

Blender 2.63: with BMesh (N-sided polygons) - steren
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.63

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exDM69
If you have used Blender some time in the past but you did not like it, you
_really_ should give it another chance. Blender has improved a lot and keeps
on improving very quickly.

The biggest change is the completely new UI in Blender 2.5. It's very nice and
my favorite feature is the good keyboard accessibility. All actions in the
editor should now be available through the UI and the keyboard, with helpful
tooltips and all.

That being said, I think it's time for me to go and grab a fresh blender
source from their repos and take it out for a spin.

~~~
nnnnni
I was pretty good with Blender BEFORE the UI change. Now I'm completely lost
=-(

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bumblebook
Heh, it seems the Blender devs just can't win ^^

Back in the day most people said they thought Blender seemed great and
powerful but they just couldn't grok the interface. Now they've tried to fix
that and still people complain about the interface, now saying they preferred
the old one.

I'm not saying you are wrong, just that from the Blender devs perspective it
must seem hopeless.

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terhechte
Blender becomes more and more impressive with each release. The lack of Ngons
was, especially for architects using the software, always a bit of an
annoyance. Now with BMesh, it should be a lot easier to create solid models.
Sidenote, the featureset, UI, and Python-API of blender are so impressive that
we decided to write the level-editor for our upcoming (non 3D) game as a
blender plugin instead of going all the way and writing our own editor. This
saved us a tremendous amount of time, and the editor is really good.

~~~
rollypolly
Did you consider using Inkscape as a non-3D game editor?

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terhechte
A bit, but we used blender before, so we already knew the ins and outs of it's
interface, and we're using Macs and I don't like running apps in X. It's kinda
sad that there's still no production native Inkscape. I know that people were
working on that years ago, but somehow it never went anywhere (or I'm not
smart enough to find it). Is Inkscape also easily extendable?

~~~
dineshk78
Agreed, Inkscape UX on Mac is really bad. The Windows version is much better
in comparison. In my opinion, FWIW, a custom UI toolkit like Blender uses
gives a much better UX cross platform and presumably a lot less maintenance
too.

~~~
terhechte
Yeah, or even Qt, since their UI toolkit is also highly optimized for all
kinds of plattforms. The advantage of the blender approach, of course, is that
the app feels the same on every platform, since it is not bound to platform-
specific UI requirements. So it doesn't end up in an uncanny valley, where it
is kinda like the native UI, but not quite like it.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Don’t forget that Blender’s UI toolkit is extremely well designed. Consistent
user experience doesn’t matter when that experience is consistently poor.

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shiven
This is awesome!!! Blender has been improving by leaps and bounds to be a
credible alternative to commercial software.

Kudos to Ton, Joseph and the entire Blender project team. Ad Astra!

Edit: Check out what BMesh is all about here -- <http://vimeo.com/41114412>

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njharman
Blender is one of my favorite projects. 10 years ago, I was one of the many
who donated (long before Kickstarter was an idea in someone's head) to get the
code base open-sourced. [http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-
foundation/history...](http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-
foundation/history/)

I've always liked the (original) interface. Then again I'm a programmer and a
vim user, not a Photoshop weaned artist.

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orangeduck
BMesh sounds pretty cool. It is a feature which Wings3d (my go-to modelling
package) embraced from the get go, and it sounds like Blender has added many
of the same tools which were fantastic in Wings. Unfortunately Wings has
fallen a little by the way-side so it is great to see Blender pick up this
idea! Perhaps it is about time I had another shot at learning Blender because
it is looking more and more powerful.

~~~
lbotos
On this note does anyone have any recommendations to awesome intro to blender
guides for a non-3D trained person? I've reviewed a few before just wondering
if anyone has suggestions.

~~~
vq
I would recommend starting with <http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-
blender/>

When starting from zero I don't think there exists any Blender tutorials that
can really compete.

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daenz
How does it handle a polygon with 3 coplanar verticies and 1 non-coplanar
vertex? It must internally triangulate the polygon in order to shade, no?

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erichocean
The real important aspect of the new BMesh stuff is that it's a non-manifold
representation. It's crazy to see that level of technology in Blender. :)

[http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Modeling/BM...](http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Modeling/BMesh/Design)

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Tobu
Why O why is there no obvious download link from the release notes! I had to
hover on the top left link, follow blender.org, to find it:
<http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/>

