The State of Open Source 3D Modeling

gmueckl writes "Since Blender was released as open source in 2002, it has basically owned the open source 3D modeling scene. Its development has seen a massive push by both the community and supporting organizations. However, the program has been showing its age all along and efforts to improve on it have either been blocked or have failed in the past (note the dates). Authors of new modules are forced to jump through hoops to get their work glued onto the basic core, which still dates from the early 90s and has gone almost unchanged since. There are many other active projects out there like Art of illusion, K-3D, and Moonlight|3D. Each of them offers a modern, much saner, more coherent, and more powerful basic architecture and could match Blender in a couple of months' time with some extra manpower. So how come these projects don't get the level of support they deserve? How come developers are still willing to put up with such an arcane code base?"

blender is here to stay.

[msh104]

I dont't see any open source competitor for blender any time soon.
blender already has quite a lot of features, not to mention game engine and other tools.
plug the fact that it's light weight, fast and cross platform. (while maintaining the same UI everywhere.)
blender may have some old cruft every here and there.
but it doesn't really bother me.

so what do these are "not yet here" apps offer me?

Re:It's there, and it works

[Jonny0stars]

I agree that the blender workspace is more productive and somewhat more artistic.
If you look at even commercial software such as Maya or 3ds max there is essentially very little difference other than the interface and i find 3ds max interface perplexing confused and illogical (looks like some one ate to many widgets and threw-up) blender was a semi steep learning curve but once you have the basics a bit guesswork you can make some alright looking models even without any experience.
But then again i like Povray better than any other 3d stuff out there.

re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Their main problem is the interface, which they are attempting to fix IIRC.
Just do the modeling with Wings 3D, or whatever you happen to like, and do the rest with Blender. It's a very capable piece of software.
And many artists use many applications to do their work, for example, they could use Modo for modeling, Lightwave for rendering, etc. So it would be perfectly normal if you use Wings for the modeling, some other application for animation, Blender for rendering, etc. This way, you are using the parts you think are better, or you are more comfortable with, from each application.

Wings 3D

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

If you want a nice natural intuitive modeler, look no further than Wings 3d:

Wings3D [wings3d.com]

It has some strange dependencies, but you might be able to find a precompiled version for your platform. (It's in Gentoo's portage for example).

Re:could match in a couple of months' time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember: if app Bar (Blender) is already the standard, app Foo (these alternatives) not only has to be better for someone just starting, but also has to be better for an experienced user of Bar.

Heh, this sounds like a major blog piece waiting to be written. Because open source can't be undercut in terms of price, and it already provides access to modifiable source code with the implicit command of "instead of just criticizing, why don't you contribute to our CVS respository?", once the first FOSS app has established itself in a given space as the big project the bar is that much higher for any competitor.

Re:Blender and graphics tablets.

[flewp]

Tablets are (IMO) a must for sculpting and texturing, but I don't like them for hard surface style modeling. I'm more comfortable using a keyboard for hotkeys than the programmable buttons on the Wacoms. I also have a wider range of keys available for assigning shortcuts to via the keyboard as opposed to the programmable buttons on the Wacoms. I also like to keep my hands on the keyboard because I tend to keep things very organized, and that requires naming/typing (material names, layer names) things. Not to mention I'm often inputing specific values (moving someting .222 units over, etc). Some people prefer modeling with their tablets, but I don't know anyone who relies solely on their tablet for everything. Usually, the tablet just replaces the mouse, not the mouse AND keyboard.

As far as multiple monitors, I generally work almost exclusively on a single widescreen monitor, sometimes moving preview render windows over to the secondary monitor. Modeling IMO benefits more from a single, larger monitor than two seperate displays - especially when I can get rid of tool tabs (by using hotkeys) and enlarge the 3D viewport.

Re:If you want to learn Blender..

[Bemopolis]

I can't speak to the helpfulness of your tutorial (amazingly, one of the few I haven't read yet), but what got me over the Blender hump was the open courseware materials for a class [tufts.edu] at Tufts University. The professor, Neal Hirsig, has posted an extensive set of UI-centric tutorials (both PDF and video). If you can get past the general distaste for Real Player streaming video, and the extremely minor annoyance of him saying "ver-teh-cee" when he means "vertex", you will go a long way towards mastering the UI.

On another note, Blender has five Google Summer of Code projects this year. Maybe those who want to develop for the competing packages should try that avenue.

Re:Rewriting

[gmueckl]

All the programs I tend to point out are usually built around a scene representation that is more than just a simple scene graph. There is some serious parametrization going on at some level. In Maya, for instance, every operation that goes beyond tweaking the positions of some mesh vertices is stored as a separate node in the graph with parameters that can be altered after the fact. This provides a base for lots and lots of features: it's easy to animate node parameters if that should be desired. Art of Illusion for instance allows those nodes to be user-defined scripts (maybe Maya allows that, too - I don't know). YOu can go back and change things you did earlier without rebuilding the entire object if you find out that you made a mistake (e.g. if a revolved or lofted shape doesn't quite look like you want). If you know GEGL you could think of the design that I'm talking about as some sort of of 3D version of that approach. Every decent 3D modelling program that I've seen implements a variation of that, Blender being the big exception. If done right, this design is incredibly versatile and modular. Implementing a proper user interface on top may be a bit tough, though.

OpenGL? Try IrisGL.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact Blender was written for SGI IRIX in the first place, before OpenGL was the clear first choice for 3D graphics. The FreeBSD and Linux ports came when Blender had been ported from IrisGL to OpenGL. This does mean it used acceleration from the start.

what about avoCADo 3D CAD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some guy has been working pretty hard on a new 3D solid modeling CAD program over the past few months called avoCADo. It is geared more towards 3D CAD engineering and design, but I thought it deserved mentioning. Does avoCADo have potential? or is it just another modeling program doomed to sinking in the sea of open source 3D apps? http://avocado-cad.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:It's a pain.

[BillGatesLoveChild]

> Blender isn't well thought out - it's evolved. The user interface is still pretty terrible.

Same can be said for 3DSMAX. Extremely powerful because it's evolved, but with a terrible, archaic user interface that newcomers like VUE leave for dead. Same for Poser and DAZ.

Being first to market is a huge advantage, but in time, you're left lugging a dinosaur around while sleek, warm blooded animals breed and overrun you. Say... is that snow? :-)

Re:It's there, and it works

[aichpvee]

I'll have to disagree, learning Maya is WAY easier than learning Blender. Blender is much easier to learn than 3DS Max, however. But that isn't saying much as 3DS is a complete mess. Still not sure how I feel about Blender copying the modifier stack from 3DS, but their implementation does seem to be better (or at least not as bad, yet) as the one in 3DS.

Re:Blender and stupid hot keys

[Michael_gr]

Well, I *am* a 3D professional, and what you are saying is bull. 3D applications are enormously complex and there is no way in hell anyone could remember all the shortcuts you need. A good 3D app should allow you to work on it without having to commit all of its UI to memory. I work mainly with 3DS max where you have about 30 separate things you can do just with editing vertices, which is just one out of four different ways of editing meshes, which is just one out of 40 something possible mesh object modifiers, and mesh objects are but one of many types of objects, and this is just modeling, there's also animation, rigging, lighting and rendering. Do you think I remember all of it? Hell no. But 3DSmax helps me by being layed out in a logical manner so I know where to search for what I need, and it lets me configure the UI so I can have icons for the most common tasks. I do use about 15-20 keyboard shortcuts, but being so complex, you can't possibly map even 5% of a 3D app's functionality to the keyboard and expect to remember all of it. And this is where the graphical UI comes in, and believe me, 3DSmax and Maya artists spend a LOT of time just setting up the interface and sometimes even creating their own menus and drawing their own custom icons. The good news is that the developers of Blender are aware of it and are going to address those issues in version 2.50. Blender has made great strides in its UI recently, and more is to come soon. I'm afraid this article is just going to cause developer's time and effort to be wasted on other less developed projects, when they should be volunteering to help with Blender's UI coding.

Re:It's there, and it works

[karstux]

I'll disagree and say that learning your second (or third) 3d app is always hard. I learned 3dsmax first and found it a breeze to learn and a pleasure to use. Then I got my hands on the personal learning edition of Maya. I never really got my head around it, being used to the 3dsmax workflow as I was.

Then, I tried Blender. Using it caused almost physical discomfort. I thought the interface was ugly, alien and counter-intuitive. After a while I became productive with Blender, but I still dislike it. And everything that I did learn I'm sure I have forgotten by now, while I could find my way back into 3dsmax with little trouble - even though I haven't used it for a long time now.

The thing is, whatever you learn first conditions your brain to a certain way of working. Everything else after that is hard(er).