I've been keeping my eye on the Blender site, awaiting the release of 2.8 before I spend any more time trying to learn Blender. But I just recently came across a fork of Blender that supposedly has a much more user-friendly interface (bforartists), and now I'm wondering how that version compares to what's coming in 2.8. Has anyone played with both bforartists and a recent beta of 2.8 who can comment?

I do all my 3D work on a MacBook Pro while sitting on a sofa (for ergonomic reasons), and I really appreciate that Blender can work with the trackpad-- no external mouse needed. That's surprisingly and frustratingly rare in 3D apps. But what has always driven me nuts in Blender is that there's no simple interface for controlling the camera, like the strip of camera controls at the top of Poser, DAZ Studio, and my favorite modeling app thus far, Cheetah3D (for Mac).I look forward to seeing how camera controls work in the next version of Blender!

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TOOLS: MacBook Pro; Poser Pro 11; Cheetah3D; Photoshop CC

FIGURES: S-16 (improved V4 by Karina), M4, K4, Mavka, Toons, and Nursoda's people

GOALS: Stylized and non-photorealistic renders in various fantasy styles