coming from the VFX industry I have always found Blender very frustrating to use but loved it's speed, stability, and development. But because of UI, workflow, lack of Alembic for ages, and industry mostly shunning it, I like most stuck with Maya, Modo, and a little Houdini.

I have been re-evaluating software for my company and looking to ditch Maya when I subscription comes up and so was evaluating all the big 3D DCC packages when I came across Blender for Artists. It is a fork of stable Blender so it is up to date with stable releases but the UI and workflow are ohhh so much more artist friendly, especially if you are coming from standard tools. If it proves worthy on the pipeline side it might win me over from Houdini which also just had a fantastic new release but obviously a huge difference in price once you have to move off Indie licensing onto standard. 

So for those of you that like Blender but not the UI and workflow, try this
https://www.bforartists.de

Free Range
My IMDB

Houdini has a lot of interesting simulation capabilities that are hard to beat. How would that compare with Blender or BFA?

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You may find "Sensei Format" to be more pleasing as well. https://blendersensei.com/store/#senseiformat

Blender for artists will probably be lagging behind Blender proper quite a bit. Blender is getting close to releasing 2.8 with real-time PBR display, and other significant improvements.

Material/textures are my least favorite part of Blender.

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Good to know such an option exists. Bump this thread up.

  >>> Indie Generalist modeler-rigger-animator <<< Hardware: AlienWare i7-HK 32G GTX1080 2T-SSDs BenqSW320 Wacom-Intuous 3Dconnexion ||| Software: IC6 Pipeline - CTA3 Pipeline - ATK2 - Indigo ||| Zbrush4R8. Blender 2.79. DazStudio 4.9. Carrara. Poser. Octane.

I finally bit the bullet and started the Sensei course for Blender, and I do have to say that after a few days I actually think it might be usable (and this from someone who has HATED Blender and couldn't even get past the opening of it up.

Sensei has a lot going for it, not the least the deep and rich tutorials (over 100 of them) covering just about anything you'd ever want to do with it.  The author also has a commitment to keeping current with Blender (and has demonstrated this for quite some time) so no problem worrying if you will miss out on any improvements.

While I'm not completely through with the tutorials I can honestly say that if you haven't tried Sensei (and spend a few hours watching the basics) you haven't given Blender a decent shot. 

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Kelley, that sounds encouraging. I may try Sensei as well. In my case it's not so much hate as incompatibility...:unsure:

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Incompatibility?  You mean seriously, like in an issue with your computer?  Or just you're "incompatible with 3D modeling programs" in general?

If computer I'd suspect you can get Blender to run on almost anything (I think it even works on Linux).  But if the latter, I do understand.  I worked in the industry for decades (even betaed for 3D Studio, nee' Max, back when it was a DOS program) so I have a lot of familiarity with it.  But modeling was never my strong suit -- I like texturing, repurposing other folks models, and all the other aspects of 3D that don't require actual artistic talent.

But, yet, give Blender Sensei a try.  It's made Blender work for me when I had tried it many times in the past and came up empty.  You can also make the screen MUCH bigger (a huge factor in my failing eyesights) and while I'm still not *real* comfortable with all the reliance on a middle mouse button, I'm slowly getting used to it.  I can see that I might actual do some modeling now (not much because that's a rabbit hole I'm definitely NOT going to drop down again).  You can't beat the price, most definitely.

And watch those tutorials on that site -- frankly, I don't know how that guy has time to make a living, given all he's done for Sensei (but I assume folks buy his products to support him).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

No, my system can run almost anything, so that's not the issue.

Strangely enough (or not), I liked 3DStudio Max; I learned computer animation using version 2.5, which I purchased as a student so I could use it home (instead of fighting for lab time). I bought a Dell workstation to go with it. Somehow the way it was set up was all very logical to me. So hats off to one off the early developers! I didn't keep up because the course was only for a semester and after that I was no longer a student and I couldn't afford it.

I tried Animation Master, Truespace (RIP), and then Poser, which was the first program after Max I could do something with. I'm not interested in making all content from scratch and Poser came with content and I bought some as well. But iClone was really a good fit and started me getting serious into animation.

Blender in the beginning was very inaccessible and you really needed to know the keyboard shortcuts to get anywhere. I'm sure things have improved, and I do actually have a few Blender courses from Udemy I hope to have time for this summer.

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