United3dArtists Archive

I downloaded Blender this weekend to see what It could offer.

I have to say so far TS was much more intuitive and easier to learn.

When I get a tutorial to work, one that can walk me through the basic modeling concepts, like Jack Edwards Fish, I will have to put up some pics of the First Blender vs First TS modeling attempts.

Here are some blender issues I ran into:
Blender is Hotkeys, I can't even move the veiwport around without using the keyboard.

the texture options are exceptionally complex, This may be a benefit later when I get more familiar with it but, I can't even figure out how to UV map a picture to a box, yet.

The use of Left and right mouse buttons, took me forever to figure out I can drag a vertext with the RMb but if I hit RMB again to stop dragging it goes back to the original position. I have to drag witht he RMB then use LMB to keep it there. Frustrating...

Thats why I smartuse Blender......
You dont have to use it for everything and you dont have to learn everything at once.....
but you will see that its got lots of power in it !
But some things are much to complicated and that is something they are adressing wit 2.50
I started off with tjhe fluid sim and gradualy am learning more and more..

I did want to test a few things on Speed and power compared to TS. One of the biggest issues I have with TS is the slowdown after getting close to a million faces or with mutliple lights.

So I was able to save a scene that slowed me down in TS, to .DAE and import it to blender. But the textures, lighting and camera did not transfer. Once I figure out how to texture something and add some lights I will try and take the same scene in both programs and see what happens.

For that reason we are using Vue for our community project.....
it also supports instancing very well but its also a lot of money for the inf edition .
thats the trouble with all the software......
with instancing we get billions of polys...
truespace works very well with Vue..
Peter
Here are 240,542,390 polygons with water and athmosphere.... and millions of lights if you need them.. !

Here thousands of lights as lightstands as well as painted

Carrara works very well to with large TS scenes, it'll import COB files but an annoying problem of the shaders being transparent and for some reason doesn't build a master shader, but exporting as 3DS or OBJ sorts that problem
You can get Carrara 6.2 pro from 3D Artist magazine, in the uk it cost me around £7.50 for the back issue delivered, I believe shipped to the States in was around the $20 mark, still cheap for £400+ software!
I would say Vue's renderer is better than Carrara though..
I'll post a scene shortly with its poly count, render time etc

Edit
work in progress:
Just over a million facets,15 group objects, 4 lights, laser, cone light, two bulb lights, all with soft shadows, global illumination, photons but low, anti alias and light quality set good, there is some volumatic effect but they aren't really showing oh and slight depth of field
Bare in mind this was rendered on a XP2000 pc with a crap intel video card, 2.8 cpu on 1,5gb of ram, its still rendering and I'm doing this! you should hear the fan lol
Whats interesting is the DAZ girl will make TS struggle without clothing, on my PC, even the Vista dual core PC we have TS would run badly with just the alien and girl, the Alien is likely to give a memory warning
Render time at that size 15 mins
PS I can't take any credit for the objects in that scene, I just thought the Alien looked cool!

Edit2
THe DAZ Aiko model exported as an obj into TS with hair and clothes is... 104108 faces

Thank you for the updates, that is amazing what Vue can do... but the price is the issue. Being just a hobby I can not justify spending a crapload of cash on just one peice.

So hopefully I will see how blender will do with scenes and poly count.

That is a huge city scene very nicely done (one critique, I counted to many of the circlular buildings in the foreground. About 9 that look identical. Im a little anal that way. the square buildings would blend better and not stick out.)

I will let you know what I found out with blender, I am planning on working more on the textures tomorrow.

Karthogen wrote:
That is a huge city scene very nicely done (one critique, I counted to many of the circlular buildings in the foreground. About 9 that look identical. Im a little anal that way. the square buildings would blend better and not stick out.)

.

That was me because I only did 8 buildings for that eco system it could have been 25 but time was the issue more then poly count.....
I am very stunned by the fact that the people expect free programs or very low $.... as Truespace used to be a 700 $ program and the plugs-paks
100 $ each......
same money as Vue ....

Here is to show you how good textures can mimic high poly count.
the window banks on the left were 170000 polys and the building would have been 680 000 polys
but the building on the right with a little bump only has 24 polys for the whole building and a 2000 px texture baked from the left building
So you might have more poly count then you need !

here is 1.5 billion polys with practically the same amount of detail that Nigec had in his scene...

You can get Vue in several free versions and do quite a lot to see if its for you
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_7_ple/index.php"

I tried Aiko in TS last night and it wasn't happy

How many models did you stuff in there Rayman?!

nigec wrote:
How many models did you stuff in there Rayman?!

about 6 or 7 but a thousand times....

I don't expect things for free or little money. But I sure do love to find them. Who doesn't prefer getting something for free or at a discount. Especially when it is a hobby, If I was doing this full time and getting a paycheck from it, I would expect to pay a portion of that to the programs that are making it possible for me to earn a living.

When looking at the plug-ins for TS, I see lot of them that would be worth that price. I would rather pay the Plugin Devs, than the actual corporation that profits off the backs of good dev's with the best of intentions.

Eventually I will have to invest more into this if I want to produce quality high poly count images, but I am tryin gto hold that off as long as possible.

Not that I am saying free isnt worth anything but 3d costs money same as photography or skiing or
stamp collecting or whatever.......
Even the devs who want to push the plugs for Ts want something for thier efforts.....
I was posting a lot here about using the free programs with Vue and how to import and export that
into Vue or Kerkythea.
Its just that high poly count doesnt work without some kind of instancing or without investment
into 64 bit and lots of ram.There´s no magic bullet...
Blender is very good if you get your head around it !

yeah and that is my main question for blender, How big of a scene can it handle before it bogs down or drops out. Could it put up with that city scene with 100+million poly's and still be usable.

Karthogen wrote:yeah and that is my main question for blender, How big of a scene can it handle before it bogs down or drops out. Could it put up with that city scene with 100+million poly's and still be usable.

The answer is simply NO ! because thats a specific for both Vue and Kerkythea that have a smart instancing system that allows you to use a certain number
of objects (amount also varies depending on your computer power ) and distribute it on the surface of your terrain.
and that with a very sofisticated distribution....
But if you look at my thread on Blender city generator and Vue TOGETHER they are incredible.....
See my tests here.... which not realy many people were interested in.....
vi ... 2378#p2378"
frankly only Marcel replied......
I also showed the people about using the physics engine with collada..... and not much... same as using the free daz studio..... with Collada...

A corporation is as valid a form of business as a sole proprietorship or a partnership. It is the form that can let the little guy have an opportunity to share ownership in a business. Profit is good. Business is good. People ... well ... often not so good so they misuse and destroy the good in anything they touch.

Of course we should pay for things. I'm amazed by the seemingly popular belief that we shouldn't. Other than regarding criminal matters or a few other such things, no person has any right the work, knowledge, ability or any benefit from those, of another person except through a voluntary agreement between them. To claim otherwise is to condone slavery.

Of course, everyone should be able to give their work for free if they choose to.

I've been considering using Blender because I can't afford to buy Lightwave or Modo or anything with a price and I want to expand my skills into things TS isn't good at. In money Blender is a good deal. Plenty of power for no money. But I find the childish anti-business, etc. attitude/philosophy of its makers, many users, and the whole "open source" movement so abominable that non-monetary factors may well prevent me from using it.

There is also the investment of my time learning it. If I could afford the other packages then I'd be learning the programs used by pros and there would be much room to grow.

See my tests here.... which not realy many people were interested in.

I think people are interested. It's that most of us here aren't pros and can't afford all these different programs (yes some of them are free) and aren't working at your level of skill.

Finis wrote: Of course we should pay for things. I'm amazed by the seemingly popular belief that we shouldn't. Other than regarding criminal matters or a few other such things, no person has any right the work, knowledge, ability or any benefit from those, of another person except through a voluntary agreement between them. To claim otherwise is to condone slavery.

I've been considering using Blender because I can't afford to buy Lightwave or Modo or anything with a price and I want to expand my skills into things TS isn't good at. In money Blender is a good deal. Plenty of power for no money. But I find the childish anti-business, etc. attitude/philosophy of its makers, many users, and the whole "open source" movement so abominable that non-monetary factors may well prevent me from using it.

I in know way want to turn this inot the Open source vs pay to play debate. I feel both sides of the argument make good points but, there are a few extremest on each side that are so entrenched in what they think is right, that they will not even look in the direction of the other side.

but I do want to research and find the best bang for my buck. If that comes from an opensource program I will use it, if it comes to me spending money to get the affect I need, I will consider it. To say you may not use a program because of the veiws of people using it and the foundation that runs it. It is admireable that you would stand by your beleifs to that extent. But, I am sure if you looked into any program out there you would find a veiwpoint of a user/owner/company that you would disagree with.

Karthogen there are hard facts what programs can do and what they cant......
Almost all of them are usable.... and all programs have limits....
but you cant avoid the free to money debate.As an example if you got lots of money you can use
Realflow but if you dont have it you got to dive into Blenders fluids.....
Realflow is a lot more advanced but I have seen some impressive work from Blender fluids
and hve used it a few times with good results.
That doesnt mean that I use blender for modeling because i simply like Silo and moi3dand Sketchup(free).
not much money but not for free.....
There is no right and wrong just a matter of taste and personal experience.....
i have got lots of good stuff for not much money and use it or for free...
I just mentioned vue because it practically is a central part of my animations because it allows you to use free applications like daz studio
or Truespace and Blender and pull evedrything together to use bombasticly large poly count all with athmosphere...
you got trees and terrains and can make your own hdr and got realistic animated water and animated textures etc.....
Froo´s exporter should allow you to even use procedural animations inside.......

Yes, my apologies for potentially turning the thread into "one of those" threads.

To get back on track, TS vs. Blender:

I may yet decide to use Blender because it is a good program and, as you pointed out, the "best bang for my buck" is an important factor. That's being a good consumer. Since I have no bucks my choices are very limited.

I haven't used it but what does it offer that would make me consider it?
- It is free.
- Functional character animation.
- Developed access to sophisticated renderers. (No offense to TS plugin developers.)
- Most functions are reliable. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
- Features like fluids and cloth.

Why would I not consider it:
- The user interface. I would like the abilities but it could be a car that runs great but has no steering wheel. I hear that 2.5 may improve that.

Questions:
- Does the EULA allow commercial use?
- Does it have particles?
- Are there many plugins available and what is the typical quality of them?
- What are some known bugs or problems with it?

About Vue:
Rayman, does Vue have native tools for character animation. If so are they good or ok?

Wow, what a hot topic.

Let me throw my 2 cents in just cuz I can... .

First, Blender vs TS is like comparing Apples and PC's... they both compute and can be used for identical tasks. You can now buy either one in the colour of your favourite condom or nail polish (well... that got your attention).

The only difference is how you accomplish the task.

There are people concerned with the hotkeys in Blender and the quirky interface...

then there are people concerned with all the icons in modelside and the quirky interface....

then there are the people concerned with workspace and depending on the LE to get things done

... errr
... the quirky interface. The lists I am sure go on but the essence is the software you use is determined by what you want to do, how you want to get it done, how much you have to spend on software and where you really value your time.

Blender is a very capable tool. The open source movie projects e.g. Elephants Dream clearly demonstrate its capabilities.

TS is a very capable tool. Just look at what Marcel does with it.

The key to the search for adding something to your pipeline or not is the value you receive for your investment. The largest expense is your time. Time spent learning a software's capabilities, developing the skills to use the software and the understanding of the software and the art form to be successful. If you think about it, the cost of the software is a ridiculously small part of the cost equation.

For example, if your goal is to create fuzzy character animations you may choose Blender, Carrara, Cinema 4d, Maya, XSI or .... If you think you can shave 6 months off of your learning curve by spending $10,000 on Maya then spending the money is most likely more worth it than not. If you think you can get a paying job in 6 months using Cinema 4d then $3,000 spent there makes sense.

If you don't have $10,000 (like me) then the list is shorter.

Don't jump at Blender just because it is free. There are other free 3d packages you can get your hands on. Get on the bandwagon because it does what you need it to do and you either want to or have to use it.

Final caveat ... 3d is a very complicated art form requiring an understanding of many different inputs, physics, math, photography, art, colour, light, and strangely, computers. There will never be a day when this will be easy or effortless.

Learning the interface of new tools, as well as their capabilities and the joy of creating in them takes work. Even tools with an interface people don't complain about.... (a short list, I think it is the telephone, or the toilet seat).... require some effort to learn and use effectively.


- Does the EULA allow commercial use?
** The final product you create with Blender (still or animation ...) can be sold commercially. The GNU license is structured to allow you the freedom to use the software however you see fit except in selling the software as a commercial product in its own right or by violating the copyright of any of the software's contributing authors.
- Does it have particles?
** You betcha, for example, fluid systems are actually particle systems and Blender has a good one. Froo wrote a tool to bring Blender fluid simulations into TS.
- Are there many plugins available and what is the typical quality of them?
** There are many and their quality is generally very good, the caveat being that they are developed by volunteers so the pace of development depends on the number of contributors. Also, plug in developers are responsible for the quality of the work they produce. The Blender foundation does not guarantee their work. The best place to look is at the key Blender sites where you can see the stuff.

Johny posted this link to a demo of a Blender muscle system plug in the other day on another forum....
http://vimeo.com/4990001 . Have a look, when your jaw reattaches to your skull drool for a while and post a nice comment on the vimeo site.

- What are some known bugs or problems with it?

Learning Blender is one of the things on my to do list so I can't really complain about anything yet. Until I have spent enough time on it to say "I am not a n00b but I am Canadian" I am disinclined to comment.

Nap time.

GTG

Cya

Finis wrote:
About Vue:
Rayman, does Vue have native tools for character animation. If so are they good or ok?

Vue has got Collada and Poser import but doesnt have tools for character animations but works excelently together with Daz studio 3
and that is hands down one of the best solutions you can get for free and realy rocks..

Jaw is re-attached,

Great video. And I am starting on the learning path with blender, and I can see where people are very hesitant with trying to pickup the package. With TS I was modeling in minutes. With Blender I crashed and burned in minutes, messing arround with 15+ layers of subsurf. couldn't figure out if I was adding more and how to remvoe them.


It is going to be along process, but I still can not see how modeling would be better in Blender. I still think usability goes to TS with drag and drop; and buttons.

I think in the end I may be modeling everything in TS exporting .dae to blender for more Poly's and the renders. But I still need to learn how to texture a scene from TS that Bogged me down. not looking forward to that one with a slow learning curve.

Resuming... Which is winning? TS or Bender?

leonregis wrote:Resuming... Which is winning? TS or Bender?

simple the user because he gets 2 applications that he can use for free and can do an awfull lot with them.
And Froo has showed how to use one with the other with a plugin for great results....
Would you ask a carpenter what tool wins his screwdriver or his hammer ?

Screwdrivers are good cuz of the orange juice....

When we know an app. We have the pleasure to create. The most difficult to change his app is to lose the pleasure of creating before returning the same tools that we love and discover other best tools. The interface is the most important thing to encourage me to learn. I think it is the same reason for artists who are not interested in technology as a priority. I am convinced that blender is a good software but I could never learn a software as ugly. Maybe with the version 3 or 4 programmers understand.

Resuming... Which is winning? TS or Bender?

tS has already lost because its development is stopped. A few dozen lost souls here at this board are left from a few million downloads. Doesn`t sound like a winner, does it?

Or let`s say it that way: given the fact that tS development is stopped and the Blender development speeds up with every year, given the fact that the tools that are buggy in tS are mainly working in Blender (now keep in mind that EVERY tool in tS has minimum one quirk. I know at least of no flawless tool in tS Workspace. Name me one, i name you the bug or quirk), given the fact that Blender has a working Bones system, and given the fact that Blender 2.5 comes with a dramatic change in the UI it could happen that Blender may win. Chance is fifty fifty though

I am convinced that blender is a good software but I could never learn a software as ugly

Same here. Features are not everything. Blender has the worst UI i have ever seen. And i know lots of software. That has stopped me for years to switch over. And i have tried at a regular basis. The 2.5 UI may bring relief here. But the current UI scares me too much. I am not made for Hotkeys only, not made for this extremely ugly and cluttered UI that seems to be made for aliens instead humans.

On the other hand, a good UI is not everything neither. What`s it worth when the tool doesn`t do the job? And that`s the problem with current tS. Too much tools in Workspace are not working as thought. Sooner or later i have to leave tS because of that. Even when it`s still my favourite modeler because i am used to. I need at least working character animation tools that can be exported. And Motion Studio, the only really working bones system in tS cannot be exported.

There is more free alternative than Blender though. For hobby/non commercial work there is stuff like Softimage XSI Modtool for example. I also follow the development of some small tools like Animeeple. Could grow to something useful. Future will show. I wait for Blender 2.5, then i decide again which route i will go

Yeah, if the tools don't work what good is a great UI? It makes me think of the old commercial where the customer examines a hamburger and asks, "Where's the beef?"

I like TS because it has a good UI and is easy to use (I use the model side, and sometimes TS 5, menus and icons. I don't use the 3D widgets when avoidable.) With the Elf Animation disaster 2 or 3 years ago (I wrote a great rant on the cali-forums about that) and now TS 5 and TS7.6 model side refuse to render my SDS models properly (see flower vase wip) I have to ask, "where's the beef?"

That's why I'm looking for other software now. I'd like everything good but if have to choose I'll take good tools and a lousy UI.

What are several of the non-Blender free, or really cheap, programs? Ones that are a jack-of-all-trades like TS or Blender. That is, they have most of the 3D tools and aren't only specialists.

Finis wrote:That's why I'm looking for other software now. I'd like everything good but if have to choose I'll take good tools and a lousy UI.

What are several of the non-Blender free, or really cheap, programs? Ones that are a jack-of-all-trades like TS or Blender. That is, they have most of the 3D tools and aren't only specialists.

No you dont have to choose ! And you dont need the mega bucks .......
As modelers Silo for 150 $ plus Moi3d for 200 $ and Sketchup for free and 3d Coat for painting and sculpting and voxels those together kickass Maya for lots less bucks.
All you need then is a) something to render where Kerky does a good job for free (but you have lots of options from unbiased Maxwell, Fryrender to Vray or Thea
but its all optional... you could even use the carrara 6 pro from the cd cover edition which has a very good renderer...(for mag price)
and b) for animation you also have good and free options with daz studio and animate plus and animeeple.... lots of easy to use programs that together cost you less then Maya or Max and are MUCH easier to use....
You have to invest some money to get easy to use but the you have to do that for photography too !

"Questions:
- Does the EULA allow commercial use?
- Does it have particles?
- Are there many plugins available and what is the typical quality of them?
- What are some known bugs or problems with it?"

Yes, blender can be and is used commercially.
Yes, it has particles and they will be improved in the next version.
There are many user created scripts available, and as should be expected their level of quality varies according to how active the author is, severity of problems and frequency of use.
Mostly the UI being non-standard, some exported formats not working in specific programs. Comparable to most any application.

There is a lot of discussion about a "better" interface in Blender 2.5 but I still haven't seen any real prof of how this "better" interface would look. There is sketches and suggestion and mockups but no one seams to know exactly how it will look - which is very strange since you can download test builds easily on Blenders site. But last time I did that, for about 6 month ago, the UI was exactly the same as in the current official release - no change at all.
The developers of Blender will not change it to much because that would annoy their current userbase who knows the current interface. So even if it becomes a bit better it will not be Truespace..

Sorry, apparently they have recently made the new UI public at Siggraph. Sorry for not reading up....

Honestly, what I am hoping for is a new startup 3D project in the open source world. Unfortunaley there isn't really any such project as far as I know. However, lets hope for something. We all know how much better both KDE and Gnome have become because of the competition. Of course, Blender has a lot of payware competitor but the befefit of open source is of course that it can't be bought and killed of like Truespace was.

So you can read about the announcement

http://www.blendernation.com/blender-2- ... announced/"

Steinie wrote:So you can read about the announcement

http://www.blendernation.com/blender-2- ... announced/"

Yep, I noticed that. Lets hope that the new UI is better.
It still looks a bit overwhelming but I want to try it to make a better opinion about what I think.

Yes no one ........ LOL !
OOOOOOO whats that that must have sneaked into my puter
USED it ... like it !but its not finished !

RAYMAN wrote:Yes no one ........ LOL !
OOOOOOO whats that that must have sneaked into my puter
USED it ... like it !but its not finished !

Well, the result seams very good at least...

Want to look at some work in progress ?
lot of functionality not in there but its coming along pretty well !
http://www.graphicall.org/builds/"