I’ve been playing around with Blender on and of since starting this blog, and I must say that I am most impressed with what I’ve found so far.

The biggest problem that I’ve found with Blender so far is that it isn’t the friendliest piece of software in some important areas.

The following list is a semi-conclusive list of pros and cons I’ve found while using Blender,I may be wrong about some things, but these are my perceptions anyway

The Good

Blender is fast! The amount of polygons that it can kick out in it’s interactive renderer is staggering. I’m running an Intel Core2 Duo 2.66GHz with 2GB ram and an NVidia 8600GTS and I can modify a 40k face object with minimal lag.

Blender has modifiers! As a long time Max user, I’ve come to rely on Modifiers and it’s great to see that Blender has competent Modifier stack, it’s not perfect and the list of modifiers definitely needs a bit of a boost, but things are going in the right direction.

Blender has a built in compositor! This is an absolutely fantastic tool. You choose which channels you want to render and it outputs them to your render buffer, then it’s a case of mixing and matching said channels into your final output, all in a neat node-based interface. Everything from remapping textures onto rendered geometry, adding simple rim lighting and Z-Merging to changing object colours, glares, filters and painting onto textures… Max’s Video Post can’t hold a candle to it.

Blender has ZBrush style sculpting! It doesn’t have the ZSpheres or much of ZB’s other features, but the basics are there and they work. After this year’s Google Summer of Code, we’ll have a modifiable base object.

Blender Foundation makes open source movies! Although not a feature in itself, it does foster an environment where new features are added. The latest OSM Blender Foundation was involved in ensured that we have Fast Ambient Occlusion, a great artist friendly tree generation script, better hair and fur support and a gaggle of other features.

Blender has a built in tree generator! It requires quite a bit of artist input, but it yields amazing results. Simple long-shot trees can be created in under 5 minutes.

The Bad

Blender doesn’t have adjustable base-objects! One of my biggest gripes with Blender is the absence of adjustable base-objects. I want to be able to change my sphere’s subdivisions based on the position of a cube after it’s been created. All objects are created then instantly collapsed to their simpliest type (mesh, curve, nurbs, etc.)

Blender’s materials are confusing! Unless you’re using the Node Material editor, working with materials is difficult. I had a problem with displaying textures in the viewport, the guys from the Blender forums at forums.cgsociety.org helped me out (thanks guys), it’s not complex by any stretch of the imagination but it requires steps that I personally think are unnecessary.

Blender’s features are hidden! I significant proportion of Blender’s feature set is hidden from the user and many features can only be access quickly via short-cut keys.

Blender doesn’t have a mature plugin-system! I tried adding a modifier via the API and it proved to be more complicated and messy than it should have been.

Well that’s it for my rant, I hope you guys found this informative.

I would like to thank the awesome guys from #blendercoders for helping me out with getting Blender compiling and running from source. Thanks guys (jesterKing, Genscher, troubled, jaguarandi) You guys rock!

I’ll keep on Blending and perhaps find a practical project to get me going.

Hello everyone, welcome to my first blog post on my own blog.

I’m not a blogger by nature so I’m learning as I go along so please bear with me I’d just like to warn everyone that I am very opinionated, but I guess that counts as a qualification in the blogging business

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my use of open-source softwares to replace the proprietary ones I have been using so far. I like the idea of open source, but certain OSS programs have fallen short in certain aspects, but the three programs I intend to learn and hopefully master have reached a maturity that allows them to seriously contend with their proprietary counterparts.

Blender 3D - Anyone that knows anything about me knows that I’m a 3D Studio Max nut, I enjoy the tools, the scripting, the modifying, etc. But something about Blender intrigues me. So I’ve decided to give Blender a really good go, there is something very inviting about a piece of software that can be modified to your heart’s content. I would like to equal and hopefully exceed my expertise in Blender that I enjoy with Max.

Inkscape - This is a piece of software that has impressed me very much. I enjoy designing logos and other vectorised images in here. I can’t wait to get my hands on the animation section. It may never have all the features that Adobe Illustrator has, having self imposed limitation of sticking to the SVG standard and what it can do, cunningly expanded with clever internal techniques, but I still have high hopes for this useful app.

GIMP - A real diamond in the rough, but still needing some work before it can fully compete with Adobe Photoshop as far as user friendliness is concerned. I have high hopes for the GIMP UI redesign project.

That’s enough waffling from me. I hope that all you readers will enjoy my journey, and I hope to inspire and be inspired by you guys as well.

Thank you for reading