Someone can tell me how to set proper smooth groups in Blender so I can export them? I tried to use "Mark sharp" method, and every time I open this file in Marmoset Toolbag 2 looks like 1 smooth group ...
Damn ... I wish Blender had smooth group like 3DS Max.
Mark the areas around the smoothing groups you need as sharp and in the obj export options make sure Bitflag Smooth Groups is checked before you export. No need to use the edge split modifier for export any more.
Just to make sure I'm understanding the last couple posts correctly: Anywhere I have a hard edge on my model, I should mark that edge as Sharp, and use Auto Smooth at 180 degrees. Does Smooth or Flat Shading have any effect before you export?
I've been having the hardest time getting good Normal bakes from Blender in XNormal, and it's driving me nuts.
The right recipe is : set smooth shading to the object, enable Autosmooth (180° or whatever) then sharp edge on the edge you want. Export and voilà.
I don't know about workflow in Xnormal. Keep in mind that this feature is quite new to Blender so if you have any trouble, contact mont29 or post in blender forum
Thanks Yadoob. Any particular export settings that need to be done for OBJ or FBX? I know there's some settings for each format about keeping smoothing, or setting smooth groups to something or another, but I'm not sure what to set those to (if anything).
metalliandy mentioned Bitflag Smooth Groups above, for example. Any other settings to be aware of?
Here's Jed's Ultimate Guide to Smoothing a Mesh in Six Easy Steps in Blender 2.73 for Xnormal. Not for anyone in particular, just for posterity really.
Step 1: Make your model and layout the UVs. This is the hard part. Here I've just got an ico sphere.
Step 2: Select the model in object mode, or go into edit mode and select all the faces, and click Shading: Smooth in the T-panel.
Step 3: Go into the object data/vertex map/whatever properties panel and check Auto Smooth. This will let you see the effect of your hard and soft edges. Set it to 180 degrees unless you want to automatically make some edges hard (which you might.)
Step 4: Go into edit mode and mark some hard edges on your model. If you want to mark all UV splits as hard edges, you can speed up the process by selecting one edge that's marked as a seam, pressing Shift+G to select similar edges, and picking Seam from the menu. (You have to be in edge select mode for this to work.) If you didn't use Mark Seam for your UV layout (e.g. you did it in UV Layout or 3D Coat, or selected one group at a time and laid each out individually), then you can generate the seam data by using Seams from Islands, which is available from your friendly neighborhood spacebar seach menu, and proceed with Select Similar Edges from there. Anyway, once you've got some edges selected press this button.
Your edges will turn green and you'll have a sharp edge. Step 5 is easy. Go to the modifiers panel and put a triangulate modifier on the mesh. This will ensure that things are triangulated uniformly in xNormal and the engine you're displaying the mesh in, preventing certain kinds of artifacts. Obviously this won't make a difference for a mesh that's all triangles anyway, but it's a good habit to always have a triangulate modifier on before you export things.
Now for step 6: To export this mesh with these edges to Xnormal, go to the File menu, then Export, then FBX. In the bottom left you'll see the FBX export settings. Scroll down on the left panel if necessary and make your settings look like this:
Of course if you use export selected you'll have to make sure that the low-poly mesh is selected before you export it. Otherwise you'll run into a problem where xNormal complains that you haven't actually put a mesh in. For step 6, press the Export button to put your mesh into an FBX file.
For extra credit you can make this into an FBX export preset that you can use for the next time you bake. To do this click the + sign above all the export settings.
In the next version of Blender (2.74) you'll probably want to set smoothing to Off in the FBX export settings, as this will export any custom vertex normals you've put together using Bastien's GATOR-alike modifier. This works fine with xNormal in this version of Blender but it causes serious problems where the tangents will be split on every vertex when you export to versions of the Unreal Engine prior to 2.7 for static meshes. So for reasons entirely unrelated to xNormal, I have set smoothing to Edges in the vertex normal export options. To me the "Off" name is kind of confusing and I wish they would change it to "Explicit" or "Per-Vertex" or something to make things a little more clear.
I've been looking at Blender's sculpting, and it seems really impressive. I especially like the Dynotopo.
Does anyone know specific areas in which it's lacking, compared to ZBrush?
I know it can't handle nearly as many polys, and the Multires is supposed to be a buggy mess.
I'm amazed though at how many features it actually does have.
I've been looking at Blender's sculpting, and it seems really impressive. I especially like the Dynotopo.
Does anyone know specific areas in which it's lacking, compared to ZBrush?
I know it can't handle nearly as many polys, and the Multires is supposed to be a buggy mess.
I'm amazed though at how many features it actually does have.
nah, dunno
the sculpting in zbrush feels way better (once you get used to the thing they call ui)
iam dont really have THAT much experience with sculpting in blender, just the ocasional doodle, but i dont think blender beats zbrush in any area in the sculpting department (correct me if iam wrong)
but i have seen some crazy good stuff done with it, so its possible
the sculpting in zbrush feels way better (once you get used to the thing they call ui)
iam dont really have THAT much experience with sculpting in blender, just the ocasional doodle, but i dont think blender beats zbrush in any area in the sculpting department (correct me if iam wrong)
but i have seen some crazy good stuff done with it, so its possible
That's not what I'm saying, I never thought it'd be better than ZBrush, since ZBrush has been around for well over a decade and is devoted to sculpting exclusively.
I'm just wondering in what specific ways it's worse than ZBrush. I think it might have potential in the future.
I know it is better in a couple areas though.
It has dynatopo, which Pixologic ironically despises the idea of (since that very feature was the primary point that made them take on Sculptris and the guy who made it).
I prefer the Skin Modifier to ZSpheres.
It also allows actual manipulation along an axis and exact placement of vertices, along with other features inherent in a traditional 3D package, and has a real 3D viewport.
The big advantage of the Blender sculpting tools is their seamless integration with a regular 3d modeling workflow. For instance, you can be working on a regular subdivision model and adjust the forms of the base cage with brushes like smooth, pinch or inflate - and then go back to modeling.
Boolean operations (Booltool) are also compatible with sculpted meshes, meaning that putting together sculpted blockouts is an order of magnitude faster to do in Blender than in Zbrush.
As far as brushes are concerned they are pretty much based on the Zbrush ones so no surprises there. The weak point of sculpting in Blender is performance - you will never reach anything similar to the huge amount of polygons than Zbrush can push, but I don't think that's the point really.
The big advantage of the Blender sculpting tools is their seamless integration with a regular 3d modeling workflow. For instance, you can be working on a regular subdivision model and adjust the forms of the base cage with brushes like smooth, pinch or inflate - and then go back to modeling.
Boolean operations (Booltool) are also compatible with sculpted meshes, meaning that putting together sculpted blockouts is an order of magnitude faster to do in Blender than in Zbrush.
ok, i was solely refering to the sculpting tools, but thats true, and i use it mostly for smoothing something quickly or making small adjustments
As far as brushes are concerned they are pretty much based on the Zbrush ones so no surprises there. The weak point of sculpting in Blender is performance - you will never reach anything similar to the huge amount of polygons than Zbrush can push, but I don't think that's the point really.
thats not the whole truth
iam not a programming/tech guru, so i wont make any half true claims whats wrong and why, but there are several videos of people sculpting on 50-100 million tris meshes
cant really remember what hardware setup they were running, but it wasnt out of this world
These videos were likely speed up then. Not everyone has the same level of tolerance when it comes to interaction feedback and framerate, and there is really not mystery here - a million-poly model that runs butter smooth in Zbrush will not be as easy to manipulate in Blender. It's not really an argument or an opinion, that's just the way it is
I don't know - the creature sculpt I'm working on is still nice and smooth in both sculpting and moving around in the viewport, and Blender says it's on 44 million quads.
Yeah, I am not saying that it unusable - just saying that everybody has different expectations when it comes to responsiveness, level of detail, and many other factors. I know that for some tasks it worked great for me, while for others it couldn't keep up and dropped way below a workable framerate. But that's fine, because I am not expecting it to do miracles
Yeah, I am not saying that it unusable - just saying that everybody has different expectations when it comes to responsiveness, level of detail, and many other factors. I know that for some tasks it worked great for me, while for others it couldn't keep up and dropped way below a workable framerate. But that's fine, because I am not expecting it to do miracles
I read an article from someone recently who uses Blender exclusively for their work, and I believe they said they got around that issue on very large and dense meshes by splitting it into multiple objects wherever it was reasonable to do so, and kept many of them hidden when sculpting on others.
I'm not sure if it's just the pain of learning a new package, or the software itself, but I'm trying to learn Blender and am finding it insanely frustrating.
Everything seems needlessly complicated and even simple operations hard to do.
For example, in 3DS Max, to align vertices to an axis, I can either scale them manually with the scale tool or hit Make Planar and choose an axis.
In Blender, the only way I can find to even do this remotely is to manually scale, but it seems to allow you to scale beyond 0, so it's difficult to get a perfect alignment.
align : select verts, hit s for scale, hit x y or z to define an axis (xx yy zz for local orientations) and hit 0 to scale to zero
you can also activate snap (shift + tab) and snap them on the axis you want to the verts you want
remove faces from selection, shift click them ?
or do you mean seperate them ? then its y
Aligning like that is actually super easy in Blender. Just type sx0<Enter> (for example; to align along the Y axis instead type sy0<Enter>.)
To remove stuff from a selection you have a few options. Shift+Right Click will unselect something if it's selected. Circle Select and Border Select will unselect stuff if you use the middle mouse button after pressing C and B, respectively. To leave circle select you right click, and you can cancel border select with right click too if you decide you really didn't want to do a border select. Note that unlike in Max, circle select is actually kind of useful in Blender as it's the way that you can paint selections. It's also a handy way to select things on both sides of the model if you've set up non-raycasting selection, either by switching to wireframe mode or by clicking the button on the bottom bar of the 3d viewport that's between the faces mesh select mode and the proportional edit dropdown menu. Alt+Shift+Right click on an edge loop will deselect the edge loop if it's selected, and Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Right click on an edge ring will deselect the edge ring if it's selected. If you're in faces mode Alt+Shift+Right click will work on face loops rather than on edge loops.
Once you learn this stuff it's easier than it sounds and quite quick.
I can hold Shift and drag LMB to select verts, but can't find any key combo to remove verts from a selection. MMB just rotates the camera. RMB doesn't do anything.
I'm not sure if it's just the pain of learning a new package, or the software itself, but I'm trying to learn Blender and am finding it insanely frustrating.
Everything seems needlessly complicated and even simple operations hard to do.
Blender does everything differently. It doesn't even use left click to select.
But, if you spend three weeks re-training your brain to work in Blender, it's worth it. Blender has a lot of great things that are worth the investment of time.
I'd spend some time learning and using the Blender default keys if I were you. The Max keymap is far from comprehensive and tends to change with updates, and imo it's not worth bothering with.
I'd spend some time learning and using the Blender default keys if I were you. The Max keymap is far from comprehensive and tends to change with updates, and imo it's not worth bothering with.
Yep. It's best to learn the basics so you always know how something can be done as a fail-safe, then augment using keymaps as needed. Else all you end up doing is learning the peculiarities of a keymap and not Blender.
I can hold Shift and drag LMB to select verts, but can't find any key combo to remove verts from a selection. MMB just rotates the camera. RMB doesn't do anything.
please don't use maya or 3dsmax preset, you will lose all the blender benefits.
for me was enough to change the selection from right to left click..
I find when learning a new software package, just try to let go and learn it as it is. Don't set it up for Max/Maya/whatever compatibility. The designers chose what they chose for a reason ... try to understand their decisions before trying to bend the app to your will.
To align vertices, it's easier to use the "active point"( the active point is the last point you select) as pivot point :
Then it's just S + "0" as it has be said already.
"Active point", "3d cursor", "snap tool" are singular compare to 3dsmax but if you learn them well and try things with them, your productivity will increase a lot !
Warren : to be fair Blender is a bit of a special case here. The Max and Maya "presets" that can be enabled from the splash screen and the options not only change the navigation scheme but also some other areas of the program, and that's what is bad about them - not the concept of using another navigation scheme in itself. (I think this issue simply came from the person designing these presets trying "too hard", so to speak.)
In other words, there is no good reason to stick with the very odd default Blender navigation scheme just for the sake of it. As mentioned before the following video covers how to change it without changing anything else :
That may be true. All I know is that in pretty much every app where I've switched the control scheme right away, it inhibits learning because
(a) Tutorials are harder to follow because some of my hot keys are different
...and...
(b) Something inevitably breaks as a result of it. Selecting stuff or whatever.
If Blender handles it gracefully, that's awesome, but it's definitely the exception.
Yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised to realize how *not* problematic it turns out to be - it just suffers from the stigma of these pre-made presets which are fundamentally flawed and only create confusion in the user base.
If the navigation scheme is edited manually as shown in this video, I can confirm that everything is fine from there.
There is supposed to be a new default keymap currently in the works, but I don't know the status of it. Its aim is to be a lot more reasonable than the current keymap, which Blender outgrew a long time ago. I doubt it'll be a magic bullet for everyone, but I think it will turn a lot less people away when trying Blender.
To align vertices, it's easier to use the "active point"( the active point is the last point you select) as pivot point :
Then it's just S + "0" as it has be said already.
"Active point", "3d cursor", "snap tool" are singular compare to 3dsmax but if you learn them well and try things with them, your productivity will increase a lot !
Oooh, that's going to be useful. I've been selecing the vertex, moving the cursor to selected, and then aligning to the cursor.
How smooth is animation workflow compared to maya?
I've played with the windows, tabs and all but I was wondering if we could set up animation layers, selection sets for curves, curves selection windows and character sets?
I hope the new default keymap won't be completely different from Blender's current one... I don't really want to learn new key bindings just because Blender thinks it has to emulate Maya or whatever.
Seriously, I can't see what's so hard about investing a few weeks to learn a new software. Being able to learn constantly is in the job description, is it not?
my guess is, that blender will still have the old keymap available
and yes, i like blenders keymap more than any maya/max defaults, but i guess thats just dependant on which software you learned first
I think that having a weird navigation is only forgivable if you are the best on what you do like zbrush.
There is no sense for blender to be different from ALL the other softwares that are the industry standard just because "autodeks is evol" . It just keeps a lot of people away from blender.
you know that you can switch the navigation to many major 3dapp styles?
i guess the best idea would be to to keep the old bindings as a setting just like Max or Maya.
Yes, the current keymap will still be available, it just won't be the default. It'll be in that dropdown where the Maya and 3ds Max keys are.
I don't think it's necessarily to try to emulate Maya, but more that the current keymap has a lot of long standing issues. For one thing we're quickly running out of hotkeys. I think Q is the only unbound letter in edit mode -- and that's only true if you don't have pie menus activated. Forcing experienced 3D artists to have to start off with really basic tutorials isn't doing anyone any favors either though.
I'm used to the defaults, and I seriously cannot fathom how anyone actually likes them. They're astronomically inefficient most of the time. The non-modal workflow is very fast, but the hotkeys themselves are really poorly thought out.
Yeah, that can be done!
But its not like modo that you just choose it from a drop down list and it works.
And maybe just maybe use QWER pretty please and have left click as default haha.
I know those things can be modified, the left mouse buttom problem is a easy one, the QWER not so much.
Just to note i HAVE used blender before and i like it a lot ,its just missing some things or others are like glued on , for example , the smoothing groups thing that you can't see on the model.
I would love to use a free 3d package full time and blender is almost there.
hehe yeah almost, sadly but also luckily. it's not that much that is missing. we will slowly port our production over. If all goes well we will use max and maya only for final deliveries at one point.
I know those things can be modified, the left mouse buttom problem is a easy one, the QWER not so much.
Just to note i HAVE used blender before and i like it a lot ,its just missing some things or others are like glued on , for example , the smoothing groups thing that you can't see on the model.
I would strongly recommend you to register and post your questions on the BlenderArtists forum, as these two things are totally doable, which makes me think that maybe some of your other concerns might be solved already too.
QWER certainly works for me (this was one of the first things I customized, right after the Maya-style navigation) ; and even though I didn't quite understand how to work with them at first, smoothing groups/hard edges are definitely fonctional - I use them all the time myself.
Now I certainly wish there was a way to "doublesmooth" with them like in Max, but that's a very Max-specific trick that no other 3d app has anyways, so I cannot quite blame Blender for not having it ... yet !
Replies
Mark the areas around the smoothing groups you need as sharp and in the obj export options make sure Bitflag Smooth Groups is checked before you export. No need to use the edge split modifier for export any more.
I've been having the hardest time getting good Normal bakes from Blender in XNormal, and it's driving me nuts.
I don't know about workflow in Xnormal. Keep in mind that this feature is quite new to Blender so if you have any trouble, contact mont29 or post in blender forum
metalliandy mentioned Bitflag Smooth Groups above, for example. Any other settings to be aware of?
Step 1: Make your model and layout the UVs. This is the hard part. Here I've just got an ico sphere.
Step 2: Select the model in object mode, or go into edit mode and select all the faces, and click Shading: Smooth in the T-panel.
Step 3: Go into the object data/vertex map/whatever properties panel and check Auto Smooth. This will let you see the effect of your hard and soft edges. Set it to 180 degrees unless you want to automatically make some edges hard (which you might.)
Step 4: Go into edit mode and mark some hard edges on your model. If you want to mark all UV splits as hard edges, you can speed up the process by selecting one edge that's marked as a seam, pressing Shift+G to select similar edges, and picking Seam from the menu. (You have to be in edge select mode for this to work.) If you didn't use Mark Seam for your UV layout (e.g. you did it in UV Layout or 3D Coat, or selected one group at a time and laid each out individually), then you can generate the seam data by using Seams from Islands, which is available from your friendly neighborhood spacebar seach menu, and proceed with Select Similar Edges from there. Anyway, once you've got some edges selected press this button.
Your edges will turn green and you'll have a sharp edge. Step 5 is easy. Go to the modifiers panel and put a triangulate modifier on the mesh. This will ensure that things are triangulated uniformly in xNormal and the engine you're displaying the mesh in, preventing certain kinds of artifacts. Obviously this won't make a difference for a mesh that's all triangles anyway, but it's a good habit to always have a triangulate modifier on before you export things.
Now for step 6: To export this mesh with these edges to Xnormal, go to the File menu, then Export, then FBX. In the bottom left you'll see the FBX export settings. Scroll down on the left panel if necessary and make your settings look like this:
Of course if you use export selected you'll have to make sure that the low-poly mesh is selected before you export it. Otherwise you'll run into a problem where xNormal complains that you haven't actually put a mesh in. For step 6, press the Export button to put your mesh into an FBX file.
For extra credit you can make this into an FBX export preset that you can use for the next time you bake. To do this click the + sign above all the export settings.
In the next version of Blender (2.74) you'll probably want to set smoothing to Off in the FBX export settings, as this will export any custom vertex normals you've put together using Bastien's GATOR-alike modifier. This works fine with xNormal in this version of Blender but it causes serious problems where the tangents will be split on every vertex when you export to versions of the Unreal Engine prior to 2.7 for static meshes. So for reasons entirely unrelated to xNormal, I have set smoothing to Edges in the vertex normal export options. To me the "Off" name is kind of confusing and I wish they would change it to "Explicit" or "Per-Vertex" or something to make things a little more clear.
Does anyone know specific areas in which it's lacking, compared to ZBrush?
I know it can't handle nearly as many polys, and the Multires is supposed to be a buggy mess.
I'm amazed though at how many features it actually does have.
nah, dunno
the sculpting in zbrush feels way better (once you get used to the thing they call ui)
iam dont really have THAT much experience with sculpting in blender, just the ocasional doodle, but i dont think blender beats zbrush in any area in the sculpting department (correct me if iam wrong)
but i have seen some crazy good stuff done with it, so its possible
That's not what I'm saying, I never thought it'd be better than ZBrush, since ZBrush has been around for well over a decade and is devoted to sculpting exclusively.
I'm just wondering in what specific ways it's worse than ZBrush. I think it might have potential in the future.
I know it is better in a couple areas though.
It has dynatopo, which Pixologic ironically despises the idea of (since that very feature was the primary point that made them take on Sculptris and the guy who made it).
I prefer the Skin Modifier to ZSpheres.
It also allows actual manipulation along an axis and exact placement of vertices, along with other features inherent in a traditional 3D package, and has a real 3D viewport.
Boolean operations (Booltool) are also compatible with sculpted meshes, meaning that putting together sculpted blockouts is an order of magnitude faster to do in Blender than in Zbrush.
As far as brushes are concerned they are pretty much based on the Zbrush ones so no surprises there. The weak point of sculpting in Blender is performance - you will never reach anything similar to the huge amount of polygons than Zbrush can push, but I don't think that's the point really.
ok, i was solely refering to the sculpting tools, but thats true, and i use it mostly for smoothing something quickly or making small adjustments
thats not the whole truth
iam not a programming/tech guru, so i wont make any half true claims whats wrong and why, but there are several videos of people sculpting on 50-100 million tris meshes
cant really remember what hardware setup they were running, but it wasnt out of this world
I read an article from someone recently who uses Blender exclusively for their work, and I believe they said they got around that issue on very large and dense meshes by splitting it into multiple objects wherever it was reasonable to do so, and kept many of them hidden when sculpting on others.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?355154-Addon-Retopo-MT
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?355154-Addon-Retopo-MT
Everything seems needlessly complicated and even simple operations hard to do.
For example, in 3DS Max, to align vertices to an axis, I can either scale them manually with the scale tool or hit Make Planar and choose an axis.
In Blender, the only way I can find to even do this remotely is to manually scale, but it seems to allow you to scale beyond 0, so it's difficult to get a perfect alignment.
How do you remove faces/verts from a selection?
Anyone know of any Max --> Blender guides?
you can also activate snap (shift + tab) and snap them on the axis you want to the verts you want
remove faces from selection, shift click them ?
or do you mean seperate them ? then its y
To remove stuff from a selection you have a few options. Shift+Right Click will unselect something if it's selected. Circle Select and Border Select will unselect stuff if you use the middle mouse button after pressing C and B, respectively. To leave circle select you right click, and you can cancel border select with right click too if you decide you really didn't want to do a border select. Note that unlike in Max, circle select is actually kind of useful in Blender as it's the way that you can paint selections. It's also a handy way to select things on both sides of the model if you've set up non-raycasting selection, either by switching to wireframe mode or by clicking the button on the bottom bar of the 3d viewport that's between the faces mesh select mode and the proportional edit dropdown menu. Alt+Shift+Right click on an edge loop will deselect the edge loop if it's selected, and Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Right click on an edge ring will deselect the edge ring if it's selected. If you're in faces mode Alt+Shift+Right click will work on face loops rather than on edge loops.
Once you learn this stuff it's easier than it sounds and quite quick.
I'm using the 3ds max preset.
S turns snap on and off.
I can hold Shift and drag LMB to select verts, but can't find any key combo to remove verts from a selection. MMB just rotates the camera. RMB doesn't do anything.
Blender does everything differently. It doesn't even use left click to select.
But, if you spend three weeks re-training your brain to work in Blender, it's worth it. Blender has a lot of great things that are worth the investment of time.
Don't give up!
please don't use maya or 3dsmax preset, you will lose all the blender benefits.
for me was enough to change the selection from right to left click..
yes, i think this one bothers most people
its the first thing i did too.
It usually results in a smoother experience.
Then it's just S + "0" as it has be said already.
"Active point", "3d cursor", "snap tool" are singular compare to 3dsmax but if you learn them well and try things with them, your productivity will increase a lot !
In other words, there is no good reason to stick with the very odd default Blender navigation scheme just for the sake of it. As mentioned before the following video covers how to change it without changing anything else :
[ame]
Once that is taken care of, learning the rest of the software will be much, much easier.
(a) Tutorials are harder to follow because some of my hot keys are different
...and...
(b) Something inevitably breaks as a result of it. Selecting stuff or whatever.
If Blender handles it gracefully, that's awesome, but it's definitely the exception.
If the navigation scheme is edited manually as shown in this video, I can confirm that everything is fine from there.
Oooh, that's going to be useful. I've been selecing the vertex, moving the cursor to selected, and then aligning to the cursor.
I've played with the windows, tabs and all but I was wondering if we could set up animation layers, selection sets for curves, curves selection windows and character sets?
[ame]
Seriously, I can't see what's so hard about investing a few weeks to learn a new software. Being able to learn constantly is in the job description, is it not?
and yes, i like blenders keymap more than any maya/max defaults, but i guess thats just dependant on which software you learned first
you know that you can switch the navigation to many major 3dapp styles?
i guess the best idea would be to to keep the old bindings as a setting just like Max or Maya.
I don't think it's necessarily to try to emulate Maya, but more that the current keymap has a lot of long standing issues. For one thing we're quickly running out of hotkeys. I think Q is the only unbound letter in edit mode -- and that's only true if you don't have pie menus activated. Forcing experienced 3D artists to have to start off with really basic tutorials isn't doing anyone any favors either though.
I'm used to the defaults, and I seriously cannot fathom how anyone actually likes them. They're astronomically inefficient most of the time. The non-modal workflow is very fast, but the hotkeys themselves are really poorly thought out.
[ame]
hehe yeah almost, sadly but also luckily. it's not that much that is missing. we will slowly port our production over. If all goes well we will use max and maya only for final deliveries at one point.
I would strongly recommend you to register and post your questions on the BlenderArtists forum, as these two things are totally doable, which makes me think that maybe some of your other concerns might be solved already too.
QWER certainly works for me (this was one of the first things I customized, right after the Maya-style navigation) ; and even though I didn't quite understand how to work with them at first, smoothing groups/hard edges are definitely fonctional - I use them all the time myself.
Now I certainly wish there was a way to "doublesmooth" with them like in Max, but that's a very Max-specific trick that no other 3d app has anyways, so I cannot quite blame Blender for not having it ... yet !