20 Reasons to consider learning Blender

I still think it’s too fiddly, I prefer Modo or Rhino to compliment SketchUp rather than Blender now that I have had the chance to use them. I am glad however that I put so much time into Blender as it gave me a lot of understanding I could then apply to other software in a matter of days and weeks rather than months and years as it has been in the past!

However, for hobby use, I can see why it’s entirely suitable with with no high price point.

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Yes, you need to use their glTF nodes in order to embed (or export) textures. I don’t find it hard to link/append their node and it’s quite similar to Principled BSDF node, so easy to connect/disconnect inputs. Besides it’ll most likely be even easier in the near future.

Also don’t forget that you can just use glTF to export your meshes. Embedding media is just an extra feature that others don’t have.

Talked with one of the top Blender guys and he said he didn’t think 2.8 would be ready for full-time production use until after the new year.

I’m not sure why anyone would substitute a NURBS based modeler for a poly one, and if they did, I’d recommend MoI3D instead of Rhino.

This former Modo ILM and Sony 3D guy switched recently from Modo to Blender (and he has a great free GUI to boot) and gave his reasons why:

Although Moi is good, Rhino is a bit better supported and if you are using it as a bridge between Poly and Nurbs it supports a whole lot of things including native .skp and Catia files. It’s new real time raytracing viewport in 6 is miles ahead of a lot of the competition.

I am using SketchUp, Rhino and Modo as my primary tools now (Modo replacing Blender only in the last few months).

I would have sticked with Blender if I did not get such a good deal on Modo through a friend, also now that I am working full time in the 3D industry this is a lot more emphasis on me to learn Modo rather than Blender as it’s used a lot in many studios in my city.

But the Rhino <> SketchUp file compatibility is a real God send.

Good to know about Rhino. FWIW, Moi3D had the best NURBS to poly export interface options I’ve ever seen and it also supports export to SketchUp. Plus you can literally cut and paste NURBS from Moi to Rhino. Might be worth a look. Though no Grasshopper, which is a game changer.

I think it is great to consider alternative tools to SketchUp for whatever work you do. I don’t really consider Blender a competing product to SketchUp any more than I think of 3DSMax or Maya in that way. Blender is designed to appeal to the same folks who like those big DCC applications. Of course, being free (gratis as well as libre) helps to open it to a wider community than Autodesk will sustain with the tools they sell.

I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for Blender and I always have. Not to brag, but my first experience with Blender was version 1.23 running on an SGI Indigo 2 that I bought (used, cheap) on eBay. I remember having to build it from souce myself, but I could be wrong about that. Somewhere deep in my library is also a copy of Ton Roosendaal’s original Blender manual; graphically beautiful from the height of the ‘deconstructivist’ phase of late-90’s graphic design. More than a little opaque from a learning perspective, unfortunately, but still… beautiful.

Blender is such a unique project in the FOSS community, both in the scope of its aspiration and its longevity in the community. Ton should be sainted for the labor he has put into it over the years. For those who don’t know the history, it is documented here in great detail.

SketchUp’s great strength, I think, remains the simplicity with which hard-surface models like buildings and furniture can be made in it. We all stretch the tools we love in unexpected ways, but at its heart, this is what SketchUp is really best at doing. We aren’t likely to implement a full particle system into it any time in the near future, so you’re going to have to look somewhere else if that is critical to your work.

No creative person should be satisfied knowing or using only a single tool, particularly not if their happiness or livelihood is bound to that tool. Rather, I think you should learn as many different tools as you can, then figure out how to stitch them all together into a unique process that meets your unique needs. You’ll spend an uncomfortable amount of time faffing about with importers and exporters (“why can’t there just be a universal file format?” is a subject for a longer thread than this one…) but in the end you’ll be in a better place.

So, from my perspective at least, this has been a great thread to read.

john
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@jbacus… This is awesome!

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Hi Roju,

As with SU, BLENDER also has extensions that will help with Architectural/Building forms. See the link below:-

Over & out,
CJT1963

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Chip, thanks a lot for your video. I use Allplan (very common Arch.-Cad in Europe), Cinema4d, Lumion and SketchUp. The simple use of 3d-guidelines an the very handy snapping function in SketchUp is outstanding. Never saw that in other programs.

But after watching your video, I consider using Blender instead of Cinema4d!
Do you know if its possible, to do renderings within a network (Render-Nodes) in Blender?

Yes it is!

Thank you Liamk887!

New video showing you how to accurately create dimensioned drawings and models in Blender using their version of the pencil tool and a background template.

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These videos are great, keep it up!

Hey @chippwalters , thanks for keeping up this series.
Also please consider making a video for Archipack and Archimesh addons.

I plan on making tutorials for addons, but first I want to get the basics down. I’m expecting Blender 2.8 to be production ready in Q1 2019 and want to get the basics completed and up to speed on 2.79 before jumping into 2.8 as a lot of it is consistent with the new release.

Limshigan aka Collage Architecture has an excellent post on Architectural Blender addons and other stuff on page 2, near the bottom of this post:

https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=69981

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New Tute-- this one is about taking the lines (edges) created from the blueprint of the last tutorial and converting them magically into walls. :grinning:

Another tutorial on setting up Cycles for a quick rendering.

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New tutorial on Smoothing meshes in Blender. Compares with how SketchUp does it.

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A primary reason for switching from SketchUp to Blender is that SketchUp (in 2018) still cannot do bevels!

Even with Fredo’s amazing plugin, it still doesn’t work-- and it’s not Fredo’s fault as he’s told me it’s about how the engine architecture in SketchUp works. UGH!

Blender does magnificent bevels and the bevel modifier is just fabulous!!! Watch to see!

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