I haven’t used Maya since the early 2000s when they had the Personal Learning Edition. I remember being put off by the 3 mouse button requirement and the weirdness of the UI at the time, but found C4D drastically more intuitive. Maybe the Maya UX has improved a lot since then, but I found Blender 2.8 slightly less intuitive than C4d when I first started, but not bad overall, compared to being completely put off by earlier versions of Blender’s UI as I had been with Maya. The expensive subscriptions for both Maya and C4D are definitely more off-putting than anything else, though.

Ha, and that’s why they exist despite what an otherwise terrible idea they are. 😂

Ads are an odd concept—it’s someone paying money to toot their own horn, which most of the civilized world looks down upon. In fact, the best way to sell me your product is to have the humility to tell me its downsides or give me a nuanced explanation of when to buy your product vs. a competitor. Otherwise, it’s always much better to let someone else sing your praises. I do find documentation, videos, and other factual information about a product to be the best possible sales pitch—give me an accurate picture of it, and if it’s really any good, I might just buy it. If I think you’re trying to bullshit me, I’ll assume your product has to be shit, or otherwise you’d just tell me the facts.

I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.

Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.

The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.

It was a better display alive where it was than in any museum.

I found this video interesting about how music doesn’t have the same value to Gen Z as it does to Millennials. I remember in high school, what kind music you listened to often determined your friends group. I was a new kid in the 10th grade sitting at a table by myself at lunch wearing a Korn shirt, and my soon to be friends group for my remaining years in high school invited me to their table based on my shirt. Not sure if Gen Z cares about music in the same way, since it has been highly commoditized now, and it seems that digital distribution at least contributed to this situation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag4iFa6E_yY

Sheesh, I just imagine imagine happening to walk past around the time some hairy slob is standing up to wipe his ass.

If you watch the Everyday Astronaut Elon interviews, it’s clear he knows a lot about rocketry, understands the workings of SpaceX in minute detail, and is obviously not just a disconnected CEO. While I’ll concede that he has played a great part in the success of his companies, I really don’t like the idea that pieces of shit like Elon and Bezos will have an oligopoly on space travel. I’d really like to see reusable rockets become more of a commodity with a lot of competition, because the future of space travel is too important to be under the control of dickheads like them.