United3dArtists Archive

I don't know if it interests anyone here, but the Blender Foundation has just posted their official "Blender 2.5.0" release. It's called an "alpha" version, and is now going through the general-public testing phase. Supposedly it has some major user-interface updates and lots of new features.

http://www.blender.org/development/rele ... ender-250/"

I'm rather new to this hobby, and I'm still trying to make up my mind whether to train myself in Truespace or in Blender and have been holding off until Blender 2.5 has been released because I knew that 2.5 was imminent and that it was getting a significant U.I. update. Now I'll check it out to see which of the two suits my personal tastes (they're radically different, these two apps). It really would be no contest (I like the Truespace style of user-interface), but the way Workspace and Edit modes in Truespace are like two separate programs that use different texturing methods/rendering outputs/etc..(ie. seem awkwardly mashed together into one executable)... is kinda off-putting to me. I'll probably end up deciding to just deal with it and use Truespace, but I'm going to give both a fair shot. Anyways, I figure if anyone's going to check out Blender just for the hell of it, now would be the time to do it since this latest release (and its major changes in the U.I.) is representative of what the app, as it gets updated, will be like for a good long time to come -I'd have hated to start learning the program right before a major overhaul to the U.I., heh heh,

Excellent thanks truespacecadet!

If it was me starting out in the new world of 3D today my choice would be Blender.
I would want to grow with the product. trueSpace is dead with no 64 bit future, no Windows7
future (currently the LE is hosed) and it is a Microsoft product. (and you know THEY SUCK!)
trueSpace is fantastic 3D application where I feel at home with it's UI. The problem is it is
a Jekyll and Hyde application creating a mess in the learning curve. (Even it's Creator bailed on us)

If you can get by the mess trueSpace can create some amazing work.

Steinie wrote:If it was me starting out in the new world of 3D today my choice would be Blender.
I would want to grow with the product. trueSpace is dead with no 64 bit future, no Windows7
future (currently the LE is hosed) and it is a Microsoft product. (and you know THEY SUCK!)
trueSpace is fantastic 3D application where I feel at home with it's UI. The problem is it is
a Jekyll and Hyde application creating a mess in the learning curve. (Even it's Creator bailed on us)

If you can get by the mess trueSpace can create some amazing work.

Thats so true Steinie but why do you guys have to choose... you can get them both for free and I can tell you some of the basic understanding of Blender isnt as
hard to learn as it sounds. Give them both a try......
If Truespace no longer works you still have learned enough skills to use Blender.
Theres even great city generators for it and a dungeon genertaor and lots of cool stuff.
i use it together with Vue...
Peter

TrueSpaceCadet I think your investigation and reviews of TS and Blender will be valuable since you are new to each program. You won't have biases toward either from prior experience.

I agree with Steinie about not starting with TS. You might consider that TS has no future. For those of us how already know TS it is useful until it is obsolete but a new 3D'er might be wasting time learning it.

Rayman has a good point about using more than one program but I think one with such a short future isn't a good choice for a newbie's arsenal.

LE is not a problem for me because i only use the model side. I can not waste my time learning a workspace with no future and without all I need. For now I can do my job on modelside without problem. Then I choose a new software and keep Truespace to convert my old work to this new software (and in french! I don't want to use a dictionnary to learn). The gratuity is not a criterion to choosing for a professional when the price of the soft represents only one or two workday. time to learning is more important. I think to keep my computer and XP for TS and buy another pc with seven to test news software. Or maybe I'll decide to go fishing and enjoy the sun...

Thanks all for sharing your opinions and suggestions. I'll be giving Blender 2.5.0 a thorough test-drive starting this weekend. It does look very cool, and it can obviously produce some truly professional result as seen in many of the animation examples available online. If I do take to Blender though, I will regret not having that fun Truespace interface...something about its U.I. just speaks to me. I guess appearance is a rather superficial criterion though, so I'll try not to let it influence my decision, but if I were to judge a book by its cover, at first glance, it's hard not to imagine that Truespace is to Blender as a video-game is to a spreadsheet, heh heh (it looks more fun). But apparently the U.I. overhaul Blender has just received makes it much more intuitive and logical, so I'll ignore the book-covers and focus on the substance behind them. The fact that Blender is constantly being improved (for free no less) and can compete with the big-boys of 3D animation makes it quite tempting indeed.


Oh, and since this is the "off-topic" forum, what the hell....

marcel wrote: I think to keep my computer and XP for TS and buy another pc with seven to test news software. Or maybe I'll decide to go fishing and enjoy the sun...

Hey, you're talking my language there Marcel....My enthusiasm for freebies extends beyond the software realm -Check out the free bass-boat I got this summer. I was testing it out on Essens Lake in Bon Echo Park (Ontario Canada) in this pic. I caught a few nice juicy bass on that boat...Har!


And a nice fat little trout I caught the following week in Ottawa. My girlfriend is a pro at cleaning and cooking fish so I only have to catch 'em and hand them over to her, which is a pretty sweet deal if you ask me! Hmm, suddenly I feel like going camping again!

I downloaded blender 2.5 alpha this morning, but could not run it. It crashed before it loaded.
That's ok.

I like blender, though I don't use it as often as I'd like. It is very capable, and very much alive.
The interface is very different from trueSpace. Then again, XSI is different, so is Maya, so is 3dsmax,
so is Autocad. etc. etc. etc.

With the blender interface, as with any interface, it's helpful to get very familiar with one small section at a time;
learn to navigate through the different aspects efficiently.

froo wrote:I downloaded blender 2.5 alpha this morning, but could not run it. It crashed before it loaded.
That's ok.

It ran fine the first time for me. I uninstalled v.2.49 first though, and since it left the original Blender folders behind, I just extracted the zip file to "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender" (making sure to delete the few leftover files in all folders first so that the "Blender Foundation" folder was totally empty except for the "Blender" sub-folder), created a shortcut to Blender.exe in the Blender folder, renamed it to just "Blender" and right-clicked/pinned to Start Menu, and it fired up no problem. Could it be you had leftover files in your Blender folder or did you install to a separate folder while keeping the old Blender installed?

I find the U.I. (er, I suppose I should say G.U.I., but what other kind of U.I. is there but "graphical"?) to be very different from 2.49, but it does look to be far better organized, and I think the way it transitions when you change viewpoints on the numpad is a nice little touch too...but I'm sure if I was experienced with the older Blender I'd be blown away by far more important features than that, heh heh.

After all we've lived with TS, I never work with a beta version.
ps: in french beta mean "stupid"

marcel wrote:After all we've lived with TS, I never work with a beta version.

Well I guess with all the work they're doing to provide this app free of charge and open-source for everyone, they're counting on users to help out with the testing and bug-reports...kinda like a team effort.

marcel wrote:After all we've lived with TS, I never work with a beta version.
ps: in french beta mean "stupid"

Why not after all thats what they left us with.

thanks for the info truespacecadet.
Yes, I still have 2.49 installed. I thought I'd try unzipping it and running it, since there is no windows installer yet.
That could be the problem. I wanted to see what the new interface looks like.

Well, I can say this Marcel; at least we know the Blender 2.50 build WILL become a RELEASE version.
It won't get bought out by a corporation for <Insert Your Reason(s) of Choice Here>. And it will be Solid.
But back to Blender 2.50. Sweet.

There are two features I am very interested in:

1. Smoke Simulation
2. Cloth Simulation

To me, it's worth the time investment learning the Blender interface in order to get the job done. I am
looking forward to it. Though, I will still use trueSpace as well. I am already using Blender and trueSpace
for fluid simulation and fluid + physics in truespace.

JimB wrote:

marcel wrote:After all we've lived with TS, I never work with a beta version.
ps: in french beta mean "stupid"

Why not after all thats what they left us with.

I am not talking about TS. I mean I do not want to repeat the same history with any other software. I will not crush my finger with a beta hammer. I prefer a good hammer. Maybe i will use blender 3.0
I like to try beta for fun but not for my job. The problem: some soft seem allway beta....

Check out the free bass-boat I got this summer. I was testing it out on Essens Lake in Bon Echo Park (Ontario Canada) in this pic

YOU STOLE A CDN DESTROYER!!!!! For shame.... liking freebies is one thing ... too cheap to spend $50 at Walmart is another .....

The timeline on the Blender site shows all 2.5's as betas and 2.6 as the full release. They expect that in March 2010. I think it was March.

v3rd3 wrote: YOU STOLE A CDN DESTROYER!!!!! For shame.... liking freebies is one thing ... too cheap to spend $50 at Walmart is another .....

Har! It was free coz my girlfriend bought it for me...and it cost 18 bucks at a bait-shop, We've since upgraded to twin CDN Battleships with a couple of really nice nylon-upholstered tubes and scuba fins. Great for pulling bass out of the reedy spots.

LOL, GF buying stuff is not free.... wake up!!!!! It's a silent commitment .... the tip of the noose as it were.... let me guess.... 2 weeks later she starts talking about how much fun it is living with her Mom.....



PS Don't do it.....

Erm...we're both in our mid-40s, so living at her mom's ain't exactly an option. Nope, this one's a gem; doesn't want to get married, doesn't want kids, has job, has her own car etc...

Aaaanyways, there are a couple of tutorial posts out already, explaining some of the changes and such on BlenderNation

http://www.blendernation.com/first-blen ... rNation%29"

I look forward to digging in when I get some time off work.

marcel wrote:

JimB wrote:

marcel wrote:After all we've lived with TS, I never work with a beta version.
ps: in french beta mean "stupid"

Why not after all thats what they left us with.

I am not talking about TS. I mean I do not want to repeat the same history with any other software. I will not crush my finger with a beta hammer. I prefer a good hammer. Maybe i will use blender 3.0
I like to try beta for fun but not for my job. The problem: some soft seem allway beta....

The problem is that if all people think that way we will never get any stable software of any brand......
helping out testing sofware and making things better should be something very common.
I use the beta versions of Moi3d for more then a year and had something like 5-6 big crashes and i use it every day.....
i dont want to bug you with how many times i had to restart TS 7.1 and that was a final vesion !
i´m dabling inside and ot of blender 2.5 for almost a half year now i didnt even see half as many crashes I had with Ts not even a quarter and that was
a software with major parts missing basically just a testbuild

I'm used to 2.49 and it's warts, but at least it's fairly stable.

I'll wait for 2.6.

RAYMAN wrote: The problem is that if all people think that way we will never get any stable software of any brand......
helping out testing sofware and making things better should be something very common.
I use the beta versions of Moi3d for more then a year and had something like 5-6 big crashes and i use it every day.....
i dont want to bug you with how many times i had to restart TS 7.1 and that was a final vesion !
i´m dabling inside and ot of blender 2.5 for almost a half year now i didnt even see half as many crashes I had with Ts not even a quarter and that was
a software with major parts missing basically just a testbuild

Excellent post Rayman. If someone offers me an amazing new tool for free and asks that I test it, I wouldn't say "No way, give me the free tool after you've perfected it as I don't want to bother testing it for you". I'd say "Sure! Happy to help...and thank you!"

I suspect that once this new version of Blender is finished, it will rival software costing thousands of dollars. Blender is free, there is and will be a ton of training material for free, and there's a huge community of helpful members which constitute a valuable resource. I don't think it's too much to ask to simply write a bug-report to the authors, who are putting a lot of work into this, when the program does something unexpected while I'm learning the application.

And you're right about something else too: I've fooled around a bit with both Blender and Truespace, and Blender hasn't frozen up on me, but Truespace has, several times. If I had actually paid for Truespace, I'd probably be somewhat irate, but since it was free, I don't have the audacity to act like I've been screwed. I look forward to learning Blender, and I look forward to contributing something back to the generous authors by reporting any bugs I may encounter. After all, what comes around goes around (or at least it should). Blender is considered to be a 'community-driven" project. If everyone in the "community" was selfish, Blender would probably not exist.

Marcel said, "Maybe i will use blender 3.0 I like to try beta for fun but not for my job." So, he seems quite happy to test beta releases. All he needs to do to contribute to the development of the software is to report his findings and we don't know if he does that or not.

You certainly can have software that has passed beta, etc., testing where hardly any of the customers or end users participated in the testing and they are not freeloaders either. That is the typical commercial process: beta versions are distributed to select customers/users based on their willingness to participate, often in exchange for discounts, and their ability to give valuable, honest, informed feedback. Customers pay for all that when they buy the program.

With Blender and many other open source programs it is quite possible to contribute to the project by donating money. The Blender Foundation has at least one paid person and surely has expenses. So you can use only the non-beta versions, not do beta testing or even report bugs, and still have given something for what you get -- by paying for it.

If Blender's development expenses are much less than regular software then the return from contributing "customers", in donations or the value of their efforts, wouldn't need to be as much as its price if it was commercial. However, I think only a few Blender beta testers, like Rayman, have the qualifications and do the work to earn their copy of Blender by testing. A small monetary contribution isn't really paying for it either. I'm guessing but I think the large majority of Blender users give nothing and aren't qualified to contribute testing, programming, etc.

Blender looks like a good program and I intend to use it in the future. I prefer the regular commercial system but I can't afford Modo or anything so I'll report bugs, flaws, ideas, suggestions, etc. and, if I ever can, make a small donation. That probably won't be worth a copy of Blender but at least I'll try to "pay" for it.

"Beta Time". Sounds like a good title for a science fiction book.

I look forward to learning Blender, and I look forward to contributing something back to the generous authors by reporting any bugs I may encounter.

If you want a good primer into Blender go to blenderunderground.com and go through the introductory tutorials. It's mostly very dry and unsexy stuff, but there are important fundamentals there. Once you've finished watching them, you will know whether Blender is for you or not......Just don't expect fireworks right away, Blender isn't that sort of app.

P.S If you want to support Blender, buy the dvd's or the manual at their shop. That's where they get their profits, sorry I meant dev money....

Thanks for the tip Benji...Ill bookmark Blenderunderground immediately!

And as soon as training materials based on the new release become available, I will indeed consider purchasing them if I haven't been able to contribute anything in the way of bug-reports.

Cheers!

if you interesting on learning Blender, you can download 2 Blender model file on this link for free

http://blenderindonesia.org/forum/viewt ... f=21&t=352"