Blender interface is pretty configurable. There's a chance to change the shortcuts to something more standard, like a BlendMax or BlendMaya UI setup. It just requires someone to put some work on this (I know, it takes somone else time).

Daniel Martinez started something with his maxmaya interface:

http://www.daniel3d.com/pepeland/misc/3dstuff/blender/maxmayainterface/maxmayainterface.htm

Lots of nice new little features!

My kids go to the kindergarten, and they (boys and girls) go to the same bathroom, with no doors. They don't have these kind of problems. The problem is when you grow up and aquire fears.

I've extensive use of both programs, me and my staff. A couple of years ago took the decision to use mostly open source software for our own financed films wenver is possible. After a few months everybody switched GIMp for photoshop. It takes a few more steps to do a task with GIMP , Curent photoshop versions look bloated but you can work with it. While working with GIMP is slower experience.

I simply couldn't finish to read the text. Text over images, images over text. Two columns, no visible contuinity. No thanks.

My wife had a stomach reduction procedure a year ago. Before that she had to follow a strict psicological therapy for a year to be approved for the procedure, this is not required but that's how her doctor works.

She had several options, and the advice from her doctor was to choose any of the couple of reducing stomach interventions. All the other options which include putting some kind of contraption into the stomach fail in a big percentage of the patients. This happens because patients learn to control the comtraptions, air balloons, etc. and end tricking them to eat more.

The length of one of the elements is innecesarily longer than the final crack length. I bet it's a nighmare to pedal thru irregular terrain, collisioning with the ground every second.

Not everybody has what it takes to make a successful business. And starting a company because you can't find a job won't help. If you can't find a job, hardly you will find clients.

Actually, Stan Leed didn't give proper credit to artists for decades. He was forced to do it Just remember Jack Kirby and Mr Lee conflict.

While the machine is ugly, expensive and underpowered, it's an interesting hack. The guy had to figure how to connect all the parts that came from differents sources, not aa a DIY computer kit. He even had to deal with some basic electronics to use one energy imput (laptop battery) to feed several parts with different voltage requirements. He even call this a protoype. And that's what this frankentop is, a fun prototype to do. Thanks for sharing it!

I miss the times when one visited a radio shack store and buy some parts to create an interesting hack. Now everything is about pre-designed arduino kits.

Blender is a blend of tools: modeling, animation, rendering, video compositing, game engine, and video editor.

You don't have to spend a dime on trainig. They have excellent, free documentation all over the internet.

We use commercial and open source software in my animation studio, money is not a huge problem if it helps to deliver a project on time. I'm the boss, I pick the software we buy, and the animators choose what they want to use. Blender is so fast for rigging and animation. Animation is a blast to do in Blender. Fast posing, no gimbal locks, fast keyframe repositioning, etc. Blender renders faster in Linux than in Windows, and is very stable. Something I can't say for other programs.

We just delivered 15 minutes of animation for a recent Guns N' Roses concert in Las Vegas. We're talking a lot of frames, at full HD resolution. As part of the videos. the band singer asked if we could please create and animate a white, hairy wolf, and we did it in two days (that was our time limit).

I have to aknowledge its akward interface. Even with the 2.5 tweaks it feels strange. I think this is the only major feature you can say may alienate new users.

I've a healthy small business. We don't avoid taxes.

The steel is 1 inch thick.