I mentioned in the post how I failed at implementing most of the decals, some kind of lighting issues going on which I dont have the time to look into fixing right now, so most of the decals I made were just a waste of time. *sigh*
Onto current thoughts on 3DsMax (beware, long and drawn out):
So Ive been using 3dsMax pretty extensively the past few months and I cant help but compare it to Blender in several ways.
Its been painful getting into it, but Im slowly getting the hang of using 3DsMax to model and UV map basic objects. It bugs me however, doing anything seems to be overly 'bulky' and/or 'slow'. Ive put most of that down to me not being experienced with Max, anyone familiar with a 3D program will know that they each have their own little tricks and quirks, and once youve gotten to know the program well enough everything starts to flow better. But even telling myself this all the time, I still feel like my inexperience with Max isnt the whole problem. I have after-all been using it for months and know the in's and out's of modeling simple objects with it reasonably well. But for me it seems non-intuitive.
Nothing seems to be in the place you automatically think it should be, or even the next place you think it should be. Max seems to be the product of getting a bunch of uninspired programmers in one room to throw together a program, no consideration for the artists at all.
Sometimes even simple tasks take a whole lot of (seemingly) unnecessary steps. For example adding a new face requires you to find the correct panel, make sure your in face mode, scroll down to the panel within the panel which has a button labeled 'create', activate the button, then the viewport suddenly has verts appear (even though your in face mode) and then the user must individually click every single vert, plus the first vert again just to create the face.
In Blender you select 4 or 3 verts, then press 'F' and the face (either a tri or quad) is created. Done - easy - it makes sense and is super quick. (theres also a button in the UI which does this, but the hotkey is slightly faster)
Another example is UV-unwrapping a complicated object.
First you need to choose the correct option from the modifiers (theres about 5 different UV mapping modifiers here), then change the modifier into face mode (hidden in the modifier stack), activate 'Select by element' in selection parameters panel, press the big 'Edit' button in parameters to bring up the UV window, all going well you can then use Mapping>Flatten map to get some kind of flattened UV map. No idea about making seams for the UVs however, didnt have the time to try to work that one out properly, as it proved to be more frustrating than a simple unwrap of the object to begin with.
Blender however, select the object, tab into edit mode, select all faces, press U (or unwrap in the side toolbar), select method of unwrapping from the dropdown. You then instantly have the UV's flattened out and viewable in the UV window. Seams are as simple as selecting an edge and using the shortcut Ctrl+E to either mark or clear a seam, or again the button(s) in the tool panel.
Again, maybe its mostly a lack of practice and instruction in 3dsMax on my part. But it doesnt take much effort, after using both programs, to see which is geared more towards efficiency and less frustration for the artists.
Additionally I found that 3Dsmax sucked up ram to a point where I couldnt have it running at the same time as UDK (which is also pretty intensive on system resources). This lead me to having to import into Blender the initial Ludus model I made in 3dsMax, so I could have an interactive 3D version of the Ludus to refer to as I blocked out the level in UDK.
Along with all this, 3dsMax takes 2-3mins to boot up on my system, Blender takes 2-3 seconds.
3DsMax 2011 student version - 1.53GB, Blender 2.57 - 74MB
And I still remember the days when Blender was <20MB....
3DsMax was a real pain in the ass for me as I'm of course very used to using Blender as well.
ReplyDeleteI hated the lack of proper hotkeys and like you said the many steps it takes to achieve something simple.
One of my own personal examples is that I like to model poly-by-poly in a lot of cases and in Blender it's incredibly easy. I select an edge and press E to extrude it. It was effortless.
Now 3DsMax isn't really making it much more difficult but it is slowing me down though. In 3DsMax you have to first enter Edge mode (while in Blender you could also easily extrude by selecting multiple verticies and even in Face mode) then you have to pull out the edge using a gizmo while holding Shift. For Max users this may be very normal but for a Blender user like me I'm missing a lot of control.
I hate the gizmos by the way.
Something I really miss is that after I initially extrude a new edge/face I can't change much at all during the operation.
In Blender I can press E to extrude and because I don't have to hold it down I can press X, Y and Z to specify the axis it will transform on or even press R to change it's rotation without having to press any buttons on my mouse.
I can even input numbers during the operation in case I want to for example transform or rotate it by a specific amount.
I also love the fact that in Blender I can input simple mathematical calculations like multiplying 360 degrees by 42 and get the resulting number without having to reside to an external calculator or calculating it by myself.
I'm sorry 3DsMax but I can't let go of Blender because you're being a bitch. Your material system is horrible. It takes way too much effort to get even the smallest job done and your Scanline renderer doesn't even support Ambient Occlusion unless you want to jump down the rabbit hole and kill yourself in the process.
Haha spot on AniCator.
ReplyDeleteI didnt even mention a modeling comparison because its just so much slower its not even funny. Took me an entire day to model the quick 3D reference of the Ludus, could have done the same job in half an hour in blender, and the mesh would have come out a lot more efficient with no errors. Had to rush the 3ds max one because I didnt want to spend my whole life joining verts and making faces.
The funny thing is that this is exactly why I ditched Max 9 years ago, everythings so damn slow.
I didnt even know you could do mathematical calcs with Blender like that either :P