Blender 2.33 Re-enables Game Engine 198
fforw writes "One and a half year after becoming free software, the Blender Foundation has released
a new version of
Blender which finally enables the game engine again.
When Blender became free software. the game engine had to be disabled because SOLID, the collision library was not free software. After SOLID's author Gino van den Bergen changed his mind, Blender has now restored all functionality from the closed-source period."
Reaching back (Score:2, Insightful)
Blender doesn't need a game engine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Informative? Funny/troll! (Score:2, Insightful)
Game engine = worst...idea...ever (Score:4, Insightful)
It was nice having it while it was around.
Re:Great F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Blender can be used to do pretty much anything you want in 3d animation, and has a fantastic set of features and great potential - but it is simply painful to use. It takes days to learn the shortcut keys that are essential for basic editing, especially if you are also trying to use other 3d programs or 2d programs along side it that have their own shortcuts that the artist has to remember too, witout getting them crossed.
Ideally, there should be a visible navigable menu for every command, even if they are nested a few deep, with the shortcut Key written next to the command! Better yet, the shortcuts would be assignable to functions, so you could set up the key mapping to what works best for the artist.
Blender suffers from the same problem that the first CAD I wrote has - only the programmers know all the hotkeys and commands, and they make 100% sense to the programmer, but not neccesarily to the end user.
Eg. I like to work in 3d by basically selecting a point, and draging it in the screen's 2d plane, and rotating the object to a different view if I want to move the point outside the initial plane. Ideally, left dragging would move the point and right dragging would rotate the object. If it was possible to map the input interfaces (ie. mouse dragging/clicking,buttons and keystrokes) to program functions ( eg. rotate target, drag target , scale, rotate, zoom,copy, etc) then I could set it up the way that works best for me in the same way that Blender brilliantly allows you to completely customise multiple views and panels.
The lack of a full undo (ie. multiple steps, on all functions) really holds blender back. I hope this gets done before anything else. It really holds discourages experimentation and steepens the learning curve beause a mistake can screw your model, or cause problems for alignment (eg. no undo for having rotated the view)
Other than that, I think it's great and would be a much stronger challenger to 3d Studio Max if these things were implemented.
Cursor issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Game engine = worst...idea...ever (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and another thing for newbies to learn (Score:2, Insightful)
WTF? Compared to what? Softimage [softimage.com]? Maya [alias.com]? 3D Studio [3dstudio.com]?
Re:and another thing for newbies to learn (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great F/OSS (Score:1, Insightful)
Many projects that are now popular F/OSS were started or was supported by commercial companies
Re:Great F/OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true for every serious modeling & animation package there is. And any other highly specialized software with a million features and a very tight and fast workflow.
Re:Great F/OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that for many critical features in Blender, the UI offers no clue that a particular option might exist, or what hotkey/mouse combination you need to press if you knew it existed, but forgot which hotkey it was. Given Blender's roots - an in-house production tool - this sort of interface isn't unusual. But now that Blender's gone "open source", there's been agreement from Ton and others that the UI is broken and needs to be fixed.
Take a look at Art of Illusion [sf.net] or JPatch [sf.net] for examples of open source applications that are "user friendly" - they support hotkeys, but any important functionality can be reached through the UI. When you are in a particular mode, the status bar at the bottom of the window displays hotkey modifiers and mouse options that are available. (I don't include Wings3D [wings3d.com] because it's pretty much specialized for modelling).
I'll readily that the example programs are currently less capable than Blender (and Art of Illusion is due for a UI overhaul in a few releases), but they show how these sorts of things can be added to the UI, even for complex processes.
And while Blender's made a lot of progress in making the UI better, but it's stalled in the last couple months - especially in critical areas like RVKs. Hopefully, people will get back on track with overhauling the UI.
Re:This is really good news (Score:1, Insightful)
Let this thirty-one year old help you: use that time wisely.
Re:Great F/OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and another thing for newbies to learn (Score:4, Insightful)
You want examples? Let's go.
- Mesh editing is cumbersome and utterly counter-intuitive. This is caused mostly by the focus on hotkeys rather than menus, and also by the lack of a manipulator of any kind. Once you learn the hotkeys, it's STILL a chore to model because the way that most of the tools work is so far from the way they work in nearly every other package.
- Having separate panels for materials and textures is a joke. The two need to be combined and refined.
- I, like a lot of people, prefer to model in one large window as opposed to several smaller ones. This is almost impossible in Blender due, again, to a lack of manipulators.
- No real undo. This is fucking pathetic, really. There is no good reason whatsoever to not have an undo in a program like this. Inexcusable. The addition of a mesh editing undo is good, but it's not enough.
- What the hell is that stupid bullseye thing? It is completely useless. Get rid of it, and make the left mouse button usable for something other than clicking the damn buttons.
- Why aren't object created at either the origin or where I click and drag, like every other package ever made ever? Just to be different?
- Speaking of which, why the hell would I want to create an obect that's aligned with the screen? I don't want to have to change my damn screen position every time I need a new object.
I can't think of anything else at the moment, but those are some starting points. My ideas for fixing them (in order)...
- The mesh editing needs to either be like 3ds max or like Lightwave. Right now it's trying to be both. This does not work. Pick one and stick with it.
- A completely new materials panel is in order. If I thought anyone would listen to me, I'd design the damn thing myself. Implementation would have to be carried out by someone else, which is why I doubt anyone cares about my input.
- Add a manipulator. Simple enough.
- Implement a real undo, for fuck's sake. If it's proving difficult, give me some real technical reasons and not just "It's hard to do." Programming is tough, no matter what you're doing, and practically evey program ever devised has an undo of some kind. Fix it.
- Get rid of the bullseye so the left mouse button can use the manipulator.
- Give users the choice of either creating objects through click and drag, or at the origin.
- This point ties in with the previous one.
Is this sensible enough? Or are you going to bitch more because I said fuck a few times? I'm not ignorant, especially when it comes to 3d program interfaces. I can jump between programs with ease because they all subscribe to the same basic philosophy and it's all a matter of figuring out where the tools are stowed. Blender is trying too hard to be different, and it's hurting itself in the process.