Non-IT WTF: Careers and me
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You might want to try simply doing a hobby project of some description - alone or (preferably) with a couple of like-minded mates. Don't open-source it or anything like that, just try to make the best product you can - for your own personal definition of "best".
For example, I've started making a game together with the wife a couple days back. She's doing the assets and most of the music, I'm responsible for the coding and probably for most of the writing. We're not really expecting to go anywhere with it - we just wanted to make a game and if we manage to finish it, we'll be happy.
It's a welcome break from doing people's taxes or writing DAOs.
Filed under: Unity's a bitch to learn, though
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Oddly enough I've been playing with Unity... but short of trying to make any kind of sense with Blender, given that all the tutorials seems to be out of date immediately, getting assets in is... interesting.
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Depends on your definition of awesome. My early 20s were awesome. It all fell apart a few years ago, in my later 20s.
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I have some experience with Blender and it is slowly starting to make sense (they've increased usability vastly since version 2.45 or whatever it was I started on). However, I find that the learning curve on 3D is so steep, I simply don't have the time to really get to grips with it.
Filed under: so we're doing it in 2D
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Depends on your definition of awesome. My early 20s were awesome. It all fell apart a few years ago, in my later 20s.
My life now (late 20s) is still awesome, just in a much different way. Getting married, buying a house, having friends with kids, etc.......changes a lot.
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I have some experience with Blender and it is slowly starting to make sense
Interestingly, Blender was the first proper 3D modelling tool I actually tried for some time, and short of losing myself in menus at times, I actually find it quite logical.
But I suck at 3D no matter which tool I use apparently, so I kinda gave up at this point.
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These days I find it quite sensible, though some of that is due to them refining the UI.
Back when I started, Blender pretty much shat all over the Principle of Least Surprise and general user expectations.
Filed under: much like certain forum software
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Blender was terrible for many years... how can it have improved short of gutting its UI entirely?
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how can it have improved short of gutting its UI entirely?
Mostly by allowing you to reconfigure the thing to your heart's content. IIRC, they even include config files that make Blender behave in a similar way to other popular software, so it's easier for you to switch between them.
But yeah, Blender used to be a byword for esoteric control schemes.
Edit: I actually had to go and check and, yeah, Blender 2.69 has input mapping presets for 3DSMax and Maya-style operation
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Back when I started, Blender pretty much shat all over the Principle of Least Surprise and general user expectations.
Blender was terrible for many years... how can it have improved short of gutting its UI entirely?
As I recall, some years ago they did do a pretty radical redesign, I had just gotten reasonably proficient at using the old one, and I had to learn it all over again.
My biggest problem with the current UI is that it really needs a real keyboard with a numeric keypad; using it on a laptop sucks. My biggest problem with Blender in general isn't with Blender itself, it's with a 3rd-party import/export plugin that gives no useful error message when it fails to export, which is most of the time.
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Oops, that lets me out, since I have a laptop with no keypad. Though I have a full size USB keyboard I could plug in, but that seems similarly suboptimal.
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I have a full size USB keyboard I could plug in, but that seems similarly suboptimal.
Actually, that should work fine. That's what I sometimes do if I'm going to play with Blender enough to bother. The numeric keypad is used for navigating to view the object from different angles, but that's something I do a lot. One can move about easily with a mouse, or clumsily with a touchpad, but aligning your view with an axis requires either the keypad or three levels of menu picks.
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That's not quite what I meant. For my current desk and layout, it would be distinctly suboptimal. I'd have to perch the keyboard on top of my laptop and it's quite a bit wider than my laptop, which means it would also be perched half off the foldable table I'm currently using as a desk.
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It was only a half-joking suggestion for @Arantor. The joking bit is because construction has just as much political WTFery as any other industry, at least to hear relatives talk about it.
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For my current desk and layout, it would be distinctly suboptimal.
Ah, yes. That's one reason I don't use the external keyboard more. I use a cheapo laptop cart, which has no room at all for a keyboard. It barely has room to use my bluetooth mouse, but that's more the fault of every horizontal surface collecting clutter than of the cart itself.
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Filed under: Unity's a bitch to learn, though
That and it encourages a lot of bad programming practices. It's been annoying me enough lately that a nice long diatribe on the matter is forthcoming for your enjoyment.
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My biggest problem with the current UI is that it really needs a real keyboard with a numeric keypad; using it on a laptop sucks. My biggest problem with Blender in general isn't with Blender itself, it's with a 3rd-party import/export plugin that gives no useful error message when it fails to export, which is most of the time.
One of Blender's biggest weaknesses is import and export functionality, being that it's in GPL-land and can't really interop with $RANDOM_AUTODESK_PRODUCT as the FBX SDK license is highly proprietary. As part of a rendering pathway, it's been compared to a cul-de-sac because once you get content in, damned if you're going to get it back out again. It's a gigantic pain to have to import RIGGED characters as OBJ (and lose the bone weights and animations) or to roll the dice with the buggy Collada importer.
On the other hand, Blender does not cost four thousand dollars, which is a pretty redeeming feature if you don't have an expense account to pay for 3DS Max or Maya (and don't feel like pirating it). I've managed to mostly eliminate it from my workflow, only using it occasionally to make minor edits or convert assets to a format my rendering engine can understand.
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These days I juggle IT. I've turned my hobby into a career and I'm beginning to hate it. I've become jaded and bitter from it but I'm slowly and surely on the path to hating my hobby. I do wonder if it's time to move out of IT and back into a different job so I can enjoy programming again.
That happened to me. I got completely burnt out in early 1993, and decided to walk away from IT altogether.
Having been a stereotypical no-social-life work-focused programmer, I had a shit-ton of accumulated paid leave owing from the job I walked away from, as well as a fair nest egg sitting in the bank that I'd simply not had time to spend. So I spent the next three years happily non-employed; the project my savings funded was learning to pare back my lifestyle to the point where I could happily sustain it and fund everything I needed by earning $100 per week.
Ended up meeting an actual woman, spent 1994 sharing a rental house with her, 1995 traveling around Australia in a clapped out old Kombi with her, and half of 1996 getting over being dumped by her. Good times (no, really! We're still good friends).
Got myself a taxi licence and started driving four or five nights per month. That secured me my $100 per week, and for the next couple of years I had a sustainable life and masses of time to do whatever the fuck I felt like with. Met another fantastic woman, to whom I am now married. More good times.
At some point in 1998 I sat down with an Apple II I'd bought for $2 at a flea market, started cutting code again, and found that it had become fun again.
Late in 1999 I got persuaded back into the industry against my better judgement, switched from $100/week back to well over $100k/year plus overseas travel plus accommodation plus perks. The money was good but the stress was ruinous, and after spending what I'd earnt to buy the house I now own, I gave up IT project work for good.
These days I maintain the IT infrastructure at a local primary school. I charge them $20/hr for a nominal 12hr/week, because they can afford that and I can live on it plus a bit of freelance PC repair and maintenance for private customers. I love the school, the people I work with are great, I get close to total freedom to run the network as I see fit, and they like what I do. I'm a married, landowning foster parent who loves his work, and honestly can't imagine living a more satisfactory life.
The key to the whole thing was that decision to learn to live happily on far less than most of the people around me. They say time is money, but I disagree. Time is better than money by at least an order of magnitude, and there is simply no amount of money worth trading away your freedom for.
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One of Blender's biggest weaknesses is import and export functionality
Somebody has written in import/export plugins for the formats I'm interested in. The import seems reasonably solid, but the export, at least for the format I use most, is really fragile. For reasons that are unclear to me, you cannot just export to any file, you must overwrite the file you imported from. (It does create a backup before it overwrites it.) If everything is perfect, the file now contains your modified mesh. If you were in the wrong mode (edit vs. object), or you have any non-triangular face, or your UV map isn't right, or the vertices aren't numbered right, or ..., you get an index out of range error, a stack dump, a 1k output file (where a valid one might typically be 10k - 30k), and a .bak file you can rename and try again. What you don't get is any indication of why it failed, so that you can fix whatever it didn't like.
Blender does not cost four thousand dollars
That is a rather strong point in its favor! The alternative, in this case, is Milkshape — preferred over Blender, even. (Somebody figured how to import/export the relevant formats for Milkshape a year or two or three before somebody else wrote the Blender plugins, so there are a lot more tutorials and stuff for Milkshape than for Blender.) However, having dabbled in Blender for years and being fairly comfortable with it, I wasn't really keen on having to learn another program with a very different workflow. Plus, a couple of years ago $35 was a pretty significant amount of money for me — now, not so much, so I may go ahead and get it one of these days.
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My mom is an avid "chase the money person". For me I will take some comfort over lots of money and PITA works that comes with that pay check.
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My biggest problem with the current UI is that it really needs a real keyboard with a numeric keypad; using it on a laptop sucks.
Oops, that lets me out, since I have a laptop with no keypad.
You can assign your top-row number keys to mirror numpad functions these days (I found out 'coz I had the same problem).
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It's been annoying me enough lately that a nice long diatribe on the matter is forthcoming for your enjoyment.
Looking forward to that.
My current major gripe (after updating to the most recent version over the weekend) is that it's still stuck in .NET 2.0-land.
WTF? Seriously? WTF? When has .NET 2.0 been a thing? Don't the Unity folks think that it just might be time to embrace a slightly newer version?
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The joking bit is because construction has just as much political WTFery as any other industry
The key is to avoid an industry that has people in it.
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The key is to avoid an industry that has people in it.
I seem to come across a lot of people who thought that IT filled that bill.
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I'm sure there are parts that minimize direct human contact.
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I think I'm with you on that one. I'm finding, though, that I have to learn the front-end stuff because there seems to be little out there that is purely server-side anymore.
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Looking forward to that.
My current major gripe (after updating to the most recent version over the weekend) is that it's still stuck in .NET 2.0-land.
WTF? Seriously? WTF? When has .NET 2.0 been a thing? Don't the Unity folks think that it just might be time to embrace a slightly newer version?
I'm surprised when there is a pushback on upgrading. Going from 1.1 to 2.0 was a bit of a pain, but going from 2.0 to 4.0 is so easy, it should be done ASAP.
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I think I'm with you on that one. I'm finding, though, that I have to learn the front-end stuff because there seems to be little out there that is purely server-side anymore.
The problem is that companies that are hiring don't care enough about server-side code. They love client-side fireworks because it looks pretty.
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Robert Fripp
An awful lot of it is about building what I want to build.
The problem is, nobody will pay you money for doing stuff you want to do, unless it's parallel to their interests.
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And that's it. I was quite happy with a regular job and my interests on the side. Then my interests and job collided and it's been downhill from there. I'm trying to work out whether I find a way to make my job and interests work well together, or I go back to the boring office job with 9-5 routine but have my interests.
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I'm trying to work out whether I find a way to make my job and interests work well together, or I go back to the boring office job with 9-5 routine but have my interests.
And you're coming to us for a life advice.
Seriously, though. Life sucks. Sometimes you need to choose between stuff you like doing and stuff you need to do. If you have a lot of creativity and a bit of luck, you can sometimes combine the two, but it can still get boring anyway.
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Actually I wasn't coming here for advice, per se, I was coming here to vent my spleen about my experiences with the whole money/time trade-off and people that had their own agenda vs mine which was 'company is paying me therefore I should look after company' which is also a WTF. It just derailed quickly into everyone assuming I actually wanted advice about a situation whereupon I know full well I will just have to suck it up but wanted somewhere to vent in the meantime
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It just derailed quickly into everyone assuming I actually wanted advice about a situation whereupon I know full well I will just have to suck it up but wanted somewhere to vent in the meantime
See? We're such a helpful community!
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And apparently misogynistic and/or misandristic, too. (I just assumed we were all varying levels of misanthropistic, equal-opportunity haters)
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were all varying levels of misanthropistic, equal-opportunity haters
Sounds about right to me...
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It just derailed quickly into everyone assuming I actually wanted advice about a situation
whereupon I know full well I will just have to suck it up but wanted somewhere to vent in the meantime. WHY THE FUCK DID YOU THINK I WANTED ADVICE? YOU ARE ALL THE WORST!BTFY
Filed under: paging @blakeyrat, we miss you in a masochistic way
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Mostly by allowing you to reconfigure the thing to your heart's content. IIRC, they even include config files that make Blender behave in a similar way to other popular software, so it's easier for you to switch between them.
But yeah, Blender used to be a byword for esoteric control schemes.
Edit: I actually had to go and check and, yeah, Blender 2.69 has input mapping presets for 3DSMax and Maya-style operation
Does it still use its own File|Open dialog on Windows that won't let you load from UNC paths?
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I believe it still uses its own Open dialog (can't check at the moment), but cannot speak on UNC paths, since that was never an issue for me.
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WTF? Seriously? WTF? When has .NET 2.0 been a thing? Don't the Unity folks think that it just might be time to embrace a slightly newer version?
Remember, Unity has to support Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Silverlight (❗❗❗) too, so they have to wait until Xamarin adds the necessary machinery.
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That's a valid point. However, they do already offer a choice of using only a subset of the framework, so I'm wondering why they cannot offer support for more recent versions, with the caveat that they may be incompatible with particular platforms.
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Because Unity's whole premise is "write once, run everywhere," not "write once, run everywhere ( unless you use anything from this list of forbidden functions, in which case things may or may not work depending on the level of support the Mono build we ship has for that platform)"
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Fair enough.
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Don't forget Windows RT support!
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I believe it still uses its own Open dialog
Yes.
but cannot speak on UNC paths
I don't know, either.
