What things do you like/dislike about Blender?

(Thought this will probably get removed from the normal Blender + CG discussion forum so I added it here.)

What things you like and dislike when working with features in Blender?

1 being the most enjoyable
10 being the least enjoyable

Here’s my list:

  1. Scripting/Logic Bricks
  2. Compositing
  3. Animating
  4. Simulations
  5. Modelling - can get repetitive + tedious
  6. Correctly lighting a scene - Choosing the right lighting can be hard + tedious
  7. Rigging - Seem to always mess this up somehow
  8. Motion Tracking - Super tedious, easy to muck up
  9. Sculpting - I’m terrible at it
  10. Texturing + UV unwrapping - I’m terrible at it

What are your 10? feel free to add different categories and comment on your choices :)!

Hey Thatimster,

cool idea! :eyebrowlift:

And here’s my list: (least --> most enjoyable)

  1. Logic Bricks/Scripting/Game engine
  2. customizable GUI
  3. Freestyle
  4. Baking AO, Normal Map, etc.
  5. Exporter
  6. Texture painting
  7. node-based compositing
  8. works fast <-- works on my old netbook (Intel Atom, 2x1.8 GHz)
  9. Retopology
  10. Sculpting

I haven’t use other 3d software than Blender so I have no point of comparison. I love it, every time I learn something, it’s always clear and logical.
Gui is very nice also, just 2 things against:

  1. After one year of using, it always take me a while to join 2 windows areas. Now I gave up with this feature.
  2. The lack of shortcut for switching between screenset layouts Developers should take a look at Reaper software from Cockos (It’s a Digital Audio Workstation and you can quickly save and load screensets layout with shorcuts! Awesome!).

I have Blender v2.71, and the two things I dislike most about it are-
-they got rid of the stars feature,
-and particle effects aren’t in the BGE.

I love logic bricks, though, and there are so many sculpting and texturing settings, so almost any desired effect can be achieved.

I don’t like how it lags when you zoom in or out in the node interface. That didn’t happen in the previous versions.

Ctrl + Left/Right keys allows you to do that. The info window allows you to edit the layouts (add/delete)

I love everything about blender,

What I have a problem with

Elite_stuckup_attitudes
Negitive trolls
People that think there own corner of blender is more
Important then the rest.

I use every feature except cycles, however I intend to dive into it one day,

Things that could be fixed
Development pipeline - blender needs a custom made software, that is used to build blender

It would include
Git/svn access
Compiler
Text editor
Chat app
And more

The idea, is to be able to open a application, pull down the source, and be ready to compile

people act like I am silly for mentioning this, but who wants to install 3 programs, to do one thing?
the workflow is all ca-jibbered,

Pros

  • Slim, and is available for a mere download.
  • Free of charge!
  • Surprisingly capable compared to commercial alternatives.
  • Good for animation and rendering.
  • Excellent community.
  • Covers all three major OS.

Cons

  • Nightmare to initially understand and use without guidance from video tutorials and the community.
  • Whilst sculpting is surprisingly easy, low poly modelling is very awkward. Blender just needs to be a bit easier to get from A-to-B.
  • Improved documentation would help greatly in overcoming the initial “20 minutes trial” session that prevent many from giving Blender a fair chance.
  • Blender does need a “killer feature” for it to become more widely used. Two ideas would be more focus on game model creation(as its said that Blender makes more sense than Maya LT) or rendering, as Blender seems to be used by quite a few artists together with ZBrush.

Conclusion

Personally, I am happy with Blender and not really bothered with the future so long as the Foundation stays on its current course. If I had to project where Blender is and where it could go, though, I’d say its almost on level with Lightwave and Modo. keeping the pace its been going so far, I see Blender proudly taking its place alongside them. At the very least I definitely see it as an option for game content creation.

Some of the things I don’t like about blender

Cycles doesn’t like amd cards, which I only have amd cards

A bit tedious when you render 10 seconds worth a frams at 60fps and you have set the images to form an avi file

I could list some more but that could be because of my pc specs or I haven’t learned how to use those features

as far as I know blender is the most downloaded and installed 3d software in the world.

things to like

  1. rigging
  2. rigid bodies
  3. drivers

The only thing I dislike is that a lot of the educational material costs money. It’s okay if people want to earn a living though.

Things I dislike,
Blender users when you ask them a question they do not know the answer to. if you ask a question they do not know the answer to. They are likely to tell you it is a stupid idea and you should not waste your time with it.

If you don’t know people than just say so, If you are not motivated enough to do it, than say so. No need to be defensive about it. It is not a mark of shame. Just say so. I don’t need a 2 hour trolling on the topic. I do not need you to use the logical fallacy list as a heuristic checklist. I do not need extreme examples cited. If i’m asking about how hot the stove is. You do not need to tell me that exposure to the sun directly will split my atoms apart. (a semi absurd and sadly a semi close parallel to my experiences with this so far) That does nothing hinder progress. Both for the current task at hand, And for anyone else who may wish to ask a question.

Pro:
So many settings and options!
Con:
So many settings and options!

Seriously, the option that I like the best is the Text Editor
to help keep track of the all of the settings of all the objects!

Is 60fps necessary for an animation? I personally wouldn’t go past 30fps, as I would be adding some subtle motion blur as well. Though I think its a time vs framerate trade off.

Na, me trying to be high end and stupid or a preference I want, one of the two

I miss the stars as well, although they didn’t work properly - if the rendering resolution got increased the star size remained the same.

I like about Blender:

  • free and very capable
  • available for Linux
  • CPU rendering under Linux is about 50% faster compared to Windows (OK, this is thanks to Linux, but still)
  • starting and quitting Blender is fast
  • nice user interface that can be highly customized (I love that you can change the color and size of all fonts; saves a lot of eye strain)

what I miss, or could be better:

  • unable to draw a straight line when painting a texture on a model (maybe this has been added during the past few months?)
  • the undo and redo does not always work properly
  • awkward way of rotating a texture on a model
  • adjusting the amount of horizon and zenith colors visible in the image in relation to each other could be better
  • mirroring an object (flipping it) does not always work
  • the compression of blend files could be much better

I really really dislike the outliner.
For example, grouping several objects, selecting with shift, deleting objects. Why can’t I select the object on
top, then the object on the bottom with shift+click and it would select everything in between. Why can’t I select an
object and press delete to remove it…Etc…It’s painstaking.

You can look forward to Blender 101 then :wink: (a simplified version of blender).

On this at least, the new painting tools that came in for 2.72 has a line mode (selectable in the brush mode menu).

Then you just click on the mesh and drag to wherever.

On the undo/redo, I agree with you that Blender could have a good quality undo manager developed for it, however, I’m not sure if it’s much of a priority unfortunately. Global Undo/Redo at least is basically a hack that stores temporary copies of the .blend file (which is a major reason why it uses so much memory), this was developed for version 2.35 and has barely been touched since then.