Bforartists 3.0.1

[Tiles]

Bforartists 3 version 3.0.1

Hello Friends,

There is a new Blender version available, and so we release a new version too. We have released a new version of Bforartists, Version 3.0.1.
Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. With the goal to improve the graphical UI and usability.

The binary downloads can as usual also be found in the download section of the official webpage. https://www.bforartists.de/download/
The sourcecode can be found at Github. https://github.com/Bforartists/Bforarti ... tag/v3.0.1
And the release note is here: https://www.bforartists.de/release-notes/

Bforartists 3 Version 3.0.1 comes with all the bugfixes from Blender 3.0.1. Blender 3.0.1. has fixed over 80 bugs.

One of the last big projects in Bforartists is fulfilled. All text and properties are now left aligned in the modifiers too. The experimental keymap with F to center at the view and X C V to adjust the brushes is now the main keymap. As a reminder, here you can find a pdf file with the vital changes in the new keymap: https://www.bforartists.de/data/tuts/ex ... hanges.pdf

The rest is the usual work to keep Bforartists updated with the Blender changes. Align all the new middle alignend things left in the UI, create new icons, fix oddities. All in all we have around 110 changes in this release.

This release ends the current development cycle. Our design goals for Bforartists are largely met. And we fade slowly into a maintaining development status to keep our changes stable, consistent and up to date with Blender. But we won't stop to make Bforartists better and better.

As with every release, friends, It was me a pleasure to work with you. And many thanks to our users too for supporting us!

Have fun with the new version. Enjoy Bforartists
Reiner

[bitkar]

thank you very much! I play with it alot these days. Its more and more viable alternative to tS. Still dont like few things - mainly scene hierarchy (grouping). Shame that such basic features keep Blender down. I love other things tho.
If you are done with dev, maybe you could make few tutorial videos with BFA3, if you have energy for that :)

Maybe i will make a new thread on tS to Blender migration.

[v3rd3]

Thank you Reiner... I have already downloaded the update..... avid fan.... thank you for your effort.

[Tiles]

Thanks friends,

Yes, the hierarchy problem is badly solved in Blender. Groups is one more thing where they eagerly wanted to do it their way. And, as always, came up with the weaker solution. We can unfortunately not change this part. This would break compatibility with Blender then, and we simply miss the man power for changes in this scope.

We have some tutorials in the quickstart series. But yes, we don't have a fancy video for every feature. And the videos were made with version two. There hasn't changed this much though. These videos are still valid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZlqqMA ... S_00jURpUB

As a note, most of the tutorials for Blender will also work for Bforartists. The tools are the very same. Just the handling differs here and there. But feel free to request some tutorials. What especially do you need?

EDIT, i have made a thread in our tracker where you can request tutorials

https://github.com/Bforartists/Bforarti ... sions/2892

Kind regards
Reiner

[bitkar]

great! I will think of things I suggest or such.

I thought you can make BFA more popular (more results in searches) by making more tutorials or so... but ofc. i usually try to use blender tutorials (tho some keystrokes and things are a bit different).

Is there some third party solution (a plugin) to groups? Or can i set some key stroke to select whole collection when iam clicked/focused in the viewport? that may help too.

[Finis]

To select all objects in a collection first select one of the objects then shift-g-o. I don't know what happens with collections that contain collections. That's on the Select menu too of course. This discussion includes how to make a custom hot key. Really though, if you can't press shift-g-o should you be doing CG? https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-sel ... /1174146/2

Parenting can be similar to a group. An effective strategy is to parent the objects to an empty. Move, scale, rotate the empty and the children follow. Be aware of the transform pivot point. Its options provide different behaviors for the 'group'. Median is usually good for group like behavior.

The outliner is your friend. Learn it well.

[bitkar]

shift-g-o does not do anything. Ofc I can press it.
Parenting... that is what i dont like either. If you have an object consisting of many, its good to be able to move whole thing no matter which object you select from the group. Not to remember or to find which object is the parrent. Null object maybe ok if its easy to select and really obvious and easy to find in the viewport.
Outliner is good, but its extra click/work to have to click to outliner and there select the collection each time. If you want to work fast, you need to work in the viewport (thats what tS does well)

[Finis]

"You" was meant in the sense of "someone" and directed at the creation of the custom hotkey whose use saves only a tiny amount of time.

"shift-g-o does not do anything." Maybe discovering why it doesn't work for you and fixing it would be useful ... Ah, my bad, shift-g release shift key then o. Shift-g is a hot key that produces a popup menu with the same options as found via the Select menu. The o is not a hotkey but a menu selector similar to windows menus. That's sort of evident when the menu pops up but it is poor UI design. I now have more respect for the custom hotkey maker. I use parenting to an empty for groups. Not as convenient as TS groups. I use the menus most of the time but I'm not a professional with a deadline to meet. Pros are fast due to much experience and expertise with the program and learning innumerable hotkeys.

Let's not derail this BFA thread with TS to Blender transition stuff. Here: Moving to Blender thread viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6255

[trueBlue]

trueSpace.png (273.81 KiB) Viewed 2085 times

Assimilate

Blender.png (322.28 KiB) Viewed 2085 times

[Tiles]

Sorry for overlooking the questions.

We decided not to recreate every existing Blender tutorial for Bforartists. Since most tutorials works just fine in Bforartists. And we simply miss the man power. The ones that doesn't work fine are usually the ones that doesn't work fine in Blender too.

There are no groups in Blender / Bforartist. They call it collections. And it is unfortunately not as good as groups. As always when Blender developers reinvents the wheel. You have to live with the limits of the collections i fear. The alternative is parenting. But even here, parenting behaviour is sometimes odd to say the best.

In some areas Blender / Bforartists is simply still not where trueSpace already was. And most probably never will be due the "we do it our way" philosophy. But in other areas it is miles ahead already. It's worth the move

Kind regards
Reiner