Generally, I have a habit of using only certain or needed parts/functions of different software/programs to get (or hoping to get) results that I'm after.
Blender seems to offer primarily mesh tools, so it probably isn't suitable for any precision object modeling. But how about its animation and simulation capabilities?
Few weeks ago, to get my feet wet I started with Bforartists, which is a 'hack' of Blender. It's still Blender, but has additional user interface elements like icons (and overall more colorful appearance) which may help to navigate and find certain functions easier, and to get a grasp of how the UI works.
I remember trying Blender several times in the past, but tossed it because its UI structure felt just too strange.
It's obviously for users who prefer to use keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking icons. I guess pros use it that way to accomplish things faster and more efficiently, but for newbies it may be too challenging at first.
At the moment, I'm playing with simple tutorials, hoping to learn basics of rigid body based mechanical animation with objects like this:
It appears that simulated objects must be mesh objects, so I'm trying out mesh modeling in Blender, and see how it goes.
It really doesn't have tools for drafting, although it's possible (but tedious) to make "cad-ish" 2D drawings from images. I find that in Blender, curves need to be converted to meshes for easier editing (vertices and edges instead of nurbs or bezier ones which have handles for more "organic" editing).
Some of the things that may seem odd for newcomers:
- Blender and Bforartists seem to favor quite dark themes; if one prefers lighter color viewport background, it makes certain elements(like crosshair cursor and selection rectangle) very hard to distinguish, so it might take some fiddling to find suitable color.
- Lack of easily making/editing toolbars (well not really lack, if one knows python). But there's an option to add commands to 'quick favorites', which opens by pressing Q key. It's handy, and I'm starting to get used to it.
- Using snapping for moving, scaling or rotating objects is dependent of the view, and works more consistently if the view is aligned in X, Y or Z axis. It's also dependent on how close the target is zoomed; the closer the zoom, the finer the snap, and similarly coarser when zoomed out.
Things to consider:
- It's free
- It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac
- Lots of tutorials from beginner to advanced levels on Youtube
- Also lots of free add-ons available
P.S. I wonder if there's way to show animated images or similar sized mp4 video snippets in posts? From what I've read on the forum, if memory serves, animated gifs aren't allowed for security reasons. As one possible option, I have free Proton account, and it has Proton Drive with 2 Gb storage. It allows encrypted link to files, but I have no idea how volatile it is. In other words, how long those links lasts. Another option would be to upload files to Youtube, which is also free, I suppose.
Besides those mentioned, any suggestions?
