Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Understanding Blender's Interface
A Little Bit of History
I'm not going to bore you with the entire history of Blender, the free and open-source software move-
ment, or a dissertation on the various theories of human interface design. A bit of knowledge, however,
can give you some perspective on the thinking behind Blender's interface.
Some programs don't have any thinking behind their interfaces. This is obvious. The programmers write
the functionality, which is operated from a command line, and realize at some point that the general public
has no way of using their wonder-program without a graphical interface. So, they learn to create a data
entry form, slap it on top of their program, and away they go. And it stinks.
A lot of people think that Blender was created in a similar fashion, and in the very recent past, this was
true. Until version 2.5, a lot of new features were added without any kind of real review of how their
functionality fit in with the rest of the program, and how their interface elements should organically merge
with the existing ones. As someone who has added a few features to Blender myself, I experienced this
firsthand. Functionality came first, and then I searched for anywhere into which I could reasonably shoe-
horn a few new buttons or steal a keyboard shortcut.
Blender's origins, however, were much more noble.
NeoGeo, a Dutch game and animation studio, wanted a better tool than they could afford, so they decided
to develop their own. Blender was the result. From the beginning it was designed to be a streamlined,
production-oriented animation program. The emphasis was on keeping all tasks within a single application,
unlike other 3D tools of the time. Lightwave, 3D Studio, and Hash Animation Master all had separate
applications for modeling and animation. Blender had everything in one package, including video editing
and an interactive real-time engine. It exhibited a heavy reliance on keyboard shortcuts. For people trying
to learn the software from scratch, this made it extremely difficult. For experienced users, though, it was
ridiculously efficient.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search