Unity is UnrealEngine4. Epic's licensing is royalty based, if you make more than a certain amount per quarter. Unreal has both a mature AAA-grade toolkit, and a convenient graphical language for quickly prototyping before optimizing into the C++.

santaclaus2• 10 years ago

I don't see Rust in their timeline, this must be a project for old people.

Ericson23142• 10 years ago

I was just thinking it would be neat to get some Rust in there. Yes, very predictable I know.

Ericson23142• 10 years ago

Downvotes on a mea culpa? Sheesh.

rcarmo• 10 years ago

One thing I'd love to see is better distributed network rendering. Right now it's neither easy nor intuitive to set up, and last time I tried it (a year or so ago) I couldn't get distributed still rendering to work...

qwertyuiop9242• 10 years ago

Exciting! I do wish we'd get "everything nodes," but I understand why we can't.

It's also nice that the VSE isn't getting cut (as was hinted might happen at one phase).

twisterge• 10 years ago

Yes. We are reviving the BGE. But we need the collaboration from the community (make games so the engine doesn't die). Currently it suffers from abandon syndrome, where every user abandon it to use other engines. If you want to ask questions (in real time), just join #upbgecoders on IRC (freenode). We will answer all the questions :)

Thanks for mentioning us!

Blender 2.8 project status

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