If you don't mind me asking, what issues are you having with Blender? I've only ever worked with Blender when dabbling in 3D stuff (never had much chance to try stuff like Maya, 3DsMax, ZBrush, etc). I am exploring alternatives to Blender solely because I hate the UI.

My main issue always remains the same:
- The UI and controlling Blender's tools and functions is CLUNKY. It's not a smooth experience and it often introduces extra hurdles.
- Sometimes it decides to not work OR introduces random errors. This is exceptionally problematic when working with Armature/Weights, Rigging and Blendshapes. And this will happen or not randomly.

And troubleshooting is impossible - cause I am following video tutorials - and options shown are either not there or Blender does nothing when I select it.

It's frustrating cause it is not reliable.

Yeah that's kinda what I've experienced too. Personally my biggest problem was that importing FBX models was an issue; they would start off in a broken as fuck base pose and it was a pain to fix it. I had to pay for a 25-dollar plugin that imported FBX models correctly.

On that note, what modeling tool have you used with the best UI/UX? Being able to comfortably model stuff is my biggest priority, even if it's otherwise having less features than Blender.

I use Hexagon 2.5.
It's free. Available at the Daz 3D site.

It has it's issues:
- don't exceed 250 000 faces for a model.
- always keep pure quads or pure triangles.
- Never SubD Smooth anything but Quads or it'll crash.

Gets the job done with modeling.

I use 3D Coat for UVs and painting.
Zbrush for Sculpting.

I'll give it some consideration! Can't argue with free, really.

There should be a documentation file in it once you download that explains all tools.

It is the best documentation ever written for 3D software btw.

What software are you substituting Blender for? I'd love to know, and I do have a horror story of my own if you wanna hear it

Mainly the client wants the model to be in Blender.
Often that means having the Armature be a Blender one.
And it's frustrating to use. I am just done...

You have your own horror story - tell it here.
People just praise many useful functions of Blender - and the main issues (Clunkiness & lack of Reliability) are never addressed.
This is why Blender cannot be used in a Professional Environment. Cause when it decides to shit the bed - you are in that bed with it.

Aye, I believe it, I thought you were already migrating to another program, but one time, I was trying to make something on my own pace on a Mac with a sad sorry excuse for a Radeon GPU (512 MB VRAM), and while I was trying to figure out which faces were where, it didn't just kill itself, IT TOOK MY FUCKING SYSTEM WITH IT! Locking it right up! Time stopped, keyboard did jack shit, mouse could move, but that was it, nothing worked! I couldn't even use shortcuts to try and force close the system! I had never seen something so evil in my life! I had never been so horrified than I was just then. I swore that I'd wait until I had a more suitable system after that incident, and will still wait since a GT 1030 is no better than a GTX 600 series.... But hey, 2GB VRAM GDDR5 isn't bad

If you find a more suitable program, let me know, would love to hear from you and give it a whack

My horror story: Rigging in 3ds max. If for some reason I want to change something to the mesh, even a single vertix, you can kiss goodbye to your whole skin. Thats why I abandoned 3ds max and moved to blender (that, and also GPU rendering, plus... it's free! (and legal) )
I'm really having troubles with Cycles + Radeon rx 580 in GPU rendering tho. But that's mainly radeon's drivers fault.

sorry to hear that! it's indeed a pain in the ass. you don't realize how many funky workarounds there are for problems until you hear a friend saying "yeah blender is doing this weird thing" and you start explaining a 10-step process to fix it and a voice in the back of your head goes "wait wtf that shouldn't be necessary"

hopefully they'll fix a lot of these little papercuts soon, they're building up and they keep adding new features faster than they fix bugs :(

That is one thing that keeps Blender in the place it is now.
Instead of polishing it up - they just keep bloating it up.

And if you have a bug that nobody you know knows how to fix - you get screwed.

Pyramids are piles of bricks, people are piles of secrets, blender is a pile of bugs. It is known.

Basically, the only way I get through using Blender is through community. I run into problems that are either not documented, not tutorialed, have outdated tutorials, are un-googleable due to lack of terms, and so on. The thing changes often enough that tutorials become outdated, has tons of addons so things look different, and ... yah, it's just plain buggy. Only way I've gotten through it is by having people who know more than me there to help, who I have even been able to help from time to time.

The UI bears all the scars of a program built with an ever widening scope by a team that is passiontae but ... its pieces just don't fit together. I get it.

Either way, hang in there. :)

I'll just use other software.
I pretty much have almost all features I wanted to have in different software.

But the issue is YOU HAVE TO ASK SOMEONE WHO KNOWS! D:
That's why in a production environment it is so unreliable. Cause you have a deadline - and suddenly you need to shop around for people who MAYBE will know how to fix the problem. And if someone lacks the time, you are screwed.

Yep. That is most certianly true.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this about Blender, the UI is so bad I can't even get started on it. It's truly painful and it didn't even need to be this way. Blender is the very reason I quit 3d modeling despite wht I need it for.

BTW trying to download Hexagon 2.5. but there's so much trouble to go through, why do they need my date of birth, address and so on?

Actually I've found a solution of my own.

DAZ 3D requires you to make an account - cause they offer free 3D software, but make money on selling 3D assets (models/environments/props) to people.

Kinda same deal with Unity. They also want you to make an account - and sell via the Asset Shop.

Well I entered everything, got DAZ central which didn't let me download it, I tried to install the download manager and THAT won't even start. I guess I'm jinxed when it comes to 3D.

Log into the DAZ 3D site.
Go to your account.
Go to Product Library.
Search for Hexagon. (Find Hexagon 2.5 there)

There should be a "Manual Download Zip" option there.
That will get you the software.

It works, thanks. (but my computer refuses to install it, that's an issue for another website)

I mainly use blender to import models to unity. Can't be bothered with that program though. Unity is somewhat easy to use but Blender? BLENDER?! Different story. Fuck. That. Program.

I use DAZ Studio's FBX export for Unity.
I would not recommend DAZ Studio for anyone, cause it has its own problems.
But it's been at least reliable for things I needed.

Blender just... does what it wants.

Like I said.
FUCK BLENDER.

Fun story: it was your very lessons that lead me to blender those couple years ago XP

Hopefully one day - maybe one day.... They'll start polishing up the features instead of bloating up the software even more.

Jokes aside, there's no middle ground to hate or love blender, seems more like an stockholm syndrome XD

i used to utterly hate blender UNTIL i just discovered how UI blender logic used to work as well the keybinds, something what a lot of people don't realize Until they are used to.. even people who migrated from 3DS/maya to blender, its once you understand the UI of blender it's STUPIDLY FAST and Smooth to work

Blender it's an Jack of All trades, Master of none of the CGI, nothing bad for a thing it's free at all

now in ANY CGI page Blender most memeable thing are his religious fans,
instead of Autodesk Obsolescence and unstable software,

i give an chance on 3DS MAX and Maya, in the Animation School we had FORBID to use any newer version of maya, and most of us had issues making the program run in the 2018 version, not to mention rely on 2009 abandoned addons for really basic stuff like tweening, the program messed some projects, and fuck it frost and BSOD extruding the face of a fucking cube, and was something really recurrent of all students and teachers, where something was fucked up and the teachers just say " yeah you need to get used to these constants bugs" even me and my save discipline made me insecure to save because it fucked several old savings D:

Not get me wrong, Maya when it works its a amazing Animation tool, with an 90s UI, really outdated workflow what did not changed in a decade at least, (really no native tweening? not even in the 2020 version?) overall a lot of thing was really nice things optimized for work pipelines, and like my teacher just say, the only reason of why Maya its still relevant its because all old productions are familiar with the addon integration so build whole software to complement Maya capabilities and able to call an autodesk engineer to solve an Specific bug for a huge production

Blender its a workhorse by itself but can work with other stuff to complement other functions too, but its not mandatory, and can OVERALL handle better doing stuff alone for an simple production better than maya alone itself, that is why it's popular in the freelancer communities, just compare Maya in sculpt vs Blender, or 3DS on render vs Blender, or Zbrush in Lowpoly modelling with Blender... of course blender can't compare to Zbrush in Sculpt. or 3DS in Lowpoly, or maya in animation pipeline, or any of all these vs Houdini for Simulation,

its not perfect like any program But saying its an garbage IN contrast of any autodesk thing what are "INDUSTRY STANDART" memeable, just compare the amount of artist in this community are using blender and have really nice results!

CumminHam
Ruaidri
Twichy
rekin
Moisty
Tenzide
Evilbanana
Furromatic
Picty
Dogson
oridas
Wow262
DoctorArk

and myself

and a lot of persons who i don't remember the name...

i can understand the frustration of using a software but calling liar who defend it it seems... i dunno a bit unprofessional,
because i'm dumb at maya i'm not gonna call an LIAR FANBOY someone who do animations on it perfectly there, and there's a lot of furries who use it too...

I think language barrier is a problem here, so I'll just quote myself:

idsaybucketsofart wrote:After I am done with the current comm - never touching Blender again.

Ever.
It's an exercise in frustration every time.
It's clunky.
It's unreliable.

Whoever tells you otherwise - LIARS!
LIARS ALL OF THEM!
DO NOT LISTEN TO THE FANBOYS! THEY ARE LYING TO YOU!

I call a liar whoever would come to me and say "Oh Blender is totally Smooth to use and Reliable."
Cause they are obviously lying.
All you need is to use Blender for a few days and you'll go "Yup, Buckets was right..."

To address your comment about Maya animation - imagine someone who animated in Maya said "Oh Maya is cheap actually. Anyone could afford it! And it NEVER CRASHES."
How would you call someone like that?


If you - as a Blender user - came to me and said "Hey, Blender is Free, decently powerful and can offer even professional results" -> I would 100% agree.
But let's not pretend that Blender couldn't use more of that "Polish & Bugfixing" instead of ANOTHER NEW FEATURE.

I mean, Ubisoft started switching to Blender as their main software soooo.

They also released a plugin for it

https://twitter.com/theCGchannel/st.....11594922528770

I understand that i never use blender much aside from messing with models i have. But the start up time is just really slow and i have had it crash on me before. So yeah i agree with ya... Well for professional use. But like maybe for anyone new to models and wants to screw around with models maybe then i would suggest blender for thoese people buy yeah i still agree with ya.