@blakeyrat said:
No. The task I want to do is extremely simple. I managed it in SketchUp in about an hour, and that accounts for the fact that SketchUp doesn't even officially support UV mapping. Also the way to create a sphere in SketchUp is kind of funky because it's designed for architecture.
If it has textures, it has UV mapping. You can't have one without the other. It's just using a pre-made UV map someone at Google made in a real 3D suite.
@blakeyrat said:
While you're right that it's a complex task, it's made 50 times worse by having such a terrible UI wrapped around it. There are a lot of complex tasks made easy by software.
Blakey you're confusing UI with premade stuff in a 3D program designed to be used by people who have no idea how to make things in a 3D program. Sketchup makes assumptions about what you're trying to do, and that control is what you lose using tools like it. That's why I said 3ds Max is a tool for people who know how to use it, and Sketchup is a toy for people who want to make stuff for Google Earth.
@blakeyrat said:
If I had to use AutoCad, I also would contemplate suicide every day.
Goddamned. There's a huge market here waiting to be conquered by a software company that can maybe write useful software. We're well past the dancing bear stage in this industry, yes? If Microsoft got the Office team to build a 3D modeler tomorrow, fucking SoftImage would be dead in a month. Or Apple. Or if Google added a couple features to SketchUp and made sure the file export worked correctly, at this point, SketchUp, despite its own UI hiccups, is by far my favorite. Even SoftImage isn't beyond repair-- if they spent a couple of release on it (and gave a shit), they could whip this thing into shape no problem.
Why don't people demand better? God. Software users are like the workers from Metropolis.
Autocad is an incredibly powerful engineering tool. You cannot simply slap a new UI over it and have it suddenly be Microsoft Invent. And it's clear that your favorite would be Sketchup, because again, you don't know what you're doing, and that's not an insult, it's a fact. I took several classes and have had several years now perfecting my skills in 3ds Max. To me, something like Sketchup is painful to use, because it's so restrictive.
As to your continual insistence that 3ds Max is crap, it's continued success and usage in industry would seem to point otherwise. Your example, Lotus Notes, is practically dead in the business world, yet 3ds Max, being almost as old, is practically a standard, and with it's close sister Maya nearly dominate the entire market.