In this video I talk about the concept of context-sensitive behaviour and how I personally find it highly beneficial as a UX design concept for facilitating a fluent and intuitive artist workflow. MODO, Maya and Blender have their different approaches and degrees of implementation of this principle but Blender’s modelling tools are where I found myself missing this paradigm the most – maybe others feel similarly and this video can serve as inspiration to further a discussion on this topic. 🙂
Video
Blender and MODO Addendum: Knife vs. Slice
Since I only touched on the most basic functionality of Blender’s Knife tool in my last video I want to append an addendum showing its other features and how they compare in particular to MODO’s Slice tool – which is separate from the Edge Slice tool with the buggy “Multi-Slice” option I demonstrated in video #4.
Okay, enough about knives and slicing for now. 😉
EDIT: I was wrong! I have just been informed that MODO also supports CTRL+LMB clicking on an edge for a mid-edge cut. You don’t have to activate the global snapping menu as I described. I never knew.
Blender and MODO Quick Take: Knife vs. Multi-Slice
Now so far for the most part MODO and Blender have come out roughly even for me. On some things, MODO had the slight edge, on others Blender had the slight edge. But I just encountered a tool where Blender’s implementation absolutely blows MODO’s out of the water – and that is Blender’s excellent Knife tool.
Blender and MODO Quick Take: Planes and Ortho Views
Here’s just a super quick take on plane creation and orthographic views in Blender and MODO and where I think both of them could improve efficiency and user experience.
“Select Next” in MODO and Blender
Comparing “Select Next Active” (Ctrl+Shift+Numpad(+)) in Blender with MODO’s “Select Next” (Arrow Up), MODO very clearly comes out on top.
Blender fails to find a plausible next edge to select way too often – even in cases where the next expected edge is quite obvious.