Update Hexagon.

pming

Hiya!

Update Hexagon to a v3. Or just accept the inevitable and just sell the dang thing to someone who will continue improving it! (but not Autodesk!...for all that is good in the world...NOT Autodesk!)

Yeah, I know...pipe dream and all that. But man, Hexagon is, by far, my favorite modeler. It just sucks that it's so dang unstable nowadays! :( I even just bought Silo a week or two ago, hearing it was kinda-sorta-simiar-'ish to Hexagon. I tried the demo for a while and came to the same conclusion. However...it's also fairly unstable! :( And...it's just not as 'fast' as Hexagon for me in terms of modeling. Hexagon just "feels right" to my brains particular way of thinking about 3d.

...*sigh*...

^_^

Paul L. Ming

bobbbjmbnklbhjklbgjkh

I too fussed with Hexagon for some time until I finally caved and went with Blender. If i had to make a complaint it would be that it updates TOO often. I don't always have time to learn a new function before it gets supplanted by another advance. Blender has been rock solid for me on both my work and home graphics stations.

pming

Hiya!

Yeah, Blender. I remember starting to try and use it waaaaay back when it was still owned by NaN and used as the primary 3d package for the NeoGeo (yes, I'm old...).

The biggest complaint that "non-newbies" have with blender is it's GUI/Hotkey set up. It's getting MUCH better nowadays, and I'm still customizing my hotkeys just about every time I fire it up, but it's slow going. I still have *no* idea why the main Blender coder dudes are so freaking reluctant to work on the GUI...or at least open up some of the stuff that isn't "customizable" (e.g., I want X, C, and V to select my Translate, Rotate and Scale widget; currently, you can't hot-key those). If the blender powers-that-be would just swallow their fricken' pride and admit that the "other programs" (Softimage, Maya, Cinema4D, Hexagon, etc) have standardized layout/hotkey/workflows for a reason (e.g., because *it works well*), I have no doubt in my mind that Blender would be a contender against virtually ALL 3D packages (excepting the really niche ones, like Houdini or ZBrush). They REALLY need to listen....seriously... to that guy who did a huge video log of the problems with, and how to fix, the Blender interface. Andrew Price?

EDIT: Found them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYiiD-p2q80
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIedljapuz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWacQrEcMHk

I guess I have a love <--> hate relationship with Blender. Still. I think I'm stuck in a bad relationship...but keep going back for more because the idea of free, group-owned, and constantly updated is just so-o damn *sexy*!! Especially when it dresses up like Softimage or Hexagon!! :)</p>

^_^

Paul L. Ming

bobbbjmbnklbhjklbgjkh

Have you tried it since the great 2.5 update? The gui had an enema and is a lot better now. It's not perfect, but much more understandable
and lots faster to get familiar with. I use two monitors and have a number of pallets open and hate having to close them all separately after each session. I make an ass of myself in the Blender developer forums whining about it and hope that they change this....even if it's only to shut me up.

pming

Hiya!

Yuppers...as I said, I've been having this dysfunctional relationship with Blender since waaaay back when (1998 I think). The last few updates have made leaps and bounds into the realm of "more easy to use". The biggest problem(s) I have with blenders UI is that nothing seems to be "together". When modeling, for example, you have to move your mouse all over the screen constantly in order to choose various things you want to do (select Edges, left side for what to do, right side to add modifier, left side to modify selection, bottom to choose Polygon, right side to choose adjustment, back to the far left to do something else....etc).

Now, you can learn hotkeys...which speed things up considerable. However, with Windows (most folks use it, lets face the facts), I would expect that if have my object selected and hit Crtl-C then Ctrl-V I should have just Copy/Pasted, right? Nope. Not in Blender. Heaven help you if you want to copy text (say, names or numerical values for exact specifications) from *anything* into Blender; blender has a completely different and separate "clipboard". Meaning Blender doesn't read what's on the OS's clipboard. You have to use Shift to it, and the mouse cursor has to _actually be directly OVER where you want the paste to go_ or it doesn't work.

That's the kind of work-flow killer that gives Blender such a horrible rep for UI and ease-of-learning.

With a few specific add-ons, scripts and themes (and heafty doses of my own changes) I've *almost* gotten to the point where I can model relatively quickly in Blender...for most things. Once I need to do something that is called, say, "Chamfer" in pretty much every other 3d package out there, however, I spend five to twenty minutes searching, hitting the internet, watching videos, etc. in order to find out (A) if Blender even has it, (B) what Blender has decided to call it, (C) where to find it in the UI, and (D) any hoops I have to jump through in order to actually even be *able* to use it (e.g., "You have to have an object that is all quads, no edges can have more than 3 vertexes on it, and the object can't have a Subdivision Modifier applied to it"... that kind of thing). I'm dreading the day I finally feel comfortable with Modeling and have to move on to, say Texturing! I'm sure that half the hot-keys I have learned or modified will no longer apply when "UV'ing and Texturing". That seems to be the modus operandi of Blender ("When modeling, use Alt-H, but in UV mode it's Shift-Q, and when in Node view, it's Ctrl-Alt-5, and you can't do it in Animation mode"... ;) ).

*sigh* I just wish Hexagon got even a tenth as much love as Blender does. :(

^_^

Paul L. Ming

nicstt

pming said:

Hiya!

Yuppers...as I said, I've been having this dysfunctional relationship with Blender since waaaay back when (1998 I think). The last few updates have made leaps and bounds into the realm of "more easy to use". The biggest problem(s) I have with blenders UI is that nothing seems to be "together". When modeling, for example, you have to move your mouse all over the screen constantly in order to choose various things you want to do (select Edges, left side for what to do, right side to add modifier, left side to modify selection, bottom to choose Polygon, right side to choose adjustment, back to the far left to do something else....etc).

Now, you can learn hotkeys...which speed things up considerable. However, with Windows (most folks use it, lets face the facts), I would expect that if have my object selected and hit Crtl-C then Ctrl-V I should have just Copy/Pasted, right? Nope. Not in Blender. Heaven help you if you want to copy text (say, names or numerical values for exact specifications) from *anything* into Blender; blender has a completely different and separate "clipboard". Meaning Blender doesn't read what's on the OS's clipboard. You have to use Shift to it, and the mouse cursor has to _actually be directly OVER where you want the paste to go_ or it doesn't work.

That's the kind of work-flow killer that gives Blender such a horrible rep for UI and ease-of-learning.

With a few specific add-ons, scripts and themes (and heafty doses of my own changes) I've *almost* gotten to the point where I can model relatively quickly in Blender...for most things. Once I need to do something that is called, say, "Chamfer" in pretty much every other 3d package out there, however, I spend five to twenty minutes searching, hitting the internet, watching videos, etc. in order to find out (A) if Blender even has it, (B) what Blender has decided to call it, (C) where to find it in the UI, and (D) any hoops I have to jump through in order to actually even be *able* to use it (e.g., "You have to have an object that is all quads, no edges can have more than 3 vertexes on it, and the object can't have a Subdivision Modifier applied to it"... that kind of thing). I'm dreading the day I finally feel comfortable with Modeling and have to move on to, say Texturing! I'm sure that half the hot-keys I have learned or modified will no longer apply when "UV'ing and Texturing". That seems to be the modus operandi of Blender ("When modeling, use Alt-H, but in UV mode it's Shift-Q, and when in Node view, it's Ctrl-Alt-5, and you can't do it in Animation mode"... ;) ).

*sigh* I just wish Hexagon got even a tenth as much love as Blender does. :(

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Shortcuts are the way to go in Blender; learning them allows for much faster modelling process as hand on mouse manipulates verts and the other hand hits the multitude of hot-keys; it is a steep learning curve though.