In my experience Blender seemed to change the UI and naming of UI elements and options with almost any release making many tutorials incomprehensible thus almost obsolete, making it super hard to get into
I love Blender. After years of using it I am a basic user as I only use it for 3D printed models.
But Blender is just hard to get into. It's not just the updates, though they may not help.
What helped me most was setting aside the time to do a series of ~3 minute videos going back to the absolute basics.
IE how to: rearrange your workspace, use viewport, vertices-edges-faces, transforms-Grab, Rotate, Scale. And more.
AND THEN learning all the keyboard shortcut keys for them.
Blender is so much easier once you learn the common keyboard shortcuts that YOU use all the time. So take those notes.
Bit of exploration of the Blender documentation, which is fantastic but probably 99% used by the automated cognitive tools you asked a query of.
After THAT, you watch/do the tutorials to build basic donut/sword/gadget whatever of interest.
Then you are on your own to do what you want and then the inevitable forum/AI queries about specifics to try to solve the issue you are having.
In my early days, I spent over a week making a game model plane into something I could print. Now I understand the concepts and a few blender tools, it might take me 30 minutes.
Easy? No. It does require a concerted effort. It's not something you just "pick up on the side" like basic photo edits.
But damn, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities...
I love blender too! Good tips, this is what I basically go through every time I need to use it because i dont use it frequently enough, like once a year mostly.
The pen tool is the big thing --- the ability to move a point when placing it using the control key while drawing w/ the pen tool is one thing I really miss, and in the context of the UI, the overall clean and straight-forward organization and layout, as well as supporting standard forms, so alt frees an off-curve node from association w/ the matching other, while shift constrains.
I see, that is indeed a highly requested feature (along with a general overhaul of the Node tool to make alternative curve methods less janky).
I'm been playing with Freehand, and the one thing that really stands out to me is the Object dialog. Current vector editors have similar designs, but none are as powerful and straightforward at the same time as Freehand's. The swatch workflow is also pretty rigid, and gives you a good imagination of what the color separations/result would look like.
The ability to do PostScript fills and strokes (and have them live-preview via Display PostScript) in Altsys Virtuoso was flat out _amazing_.
Ages ago, I once used the CMYK adjustment to get a rough preview of a multiple spot ink job à la Cerilica Truism (which you should have the person doing the CMYK stuff look into --- it allowed one to set paper stock colour options and then simulate multiple ink mixes, including spot colours --- also spot types, so there was only a single set of ink mixes, but if a spread had coated paper on one side and uncoated on the other, the appearance matched what one would have had to use two ink swatches for in other apps).
Also, Graphics Find and Replace is invaluable for working on complex files w/ many objects.
The only problem I have with it is GTK-style bulkiness. I feel like every open source software is developed for 4k quad-monitors in mind, or tablets. Everything is thicker and taller than it needs to be.
In my experience Blender seemed to change the UI and naming of UI elements and options with almost any release making many tutorials incomprehensible thus almost obsolete, making it super hard to get into
I love Blender. After years of using it I am a basic user as I only use it for 3D printed models.
But Blender is just hard to get into. It's not just the updates, though they may not help.
What helped me most was setting aside the time to do a series of ~3 minute videos going back to the absolute basics.
IE how to: rearrange your workspace, use viewport, vertices-edges-faces, transforms-Grab, Rotate, Scale. And more.
AND THEN learning all the keyboard shortcut keys for them.
Blender is so much easier once you learn the common keyboard shortcuts that YOU use all the time. So take those notes.
Bit of exploration of the Blender documentation, which is fantastic but probably 99% used by the automated cognitive tools you asked a query of.
After THAT, you watch/do the tutorials to build basic donut/sword/gadget whatever of interest.
Then you are on your own to do what you want and then the inevitable forum/AI queries about specifics to try to solve the issue you are having.
In my early days, I spent over a week making a game model plane into something I could print. Now I understand the concepts and a few blender tools, it might take me 30 minutes.
Easy? No. It does require a concerted effort. It's not something you just "pick up on the side" like basic photo edits.
But damn, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities...
I love blender too! Good tips, this is what I basically go through every time I need to use it because i dont use it frequently enough, like once a year mostly.
I wish they would consider Freehand/Virtuoso as an exemplar
What features of Freehand or Virtuoso would you like to see in Inkscape?
The pen tool is the big thing --- the ability to move a point when placing it using the control key while drawing w/ the pen tool is one thing I really miss, and in the context of the UI, the overall clean and straight-forward organization and layout, as well as supporting standard forms, so alt frees an off-curve node from association w/ the matching other, while shift constrains.
I see, that is indeed a highly requested feature (along with a general overhaul of the Node tool to make alternative curve methods less janky).
I'm been playing with Freehand, and the one thing that really stands out to me is the Object dialog. Current vector editors have similar designs, but none are as powerful and straightforward at the same time as Freehand's. The swatch workflow is also pretty rigid, and gives you a good imagination of what the color separations/result would look like.
The whole Inspector palette system is great.
The ability to do PostScript fills and strokes (and have them live-preview via Display PostScript) in Altsys Virtuoso was flat out _amazing_.
Ages ago, I once used the CMYK adjustment to get a rough preview of a multiple spot ink job à la Cerilica Truism (which you should have the person doing the CMYK stuff look into --- it allowed one to set paper stock colour options and then simulate multiple ink mixes, including spot colours --- also spot types, so there was only a single set of ink mixes, but if a spread had coated paper on one side and uncoated on the other, the appearance matched what one would have had to use two ink swatches for in other apps).
Also, Graphics Find and Replace is invaluable for working on complex files w/ many objects.
The only problem I have with it is GTK-style bulkiness. I feel like every open source software is developed for 4k quad-monitors in mind, or tablets. Everything is thicker and taller than it needs to be.