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Yeah - you'd need to remap that middle-button to a keyboard button (but then still use the trackball for the actual control) - Blender has a menu for assigning keys to different functions.
Thanks art3D and will for the info on Mudbox. That is a very reasonable price!
...sad that Autdesk also went the "by subscription only" route like Adobe did. Prefer perpetual licences as at least in lean times I still have something to work with even if it isn't totally up to date.
...sounds like more trouble than it is worth as my goal is get away form keyboard commands rather than become more dependent on them.
I had the opposite issue when the place I worked at switched from WordPerfect to MS Word. Having to stop, remove one hand from the keyboard to use the mouse, and then go back to entering text seemed counterproductive as it broke the rhythm. WP did it right by making the function keys in combination with ALT CTRL and Shift (with a handy little template that made memorising the combos much easier) do many of the same things that MS used a mouse for and your hands never left the keyboard.
For graphics production software, Icon and pointer systems are just more "elegant".
[This spell checker here on the forums is a total piece of rubbish. Often, it only picks up on a few typos as I find myself having to reopen the post to fix the ones it misses (particularly words shorter than four characters). Sometimes it doesn't work at all even when it is opened. A total pain in the bum if you are dyslexic like I am. I don't see why we can't just use our browser's spell check.]
But again, that is your experience which is why I don't label anything as easy or better UI. As much as I disliked the older version of Blender, I absolutely hated Wings and found nothing about it easy. And that was my experience with a program someone recommended to me as much easier than anything out there to learn. Most programs, when I am first learning should come, for me, with a restraining order as I would gladly ring it's size 101010 neck at some point or the other. You need to persevere, tbh. And it's likely that because I really had no 3D experience when I tried Wings may be why I still can't stand the thought of it. Totally biased. I didn't have the discipline then that I have now (though software still fears me when learning something new).
You just have to try things. What I have found is when there is more available on it. the better I learn. That's me. And as programs go, Blender does have a ton of tutorials.
Bleder's UI never bothered me. Frankly, I didn't have a choice. It's either Blender or I'd need to shell out near a grand for a decent program.
Besides, as a 3D modeller, adaptation is a must. You try out new things and learn them. You can't keep staying in your comfort zone and expect everything to carter around you.
...when I first tried Blender I had pretty decent computer and software experience under my belt as I worked in Multimedia development as well as programming, the latter which goes back to the days when what we carry in our pockets today took up the entire cellar of a university research building and only the sysop had a CRT terminal. I actually did work with 3D CG back the 80s for a while but found it even more unintuitive as everything had to be coded by hand. There were no programmes or tools like we have today.
Back then I dreamed that someday there would be graphics software that approached the task from the perspective of the artist rather than the programmer. Nearly ten years ago when I discovered Daz and Poser, I was floored that someone actually did it.
One might think with that background I would have taken to Blender like a fish to water. However its UI never clicked with me, no matter how many times I re-downloaded and installed it when someone would me they "improved" the UI. I guess when it comes to creative based software I automatically fall into the mindset of a painter, sculptor, or physical model builder who has in his hand a brush, clay and sculpting tools, or wood, metal, plastics, etc. model building tools, not a computer keyboard.
I have been a traditional artist and model builder much longer than I have worked with computers. The "muscle memory" and "feel" if you would have it, is still there and much stronger than what is requried for typing to the point I feel disassociated from the process of trying to create an image or a model primarily using the keyboard. If anything VR would probably even suit me better, but that is still quite a ways off for our little 3D gaphics "toys".
ETA....
Oh and as to tutorials, As I have mentioned before, I have very poor retention with film and video. I tend to retain complex processes much better with text based learning. I am also one of those who jumps in and "learns by doing". Blender is definitely not very well suited for that.
Bforartists is definitely a pared down version of Blender - and they did a good job - but at the end of the day, it's still Blender. All I manage to get done is open, stare at it and wonder "Where do I start?" LOL
The Rocket 3F interface on the other hand makes absolute perfect sense to me, looks uncluttered and easy to understand. Go figure ;). I might have to buy myself the pro version of that for my birthday :P
Laurie
...If Daz just put the same level of committment into Hexagon as they even did for Carrara, (as well as also moved it into the 64 bit world like Carrara Pro) Hexagon would be a much more reliable and powerful dedicated polygon modelier than it currently is.
Both Carrara and Hexagon are former Eovia products which were acquired together. I imagine the coding between the two is somewhat similar as they were both created by the same company so I don't understand why Hexagon was left to rot on the vine so to say, particularly since it has the two way bridge with Daz Studio (which Carrara doesn't).
".it doesn't look much different to me than ver 2.45 did nearly ten years ago when I open it. "
@kyoto kid Really?
...compare the two versions' startup screens without any customisation applied.
That's pretty much me too. I used to use Paint Shop Pro for years, but would occasionally tackle Photoshop as I knew there were far more plugins, brushes, tutorials and other 'etceteras' around for it. I don't think I've ever heard anyone else describe Photoshop as 'unintuitive', but that was my experience of it. I couldn't get a thing out of it, and that was before I even grappled with the pen tool, the results of which always looked like I'd been fighting with a digital eel. Then I made myself take a couple of days out just to learn the program, and it was one of the most useful things I ever did as far as digital art goes. Photoshop is always up near the top of my 'most used' list of programs now, and the pen tool was tamed years ago. This experience has been at the back of my mind with every Blender failure, and recent successes have been the result of deciding to do more or less the same thing as I did with Photoshop. It just seemed easier somehow, with all the 'Oh, I get it!' moments coming a bit closer together, and Blender itself being a bit more prepared to reveal it's secrets than it once used to be.
It is possible to take on The Mysterious Cube of Despair and conquer it, and more and more of us are proving it :)
There are a number of excellent blender books available on Amazon. That's how I learned initially.
C4D is absolutely the easiest way to learn 3D.
In an ideal world everyone would start with Cinema then, if you really want to, you can downgrade to one of those cheap, flakey programs like MAX!
BforArtists looks like a gamechanger for me. Thanks for posting it. Will be playing with it this weekend.
Wow! Thanks for the information on BforArtists, I had never heard of it before! Looks to be well worth a try.
My C4D demo expires in two days. That will be a sad day. Why-oh-why can't they release an "apprentice " version for students/hobbyists that is the full program just with restrictions.
You mean like this one? https://www.maxon.net/en/training/student-version/
Time to join the darkside with the rest of us Blender heads.
Shrink fit a primitive mesh to get results comparable to Marvelous Designer? That's intriguing - who do you mean? How do you do it? What results do you get? Could you post some pictures?
What I'm referring to is a cloth sim add-on for Studio that has a function called "Scale". What I do is make a very simple low poly mesh clothing object in Blender (using an OBJ of the character if necessary as a model to fit to), then subdivide it and export into Studio. I then use the cloth sim (called Virtual World Dynamics), and apply a Scale of, say, 80% to the clothing mesh, and run the sim. It shrinks to mesh to 80% of the original size, which causes it to fit to the character.
Ultimately it's very similar to the MD process, where you use an OBJ model, a simple mesh front and back of the clothing, and "stitch" the two dynamically in a simulation. But with this the dynamics is done inside Studio, which I think is more desirable.
BTW, it also works on just about any rigged, conforming clothing you buy from the store too. You can convert an ugly conforming clothing to a nice cloth-simmed version that looks much nicer and more natural and realistic.
...I have one and was still stymied.
Whichever one you like after you've spent some time trying them all out.
Blender is loved and hated, and the same can be said for the others - although Blender does seem to polarise views more.
Here's an example of a very quickly done pair of shorts I just modelled in Blender and then did a cloth sim in Studio. Yeah, it's not the best cloth sim, but as much as I love you guys it's dinner time and I'm not going to spend all night on it.
First image shows in Blender the very basic, boxy shorts model I hand made, using a G3 OBJ as a model to fit to. Next image I simply applied a subdivision modifier (two clicks...), then exported as an OBJ. And the third image is the result of the cloth sim after applying a scale of like 70%.
So as far as modelling, if you can make a box like that with only 6 or 8 faces, you can make some natural looking shorts.
Thanks for posting those! I was interested in VWD, and I emailed the developer, and it doesn't work on a MAC. I have a cheap PC laptop that runs Windows. How much memory does the VWD program take up?
I have no clue. I suppose it depends on the mesh you're doing the sim on. How many vertices and stuff. I think the developer mentioned theres a limit to how many vertices it can handle, only because any more than that the sim gets too slow. But I don't know what that is.
Greetings,
All of it. I don't mean that to be mean, or anything, but the more memory you can give it, the happier it'll be. It uses that memory to store the springs and information about the dynamics. If you're using it to make basic clothes, that's probably a lower impact use. Using it to re-drape complex conforming clothes has...tested my patience with memory issues, and I have 32GB of RAM in that box.
You could PROBABLY use it, if you're going to make clothes the way @ebergerly describes, but you'll find quickly that you want to do much cooler, and complex things, and when it runs out of memory it behaves badly, in my experience. It's gotten better in a series of patches, but it's worth keeping in mind.
To the original question, I think that Sketchup is probably the simplest, but isn't comfortably part of the general modeling world, and probably won't teach you skills that'll work across multiple applications. Still, for quick prototyping, it appears pretty easy to pick up.
I found Silo to be...amazing, faster than Hexagon, and easy to understand, especially with Fugazi1968's Silo tutorials on 'rosity. (For the modeling needs I vaguely recall you describing upthread, something like his Lil House tutorial would be perfect, and decently priced; he also has a Digital Tailor series that is nice for clothes.) They're all dated, but the interface hasn't changed significantly since then, IMO.
If Silo had a plugin capability, I'd be trying to write a DAZ <->Silo bridge right now...
-- Morgan
Yeah, I think that when you get into complex conforming clothing you're in some dangerous territory. Keep in mind that the mesh wasn't designed for cloth sims, and cloth sims prefer certain types of mesh. And efficiency of mesh probably isn't in the mind of many conforming clothing makers. So yeah, when you consider the complex mesh that isn't uniform and probably has parts of the mesh with vertices that are far too close for any reasonable collision and so on, you might want to consider just making your own base clothing. Sometimes it works fine, but you really need to inspect the mesh first and see if it's going to work in a cloth sim. IMO, often you can make something much cleaner and less memory intensive on your own.