Blender Foundation has announced the release of Blender 3.3 LTS, the latest version in its long term release branch.
New features include a new system for grooming hair that uses a new Curves object that supports Sculpt mode and Geometry Nodes; expanded Geometry Nodes with support for UV unwrapping, shortest path, and new primitives and utilities; better performance for Grease Pencil which can now also calculate light and shadow contour lines, specify object priority, and received improvements to silhouette detection; better Library Overrides management; new features in Video Sequencer; modeling, and UVs; faster sculpting in EEVEE; updates to the user interface; Cycles support for AMD Vega graphics cards and the new Intel Arc GPUs; and much more.
To see a full list of what’s new, visit the release notes.
There are a couple of nice things in this release, but by far for me the most interesting developments for blender that are brewing in the developer.blender.org discussions, are related to USD, there is mounting interest in integrating a complete USD workflow with layers, referencing, variants, etc. Also a Hydra viewport and materialX, best thing is that most is already developed by AMD, the discussion is how to integrate it natively, we could start seeing this as soon as Blender 3.4 or 3.5, very exciting times!
Yes that is good, even very good if they accomplish it as a central part of Blender
But Blender is still the most unfriendly of DCC maybe excluding Houdini due to its peculiarities. They really have to make another jump with interface.
how so?, I mean I’ve used them all and nowdays blender seems pretty easy to pick up to me, other than qwert everything seems pretty standard UI wise, it has a good outliner, intuitive right click menus and customizable interface, it has a pretty standard and easy to use node interface, it has contexts where all works, maybe it is that I’m used to it, but even guys that have worked with maya for a while start using blender at the studio and in a week they are up and running, in a month they preffer a lot of the goodies it has by default, maybe this UI notion has just stuck frozen in time from the 2.7 days? I don’t know, it’s maybe something I’m not seeing but we used to be 3ds Max based, it tooks us more than 2 years to completely make the switch and nowdays Blender and Houdini have us completely covered and working pretty efficiently with absolutely no problen in getting new team members up to speed (on th eblender part mostly, we usually don’t get new people for houdini).
By the way, something pretty awsome we could do with blender was to make a google cloud deployment using OpenCue, this way we can make our own cloud based renderfarm that is insanely cheap (by cutting the middle man like rebus) and since we had no hoops to jump with licensing doing the deployment was very easy.
I am not much upset with non qwerty but the non ALT use in viewport unhelpful . That said my main complain is what not exists. Why not double click to select a edge/point/polygon ring is it patented?
Important things to learn should be defined beforehand as default.
There are command all over place. The n panel, i get back to it below. if you select a collection you can’t see what objects you selected you have to RMB.
The the whole schizofrenic: you scale one way you have options that don’t exist if you scale another way like with gizmo.
Then we have the coordinates complication with 3 places to add coordinates!
Editor, N panel. Current command panel that you can’t go back too.
and some work for some stuff, other work for other stuff. it is a complete disaster.
Also why having to enter “edit mode” and not seamless go there if you click a point, edge, polygon key?
All this is very bad business.
I don’t know, again, I’m not saying your complaints are invalid by any means and by no means I’m trying to “defend” or “attack” any software, I do seem to read some of these complaints a lot and in my opinion they are more about the software not being like the softwere they are used to than it being “schezoprenic”, I like moving with ctrl and shift personally, and I can’t remember how it was in max but it was not like maya either, the difference in use is so minnimal that I think the complaint could go the other way around, I like using just one button on the mouse and not having to switch between multiple ones ore two at the same time to scale OMG 😉 see what I’m saying, it’s the same concept just a different execution.
I remember comming from Max in Maya it was confusing to me having the properties pannel, the floating propperties pannel and the chnnel box all displaying the same thing, but this is very simmilar to the n pannel issue you are mentionning, now what I can say about it is that if you ctrl + space in the viewport and get into full screen inmersive mode you can wight paint or sculpt using this pannel and is very comftrable, it also helps a lot when you want to have tool settings on one pannel and let’s say contraints on the other, kind of like channel box and propperties 🙂
Current command panel that you can’t go back to, I’m at a loss here, sorry I don’t know which one this is.
Regarding edit mode, as far as I know, in every software you have to go from object mode to “edit mode”, I honestly can’t see the difference, if anything, to paint weights in Maya or max is a whole other mode and interface, and the whole process is destructive if you change vertex count (or it used to be, it is for blend shapes at least), in max you have to press 1 to 5 to get edit mode, in maya I honestly don’t remember but you have to press something to edit points, in blender you press tab and you are there too it’s kind of similar unless I’m missing something.
now, these are some maybe valid but very very subjective complaints, at least they are specific, but if the specific ones are something to go by, I could say that “some work for some stuff, other work for other stuff. it is a complete disaster” might also be on stuff that is simply not exactly like the software you are using, and not something that is inherently wrong with blender. I mean there is probably nothing wrong with that software but if the argument is blender is not it, then yeah you are absolutely right.
there are some very valid complaints about blender, I have some of my own, but usually this very subjective type is the kind of complaint I see online.
This kind of complaint can be thrown at any software if you come from another one and I feel deiminishes what could be a productive conversation that helps improve the software.
I could easily say that paying for a 3Ds Max lic to get the same as in blender for free could be very bad business, but I understand that software has to be developed and that if you are paying for it is actually giving you some value so “why are you not free” might not be a very constructive criticism.
“Current command panel that you can’t go back to, I’m at a loss here, sorry I don’t know which one this is.”
When you create a cylinder a panel appears in left bottom side corner of viewport with how much size, number of sides etc.
That panel is the only way to move a pivot by coordinates for example, you cannot do it in N panel nor in editor panel. So there is 3 places in Blender to put coordinates. Other softs have one place to put coordinates to.
In Softimage i just need to click in point, edge, poly key and i edit the object. I don’t need to click editing mode+point/edge/poly.
Ah yeah I see, the lightwave/modo like panel 🙂 yeah that is destructive (non procedural), and it has it’s uses, just as in modo it’s meant for modeling on the go, but I don’t use it much, if I need proceduralism I just use the new primitives or operations on geometry nodes, there you can let’s say make a cylinder and go back to it’s properties just like in soft, Maya, max and houdini, the pace of development has been frankly astounding. Again I’m not trying to defend a software per se, I’m just trying to point out that maybe blender’s discussion has been kind of frozen in time and most workflows are shared with other softwares, it’s just a matter of coming into blender not looking for exactly the same workflow you used to have.
I am also not attacking the software that keeps improving all the time. My point is the they should make a jump in usability just like they have done with 2.8. Right now it do not feels an integrated logic experience instead it feels haphzard.
But this is my point, personally and in the sampling I can do of artist at my company I can tell you that after a couple of weeks usability is not only no longer a complaint but it is in many cases preferred, there are so many things that are just well designed that I feel the complaint has to do with how the software used to be, in the end maybe is personal preference, and that is ok, but going the extra step of saying is badly design when these issues could be raised just as well with other software seems a bit unfair. I would tell you that if you make someone at our studio work with Maya’s history, hypergraph or weight painting interface they will go nuts, it’s a matter of having a personal workflow you are efficient with, I love Houdini, it’s my software of choice, but I can see why almost nobody at the studio uses it, the same way I miss stuff there from blender like being engaged with a tool as soon as you press the shortcut, that is super smart and saves you sooo much time, but you need to get used to it, it’s fair to not like it, I feel it is a bit unfair to say it is bad or haphazard when exactly the same could be said about every 3D software out there
Hey AlexS,
Not trying ot hijack this thread here, and sorry for the shameless plug, but have you tried Bforartists? https://www.bforartists.de
Bforartists is the Blender fork that improves the UI. We cannot fix everything. The tools and the workflow has to remain the same to stay compatible with Blender. But we have improved quite a few things at the UI over the years. Like entering the modes with hotkeys. hotkey free navigation with just the mouse, left aligned text, a more colorful UI, and so on. The changes goes into the thousands.
Kind regards
Reiner
Thanks Tiles
Congratulations to the release. Again lots of useful new tools 🙂
Are there any plans to add something like “Surface constraint” in Edit mode?
There are a couple of ways to do this, either by surface constraint if you want an object to be able to slide on top of another or parenting to a point or face if you want let’s say a button to follow a shirt, in edit mode there’s the snap to surface (or faces, I can’t remember right now).
I meant something like this https://youtu.be/UFL24N8G8ow?t=1375
Shift+v or pressing g twice or by right clicking and selecting slide vertices, it has a few handy options and altough it’s missing cafe slide, you cand get to virtually the same point in two motions, hope this helps 🙂
Thanks for help
Been in this industry for a while and I had never heard of “cafe slide”, could you please elaborate? I am genuinely curious 🙂 thanks!
Hahahahaha, so funny, didn’t even realized, that mischievous autocorrector, I’ve had some cafe slides, they are terrible for keyboards, but in this instance what I ment was “face slide”.
Now bear with me, how about a small expresso machine on the side of the CPU, with the reduction of the components there should be some space, maybe a cafe slide buttos that pushes some coffee ever so slightly to your way wouldn’t be such a crazy Idea ah?