Home General Discussion

Has anyone moved from a commercial modeling app to Blender?

13
Rev
Rev
At the risk of starting a "Blender is better than xxxxx" thread, I'm just curious if anyone here has made the jump from a commercial app (MAX, Modo, etc.) to Blender and how it's worked out for you.

Also, if you could share a little about your job, workflow, etc. that would be great.

Replies

  • gnoop
    Offline / Send Message
    gnoop polycounter
    I have moved but still have to use 3d max to save files for work. Doing most of my modelling in Blender. Moved before Max bought Graphite tools, node based materials, shader fx, and so on.

    Before that Max was so behind of Blender, crashy, slow and bugs infested so it was just a matter of getting accustomed.

    Now Max developed all those features I moved to Blender for and to be honest they work a little bit better and easier. Still I already accustomed to Blender and too lazy to switch back.
  • Equanim
    Offline / Send Message
    Equanim polycounter lvl 11
    I use it as a glue program. Over the last ten years I've watched the common workflow go from being very Maya/3DS centric to a string of specialized tools, e.g. ZBrush, Substance, 3DCoat etc. and I'm more glad I'm familiar with it every year.

    My pipeline is Maya LT/Zbrush > 3D Coat/Substance/PS > Unreal/Marmorset/PS/etc. Blender usually fits in if I need motion graphics or a still renderer. Most scripts from modding communities are also designed for Blender.

    My current occupation is Frontend Software Engineer and my 3D work doesn't intersect.

    Were I to start a studio, I'd give serious thought to having modelers use Blender so I could buy animation tools for the animators and hopefully avoid import issues into the engine.
  • Rev
    Equanim wrote: »
    I use it as a glue program. Over the last ten years I've watched the common workflow go from being very Maya/3DS centric to a string of specialized tools, e.g. ZBrush, Substance, 3DCoat etc. and I'm more glad I'm familiar with it every year.

    My pipeline is Maya LT/Zbrush > 3D Coat/Substance/PS > Unreal/Marmorset/PS/etc. Blender usually fits in if I need motion graphics or a still renderer. Most scripts from modding communities are also designed for Blender.

    My current occupation is Frontend Software Engineer and my 3D work doesn't intersect.

    Were I to start a studio, I'd give serious thought to having modelers use Blender so I could buy animation tools for the animators and hopefully avoid import issues into the engine.

    I've definitely seen the same things. It seems that workflow has become more specialized and you can't just get away with knowing one package anymore. This is true even for the independent artist who seems to more than likely also be using a variety of tools.

    Most artists using Blender are using it as part of this larger workflow it would appear.
  • DireWolf
    A very well known Modo user sold his Modo + Meshfusion license for $100 and moved on to Blender 2.75. He mentioned he waited so long for Blender to be 'ready for production' and 2.75 finally delivered what he was waiting for.

    http://www.nullrefer.com/?http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/post.aspx?f=4&t=60807&p=954703

    In a sense he's giving Modo away for free because the Foundry charges $100 for account transfer.
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    DireWolf wrote: »
    A very well known Modo user sold his Modo + Meshfusion license for $100 and moved on to Blender 2.75. He mentioned he waited so long for Blender to be 'ready for production' and 2.75 finally delivered what he was waiting for.

    http://www.nullrefer.com/?http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/post.aspx?f=4&t=60807&p=954703

    In a sense he's giving Modo away for free because the Foundry charges $100 for account transfer.

    Oh, hey, that's me. Yeah. I gave away my Modo license, and will just use blender mostly. What can I say? Blender is awesome and free. A lot of great things are happening around blender, and I admire the blender foundation.
  • Lamont
    Offline / Send Message
    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    I have been thinking of dumping 3DS Max and going 100% Blender at home... just have to make the plunge.
  • pior
    Online / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Moved from 3DSMax+Maya to Blender last year when doing the transition from studio worker to self-employed. A few reasons why :

    - More stable than Modo/Max/Maya
    - A constantly evolving toolset
    - Modeling and rendering features already equivalent/superior to other programs (no idea about animation yet, hoping to test it out in the near future)
    - No official support ... yet very fast tech responses from the Blenderartists forum
    - Addons don't even need a restart to be tested out !
    - Completely open customisation options (the idea that one has to use the default shortcuts in order to make the most out of the program is a complete myth)
    - Not a yearly dev cycle, meaning that updates happen when they need to instead of being forced by a calendar
    - free and open.

    and the list goes on ...

    At that point I sincerely wish I had picked it up sooner. It's a really impressive package once past the (admittedly longer than usual) learning phase.
  • CapableWizard
    Offline / Send Message
    CapableWizard polycounter lvl 9
    At a previous studio I used it despite having a max licence. The 3D painting tools are just way superior (in my opinion) than max, as well as being able to do the whole photoshop projection thing that deep paint used to be great at. I'm not sure I'd be able completely replace max, and we definitely didn't at the studio either but it filled a gap in the workflow really well.
  • DireWolf
    pior wrote: »
    - More stable than Modo/Max/Maya

    That's a surprise. Good to know. Thanks for sharing.

    @nervouschimp good to see you here! I tried to contact you for Modo license too but couldn't find your e-mail :D
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    DireWolf wrote: »
    That's a surprise. Good to know. Thanks for sharing.

    @nervouschimp good to see you here! I tried to contact you for Modo license too but couldn't find your e-mail :D

    Thanks, and sorry, I got flooded with emails instantly, and so I removed my contact info from my profile.

    I agree with all the points pior makes, and also wish I had switched sooner instead of continuing to invest in Modo.

    Edit: oh, and yeah... stability. Blender is really way more stable than Modo and Maya. I even run the nightly builds, and they are more dependable than a Modo release after 3 service packs.
  • Blond
    Offline / Send Message
    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    Surprisingly, Blender has never crashed on me...I'm still waiting for the day I will be celebrating my first crash/shutdown.

    I've been using since 4 months.

    My avatar is the first character I've made inside of it.

    The animation workflow is tedious though.
    Rigging is a bit quirky also...
  • Rev
    Oh, hey, that's me. Yeah. I gave away my Modo license, and will just use blender mostly. What can I say? Blender is awesome and free. A lot of great things are happening around blender, and I admire the blender foundation.

    Hey chimp!

    I actually saw that post on the Modo forums but it was after you had already given it away. Very cool of you to be so generous.

    I am/was considering Modo indie at the moment (don't have the funds for full) but Blender is my other real option. The only other thing I have right now is an older version of Lightwave which doesn't seem to get much love for game dev. (I've never upgraded because I don't see any real updates I need)

    What kind of game modeling do you mainly do with Blender- characters? environments? and how is working out without Modo? I always thought Modo's modeler was its strong point, but animation- not so much.
  • DireWolf
    @chimp you mind if I add you on Skype? I'd love to have someone to talk to about Blender.
  • Arkadius
    Offline / Send Message
    Arkadius polycounter lvl 13
    Pior: Awesome list, makes me really want to give Blender a go. Did you ever document your journey from Maya/Max to Blender?

    nervouschimp: Wow, what you did says alot for blender. I assume there is a discussion on luxology's forums about why you sold off modo and switched to blender. I must find it!
  • RN
    Offline / Send Message
    RN sublime tool
    @Arkadius -- this may sound stalky, but with some forum sorcery you can filter a user's posts in a specific thread.

    Pior shared a lot of his progress in the Blender Mega Thread. You can search for his posts there:
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/search.php?do=process&searchthreadid=72805&searchuser=pior&exactname=1&showposts=1 (newest first)
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    Arkadius wrote: »
    Pior: Awesome list, makes me really want to give Blender a go. Did you ever document your journey from Maya/Max to Blender?

    nervouschimp: Wow, what you did says alot for blender. I assume there is a discussion on luxology's forums about why you sold off modo and switched to blender. I must find it!

    I don't really share my opinion on Modo publicly anymore. And really, my opinion doesn't matter. If Modo works for you, that's awesome. In a perfect world, we would all just use the tools that we are the most comfortable with.
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    I find your decision weird.

    Nothing weird about it.

    ...but I am weird.
  • MmAaXx
    Offline / Send Message
    MmAaXx polycounter lvl 10
    Yes I did, from 3dsmax (at the time was 2010) to Blender 2.49 or something like that.
  • Lazerus Reborn
    Offline / Send Message
    Lazerus Reborn polycounter lvl 8
    My 3DS Max student license runs out soon, i'll be making the switch.

    Everything max has done since 2009 ver has been a poor showing for me. I can't see the investment value of buying a 1 year license for them to fix bugs a in the next release and charge the upgrade fee.

    That said i do love my max despite it's faults, i mean, i hope it can change or i can change it someday, with the right scripts we could have a wonderful time. It's just occasionally it get's angry for something i did wrong, i mean it was my fault for using the cut tool, it had every right to crash 2 hours of work and destroy the autobackups. It's just a rough patch, i'm sure we'll find a way around this in the future.

    That folks is the denial of an abusive relationship.


    Blender is going to white knight me one day soon i hope <3
  • Frankie
    Offline / Send Message
    Frankie polycounter lvl 19
    I use blender for everything in my game (see sig) before that lightwave, modo, max maya and the only time I miss something from other packages is when Perna posts his workflows. Switch to blender?

    At first it was because it was free and there were lots of compromises because of it but now it's my preference.
  • Arkadius
    Offline / Send Message
    Arkadius polycounter lvl 13
    @Kryzon: Thanks! Doesn't sound snarky at all, I'm pretty familiar with the search function and I've seen pior's post on the thread. I was just wondering if he has consolidated his experiences on a blog or something. I've seen some XSI users document their shift from XSI to modo in a blog and it was very interesting. :)

    nervouschimp: Well that is a shame, but I think everyone opinion is valid and worth listening to especially if they have some background in the subject.
  • Mant1k0re
    Offline / Send Message
    Mant1k0re polycounter lvl 8
    I did the opposite. Blender is an excellent tool and on par with Max except for two things:

    -spline modeling is still a lot better in Max
    -lack of good scripts for Blender, and when you find one it will be broken with next update and god knows how long till it's fixed.

    So it really depends on your workflow. I use splines and scripts all the time so I prefer Max.
  • derphouse
    Offline / Send Message
    derphouse polycounter lvl 4
    At our small studio we just decided to go practical about it, and use blender until either it reached some limit, or the workflow got too slow. So far I'm happy to be using blender :D
  • WarrenM
    I find your decision weird. Modo has always been ahead of its time, it's well designed, ready to evolve and now The Foundry can take advantage of all their technologies to empower each single software (ex: Modo 901 using similar tech for viewport as Mari 3). Some of the brightest minds in the industry are working on Modo, it has great community support, members and everything. 3D software business done right. I just don't see how Blender can catch up with Modo without the budget, same support, etc.

    I hope you found what you were looking for.

    I love MODO ... you all know that ... but 901 hasn't been the best release and even a die hard fan like myself is sitting back and waiting until it gets stable before upgrading.

    I can't remember the last time that Blender's fans took to the streets to protest a broken release. :)

    So a larger budget, bigger team, etc. don't always translate to the best possible outcome.

    I'd even take issue with this ...

    "it has great community support"

    It has a great community FEELING but in terms of actually getting answers, the forums aren't that useful. I've asked several questions over the years that just rotted without a single response. They weren't even complicated.

    But someone says something like, "MODO rocks!" and there's 40 responses all high fiving each other.
  • Zack Maxwell
    Offline / Send Message
    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    WarrenM wrote: »
    I love MODO ... you all know that ... but 901 hasn't been the best release and even a die hard fan like myself is sitting back and waiting until it gets stable before upgrading.

    I can't remember the last time that Blender's fans took to the streets to protest a broken release. :)

    So a larger budget, bigger team, etc. don't always translate to the best possible outcome.

    I'd even take issue with this ...

    "it has great community support"

    It has a great community FEELING but in terms of actually getting answers, the forums aren't that useful. I've asked several questions over the years that just rotted without a single response. They weren't even complicated.

    But someone says something like, "MODO rocks!" and there's 40 responses all high fiving each other.
    I'm with you on that. I think literally the only person who has ever answered a question I've had about Modo was Farfarer, and that was on the Polycount forums.
    I'd say it actually has the worst community among the major four. The least helpful, anyway.
  • Neox
    Offline / Send Message
    Neox veteran polycounter
    I find your decision weird. Modo has always been ahead of its time, it's well designed, ready to evolve and now The Foundry can take advantage of all their technologies to empower each single software (ex: Modo 901 using similar tech for viewport as Mari 3). Some of the brightest minds in the industry are working on Modo, it has great community support, members and everything. 3D software business done right. I just don't see how Blender can catch up with Modo without the budget, same support, etc.

    I hope you found what you were looking for.

    well you are kinda infamous for your very one sided stance towards things you prefer...

    anyways

    I don't say Modo is a bad choice, it's not my cup of tea but i can understand people using it. But i can also understand people opting for blender, I for one would switch to blender rather than modo IF i decide to switch from Max/Maya to anything else.
    I will have to have Maya and Max Licensen anyways for a long time to come, i don#t see why I should get a new tool to the pipelin that again adds a lot of costs to the production, while i could get another new tool, which also is becoming better and better for free.
  • MmAaXx
    Offline / Send Message
    MmAaXx polycounter lvl 10
    WarrenM wrote: »
    It has a great community FEELING but in terms of actually getting answers, the forums aren't that useful. I've asked several questions over the years that just rotted without a single response. They weren't even complicated.

    if you were talking about Blender, ask it again here :D
  • Neox
    Offline / Send Message
    Neox veteran polycounter
    I don't ''love'' any particular software, just looking for maximum efficiency which is what I overall get from Modo, Zbrush and Substance.

    yeah you, that doesn't apply to everyone and doesn't make you the most efficient modeller, or gamedesigner, or leveldesigner, or whatever you have very strong feelings about ;)
  • DireWolf
    WarrenM wrote: »
    I love MODO ... you all know that ... but 901 hasn't been the best release and even a die hard fan like myself is sitting back and waiting until it gets stable before upgrading.

    How is the sp1 working out for you? Is it much more stable?

    Modo IS getting expensive for sure. While Indie is more than enough for learning, no plug-ins means PRMAN is not gonna be available. In that aspect I really am leaning towards Blender :D
  • Shadownami92
    Offline / Send Message
    Shadownami92 polycounter lvl 7
    I jumped from Maya to Blender when 2.5 released. I haven't used it for any big finished game projects but I have used it for some industrial design animation work (though its under NDA for while.)

    I really have been loving the developments in Blender. I complained about a lack of custom vertex normals and we are finally getting tools for that and complained about the viewport and they are working on an overhaul for that this year as well.

    Combine that with Cycles for renders as well as baking in cycles using cages and it's getting really really great for games as well. I've been doing tests with baking lightmaps in Blender for game projects in Unity and it's getting really easy to work with, and waiting minutes for a finished lightmap bake compared to a day with Unity 5 is a big boon.
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    DireWolf wrote: »
    How is the sp1 working out for you? Is it much more stable?

    Modo IS getting expensive for sure. While Indie is more than enough for learning, no plug-ins means PRMAN is not gonna be available. In that aspect I really am leaning towards Blender :D

    The prman RIS plugin for blender is being developed at a very rapid pace by Pixar. I think you'll be waiting a while if you want renderman for Modo. But if you plan on doing some serious renders with prman, you better have a dual-zeon workstation with a ton of cores, otherwise you'll be facing some long render times.
  • nervouschimp
    Offline / Send Message
    nervouschimp polycounter lvl 4
    At the end of the day, I'd say... Blender and Modo have the same heart, Blender is open source and free software done right and Modo is software business done right and both have their pros and cons.

    Blender and Modo do not have the same heart. A company that attaches DRM to your scene files, disables scripting, and imposes strict export limitations is pretty much the polar opposite of Blender Foundation.
  • ferrettank
    Offline / Send Message
    ferrettank polycounter lvl 2
    I grew up on Blender but I tried to switch to Maya and Max with a solid month of practice on each (because everyone told me to be a pro you must learn those programs, although I've gotten jobs because I am one of the only ones using Blender here :P)
    When trying the other programs, I ran into many bugs, I had problems even a experienced Max and Maya user couldn't figure out. After a month of tinkering with the programs I went back to Blender and couldn't be happier.
  • repete
    Offline / Send Message
    repete polycounter lvl 6
    I have really enjoyed using modo from 601 and the foundry did do their best to keep moving the software forward but 901 has been a complete slap in the face and a completely different attitude has shown it's ugly face.

    Basically if you bought 901 you where duped into being a "beta" tester and of course the fan boys will disagree with this fact. All the hype over how stable the release would be was a farce because they new very well that the core of the program had many issues. The main "hype" promoters during the build up for the 901 release said nothing for 2 months after the release. A week before 901 SP1 came out they came back on the forum with "SP1 hype" and the majority of users just accept this, that's when I lost respect for the main players of the foundry.

    Many of the issues have been ironed out in SP1 (thanks to all the beta testers including myself btw) and there will be more features added this year through service packs but I am done with the foundry and the new attitude.

    3D software business done right, yeah right !

    Pete
  • Neox
    Offline / Send Message
    Neox veteran polycounter
    ferrettank wrote: »
    I grew up on Blender but I tried to switch to Maya and Max with a solid month of practice on each (because everyone told me to be a pro you must learn those programs, although I've gotten jobs because I am one of the only ones using Blender here :P)
    When trying the other programs, I ran into many bugs, I had problems even a experienced Max and Maya user couldn't figure out. After a month of tinkering with the programs I went back to Blender and couldn't be happier.

    the thing is, you run into a lot of crap as a beginner, stuff you start to exclude from your behavior. as a tutor i often had people running into stuff i had no clue how to reproduce, with interns or juniors on site the same. I bet there is similar stuff in blender, and if it's just weird behavior, not bugs, you just start to remove those things from your workflow.
  • Rev
    In the Modo Indie - Group Chat on Steam, I've been talking with both Greg and Brandon for months now, every week. And we can talk with them, talk about issues and make things move. Mari Indie got an Unreal Shader, Modo Indie is going to get a decent upgrade to 901 soon with integrated custom scripts used by users of the full version, etc. And much more that I will not talk about here, but by talking to them directly there... you can directly have an impact on the future of Modo. On the forums as well, but it's not as direct. You'll find someone you just named in there too.

    So, I would that the Foundry does have its own agenda and for the most part... it's fairly great. Still, I still don't understand why in Modo 901 there isn't a dynamesh-like feature, an fully functional Rounded Edge Shader or fully integrated Vertex Tool Kit, Unreal Engine 4 shader or button to quickly export for UE4, etc. All those things that game artists would probably find very useful or even essential. On the other hand, Greg mentioned that game art was a much higher priority now and that The Foundry is aware of this things and are actively looking into it now that Modo 901 and SP1 got released. So, they do listen to the community, but it's a slow process and slower with Modo Indie, because they have to deal with Steam.

    Also, I've been working in QA for the past 6 months and personally didn't find all those crashes in Modo 901 - Trial "normal" or acceptable either. I mean who, seriously, would want to work in crunch time, in a game studio, with a version of Modo that crashes all the time? That's crazy. Modo 801, in my opinion, shouldn't have been released before SP3. It's something that they really need to change if they want to keep their users.

    I do see the long term value of Blender. Get it once and I assume that it keeps getting better every year for free. Buy 901 and you are very much stuck with that and not everyone can afford to pay $500-2400 at every new release.

    At the end of the day, I'd say... Blender and Modo have the same heart, Blender is open source and free software done right and Modo is software business done right and both have their pros and cons.

    If indie got some of the more useful scripts (Seneca, etc.) along with Substance support that would go a long way to making it more appealing in my eyes. Also, I thought there already was a rounded edge shader in Modo?

    On the topic of Blender, one of my frustrations is looking for a feature and being directed to a custom script only to find out the person making it gave up on it because Blender broke the code with each new release. There are so many "dead ends" with Blender when it comes to custom work- and with dependency on the community to take part and improve it this is not good.
  • SnowInChina
    Offline / Send Message
    SnowInChina interpolator
    Neox wrote: »
    the thing is, you run into a lot of crap as a beginner, stuff you start to exclude from your behavior. as a tutor i often had people running into stuff i had no clue how to reproduce, with interns or juniors on site the same. I bet there is similar stuff in blender, and if it's just weird behavior, not bugs, you just start to remove those things from your workflow.

    same stuff in blender
    often times people complain how bad it is because you cannot do this or something is not working etc.. when its just a user error or lack of knowhow



    to stay on topic :

    using blender at work for all my modelling and uv work
    but still using maya to edit normals and export to special format

    at home iam running only blender
  • JedTheKrampus
    Offline / Send Message
    JedTheKrampus polycounter lvl 8
    Rev wrote: »
    On the topic of Blender, one of my frustrations is looking for a feature and being directed to a custom script only to find out the person making it gave up on it because Blender broke the code with each new release. There are so many "dead ends" with Blender when it comes to custom work- and with dependency on the community to take part and improve it this is not good.

    Yeah, this is seriously bothersome. It's not as bad with Autodesk products because there's only a new release once a year after which you have to wait for everyone to come out with new scripts. Luckily the plugins are open-source due to Blender's GPL license, so if you know what you're doing and the plugin is important enough to you it's technically possible to fix it. But I agree that it would be a big step forward for Blender if it kept Python API compatibility between releases.
  • .nL
    Offline / Send Message
    .nL polycounter lvl 3
    this thread prompted me to give blender a try (from Maya), and after about six hours playing with it over the past couple days, I've become a fan, though with a few reservations. I'm a big fan of macros, and hot keys, so aside from grabbing a modo theme, I've barely touched the UI. Blenders biggest asset, is that pretty much everything in it is about three inputs away. The caveat here, is that everything's about three inputs away, meaning that more common actions like translation can feel a little clunky (rmb+ drag, release rmb, click to confirm). The same goes for deleting, scaling, and rotating objects. Overall, I've been working relatively quickly in it, but I think I may have to go through and refine the keybinds when I'm familiar with the software. Though I think the reduced amount of time I'm spending moving my mouse to reach GUI elements makes blender a net win. Hot keys can feel a little overdone, though, with the fact that every key has a function mapped to every combination of modifiers you could imagine.

    I'm also enjoying the ability to sculpt my geometry as I work on it.

    I haven't touched its UV or animation tools yet, but I hope to in the next few days
  • RyanB
    15 years of using Max or Maya at work
    4 years of using Blender at home

    I don't think I could ever recommend Blender to replace Maya for animators.

    Blender is amazing, getting better all the time. Interface is sometimes weird but I've gotten used to it. Blender would be my first choice for personal projects but last choice for projects with other artists.
  • pior
    Online / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    more common actions like translation can feel a little clunky (rmb+ drag, release rmb, click to confirm). The same goes for deleting, scaling, and rotating objects.

    There are indeed many ways to remap/modify this kind of default behavior, but it does require a little bit of advanced know-how with the input editor. This is probably best kept for a little later, ie for a time when you are even more familiar with the program.

    That being said : the XYZ manipulator can be (and in my opinion should be !) completely disabled in Blender. It sure is a very nice tool to have, especially for users transitioning from other programs since it allows for a traditional component transformation workflow (move rotate scale) but there is a parallel (and in my opinion more efficient) paradigm available in Blender which comes with the added benefit of being easier on the wrists as there is no need to click down and drag. Here is a quick breakdown :

    - hide the manipulator (ctrl-spacebar)
    - in edit mode, select a component with a single mouse click - release
    - tap the key assigned to move (default is "G" for some dumb reason ; I suppose you already remapped it to "W")
    - move the mouse around (without having to maintain a clickdown)
    - primary click to confirm, secondary click to cancel.
    - axis constraints can be defined by tapping X-Y-Z while transforming, Shift-X-Y-Z for perpendicular axis constraints, and XX-YY-ZZ for local mode.

    This has many benefits :

    - There is no need to precisely move the mouse cursor, as the movement is relative to it, not absolute.
    - No need to keep a pressed click while dragging, which is much easier on the wrist in the long run.
    - Shift acts as a precision modifier, which is extremely useful for move as well as rotate and scale.

    It's really worth trying !

    As for the delete confirmation popup, indeed this is a stupid annoyance, and is fixable. More on all that in my customization thread here : http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?351344-Customization-questions-from-a-Blender-curious-2d-3d-artist

    Good luck !
  • nervouschimp
  • Lamoot
    Offline / Send Message
    Lamoot polycounter lvl 7
    pior wrote: »
    (default is "G" for some dumb reason ; I suppose you already remapped it to "W")
    The rational behind many of Blender's shortcuts is that they correspond to the initial letter of the action. Not advocating any key combination over another, but hopefully providing some small insight into how and why Blender's default is the way it is.

    G - grab
    R - rotate
    S - scale
    H, shift+H, alt+H - hide, hide unselected, unhide
    E - extrude
    I - inset
    etc.
    pior wrote: »
    That being said : the XYZ manipulator can be (and in my opinion should be !) completely disabled in Blender.
    +1 to disable the manipulator, it only gets in the way with all other options to manipulate stuff in Blender. It's so much nicer to have it off.
  • DireWolf
    Looks like Bevel by default isn't set to any hot key? A bit surprise as that seems to be a tool that got used a lot.

    How do I show wireframe on shaded mesh?
  • MmAaXx
    Offline / Send Message
    MmAaXx polycounter lvl 10
    DireWolf wrote: »
    Looks like Bevel by default isn't set to any hot key? A bit surprise as that seems to be a tool that got used a lot.

    How do I show wireframe on shaded mesh?

    bevel by default is CTRL+B

    wire.jpg
  • DireWolf
    Ah nice thanks Mm. How do I bring up that panel?
  • Frankie
    Offline / Send Message
    Frankie polycounter lvl 19
    Pior, totally agree on working without clicking the gizmo, such a huge workflow speed increase, it also has the middle mouse button constrain to closest axis if you press it after you start moving (although I never use it). Have you got some way to visualize the action center with the gizmo turned off?

    Direwolf, Jed wrote a script to put a global toggle show wireframe on a hotkey here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2296204&postcount=2382

    edit: the panel in the screenshot is the box icon on the properties editor (the row with lots of icons to switch between modifiers, materials, render settings etc)
  • DireWolf
    That looks great thanks Frankie :)
  • MmAaXx
    Offline / Send Message
    MmAaXx polycounter lvl 10
    DireWolf wrote: »
    Ah nice thanks Mm. How do I bring up that panel?

    inside the 'properties' tab there is the 'object property' tab (the little cube) than you can find 'display' ;)
  • Tiles
    Offline / Send Message
    Tiles greentooth
    rmb+ drag, release rmb, click to confirm
    Some Blender defaults sucks. And this is one of it. Unfortunately the devs are not really willing to change this. So you need to do some vital adjustments by yourself. Or Blender will give you a hard time. The problem here is, a new user will not even think about doing this adjustments in fear to break the software and/or tutorial compatibility.

    Anyways.

    To change this behaviour go into the Preferences and tick Release Confirms item in the Editing tab. It's one of many settings that should be on by default. I would also suggest to turn selection to LMB. Can be done in the Input tab.
13
Sign In or Register to comment.