Hahahaha indeed a funny article. I recognise what she is exploring, I thought exactly the same when I started with Blender 2.23 ‘What the hack do all those buttons do? and were can I add a cube?’ wish directly turned into a removal of Blender. Afther 2 lessons of 3ds Max on school I thought how much something would cost to have at home and play around with it, and when someone told me that it was ways behind my budget I downloaded blender and forced myself to take the time to learn it, and finally I could afther a few days.

I’m sure she’ll find out it was worth the swet and stress, I’m sure, because she wants to do something with it and that drives the spirit of learning Blender. :)

Hahah, yep… We all remember that =D

I remember the first time after using countless 3D programs with ease, I tried out blender. I thought “WTF!?” All these buttons are in weird places! Strange interface, strange way of doing things =D

Well my first experience was 2.2… then 2.27… then again in 2.37… =P

Then I came back in 2.41 and it was a breeze to work with for some reason, so I’ve stuck with it this time =)

Hmmm…. One piece of advice, don’t give up!

Another piece of advice, buy the book (or print out the online documentation).

And yet another piece of advice, explore: click on all the buttons, hold a mouse button down.

P.S. Almost forgot the best advice of all, check out BlenderNation, Elysium and other online resources to ask others or find out how they did it.

everybody knows it’s sudo killall blender

The great advice and simpathies not withstanding… this is the sort of feed backBlender should be getting about the interface. Not all of the learning curve needs to be this steep. There are other programs that are less organized that are still easier to use(not for free mind you. But time is money as they say).
Still, stick with it and I agree about the video tutorials. Greybeard has some good starter stuff.

LOL, poor thing. I remember being there myself once upon a long time ago. First time I opened Blender there were so many buttons, that I panicked and promptly deleted the whole program. A year later I came back and figured it out.

The thing that helped me the most were the current tutorials of the time and the forums at the old NaN site. Since then I still read every tutorial that comes out and I play with all the buttons every chance I get. The key is to be patient. I seem to remember doing that house tutorial in “Tutorial Guide #1″ like a dozen or more times before I finally ended up with a house.

People would have the same exact “what the hell do I do now” experience if they loaded up Autocad, Illustrator, quark express, or photoshop.

The user interface of Blender is no more complex than any of those those.

“People would have the same exact “what the hell do I do now” experience if they loaded up Autocad, Illustrator, quark express, or photoshop.”

I partially disagree. In my OS (Mac) right click is contextual menu, left click to select. That works for files, menus, and in the vast majority of programs.

Out of the box, in Blender, left click does something funny with the crosshairs, and doesn’t select the square when you first open the program.

In Illustrator, Photoshop and XPress, a tool palate with visual cues is right in front of you. In Photoshop and Illustrator, if you select the paintbrush or pencil tools, you can immediately paint — somewhat intuitive, as if you picked up a wet brush of paint in a kindergarten playroom.

More advanced stuff you would need more help with, but if you just wanted to play with the toy for a few minutes, you would get *somewhere*. There’s “undo” where it is everywhere else in the system. Cut, copy, paste… so any basic familiarity with your OS lends itself to some immediate proficiency in those programs.

No idea about Autocad, but that’s why cad people get big bucks ;)

Blender’s interface may or may not mesh with some gui desktop linux flavor’s standards — but in what program is space bar the key for bringing up a menu? :) Even KDE uses left click to select. Yes you can swap those in preferences for Blender — but guess where those preferences ARE? Who would ever think you have to drop the top menubar down because they’re hidden above the top edge of the screen?

And don’t get me started on not being able to change the keyboard mapping :P :) I love blender; it’s become second nature to me. But it was work, not play.

And for the record, autocad is no harder to learn than blender. Like blender, it does things in a very different way than other programs, but in a way that makes sense within itself.

the fist tut i did (and they were few at this time)was the “animated gear” one. well described, quick and end with a animation.
it was a time before the C key. the 1.72.
i think the old NaN site was easier to find tut a

I read the old Getting Started tutorial from the NAN site and thought “this doesn’t look bad…” Tried it out and in 5 minutes time I was so frustrated because it didn’t seem consistent. Gave it up until I had the summer to work on it because I saw the potential in the classroom. Then I learned “you have to exit Edit Mode BEFORE making another object so they’re not joined together!” That was about 6 years ago. Love it!

Killer Tip: READ…THE…INSTRUCTIONS. Happy Blending!

I have idea….

Like many other people have already said – “I remember that feeling too”.
Because of all the “standard interface paradigms” you get used to being able to pick-up an new program and learn it on-the-fly by playing around inside it (aided by your thorough knowledge of “standard application interfaces”).
But Blender’s interface *is* different…
Since then (like most other people), I found that reading the manuals/tutes/etc was the only way to learn to use it.
Finally, here come my suggestion:
“How about integrating into the main window some sort of *really obvious* link to an intro to using blender tute/guide/etc”?

It would be analgous to a great big (that can be seen from anywhere) flashing neon-lit tourist info sign with map and other key info for visitors who find themselves lost in this strange new town

Yes, forgot to mention: I love the interface as it is, too. Well except the scripts-interface. And that’s because of its crappy API. I allways see how horrible the code must be, which draws a script UI, so I can’t enjoy the UI of scripts.

thats just plain funny

Please don’t dumb-down the UI. It’s perfectly fine…once you LEARN it. Sometimes you have to dust off the old brain and learn a few new things, learning Blender is one of those times. LEARN it, LOVE it. Then, go back to the other applications and realize how clumsy THEY are.

i love the quick blender gui …but,

but what i hate: when the mousepointer moves to to the upper right corner and for an “unknown reason”:)and unfortunely the mouse drops to the floor and s***F**k blender is closed: thanx for using ……
Just a liittle menu or just the need to push two times on the x would help sometimes calm my nerves…
Why is there only a remark whe you push the shortcut ctrl+Q (Quit Blender?)

..of course the most time i know what i do… :)

Hi Terry.
That thing you are talking about is called the blenderhotkeyboard.

Ofcourse you need to read stuff (google) to find out where to find information.
And for most people that’s just to much work. They step into the cockpit of a boeing 747 and start complaining that the interface is so confusing. They’ve driven a car before so it’s all to blaim on the airplane company that they can’t pilot a plane… ;)

So, again, think 3d, and don’t use any of the buttons, they are only there to confuse you.

http://3d-graphic.hachmeister.org/uploads/media/blender_hotkeys.pdf
http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyReference.pdf

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_HotKeys/All

And a list of nice tutorials by Bart:
http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/computers/blender/Blender_Tutorial_List.html

A, yes, then, what are you learning? 3d or Blender?
Seriously. I read she wants to write a best selling poem with the modern incredible design on Open office without ever using the software before, by looking at the interface…
Ofcourse you will have a hard time.
But I find it a very funny piece. And blogged with a healthy attitude.

Since this article was one of the reasons i’ve started my dice-tutorial i think i just _have_ to post a link to it here:

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Hoehrer/Tutorial:_Modelling_A_Cube

I try to cover some of the traps (and their solutions of course) that new blender-users always fall into, but if I missed something just tell me :)

Werner

Ah ha ha ha. It’s called the “Blenderboard” and here is a link:

Blenderboard.gif

I can’t speak for how up to date it is, but the keys I already know look right.

Then there’s baby, which I *want*:

Optimus Keyboard

According to the page it will be “open source” and there will be an “SDK”, so
I’m hoping that means “there will be an open source SDK”, though it doesn’t
quite say that. I will have MANY applications for this tool, of which Blenderizing
is only one.

So I was able to find it, thanks for the hint.

Cheers!

Won’t you just STOP the useless fight over graphical interfaces… now we have those saying it’s totally awesome, we have those saying it’s totally terrible. now… no 3D app will ever be incredibly easy, and will neither have a perfect interface either. instead of fighting over uselessely you should discuss together how to make it better, or write tutorials.

“I doubt that. I’ve tried to learn Blender to about 6 persons and everyone gave up”
:) And this is ofcourse to blaim on the blender interface, not your teaching skills.

“Won’t you just STOP the useless fight … or write tutorials.”
The initial blender hotkey list is by me. I think some amount of people has used it and seen it as a life saver. I’ve taped most of the blender conference and put them online. But there will always be people who want ‘the easy way out’ ie. master a skill by looking at their tool. You are right, it’s to silly to take serious. Gives a funny blog though.

Well this blog and discussion somehow has made me think about this age old debate in a partly new way. Maybe this is old hat to you’all but it strikes me as a division of 2 types of person.

1. Ambitious – expects 3D software to acheive alot, to be deep and technical. Plans to create work over considerable time. Will read ALL docs first, pick the software that meets their requirements and study it on its own “Terms” until very proficient. Thier expectations of the ability of the software are High and expect similar dedication from fellow users\learners.

2. Modest – has a more imediate (specific) goal in mind. Feels that a simple task sould be simple to achieve. Likes to make aleast some progress quickly ie, plonk an object in 3d space and rotate, pan and zoom round it. Much the same way as when entering a new environment, people like to size it up and get comfortable.

One type will gain motivation from feature lists, the other from first impressions.

If you ask me both are valid and the easiest way ahead would be to fork blender, with one version sacrificing efficiency for an easier learning curve. containing more common and simpler interface concepts, big clear buttons, (and loads of point’nclickn hehe) etc.

At the end of the day as long as modest users could make some progress in the first hour, blender would see more use.

“”"
Maybe this is old hat to you’all but it strikes me as a division of 2 types of person.

1. Ambitious – expects 3D software to acheive alot, to be deep and technical.
2. Modest – has a more imediate (specific) goal in mind. Feels that a simple task sould be simple to achieve.
One type will gain motivation from feature lists, the other from first impressions.

If you ask me both are valid and the easiest way ahead would be to fork blender,
“”"

NNOOOO!!!!

Bad idea. The two goals do NOT conflict — this is a false dichotomy. There is nothing about the difficulty of Blender for newbies that is essential to its success for pros. Likewise, newbies don’t want a special dumbed-down version. They see the beautiful renderings by pros using Blender, and they want to get on the path to making them. People are not looking for a separate slow road, they are looking for an on-ramp.

There are two things that are going on here. One is that people have to learn that it’s *normal* to have this kind of experience with a new piece of software.

That was actually R’s point: “It’s okay, we all go through this, it’s not your fault”. That’s really needed, because the minute you express frustration with the interface some bozo will come out and tell you “Well it IS all your fault, because you’re an idiot who thinks it should be easy, and then gets upset when it’s not — go home to your mama you little *girl*” and then starts talking about 747s and how amazingly macho and proficient they are for having learned how to use it (IOW, from their PoV, ‘the harder, the better’).

It’s all about adolescent male psychology. There’s always some bully who’s insecure and has to defeat his own feelings of inadequacy by dumping on the newbie. In an all-male environment, this kind of works, because the the new guy plays ‘low man on the totem pole’, gets angry and tries to prove himself by learning the tough program so he can “show” them “he’s not a *girl*!”. It’s all part of primate psychology and the ‘pecking order’.

But that’s pretty the much opposite of the typical female reaction. They think “Oh these people are all jerks, lets go somewhere else where I don’t have to listen to pissing contests” (if they’re self-aware enough to recognize the problem) or “Oh, it *must* be me, I’m just not smart enough to do this” (if they’re basically insecure about their ability with the computer).

If you pay attention to the way female-dominated groups react to this kind of problem, it’s totally different: They band together in groups and actually *support* each other emotionally when it comes to frustrations. They say “it’s okay we all have to do that, because it’s just hard”. And that makes the woman want to do it, in order to “belong” to the group. For those that didn’t ‘get’ the blog, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t think Ros immediately realized that’s why she needed to write it, but I think that’s what it is. Ultimately, women have different psychological problems when faced with frustration, and they cope with them differently.

(Side point: this can drive guys crazy — I spent about 3 mo working in a nearly all-female office environment in the early 90s, and I nearly needed a straightjacket by the end of it).

THIS is the reason why there’s only 2% women in the pool of free software developers and Gnome is spending money on figuring out why: It’s because the social dynamics of the community are driven by the mindsets of pre-teen boys (some of whom are in their 40s and ought to know better, but that’s another story).

We like to imagine ourselves rational beings, but we do so much on hormones and instinct, even in the high-tech world. It’s an amazing thing to watch, really. (And a little bit of a sad commentary on the human condition, but hey, it apparently worked for our ancestors or we wouldn’t be here today, so try to be philosophical about it).

Anyway, that’s only one response — the way you change the users and the culture to deal with this kind of problem (which is NOT unique to Blender, though at the moment Blender is one of the worst offenders — afterwards I might mention xcircuit, gEDA, Emacs, vi, xfig, anything to do with configuring a Linux server, and maybe even Gimp (though it seems quite comfortable to me now)).

But as for how to improve Blender? Well, the truth is, from what I’ve seen, the hot-key mappings are totally random and illogical, so I can’t really buy the “Oh they’re great” argument. But you still shouldn’t change them, and that’s not because they are any good, but because so many people have already learned them (and there is a degree to which key mappings are doomed to become incomprehensible as they get more complex, no matter how carefully you design them).

Nor is it really all that good an idea to provide multiple methods to do everything — that just makes things really complicated. So the problem becomes, how do you *teach* Blender — or rather how do you set people on the path of learning it for themselves?

The main issue is PACKAGING of Blender. The program needs to lead you to the tutorial right after installation and every time you start it up. Then you provide an option somewhere down in the menus to turn the on-ramp off for experienced user. You see the trick is, you have to be an experienced user in order to turn off the training wheels — isn’t that clever? :-)

People seem to act like UI issues are rocket science, but sheesh, it’s really pretty trivial. You just have to have more empathy and realize what the new user sees. You have to be careful about jargon — don’t use it until you know the person addressed knows it. Which is NOT the same as not using it at all — I find that the most frustrating thing about Windows, because it’s constantly asking you stupid questions or using roundabout phrases instead of the obvious and quick jargon-correct terminology. No, the point is that the system should teach the jargon.

The idea of tutorials, of course, is great. But the existing tutorials do have a tendency to be a bit haphazard about their approach (which tutorial is the obvious starting place for instance?). You have a situation where you have ’1792 hatches, windows, and portholes, but NO FRONT DOOR’.

Consider this — when you open Blender, what is the “big first step”? What’s the key thing to do first?

With Gimp, it’s easy: “click the right mouse button on the picture — everything proceeds from there”. Once you learn that, the system draws you in. You immediately start learning. That was the big insight. Of course, at one level that was a failing, because most people assume they need to click the *left* button. But once you start thinking Unix and Desktop Environments like Gnome, KDE, and CDE, it makes sense — because “right click on the desktop” is where the application menu is. It’s just a different ‘common sense’.

If I’m not mistaken, the closest thing Blender has to this is to realize that it’s really keyboard-centric. You use the mouse for maneuvering, but all the important commands are driven from the keyboard. Plus they have NO logical connection to the key labels (or at least it’s pretty foggy — maybe it makes sense if you’re Dutch). You should realize of course, that this seriously bucks the trend — these days most applications are mouse-centric, and the keyboard goes virtually unused. That immediately sets up a conflict, because you’ve broken a key user expectation.

Also, I’m pretty sure that the version I first used was sensitive to “mouse gestures”. That’s another new concept for most users, so that needs to be explained pretty early. The thing is, you’ve got to explain all this seemingly random stuff that happens when a new users starts trying to use the interface. Unexpected and irreversible results have the effect of causing a new user to “lock up” and become overly cautious. That retards the normal process of exploratory learning.

OTOH, there’s a hidden advantage to these conflicts, because you, as the designer, know that the power users are going to go straight to the keyboard. So you put the newbie-friendly help in the menus, where they expect it to be. And in those menus, and the help they provide, you TELL the new user they should learn the keyboard commands. You also make sure that some things can only be done via the keyboard — that gives them a firm motivation to learn it (otherwise the userbase forks into ‘mouse users’ and ‘keyboard users’ — and you still have an effective fork in the userbase and documentation, which is bad for the future of the software package).

In the end “able to do simple things simply and capable of very complex things” is an achievable UI goal, and Blender is not as far away as you might think. Most of these things turn out to be minor tweaks, not major design changes.

Terry Hancock: I just read your post, and I don’t understand why you think the hotkeys are counter-intuitive. [G] = Grab, [S] = Scale, [R] = Rotate, [F] = “make Face” in edit mode, “Face mode” in object mode,[P] = Play game, [ctrl]+[P] = make Parent, and etc. How does [W] = Boolean? I don’t know, but [B] was already taken for “Border select”. The vast majority of hotkeys are letters related to their functions in English. What more do you want? You just need to memorize the word associated with each key or combo and start thinking it as a second language. I don’t think “Press [G] to move” anymore. I think “Press grab” and my finger moves to the [G] key.

“”"
She wanted to create a 3D portrait of herself similar to the graphics seen in “Ghost in the Shell”. Have you seen that movie and the level of the graphics it contains? Is it even remotely reasonable for a beginner to have those expectations and then, upon failing, blame it on the software’s interface?…
“”"

Uh-huh, and I’ll bet you started learning Blender because you wanted to make cubes and spheres, right?

Come on, everybody starts because they see a really cool picture and they want to learn how. Don’t be dense. The GiTS reference is there precisely *because* it’s unrealistic goal. Sheesh.

“”"
She stated that she had read through a few tutorials. It’s clear that her reading through the tutorials and her attempts at using Blender happened at two separate times. Who here thinks that’s a good idea? What IS a good idea is to actually go through a tutorial WHILE using Blender…duh.
“”"

Well, duh, you are just SOOO smart, aren’t you. I bet you’ve NEVER had this experience, right? You’re always a good little boy who does what he’s told, right? Uh-huh, rriii–gght.

Get real. It’s a story about someone’s learning process. It’s not “excuses”. You guys read so much into this it’s funny. I guess every time you admit to having trouble it’s an “excuse” and every time you have difficulty you have to have someone to blame, and so you figure that’s what everyone else is doing, too. It never occurs to you that someone might just choose to be HONEST.

“”"
Anyway, according to Terry, most opinions here are symptoms of the excessive male macho. So, I guess I’ll go off and quietly neuter myself for being such a bad boy…bad Kernon, BAD Kernon, sit… sit… good boy.
“”"

Sounds like a plan. ;-D

Anyway, I happen to know there are two more installments in this blog series, so I’m really wondering what you’re going to think of the rest of it. ;-D

“Get real. It’s a story about someone’s learning process. It’s not “excuses”. You guys read so much into this it’s funny. I guess every time you admit to having trouble it’s an “excuse” and every time you have difficulty you have to have someone to blame, and so you figure that’s what everyone else is doing, too. It never occurs to you that someone might just choose to be HONEST.”

I wouldn’t exactly call it a “learning process” when you approach Blender like it’s a 3D pinata. Where if you swing at it enough times, you’re liable to bang something out of it. I don’t think anyone’s taking anything out of her post that isn’t there. And the blaming is actually coming from her, not from “us guys”.

3D graphics are a lot more complicated than the average person realizes, no matter what software they’re using. To make her blog more HONEST and relevant, she should try to create her desired graphic in other applications as well and then present the details of her successes and/or shortcomings. Now that would actually be something worth following…

Cheers!

When explaining somebody how to start with Blender.
Say: it’s easy like ABC !?

First tell about the Tab-button (to know difference between object/edit mode is essential!)
Then explain:
A the A-button (select/deselect the dots…)
B the B-button (how to select…tap once or tap twice)
C the C-button ( Center so don’t get lost in space)
D the D-button (Different views of the cube)
E the E-button (Extrude what you select!)
F the F-button (you make a strange Face when in object mode?)
G the Grab button

Space to add new shapes.

The num-pad doing the viewports is also very easy for newbies to understand. And then……..direct them to the Blenderwiki and do the cookieman tutorial!

Don’t forget to tell to save your work because…

You see it’s as easy as the ABC; it took me years to read and write.
Working with Blender since version 2.36 and still not knowing all the buttons……. :)

…ah… rest of my post got itself lost.

Anyway I recall broken had some plans for the UI, I look forward to seeing them, and if new users take to them…
…The only way i learnt Blender was through the books….
…and honestly…will take my hat off and happily munch it the day blender is intuitive to new users…

the first time i opened blender my first thought was that hmm how to rotate the view, then i thought that naah left click must select some thing, so i tried the mmd and it worked, yay i was sooo happy! well, ill wish her good luck with the learning, and no blenders gui IS easy, and wery beautiful, what i cant stand are 3ds max, well maya i can somewhat stand, and xsi is more like: “ok so this is it, and that is that, ok fine, ill go back to blender now!”