> (not having used Blender at all) I am skeptical Blender successfully replicated these workflows.
I don't quite understand why to wish for something without having tried out what's there?
> That video isn't using a tablet at all.
What leads you to say that?
In the description it literally says: "I use a graphics tablet to paint with..." Did you read that as meaning that he doesn't use a graphics tablet to, say, sculpt?
If so, I think that's a misreading. I own a graphics tablet that I use with Blender in part due to Grant Abbit's (the presenter) advice that it's really a necessity when it comes to sculpting in Blender. :)
> – you can bring up a "context menu" just by tapping a button on your pen, select a new tool by flicking your wrist slightly
> If you have to design a UI that can do anything, it can't do everything well.
While that may be true, Blender's UI is more of a UI toolkit (in the not bad sense of the concept :) ) and the tabbed "workspaces" and/or "application templates" of Blender enable the UI to customized to the specific task at hand.
> Caveat: I've been out of the art world for around five years at this point, [...] I can say that Blender never once came up as a realistic option
Ah, okay, that's useful context--yeah, Blender today is not Blender from five years ago. :) The 2.80 release pretty much changed everything and there's been huge development effort in that time.
There's probably better examples of non-beginner focused sculpting in Blender but here's another teaching video from the same guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOSdRdeS5oM
I don't quite understand why to wish for something without having tried out what's there?
> That video isn't using a tablet at all.
What leads you to say that?
In the description it literally says: "I use a graphics tablet to paint with..." Did you read that as meaning that he doesn't use a graphics tablet to, say, sculpt?
If so, I think that's a misreading. I own a graphics tablet that I use with Blender in part due to Grant Abbit's (the presenter) advice that it's really a necessity when it comes to sculpting in Blender. :)
> – you can bring up a "context menu" just by tapping a button on your pen, select a new tool by flicking your wrist slightly
That's a pie/radial context menu and one is shown within the first twenty seconds of the video: https://youtu.be/L3XtAFUWNuk?t=17
> If you have to design a UI that can do anything, it can't do everything well.
While that may be true, Blender's UI is more of a UI toolkit (in the not bad sense of the concept :) ) and the tabbed "workspaces" and/or "application templates" of Blender enable the UI to customized to the specific task at hand.
> Caveat: I've been out of the art world for around five years at this point, [...] I can say that Blender never once came up as a realistic option
Ah, okay, that's useful context--yeah, Blender today is not Blender from five years ago. :) The 2.80 release pretty much changed everything and there's been huge development effort in that time.
There's probably better examples of non-beginner focused sculpting in Blender but here's another teaching video from the same guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOSdRdeS5oM
And here's a video of the features that got merged into the most recent release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuSL1F9Sd78
Anyway, I think it'd be worth trying out Blender of 2021, if only to be able to be able to update your critique to aspects not currently available. :)