The Blender metaphor is spot on. I am a software engineer, I spent 2 years living in 3ds max in my teens, writing tutorials for it, and I am unable to make a basic scene in Blender, it’s like alien made software.
The Blender metaphor is spot on. I am a software engineer, I spent 2 years living in 3ds max in my teens, writing tutorials for it, and I am unable to make a basic scene in Blender, it’s like alien made software.
The GP refered to "blender of yore". Blender went through major UI overhauls and recent versions are very intuitive.
Still, Blender and 3ds Max are pretty much on two different ends of some spectrum, not sure which yet, but they seems to more or less follow two very different axioms when it comes to UI and UX philosophy. I've spent most of my 3D-ing time in 3ds Max, but Blender is more intuitive to me, but I also know others in the same position favoring 3ds Max.
Something can be intuitive to new users and yet a complete mystery to a pro experienced with a different UI paradigm.
It really is bizarre. It's like a dive bar that has the bathroom doors as men's on one door with an arrow pointing right and women's on the right with an arrow pointing left. It's a case study in how not to design a UI.