this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
20 points (91.7% liked)

Blender

2742 readers
1 users here now

A community for users of the awesome, open source, free, animation, modeling, procedural generating, sculpting, texturing, compositing, and rendering software; Blender.

Rules:

  1. Be nice
  2. Constructive Criticism only
  3. If a render is photo realistic, please provide a wireframe or clay render

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Tobin@lemmy.world
Mandy@sh.itjust.works
20
Why are blender docs and related advice either horrendously outdated or plain wrong? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by Mandy@sh.itjust.works to c/blender@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

No matter how often i check blenderdocs, never ocne, and i do mean never once did it help me, their shown pictures for help are so terribly outdated it doesnt even look remotely like current blender anymore.

And when im lucky enough to find something i actually need, the advice is just plainwrong (most recently the knife tool and cut-through, literally wrong information)

top 29 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Kyyrypyy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, that might partly be the result of Blenderfoundation every once in a blue m8on decide that "now is a good time to completely overhaul the interface". Blender 2.6, I think when they started to put effort in UI, but after that the UI alone has been overhauled 3 to 4 times, I believe. And people who have lived trough all those UI overhauls (let alone introducing, and scrapping renderes that need to be worked differently each) have jist accepted to adapt "from the olden times", and never bother to update the tutprials, sine they'll be obsolete the next time Blender UI is overhauled (for better or worse).

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I see, I understand, its a shame tho

[–] Tanza@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i've been using blender since 2.8, because of 2.8, and i can't see much of a difference especially layout-wise from 2.8

[–] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was one before you at 2.79 and to say the change was jarring was an understatement.

For sure for the best tho it looked out of windows xp

[–] Tanza@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

also made it way more accessible to newcomers, i tried to use it with 2.79 but i just couldn't get a hang on the UI, 2.80 really made it usable for me and many others

[–] fcuks@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey man just a heads up - I'm not 100% on the blender docs themselves but generally for open source you're able to contribute and fix issues if you spot them and help out your fellow blender users. Could be worth looking in to if you feel strongly about this and aware where they need fixing :D

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The amount of fixing blenderdocs and general advice needs far outweights must willingness, patience hell, even ability to do so

I generally don't get much if any satisfaction from such contributions anyway, if once in a bluemoon it isnt rejected that is

[–] glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Add the fact that it’s not a paid job and you have the answer to your question.

[–] breakingcups@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

It's not a paid product either.

[–] BobbyBandwidth@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve been teaching myself blender for the past several months so I feel your pain

You just gotta push past the frustration til you hit a point where things start feeling comfortable

Tbh once I started understanding more 3d workflow/concepts in general, blender became easier to reason with

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Been at it for over a year, never has been easier or more understandable for me

[–] BobbyBandwidth@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anything in particular you’re getting stuck on?

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

everything lmao im never not surrounded by roadblocks

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 2 points 1 year ago

Sometimes the best solution is to ask people on lemmy.

[–] Dreyns@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I personnaly learned blender almost solely by reading the doc thoroughly, it rarely presented any problem to me and rhe doc is my go to when I have an issue.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How old is your version of blender? I can barely find anything with how different the docs look

[–] Dreyns@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I try to keep up with the different new versions

[–] Tanza@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you sure you're looking at the right docs? https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/ this seems pretty up to date to me

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

of course, where else would i be looking?

[–] Tanza@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

eh, i dunno, i've ended up on blender docs for 2.7 and such loads of times through google and had to go search for the same page on the modern docs

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Like you accidentally end up here instead, for example: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.92/animation/index.html

Pretty subtle difference to most people (2.92 vs. latest). Especially if you get to the doc page via a search engine-- The search result often refers to a particular version, just cause of how crawling/indexing works, and that's likely to not be the your version.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I downloaded the latest version from blender itself, but I get you

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing: The problem that I'm describing is that you'll sometimes accidentally find old docs, e.g. docs for version 2.73 when your program version is 3.6 (or whatever the newest is). Not so much that you're using an old version of the Blender program.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, the documentation is not very good. Tutorials and forums are better learning resources.

[–] joshfaulkner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey, @Mandy. I know you gave the example of the knife tool and cut-through, and in another response, you said you were struggling with everything, but can you be more specific about what is wrong or outdated? I know that every new version may tweak the settings/visuals a little bit, but the manual text is usually up-to-date.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks but im so done with blenderdocs I don't even pen their link anymore if it appears, it was wrong or outdated that often

And text only really doesn't mean when it says "go there and click that" without properly telling us where that is, if it tells us to.begin with

[–] joshfaulkner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm sorry you had that experience. When I started really learning Blender (back in the 2.37ish days), there weren't video tutorials for everything. But the piece of advice that really helped from the resources that were available (shout-out to Blender 3D: Noob to Pro) was to read the manual in its entirety.

I'm not sure how practical that is nowadays, but the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro eBook still pushes a "Know before making" approach. I hang out on the Blenderartists Support forum and frequently point people to the relevant manual page for whatever feature they are stumped by or whichever limitation is explained on the Cycles vs. Eevee page, etc. I'm willing to offer you one-on-one help if you'd like, but I do my best to take a "teach a man to fish" approach that requires effort on the other end as well. DM me if you wanna chat, or post in the Blenderartists Support forum and I'll jump in there.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

while i do appreciate a well made text based tutorial, i just cant say that for the blenderdocs in current year. im not joking when i said i never once had the blenderdocs help, not once was i able to find correct info even on the page i wanted to be.

While i thank you, genuinely for help, but just sending me to the docs gives me archwiki ptsd (it may not be wrong, but archwiki is written like you need a fucking linguistic degree soo i end up with basically the same problem)

So if that is still okay with you, i might take you help for help.

[–] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

got another example from literally just now: trying to set up a toon shader, doesnt work as expected (to be fair that ones on me for thinking it should be easy) way too complicated when actually set up as instructed: doesnt look like advertised, doesnt even work as several pictures and videos have shown

shit like this, constantly, is why it feel that im constantly being surrounded by wall with no way out, its ALWAYS the same, its no wonder barely anybody does 3d work