Giving Up on Blender

There is quite a bit of discussion here and elsewhere on Blender’s adoption and usability. However I’m interested in a question that is almost impossible to answer - how many people start learning Blender and give up. And why. Of course everyone here didn’t give up, but perhaps you know someone who did. I’m an educator so that’s why I’m interested in ‘learnability’.

But compared to what?
Blender 3D is a high end professional program. For example, I guess there will be more people who give up with Adobe Premiere, and they prefer a program like Movie Maker. So, the question is: Do the people give up because Blender 3D has faults in usability? Or because people expect to use a very complex professional program intuitively without spending time studying/learning about it?

I downloaded blender two times, and deleted it two times, before I actually kept it and began to use it. The very first time that I downloaded it, I left clicked on the gray box and dragged thinking that I could draw on the screen like photoshop. Ofc nothing happened, and like allot of people the inability to interact with anything in my environment immediately put me off of the program.

What got me into blender was the discovery of the Blender Guru website. His very clear step by step process answered allot of questions and ultimately allowed me to create something beautiful pretty early on. Today for example, I checked his website and found “how to make cliffs”. Although I already knew how (for the most part) he still shows me a trick or two in each session that I never would have thought about on my own.

At present I have new frustrations with blender, and I suppose that these are the ones that intermediate to advanced users get. Like, can the water simulation only be deflected by one object, or why does baking normal maps work some of the time and not all of the time? I am sure that there are answers to these questions as well, I just have not found them yet.

Anyway, as an educator (if your teaching blender) I highly suggest introducing your students to the Blender Guru website. Doing some of those lessons in class would more then likely be a fun experience for everyone.

Pre 2.5 I found Blender unbearable, with the nasty UI, and needing to know all the hot keys (personal opinion).

Then a friend showed me 2.6, and I was blown away by the new UI, cycles and real time physics to name a few.

Blender still has a ways to go, but I am comfortable now with using Blender for most of my workflow.

This is a really hot topic at the moment, with where Blender is headed, and is the user base growing, along with creative companies being included in that user base.
Some people are of the opinion that Blender is fine, but just needs stronger features in their desired area.
Other want another leap like the one between 2.4 to 2.6.

I think far less people are leaving now (when opening 2.6) than when 2.4 was around. But, there are still people leaving.
Personally I think Blender has a lot of quirkiness, which in a lot of ways works in its favor, making it a very charming software, but it does need a bit of standardization to bring it in line with other more mainstream software.

I am glad I did not give up on Blender, but more importantly, I’m glad that Blender did not give up on me, and every other 3D creative who is looking for a powerful 3D tool that is affordable.

I really look forward to seeing 2.7 :slight_smile:

Naturally people who quit blender won’t be on BlenderArtists. They either switched over to other software or were amateurs who simply gave up because they didn’t think it was worth it.

in the case of my brother, he’s had a long history of hating arbitrarily custom interfaces (before Steam upgraded to use WebKit he ragged on that all the time), and when we talk about using blender the way he makes fun of the nerd mentality that defines its nonstandard interface and rabid fan community, which he likens to nerds using Linux and Dvorak keyboards. Sure, if you’re willing to invest the time to relearn typing and memorize terminal commands and familiarize yourself with the entire system inside-out and then keep up with updates and occasionally write your own tools, it’s probably great and fast and rewarding, but the barrier to entry isn’t justifiable to the average joe who just wants to get work done. Also now that were both in our 20s, we’re both at a point where we agree that money is less valuable to is than our time.

I still use blender from time to time as an amateur, and he just dropped 3D entirely. I would not use Blender except on the side if I could make a livelihood off of CGI. Even where it works the workflow is way too tedious, only slightly better than Inkscape (with the advantage of some efficient hotkeys).

3D is not easy to learn
there is no button read my mind and make me a scene!

all soft and blender have a learning curve and needs time to learn

but blender being a real 3D soft for modelisation rigging anim physic = the learning curve is steep!

and blender is improving over time which is very good and nice to see new tools being added all the time!

overall considering the cost it is a very good and will improve over time at no update cost!

happy bl

I disagree with that. 3D is often very intuitive and natural, in a large part because it is the world we live in, and most people growing up with computers are familiar with 3D video games which have mastered intuitive 3D navigation and manipulation.

That doesn’t mean that Blender has to be as easy as Minecraft or SketchUp, but I think those, although very simple, falsify the claim the “3D is hard”. There’s a fair argument to be made that it’s a totally different ballpark, but I don’t believe that there’s a magical line where suddenly 3D stops being easy because it’s too complicated. When you look at game development tools, they often acknowledge this very readily and their 3D navigation tools are just an extension of the navigation verbs used in the actual games they create, and by default they work at a high level of abstraction that is powerful yet easy to grasp. UDK is both more intuitive and more powerful than SourceSDK.

Of course I acknowledge that making a video game is specialized, and these tools are each designed for a very specific workflow. I don’t know if Blender’s design was made with a certain development process in mind but that’s for another discussion.

Blender is like a piano for the eyes. Why do people give up learning to play piano?

-Larry

If this 13 year old kid can learn Blender 3D, you can too!!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/meeperman12/videos

I’m kidding. That kid (Dominick Villano) seems very restless and must be some kind of gifted.

I love Blender now but I gave up on it twice. I decided to buy a pen tablet last year and did some research into which 3D applications have the best best tablet support, Blender was up at the top of the list and it is excellent. However! Blender does have some pretty big quirks, the ‘right mouse button’ select is nothing short of retarded, so is the inverted zoom. Fortunately, these two settings can be changed in the user preferences with out any difficulty. If it wasn’t for those two things I would likely have started using Blender several years earlier. Both times I tried it, I immediately uninstalled it due to enormous frustration over the mouse input. That backwards-ness gives the impression that everything else will be convoluted and wrong but it wasn’t until I decided to get the pen tablet that I chose to put the effort into learning. I’m glad I did, Blender is fantastic and very easy to learn because of all the online video tutorials that have been built by the user community. The recent Blender versions have tools that I wished for in Lighwave3D but never saw and they keep getting better. Also, the fact that the programming interfaces are so completely exposed means that development is not just limited to the official development team. Anybody who wants to program Blender can do so and the results of this are nothing short of spectacular. There are some truly amazing 3rd party add-ons available that greatly extend the functionality of Blender. There are also about a half a dozen different lighting renderers avialable for Blender which a tremendous diverstiy to the look and style of the art people which people can produce. The fact that it’s free and has many tools that even some commercial packages don’t have is really amazing.

I installed Blender 10 years ago and quickly deleted it since I couldn´t figure out the interface. 6 months ago I saw a nice image on Libre Graphics World that was rendered with Blender Cycles. I got curious & installed it again. After weeks of cursing I managed to get over the first steep learning curve & now Blender is on my short list of favorite software. I still think the user interface needs a major update but beeing a 3d hobbyist it´s good enough for me.

@YAFU It’d be nice if these sorts of threads didn’t contain patronizing comments about how “even an X-year-old kid can learn blender!” People come from different backgrounds with different education and experience, patience, and needs. Waving a precocious 13-year-old in front of people’s faces and taunting “what, you gave up you little quitter? You’re not as good as a little kid?” is not only insulting but dodging the point. The kind of person who’s bright and educated enough to put together her own python scripts by the time she’s a teenager doesn’t need to be accommodated.

@Luftmensch, If some people can give examples of his brothers, why I can not give examples of children using Blender 3D?

insulting? Someone talked about “nerd mentality”, “nerds” and “Linux users”? Ok, not you, your brother…

But hey, I think you have missed the part of: “I’m kidding”.

The truth is nothing worth doing is easy,

The most important thing to do, is PLAY!!!

I learned to script by looking at commented examples,

I learned to draw in 3d with autocad, and had relearn everything again to switch to blender,
now that I have autoCad seems almost silly.

Blender has the ability to do just about anything

I have seen it run robots, print in 3d, and have used it to make games from scratch.

the deeper into the rabbit hole you delve, the more coding you learn, and eventually you can write your own tools,

I learned python, I could have just as easily learned C++ and C from the source of blender.

Reverse engineering is a valid method of learning.

For many years since I started using Blender 2-4 (years) I was very ambiguous about it, if it would worth the effort to use it, if it is good enough. I found that when I was a beginner I struggled to learn anything and this disappointment resulted to “drop Blender”.
P.S. Also the feedback I got from non-Blender users was not positive at all that was like purring salt in the wound, but that’s a totally different story…

But because Blender indeed suits my needs and is practical to use, I find no reason to stop using it, the more I use it the more good I become at it. :slight_smile: To tell the truth, if I stop using Blender and go to Any3DSoftware, I will do exactly the same stuff. Nor I would become better artist, neither Any3DSoftware will create everything for me automatically. Only time makes perfect.

I have learned Blender 3D in series of 2.4x that was at age 19 and took 3 years to learn all his guts. Dropped using Blender 3D 2.4x due my university exams etc. Got back in 2.6x to find that was changed 70% but the learned skills are the same even with changes it is nothing to hard to get used too. One problem it is that I have used 3DS MAX R2 at age 14 and it was a pain on eyes and pain to learn and even played with Zbrush Alpha 0.1 when it was only 20 euro ?! Yeah! 20 euro! The only one software I regret not buying it when he was at start!

Kids must be learned the basics of fine art : thinking in forms , drawing in 3d , learning some basic color theory. Second after that they must learn modelling part of Blender 3D and how to model Poly by Poly / Box modelling , after that can be learned texturing , and after texturing can be learned rigging , and so on.

Little steps are big steps!

In time I have learned Blender 3D I have learned music software aka DAW and if Blender 3D it is hard ?! Open Cubase and Ableton or Live … and get prepared to learn “what this mf*** knob do?!”.

I too love Blender, I came in around 2.58? So I was saved the experience of pre 2.5, still learning, ofcourse. I can for sure say, I definitely love a lot more aspects of Blender than I love of Maya(Mostly because Maya have a lot of legacy crap laying around, just to be backwards compatible, if only they were optional :rolleyes:)

Recently however, I made the switch to Maya because the viewport performance in Blender on larger scenes is nothing but horrible for me(despite decent hardware). Hopefully that will change soon considering the GSOC project :slight_smile:

Best regards
//Morgan

i have been using blender for years and it still bugs me that unless you use it all day everyday there are certain tasks that should be simple to do,but you have to google for n hour to remember how to do them. Sometimes I wish thee guy running the ui show would jettison the linux neck beardwe do it our way so tough attitude, and use some normal software and adopt those standards. i think it’s kind of a command line mentality where you expect the user to memorize the entire os. the ui should provide a way for you to figure out how to do something, but oftrn it doesn’t. exmples…

quick how do you delete a hair while combing in particle mode
what are the checkboxes and modes you need to be in to texture paint while in render engine xyz
etc

Blender would not be more difficult to learn than any other 3D app. I am not sure what your plan is, but if your school or you are thinking about setting up a lab for Blender and letting kids have a go at it, you would likely find it equally disastrous with any program.

I think we are all kinda grasping at straws here because we don’t know what your plan is.

But what it boils down to is study habits. People with poor study habits will not do well with any 3D app. But some apps might be more forgiving.

As well, you can have the situation that a user might fumble his way through an easy program to grasp initially, and then, because in reality that student has bad study habits, he/she will hit a wall and not know what to do, or worse not try and push themselves for fear of running into something that would cause them to have to break down and study for real.

That in a nutshell is the entire situation.

It would be wonderful if you could shift the blame to a program’s design, but that is a very weak position. And argued all the time of course. But it is weak and pretty much admitting you are a poor student. It is not a good thing because if you have a problem assimilating data then this will also permeate other ares of life.

How many people come here and ask questions about things that they could have just found out by using Google? Or definitely would know had they read the manual? And it is not just Blender. Other programs particularly the ones that have eduction programs get a lot of students come online with problems that are very basic.

And entire industry is built on this one fact. Someone has to break it down and make it into something that people are willing to experience like a video.

So the problem has two sides. One side is study habits. The other side is good documentation, materials and resources.

So if you would want to have a successful study program (with any 3D app) here is what you would do:

First you or someone would have to be an expert at Blender.

Then you’d make sure you had a good program of materials and resources. The Manual Wiki, tutorials, written and video and so on. A good list of these to hand to refer to.

Then insist that students use these materials to study and not fumble around aimlessly on their own or try like the blind leading the blind to help each other.

Second to the above would be a well laid out program that went in a logical order with learning interspersed with small projects. This is ideal but a more refined approach rather than the first priority.

I have been using Blender since I was 12. It took me a day to learn the basics and create a simple animation(after that, it got harder XD). For what reason? Because I just can’t draw, but I wanted to create things, and Blender gives me that opportunity.
So, thank you Blender!
And why people give up? Lack of spirit, I say. They see a cube and they say “Oh, that’s stupid, not worth it…”. A friend asked me once what program I use and I showed him Blender and he just couldn’t get it! After a week, he comes and says to me that he has found that program called After Effects and it’s much better for animation, in fact, why should i use this cube thingy??? After that, I kept our friendship out of the computer, for the shake of humanity.
People should learn that nothing is easy in this life, but with practice, it can be…