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Thread: is blender is good for newbies

  1. #1
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    is blender is good for newbies

    anybody tell me is blender software is good for fresher or is there any other software available in the market ?

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    Honestly? No.

    In regards to the modelling side of 3D, I am a novice, and I find 3Ds max far, far easier to learn than Blender.

    Max is powerful and intuitive, fairly quick to pick up and get a grasp of 3D modelling, with a nice workflow.

    Blender is hideous, the interface is horrible, the workflow is horrible. The only good thing about it is it's free, and fairly lightweight/fast, but it's not even close to being as good as Max.

    I even prefer Lightwave to Blender to be honest.

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    I forgot to say, the version of Blender I have is 2.49. There is a newer version avaialble (possibly still beta?) - that is supposedly significantly different, and better.

    So it's worth a try, seeing as it's free, but if it's anything like the 2.49 version, then it's not even close to being as good as Max.

  4. #4
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    I concur with rumblesushi, 3Ds Max is far easier to use than Blender. (even though on first inspection it may look more complicated)

    Swift3D was the first 3D suite I ever used, I was able to learn fairly quickly. It obviously has the benefit of easy flash integration.

    If you are completely new to the 3D scene I'd suggest having a go of the free version of Google Sketchup, it's easier to use than any of the other ones that have been mentioned. The push/pull and follow me tools that Sketchup is famous for translate well to the extrusion and lathe tools in other suites, so the techniques you'll be learning won't go amiss.

  5. #5
    Senior Member bluemagica's Avatar
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    Well when it comes to 3d modeling, especially poly-modeling, Maya is the fastest and best way to learn. I am a 3d modeler, and I have experience with Max, Maya and blender, and blender is the hardest of the three. but blender being free, has a pretty good community behind it, and there are numerous tutorials out there, so the learning won't be that hard, and once you get into it, all 3d softwares are more or less the same.

    Well if you are just looking to learn 3d easily, I would suggest "wings3d", or "3d canvas", it is a good editor with drag-n-drop modeling, good for beginners, and it is closer to real 3d modeling than softwares like google sketchup! Heres a list of some free softwares, you might wanna check out. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/25-free...ould-not-miss/


    PS: If you are a student, try visiting: http://students.autodesk.com/
    Last edited by bluemagica; 08-14-2010 at 03:20 AM.
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    blue - do you have a portfolio or examples of your work?

    I'm surprised you say Maya. Almost everyone in the industry (3D modelling for games) that I've talked to say that Max is superior for modelling, and that Maya is better for animation etc. Though of course Maya is the second most used application for modelling in games industry, so it must have merit in the modelling side of things too.

    I'll give Maya a try, and I know that a lot of people sing the praises of Modo.

    What Ork says is true too, at first Max seems overwhelming. More than pretty much any other app, it just has an obscene amount of "stuff", so many options, menus, gadgets, ways of doing things etc. You have to put in a decent amount of work to learning it before it all clicks into place, but when it does, it's a brilliant piece of software, powerful, easy to use, with a fast workflow.

    My only criticism of Max is that it's pretty slow, actually really slow on anything but a beast of a computer (Max 2010 anyway) - and it tends to crash a lot too. Luckily it has a 5 minute autosave function though, which is good.

  7. #7
    Senior Member bluemagica's Avatar
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    Well I am kindof building my portfolio for when I get out of school, so there's nothing on the web at the moment....


    Anyway, yeh Max is really good especially for creating detailed models, but for some reason, I find Maya a lot easier and faster for making polygon models.....not only can you create low poly models of cars, people e.t.c very, very fast, the rigging and animation can be done very smoothly too. In Max I personally find attaching bones, and then creating custom controllers, pretty cumbersome. As for the interface, Maya is a lot cleaner than Max, with the most common tools you are gonna use spread right in front of you. The easy dynamic menu always changes itself to help the work you are doing, and the well thought keyboards shortcuts make life a lot easier. To me, for modeling Maya, and for detailing Z-brush are the best tools......but well, people like me tend to be biased towards the tools they frequently use, so don't just listen to me, and give Maya a try yourself.


    For a beginner, maya is the perfect tool to start with, it has very low learning curve, since you don't need to go through all the menus to find the tools you need, if you want to do a poly model, just click on the polygon model tab, and the common tools you will need are laid in front of you. If you want to animate, then too all the tools are right under the animation tab.......And once you learn Maya, you are already using an industry recognized tool.
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  8. #8
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    i think so, for i am fresh and learning this now.

  9. #9
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    I personally find blender has one of the worst IDEs imaginable, i find it extremely unintuitive. I know many feel the same, but on the other hand i also have a few artist mates who got used to it quickly and love it, so its one of those love it or hate it things since its so very different in its UI than many other tools.

    If someone uses a 3d tool only for flash content i´d suggest him going with swift3D or 3D Max, mostly because swift3D is easy to get into and has very tight flash and also papervision integration and 3D max is the powerful big brother companion to that, allows to do way more but is also way more complex and takes longer to get into but is one of the industry standards so good to learn and seems like next to swift3D also what´s favorited among those doing 3D stuff in flash so you´re likely to find most reference and help content on that.

    Once its not just about using it for 3D content with flash i´d base my decision more on what kind of things you want to do with your 3D tool and inform myself which 3D package offers best deploy/integration options for that.
    Some Packages like blender, Maya and Max for example are used more in game dev and then there some of them have better import or export options for various engines and other ways to deal with the created content.

    If you do more prerendered movies than games for example then the focus turns more towards which has the better modeling tools, renderers etc than what allows better export of models with animations for example. So yeah, gotta decide some based on what you want to do some, too.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Ray Beez's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rumblesushi View Post
    I'm surprised you say Maya. Almost everyone in the industry (3D modelling for games) that I've talked to say that Max is superior for modelling, and that Maya is better for animation etc. Though of course Maya is the second most used application for modelling in games industry, so it must have merit in the modelling side of things too.
    How recent is your info? I've been told that Maya has surpassed Max.

  11. #11
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    I'm surprised you say Maya. Almost everyone in the industry (3D modelling for games) that I've talked to say that Max is superior for modelling, and that Maya is better for animation etc. Though of course Maya is the second most used application for modelling in games industry, so it must have merit in the modelling side of things too.
    Where did you get that info from?

    I'd have to disagree with that.
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    Polycount. Seemingly half of the guys there are professionals working in the games industry as 3D artists/modellers. They say Max is the most used and the industry standard, and even some statistics were posted (pretty sure from 2010, if not then 2009) showing Max to be the most used application in the industry with Maya second.

    A lot of the regular posters there are not only pros but 10 year veterans of the industry, so I believe them.

    What part do you disagree with exactly hooligan?

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    Here is a post from a guy called MoP on polycount, one of the admins, who I think has been working in the industry for many years.

    PredatorGSR: I don't agree that Maya has significantly better UV tools than Max. The UV editing integration is way better in Maya (Max using a modifier for UV editing is just weird and inefficient), but the actual tools you can use for editing UVs are more full-featured, even out-of-the box with no plugins/scripts, and generally faster to work with in Max.

    If you already have some experience with Max, then go with that if you can. A significant portion of the games industry uses Max, and an almost-as-significant portion uses Maya too, so either one will set you up well for any future work.

    Regardless of application, modelling is modelling and UV mapping is UV mapping, if you know the theories and best practises then you will be able to work in any application as soon as you figure out where all the buttons are.
    And here are 3 Max Vs Maya threads. As I said, it seems Maya is a close second in the games industry, but Max IS the most used, and the general consensus seems to be that Max beats Maya for modelling, and Maya beats Max for animation. Some people still prefer Maya for modelling though, or at least consider it equal, but not many people seem. I can't find the actual stats someone posted though.

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showt...&highlight=app

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52652

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showt...light=max+maya

  14. #14
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    I guess its one of those Mac vs PC things because I've been working with 3d for quite some time now and I have the opposite impression.

    From what I've seen and read most CG movies I have seen produced are with Maya. Most leading game studios I've seen use Maya. I'm pretty sure Square Soft is one of them among others.

    ILM use their own version of maya and so do pixar and I even think that Avatar was modeled in Maya. I remember reading an interview with the lead molder somewhere.

    I also see a lot of institutions train in Maya and not 3d max and jobs being for Maya. I frequent polycount and I see users mostly using Maya and Zbrush combination. But this is what I've been seeing and reading but you seem to be seeing differently. So I guess its one of those differences of opinion. Like which platform is better for video editing.
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    Blender is powerful and free. But you will need quite a few hours to get up to speed. The interface is far from intuitive, but it is great once you know it. If you take the time to learn it you will have that time back many times over when using it.

    I've been working a lot with Cinema 4D too. It costs quite a bit, but the interface is much quicker to learn.

  16. #16
    Senior Member bluemagica's Avatar
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    Guys, Max vs Maya is a old war, and it is kind of pointless continuing on it. The topic starter wanted to know if blender is good to start with, and I think it has already been answered : Blender is good only if you are willing to spend a good deal of time in learning it.

    Anyway:-
    Code:
    BLENDER:-
    Advantages:
    1) It is free
    2) Built-in support for making 3d games using python
    3) Huge community with many tutorials and scripts to help get started
    
    Disadvantages:
    1) It has a non-standard interface and is very hard to get used to without guidance.
    2) It's rendering capabilities are not as good as big-budget softwares, but it is more than enough for games.
    3) It is not a industry standard (..yet).
    
    
    
    3DS MAX:
    Advantages:
    1) Pretty standard tools and interface.
    2) Very good for making architectural models, and game levels, basically things which need realistic measurements.
    3) Is a industry recognized software, and also one of the most used softwares for modeling.
    4) Built in scripting. You can create a game with it, if you put enough work.....
    
    Disadvantages:
    1) Animation support is not that good considering games platform. Animating and exporting animations as groups is a pain compared to Maya, and you will need this a lot if you plan on controlling animations via code, and I don't mean simply syncing two skeletal animations.
    2) There are many tools, but they are spread around a bit, and when beginning you will often have to search through the menus to find the right tool for the job.
    3) CgFX is not that good, and also photo-realistic rendering can be quite daunting.
    4) Quite costly.
    
    MAYA:-
    Advantages:
    1) Industry recognized tool, and highly used both in game and CgFX fields.
    2) Well organized tool-set, and easy to learn interface.
    3) Creating low-poly models then converting to nurbs, or exporting and fine-tuning in Z-brush is a breeze.
    4) Great support for rigging, animation and exporting the setup for games.
    5) Various dynamic effects, with visual linking editor and loads of useful tools.
    6) Great for lighting and rendering photo-realistic images and scenes.
    
    Disadvantages:
    1) Making any sort of architectural design is going to be a huge pain, if you are planning on utilizing real life measurements.
    2) The dynamic menus may seem unintuitive and cluttered to some. (But I personally find them very useful)
    3) It is not as easy to create custom tools and helper scripts as in some of the other softwares on the market.
    4) Very costly tool, compared to other job-specific alternatives.
    Well nowadays, both Max and Maya belong to Autodesk, and thus the difference between them is slowly blurring....
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  17. #17
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    hooligan, that's weird, I also frequent polycount, and it seems most of the people there use Max. There was even a poll there asking which app you use, Max came first and Maya second.

    What area of 3D do you work in by the way?

    I have no idea about the film industry 3D, I'm talking purely games industry. I know rockstar and several other big dev studios use Max. I remember one studio using Maya, as they gave a talk on how they used Maya as their level editor too, with a custom exporter/importer.

    Also I don't want it to seem like I'm saying Max is better, because quite simply I haven't used Maya. But the general consensus does seem to be that Max wins for modelling and Maya wins for animation, at least on polycount. Look at the threads I posted, or any Max vs Maya, or which app is best thread.

    In fact I'm going to give Maya a go purely for animation, which I still need to learn.

  18. #18
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    Yeah understood everyone has their points of view and its one of those arguments no one will win. Although I haven't shown many facts. I guess I've been using Maya so long its hard to see what it cant to. I used to do the modeling/uv mapping and animation for a web company but now days its just casual on my own projects.

    Best bet for anyone starting out with 3d is to try get your hands on some training dvds.

    http://www.digitaltutors.com/09/index.php
    http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/

    Are 2 great places to start with most 3d packages.
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  19. #19
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    Have you done any modelling for games hooligan?

  20. #20
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    3d Max used to be the most used for games because of its easy to use interface and way of working. But if you go for detailed modelling and texturing then maya will be better. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I use both maya and max. For motion graphics and things like environment modelling I would prefer max. For Character modelling and Other Organic and detailed modelling I would definitely prefer Maya. You can start with any one. Both are very good in their own ways.

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