You should scroll back up and hit the like button so this can spread to more people! Get Blender Kit Here - www.blenderkit.com/r/filmstop * IMPORTANT NOTE - This video is not sponsored by Blender Kit. I use it and I get a small percentage of each sale through this link. Everything said in this video about them is my own opinion.
I think your perspective is slightly skewed, like you said, one app for modeling, one for animation, etc. This is a production pipeline, and Blender is becoming a part of that. Just look at Across the spider-verse, Blender became part of the pipeline because of Grease Pencil. While Blender isn't being used in every pipeline, at every major VFX studio, it is being widely used across the world to make CGI, VFX, and animations for TV shows and commercials. Add to this, that it's a tool that anyone with a computer that meets the specs, a tool to learn. Blender is in a great place, and will only become a bigger threat to the market, as time goes on.
One other major thing of note is after 2.8 Blender is being stuffed with half-baked and half-thought through features. Yes, now it's feature-rich, but it will take years if not decades to make these features work as intended or even design them properly. Most of those look cool on paper, but when they start working not as 'advertised', an artist has nowhere to go unless studio also rewrites parts of Blender for itself. Also, some of these features are inconsistent between Blender versions, being changed drastically or even cut. Obviously, when you plan out your production, this is a big issue.
@@ShadeAKAhayate Blender isn't alone here. Many software have this problem, add to that, Blender is one of the more stable programs. Usually only crashing if you do something silly, like subdivide one to many times.
Studios dont hate blender, no one has time to throw away 10-20 years of pipeline and start over learning a new software from scratch to rebuild it unless you start with blender
This. Exactly this. Although I did know of a studio (Tangent Animation) that switched almost completely over to Blender with some Houdini and produced excellent work. They were a relatively small studio and introduced Blender bit by bit over time. Ironically they went bankrupt after the higher-ups forced them to switch to Maya after they started on a major production already using their Blender pipeline.
@Xero_Wolf it was not much "higher ups wanted to use Maya". Higher ups only care about production output, deadlines and budget. AFAIK Maya was introduced per supervisor AND artists working at tangent, and they wanted to glue it all back at Blender using USD. Did not work. Production stalled, scene translation was not seamless, and Blender showed it was not capable to be the centralized hub they thought it could using USD. Maybe not entirely Blender's fault, but it certainly did not meet the specs needed to tie in everything.
We don't need Blender to be industry standard, the beauty in blender is it's versatility, the accessibility and price. It's good for everybody. Blender is not trash. It's just not for big studios.
I'm happy blender is not industry standard, in that case blender would be forced to become a mature boring corporate software with many restrains in its feature development. The best part of blender is that since is not tied to any standard it have the freedom to be fun and going some steps ahead with its own ideas. Blender needs to exist and have its place not only because is free, but because it have a diferent role for a different target (mainly amateurish but majoritary), it fills a gap that has been becoming more noticeable since industry software became more prohibitive, closed and started to adopt the suscription model crap. If you are working on a studio none of that is a problem, but what about the other 90% of people who are students of hobbyst, they should be alienated until becoming worthy of touching a proper serious 3D software only aimed for high end industry productions? People forget that industry is only a portion of the 3D world, software don't need to be "validated" by the high budget hollywood industry to be worth of being used, there are many other industries where blender have its place, not all studios work with huge pipelines with thousands of people. We have jobs in printable figures industry, advertising, visualization, indie content creation, videogames, etc...
Blender flexibility reminds me of another industry standard: Softimage, which was quite extended, especially in Japan. The industry uses what most people say they use, regardless of the actual functionality. Blender quality is industry grade, just, not the most published by "profesionals". Something I'm most grateful because keeps Blender away from their pressure.
If blender were industry standard amateurs wouldn't use it for their hobbies. Professional features are overwhelming for basic users and not fun to learn
If blender ever got to the point where it COULD replace C4D, Maya and Houdini, you would want for it to become industry standard. It would mean that all your years learning it, could branch out into massive studios seamlessly, which isn't the case atm. Being industry standard is a great thing for its users. And as much as it's probably never gonna happen -and that doesn't take away from how awesome blender is- it would still be great for the community.
I work as a Senior Art Producer in a professional video game art studio, and I can say without problems that Blender is part of our work pipeline, in the same way as other commercial software is also part of our work pipeline. I think when people say "Why do Studios Hate Blender?" it's because they naively think that Blender should be the only software they should use and throw away all the others. But reality doesn't work like that. We use the right tools for the right job. Sometimes it's Blender, sometimes it's Maya, and sometimes it's Houdini.
Blender is bad at texturing, so I texture in Substance Painter, the people that say "use blender for everything" are kids, new to 3D or don´t value their time.
@@TheOrijinalPajeet Depends what you're doing. For professional quality on some projects, sure, but industry standard levels of quality takes time. If you're a hobbyist, kitbashing, creating free content for fun, you'd save a lot more time by just using something like adobe stock and importing materials, megascans for some spare parts, and using some noise nodes and whatever else to make some quick masks, rather than spend all that extra time dealing with substance painter. "use blender for everything" is a completely honest phrase to say as someone experienced with 3D that values their time enough to not want to burn out from doing the first sketch > blockout model, sketch over > simple 3D modeling, sketch over again and final 3D model process that you will be using in a studio, which takes much more time than hobbyist creation. In fact, you save so much time by cutting those corners that you won't have to cut in a studio, that it sounds more like the kid is you.
@@translatedbird I make characters that are rigged and imported into unreal, with their props, haircards, the works. Use blender for everything is not a correct phase, use whatever is most efficient for you is the correct thing to do. substance is a 5 click bake machine thats good at texturing, blender is none of these things. You´re that kid, noob.
@@TheOrijinalPajeet "You´re that kid, noob." summarizes your type perfectly. I wouldn't need to add anything else under normal circumstances, except the correction that the "5 clicks" is a gross simplification. With a blender addon you'd actually be baking close to the 5 clicks advertised, the big deal is that you won't have to bother exporting and importing to and from substance, and you won't need to have multiple apps open at once (just blender) That's besides the point anyway, if you're trying to save on time, you wouldn't be using substance or blender to make the materials, you'd be importing materials and make masks to get the look you want. Guess what program you rigged in, that's right. You probably animated it in it too. That's called a time saver. What's the phrase? Git. Gud.
@@translatedbird "With a blender addon" What if the addon breaks and the dev stops giving a sheeet?. What if the addon stops working in newer versions?. What if the support ends? What then? As a COMPANY you have to ask these questions. I know addons exist, man, I prefer Substance for ease of use, simple. Works out of the box. >you'd be importing materials I´m texturing IN SUBSTANCE. All the brushes I need. I´m not importing jack besides color IDs from the sculpt. Git good indeed.
I agree but this is a general problem on RUclips. If you don't click-bait the title you don't get any views. It sucks for viewers but creators have no choice. There is a great video by Veritasium "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective" that explains the problem.
You missed a huge reason why studios wouldn’t use Blender in the early days. Not because it was slow (EVERY program back then was slow.) Blender’s open source EULA back in 2002 required users to release their source project files along with their movie, huge no from studios with licensed IP. Glad that changed.
I don't think he meant "slow" compared to today's software - obviously all were slow compared to today - but slow compared to the other alternatives. Which is very often the case with graphical acceleration for smaller software companies, especially starting out. And this is a much bigger reason the some might think. Things taking just 10-20% longer to do due to graphical performance is a HUGE waste of time and money. Not to mention a source of frustration for users.
Wow, that was a really harsh EULA. I am a passionated animator, who's working on his first episode of a very elaborate animated channel - and even for me, it would not to be considered just throwing my project files out there. I'd happily made ads for Blender, showing all my work with the program, but giving these files to other people to mess around with them and potetionally abuse my many handmade assets, I wouldn't.
I remember using blender back in 2002. It was also an inscrutable mess that nobody would consider using for anything serious. Very different from blender today.
@@marcfuchs6938Yes no way I would publish blend files of my characters and original acenes for my animations/series, not even for money. And if I wanna post something I wanna decide to monetize it or not. Very good they got rid of that eventually.
Are you sure about that? I remember there was a huge misconception for years about Blender's license, but I don't think it ever obliged people to release the project files along a film. But I might be wrong.
You didn't mention the most important thing: Blender does not have multimillion contracts with education institutions that push it onto students as part of their courses.
Fifteen years ago, I worked for a large international private institute focused on video and media education. They made massive amounts of money from students, but it seemed to me that there wasn’t much profit to be made from the software side. However, I must assume they had some kind of deal with Apple, as they suddenly started giving out iBooks to every new student. They claimed these laptops were "free" for students-right after raising tuition by $1,200, which was exactly the cost of those laptops. In other words, they effectively forced every new student to buy an entry-level Mac. This was some type of big deal between an educational institute and a tech company. But I know something else: they definitely never had any “get paid to use our software” deals, beyond the standard price discounts available to educational institutions. Amusingly, they were also involved in a conflict with Adobe because Adobe refused to sell them educational licenses. I will not talk about the reasons, but Adobe really had good reasons not to do Business with that institute. As a result, the institute had to pay full price (!) for every Creative Suite (CS) version. This situation led them to encourage us, the teachers, to switch to “free” software to save on licensing costs. It was embarrassing since we, as teachers, wanted to equip students with the skills needed to secure well-paying jobs, which meant using industry-standard software, not saving the institute a few dollars or euros by switching to free alternatives. Nowadays, though, I feel differently about that last point. “Free” software has become a very good alternative, and I personally use Blender.
Reminds me of an art achool in San Francisco that over time turned into essentially a massive real (erm, um fake) estate company that shuttered or got acquired by another art campus. I knew of or read about said school (maybe 2010-2014) compelling students to buy Mac laptops when many or some students already had art machines but just wanted formalization of their skills. Sadly, probably half or 3/4 of the students were foreign nationals whose parents wasted $50k to >$100k only to see their diplomas from that school mean next to nothing. I don't know what software they used, or whether students resorted to piracy. IIUC/IIRC, major software titles sometimes enrolled undercover students to determine what and how much piracy existed. Not sure if any findings led to implosion of the school, or if it collapsed under the weight of SF fining it for tax evasion/code violations, and acquiring unregistered wink-wink residences/biz sites run as biz sites/residences. Buying up and removing SROs from the housing market super-irritates the City and residents. But, SF is regarded by some as corrupt beyond even NYC, so, maybe that's how tons of SROs got removed from access to non-art students moving to SF? Well, til the house of card fell down. But, a number of moving parts led to its demise. Its competitor is still around, but seems like a shell of its former self given how few of its student/staff limo vans can be seen. I knew maybe 8 people who attended the now-long-ago imploded school. I make it a point to read the credits of 90% of anything I watch. I've never seen names of people I knew. Did see companies, but not people I knew maybe they went home and worked outside of the industry, or toiled in it unrecognized? @@schnittmagier5515
For studio, switching is almost always out of the question. They can add blender into their tool set, but cannot ditch the old tools, else they can't open their old asset.
Nothing to do with not being able to open their assets. This is ridiculous. With the money they save from licenses they could hire someone to convert the assets. Blender is horrible for production of any important assets in a high end professional pipeline. Maya and 3dsmax are professional tools designed specifically for professional pipelines and Blender is not, and everything else is nonsense.
@@keelfly Conversion may not be perfect. It is a risk studio won't take. Business continuation is priority. Asset, other than data/model/drawing, also include pipeline, plug-in, filters, custom tools, etc.
@@keelfly "3dsmax are professional tools designed specifically"- it used to be a poors man Softimage, used mostly to model furniture and packaging. It wasn't better, it was cheaper. Then, with time, it became more professional and now is "industry standard". With blender might happen the same - more features and (more importantly) growing user base might elevate it to the "industry standard" role. 5yrs ago there wasn't even discussion, now people are making animations on it.
@@artephank Not true. 3dsmax was used for full pipelinestuff in game development around 96-2006 I would say that for gamedev it was THE goto software around 2000. Softimage lost traction and the new version came to late and was never truly adopted (sadly) - softimage was big in Japan during the whole period tho. Maya started really to rise in game dev from around 2000. So no it was not used to do furniture, that max became more of an arcviz software is something that happened after mid 2000s
I have worked in the industry for over 5 years, my longest experience was at Outpost VFX. I worked with people that worked at ILM, Digital Domain, Rodeo Fx, and Legion VFX and can confidently say that we don't "hate" Blender. At Outpost, we did have Blender downloaded (I did not use it as I was the Lighting Artist) but it was probably most likely for one thing. Modeling. Yes, we used 3DS Max and Maya for modeling a lot of the assets, but for smaller things you can use Blender because at the end of the day you can export it as an FBX or OBJ to the Texture artist to get it UVed and then so on and so forth. Blender can be a part of the pipeline like every other software in the industry, but I do not know why people think it has to be able to replace everything in the pipeline just because it can do everything decently. I use blender as my main modeling software for my personal projects, then I bring it into maya to UV and texture with Substance. I personally like lighting in Arnold, so I light and render in Arnold, and I composite in Nuke. For studios like Pixar, it won't replace it because it has in house software like how some game studios don't use Unreal because it has an in-house game engine. But if it doesn't become industry standard, so what! Continue making cool stuff with Blender! Why do you care? Cause you won't get a job? That is not true, because the workflow translates over software. Keep making art and stop worrying about things you don't need to worry about.
People that keep repeating this idea that studios don't like and don't use blender are people that have no experience in working in medium to big studios. Stop making assumptions of things you don't know.
Blender is like that one superhero which doesn't gets sponsors, TV interviews, bright and shiny cape and suit. Blender helps EVERYONE in need (not only president's daughter) without asking for anything.
@@saynapolygons Overhyped, maybe, but why would you say it's overrated? An insanely powerful software, whose competitors are only available for serious money, yet which is able to compete with them in every visual means, how is that overrated? I think it absolutely deserves any bit of fame it receives.
In Morocco Blender is becoming industry standard for architecture renders but it depends if it's a small studio or freelancers, some bigger studios still use other software but it's starting to change a lot
3ds Max is not just a software specialized in modeling; it is used for designing interior architecture, environments, industrial products, and for creating animations in games. In fact, I use many different software, and sometimes I combine both Blender and 3ds Max because there are things that Blender can do that 3ds Max or ZBrush can't. I feel that this is a very impartial video, not biased towards any software. I hope that one day Blender will soon find its place in the CG industry
@@RodneyKimbangu In my architecture school everyone hates 3ds max. it supposed to be the best for modelling, but in reality both blender, rhino, c4d is equivalent or better, except 3ds max is ugly and inconvenient. And crashes way more than all the other softwares listed.
I feel like Blender is good for amateurs and hobbyist, but the program honestly leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of the modules are denied. Sure, they're getting better, but very very slowly. Animation tools, texturing tools, even the modeling tools. Lately, they've seemed to only focus on geometry nodes, which might be great if you're into motion graphics, but it's a big learning curve and most likely not the reason people use Blender. The deeper you dive into Blender, the more you realize how lacking the tools are. Blender is still a great tool, but the biggest reason people use it is cause it's free.
Mhm and geometry nodes, when you try it as an experienced Houdini TD, are pretty terrible. Same goes for simulation -- Everything is black boxed, bolted on based on some whitepaper, different sim engines dont talk to eachother, and the performance is not good. Blender is great for a treat but sucks as a meal. Great for making a cool smaller thing very easily, but falls apart under load.
You didnt mention a few things here 1 - Pipeline tools : Large studios have their pipeline tools built with Maya, Max etc which makes them efficient in what they are doing. Be it Scanline or Weta, no one uses the softwares in its default state. Even in games industry it is like that. So their pipeline being built with these softwares makes them the most efficient in what they do. 2 - Educational License : Autodesk caught the market by giving away their softwares for free to learn for students and universities. This will make every student learning vfx workflows or game den workfllows already well adopted to the software, be it maya, max, etc, before they go job hunting so there is no need for VFX houses to hire someone and train them, they are already well versed in the software like animators knowing Maya, etc. This is the move that I feel made the Autodesk softwares entrenched in media and entertainment pipelines.
As someone who has used blender for years that has worked with industry professionals, the main problem Blender has (according to studios) is that it just does things differently sometimes that cause it to not work well with other programs. As someone in vfx, one of its biggest flaws I have found is the lack of native ACEs support. Sure you can manually set it up it but it creates problems with lots of adddons and renderfarms. It’s kind of frustrating that they recently pushed the whole “AGX” profile when it doesn’t really get used outside of blender. Another big development that blender hasn’t jumped on is USD and MaterialX, which other programs and productions are now becoming fully dependent on.
There is a survey on the blender website until October 22, about the direction of development and new functions. The questions also include a point about full support of USD
First time I see not a "Blender Guru ultra hype - let's make a world in 3 minutes" video about Blender. There is another reason why Blender is not a replacement / standard in the CGI industry. It is pipeline stability. As for maya - it is highly dependent on python. Next version of maya can have different python version included which might lead to rewriting some tools to be compatible again. Not a big deal but usually those tools are developed in-house so there is always someone who will keep them up to date. Writing tools for max, houdini things are kinda better. Those two programs have excellent backwards compatibility. You write tools nearly "once" and later there is almost no maintenance caused by changing program to newer version. As an example tools / scripts written for max 2007 version work flawlessly on max 2025. In Blender you have LTS versions, which ( I hope ) keep this compatibility but it is also python related software. Also Blender API is also something which is evolving with "cutting tails" in mind. Which is a good thing as they do not create their technical debt too long. So from my semi personal experience, our tech pipeline team wrote custom exporter for Blender 2.81. Then Blender 2.82 came out and exporter stopped working. So they fixed it. Then Blender 3.0 came out. Guess what ? And then 3.2 and so on... Another bad thing is "3$" Blender addons. They work as long as their author has any reason to keep them on par with Blender progression. If big studio will buy them ( cheap !! ) and rely on them in their pipeline, they are sitting on a ticking bomb. Each move to newer Blender version will be a potential risk that those plugins they rely on, will not work AND their author will not support them anymore. Then you have to keep your internal tools updated AND those external written bu God-knows-who. Very GOOD and grounding video.
Studios don't hate Blender, on the contrary, it's a slow process for certain industries to adapt their workflow, and Blender still needs a bit to be on par with some of its competitors like Maya or 3dsMax. For example, for handling VERY large scenes, Blender is still behind, it can become chaotic. The real problem I see is that a large part of the Blender community has become very toxic, lately there is a slight rejection or mockery of those who do not work in Blender, and that is very bad. For my part, I have received criticism from Blender users when I tell them that I work in ArchViz and use 3dsMax, and on the contrary, every time I see a comment in the forums and groups about someone using Blender for ArchViz, what I see are comments about how it could be improved, that it is good that it is being included in that industry and the excellent results that are achieved.
The problem I have with Blender isn't that it is unintuitive, but that it feels unintuitive. When you've worked in-depth with an industry standard, student license or otherwise, it's a lot harder to transition or make sense of Blender. I see this as a form of payment through watching countless youtube videos and digging through reddit threads to try to understand something that industry standards document perfectly, and often with less hoops to jump through. Blender might technically be capable of the same results... but the industry standards have methodical thought out approaches to these problems. I really wanted to like Blender. It may technically be free, but you pay for it one way or another.
I think hobbyists might not understand how many features are missing from Blender that will cause a you to hit a brick wall in professional production. I'm a compositor and the lack of AOV options and deep pixel rendering makes Cycles kinda just... Dead in the water. I'm talking about features that you might not use every day, but then one day you REALLY need it. Deep is an example one of those things, sometimes there isn't really an alternative without massively sacrificing efficiency and/or quality. There are HUNDREDS of these seemingly little pitfalls that Blender has, that a hobbyist probably doesn't even know is a thing, but they'll trip up professional production.
@@carlomdlf No, deep data is data used in compositing (with Nuke) to simplify complex layering. A normal render might have a zDepth pass which tells you the depth of that one pixel, but it can only describe the depth of the whole pixel (it's aliased, when the RGB is anti aliased). You can't use AA on a zDepth, because it'll give you incorrect depth on anti aliased edges. Deep images however, store multiple depth samples per pixel, containing information about each samples opacity, colour and depth. The deep engine in Nuke will automatically layer these samples when you merge multiple deep images together. Nuke can create deep data for comp stuff like projections and 2d elements (smoke, fire for example) on 3d cards, and then seamlessly layer them with deep renders from CG software. It really simplifies complex layering in compositing. It originated at Weta and is now extensively used in VFX. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_image_compositing
Also a lot of people not understand how an Open Source system should work. They like to point out the missing things in a software but they never do anything for the 3d community by helping themselves to integrate it. If more people helped Blender, we would have the best 3d software for free and open source.
Blender is not trash being open source, free, versatile and popular helps blender be accessible to someone like me i could never get used to 3ds max or maya
The Gen Z will argue as big studios today is barely surviving. In fact most jobs are now outsourced to small studios. and USD pipeline is making its way to make CG, software agnostic. Big studios put their names on the table, give some supervision and distribute the load to smaller studios. Another fact is new gen artists are training themselves with Blender. My gen was trained with 3Ds Max. We will be obsolete by 15 years. It's an industry for young people. Our old pipeline, plugins are being replaced with something new everyday.
Yes for sure. still 15 years is a looong time. Especially now when things are happening in the fields of generative AI content. Also a player that many seems to miss is actually Unreal engine. It is step by step getting more and more content creating tools in it. Just check the change made the last 2 years. I would not surprise that for gameplay / game needs unreal will be the content generation package of choice. When it comes to more advances simulations then it will be Houdini, unless Blender steps up there but it has looong way to go there. When I look at Blender today I actually see its biggest strenght as a free sculpting software. Maybe its there it can find itself.
i wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment. in vfx for film atleast most jobs still go to big studios. usd isnt making much things software agnostic, if anything its actually benefiting houdini, as solaris is by far the best implementation of usd anywhere. as for your last point they dont need to adapt to what new artists train themselves on, theres so many students graduating each year that come from schools where they are taught industry standard softwares. pipelines are incredibly expensive and risky to change, especially when there is no reasons to do so; houdini is miles better than blender for fx/env, maya is equal if not better for animation, rigging and modeling, etc. no point
@@luansmn For Volume: VDB For Surface: ABC For Texture: PBR For Procedural Shader: Material X For Hierarchy Description: USD For Render: Omniverse These are the pipeline studios now are focusing on. And it will continue to emerge. The concept of capitalizing a feature is obsolete. Industry will change after us the old and rust. We used to make MEL script for rigging, now we have developed node based procedural rigging. It will be changed to a AI template soon. So yeah, we could disagree but it doesn't even matter.
@@fahadhasn i honestly dont see how thats even relevant because you still need softwares to create those assets and blender isnt one of them apart from (maybe) some hardsurface at this point. also i have never heard of a single studio transitioning to omniverse lol thats just simply not true. i agree with you that the industry is continuously changing but it would take a while for blender to get there
You make decent points, however you missed the mark on the real reason- studios don’t use off the shelf versions of software. There is decades of internal development of their tools that may run from something like Maya or Houdini in the film industry but the custom tools that make the movies you watch carry more weight than anything like software deals. Every studio I work for as a compositor has a different bespoke pipeline, each using the standards in film production differently- I think it’s crazy in certain ways, but it works for them and as an freelance artist I have to roll with it and get my job done.
Probably the best video I've seen on this topic. So many videos seem to ignore that even the most junior artists cost at minimum 10x as much as a maya licence.
I've heard anecdotally that Blender is now being taught in art, animation, and VFX schools. If we start getting sufficient numbers professionally trained students who want to enter the studio workforce, then Blender could become more main stream. I've also heard that many (mostly indie) studios already allow their artists to use Blender if that's their preference. I've noticed it being used in various behind-the-scenes footage for game studios. And I believe it's also a popular tool for some very high level concept artists who don't necessarily need to slot into the full pipeline with proprietary file formats.
You're right! Blender is way behind right now at the highest level of production, but in 10-20 years, or maybe even sooner, we very well could see it begin to become industry standard.
Tbh, using only Blender in academic will stunt your growth and limit you, Blender Hotkey and workflow is a bit different, some of blender of doing stuff is very incompatible with other software, to the point that you basically learn everything from scratch again if you someday decided to use the real deal program like Maya or Houdini in the future. i know, the Industry Standard Hotkey is a thing in Blender, but, if you learn blender as your first 3d editor, you probably won't change your hotkey scheme, and if you use Industry Standard hotkey as a newbie, you'll get alienated from thousands of Tutorial out there. in term of Heavy Duty, Blender is not there yet, Maya, Zbrush and Houdini is extremely Heavy Duty, you can throw super big stuff at it, and it will handle it with grace, and the Export import support is very good, it can handle a lot of file format. Blender is good for modeling, rendering, and tweaking stuff here and there, but other than that, if you want to do Production level of Rigging, VFX, Animation, Procedural, Sculpting, you have no choice but to reach the big boy stuff. majority of Blender user never use any other software outside of blender, they don't know what they don't know. i use blender daily for like a Notepad equivalent of 3d Editor. and i pretty much a 3d Program Agnostic, use the right tool for the right job
It is for almost a decade. Leftist teachers promote it and schools like it because they do not have to deal with licensing even free one. There are thousands who are taught with Blender. Their work is not up to par with people who are seeing their profession more seriously and professionally. More seriously dedicated and more methodical. Blender is a tool that not only it is preferred by amateurs, but also produces amateurs. And yes there are of course great artists working with Blender but they are the exception, and not the rule.
Everything I heard so far tells me professionals are already using it at home, thus minimizing that 'learning curve'. Studios are already using it for Pre-Vis since it is faster and easier to pump out prelims when all the tools are available in the same box. Schools are beginning to teach it. It's biggest deterrent right now is its limited capacity for handling millions of poly's, but there are people poking at it under the hood to optimize that code so in the near future that may be a non issue as well. I don't think it'll ever become an industry 'standard', since they all use a variety of tools to begin with, but I do see it as being added to the pipeline more and more.
I've been a plugin developer for 3ds Max and Maya for 11 years and in this video I hear something that I've thought before, but which later changed: I thought we needed to make big studios switch to our software. This DID happen, but very slowly, very little. But through the years, new studios popped up and gained momentum while using my software from the beginning. And this was an "aha!" moment for me :) I was around as these folks grew and got better and it was a great pleasure to see them become big. So with Blender, it might be something with delayed effect that kicks in after 5-10 years. Through which the software needs to survive, though. And there's one more thing - with Blender, I, personally, never managed to do the things I tried to do - I wanted some averagely complicated things, and I always hit a wall of bugs or missing implementation. And since people lived through the same disappointment with my software and we managed to change it, I know for sure this is also just a matter of time, but also - of good prioritization and motivation.
A Blender issue that used to hurt me a lot was compatibility. Blender has to live in a world dominated by 3dsmax, Maya, and so on and show that it can handle what those other programs produce. For years, I had major problems trying to import 3dsmax models into Blender without suffering major glitches and bizarre-looking meshes in the conversion process. This hurt my ability to continue working with other artists' 3dxmax models or use off-the-shelf models from Turbosquid and elsewhere. Even today, the materials and textures don't always convert properly. That's what happens with any competing program. You have to be able to import Microsoft Word documents into LibreOffice and import Photoshop files into Affinity Photo without conversion errors too. These alternative programs at least *claim* to be compatible with Word files and Photoshop files. Blender doesn't even try because its developers know it isn't.
I think you're missing an important aspect and it is that blender devs are full of shit sometimes. People would report that really important features you'd have in maya or maybe another big 3d software aren't available in blender, or it can't be done, and they would tell you "that's intended" and close your thread. Let's not forget how they thought making right click select the only option was a good idea for like 15 years... if it weren't for Andrew Price we would still have another unusable piece of shit FOSS program. Which is sad because blender has a lot of potential to become industry standard, even more with addons created by its community, often for free or really cheap.
Agree with you on the Dev stuff. they do fix bugs pretty fast. Texture paint is a prime example of ignoring user feedback for a long time. The right click select was conceptually a good idea but in the end i'm glad they finally let it die. Lets hope they don't eliminate the 3d cursor to placate the masses. Its keyboard shortcut heavy workflow and infinitely configurable UI are things i miss in every other program. Oh and pie menus!
Workflow and their pipeline come first. Blender, while getting better all the time, is not worth restarting the process as you stated. The good news is that smaller studios are using Blender for a specific reason, such as price! Future generations are learning it and eventually, there is a good chance that eventually it will be used more!
I can tell you. You are young. I started with Cinema 4D back in 1998. I got it from a friend, had to print out a 1000-page manual with my home printer and started to learn 3D. There were no RUclips Channels or anything that helped me out. Through the years, I got invested into the C4D community. But I struggled to get a job in Germany. Every big company was using 3dsmax. I finally found my first job after over 150 tries and was able to use C4D. During that time, I started to use 3dsmax at home, learning. In my second job, I started with 3dsmax and moved forward. Today, my main tools in the game company I work for are Cinema 4D and 3dsmax, while all other artists use Blender. Most of them are juniors. It's totally fine. I learned to use Blender as well over the years, but are still blazing faster as a Senior Artist by using the tools I am used to for over 26 years. It might be easy for young people to say: Oh, just spend a couple of weeks with Blender, but there is much more to it. Blender in my perspective wants to be a Jack of all trades and combines some strength of 3dsmax, C4D, Maya and other apps. But you will never get the modularity of Cinema 4D in Blender or even 3dsmax when working with modifiers, and how they interact with objects in the outliner because is it a complete different approach on using modifiers on an object directly. Every app has its strengths and weakness. 3dsmax is excellent with exporting capabilities and I found it way easier to export from C4D to 3dsmax and then to Unreal Engine and not directly exporting from C4D to Unreal, since the FBX exporter works different. I don't think Studios hate Blender. There is more to it. First: You have customers and other companies surrounding you. I can give a simple example why it's the same with Gimp and Photoshop. If I used Gimp and exported in Photoshop Format, there is a chance of error. If the customer gets these files, and they are either not working or print different outcomes that would not happen if the files come from native Photoshop, I get into BIG trouble. We are talking in $10k+ trouble here. Blender in direct comparison had (or still has) horrible FBX export and maybe plenty of issues on other ends that other companies like Autodesk or Maxon don't have. Second: Pipelines. You can't just use Blender when you have a complete Redshift or Houdini-Vex driven pipeline. Nobody cares that it's free when it can't do what the existing pipelines are capable of. There might be a day when all of this is possible, but that does not change overnight. I want to be honest: I tried Blender many times in my life… since 1998. And many times I regret the time I spent on version 2.49 and earlier. Try it. It was horrible. With version 2.5 and up, it slowly started to evolve and got a lot more attention. And definitely, there are many artists who do excellent work with it. I bow my head to the people who create stunning art and animations with it. It is capable of doing a lot, and probably the same that other applications can do. But you also can't just delete 30+ years of existing knowledge. Older artists in small to big companies may know a couple of tricks in 3dsmax, Houdini, Maya and C4D that a youngster with Blender would never expect to exist. Blender is cool. I love Blender! But I also learned what it can't do. Suggestion for young artists: Definitely stick with Blender! This is what Cinema 4D was for me when I was young. However, also… keep your eyes open. Be open to try every 3D app. Try 3DCoat. Try Modo, Lightwave, 3dsmax, Houdini Indie/Free, C4D, Plasticity, ZBrush, Marvelous. -- And then… stick to the apps that YOU like, not that others tell you It's cool and swag and fresh to use. XO 3D Boomer Dad
For modelling I think it's really the best tool right now. it's regular modelling tools, hard surface addons, subd and the easy switch between modelling and sculpting makes it superior to the competition in this area. personally I think the biggest obstacle is that the internet is flooded with very good, but not top tier professional works done in blender and that makes pros think that it's because of blender's limited capabilities. in reality, it's because professionals get good by doing professional jobs in professional studios...and as a consecquence, they use other softwares. but ofc simulations, animations, rigging and texturing has better tools are the job of houdini, maya, and mari/substance.
@@FutureRulesat least it would still way cheaper than subscribe to Maya or similar here while those blender add-on only need to buy one time (check the video that compare the cost between blender with needed add-on and other software, then try to scale it for each computer your company need to use, and you will see how damn costly it is both short and long term. Of course that doesn’t mean you need to thrown out all the other tool, just one or two with Maya or similar so they at least can open or convert old projects -customer file there)
did you ever work in a vfx company? did you ever talk about this topic with someone who works in vfx? vfx companies don't hate blender, and many use them to some extent. and many of the experienced 3d artists like it, it has it's strong points. some of your assumptions are right like bulk licensing, jack of all trades master of none, missing support (although autodesk support is pretty bad :) ) but you miss the big picture: production means many steps, pipeline, integration, developing scripts and plug-ins, finding blender users with production experience. also, last time i checked the docs it was missing a lot (maybe it's better now, i dont know). in short it's a totally different world compared to a one (-2-3) man team doing some nice stuff at home. everyone sees that blender develops insanely fast, has some great features and in my experience many people in vfx like it. i'm not a pipeline td but what i saw and heard blender has some inherent problems which are hard, maybe impossible to fix, but it's tools are getting better all the time.
@@Dr.W.Krueger your standard for what? you spoke but didn't say anything apart from scolding me, moron. :D it's a stupid and childish "answer" from someone hwo is probably smart (if your name is not a lie)
"Support" is absolutely a huge reason for large companies purchasing expensive software licenses. On the surface, it doesn't make a lot of sense to blow money like this when you might not ever even need the support, but when every day of missed work due to technical problems can cost a company hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars, the support fee seems miniscule in comparison to what it promises. Every big-business-company I've worked for dumps mind-blowing levels of cash to secure a support license even when extremely good free options are available and this at least _seems_ to apply to every industry if the company is large enough.
I wouldn't say Studio's hate blender, but other 3D companies definitely do. Imagine you're renting out your software for thousands of dollars a year. And a company comes along and provides an alternative to your software that is FREE growing bigger and better all the time and is getting a bigger percentage of users over your software? I've seen a lot of users moving from Max and Maya to Blender, as a graphic designer vfx artist myself.... I find Blender does what I need it to do. Let's face it Maya and Max crash as well, all software is prone to crashing at times. The future of software isn't Subscription based! It's Open Source. The majority of users don't want to be locked into software based on how much you pay a month to use it. Unless you get hold of the software some other way.... (Argh Jim lad) The problem with software like Maya and Max is that it's Closed Source, in Blender as part of the GNU General Public License. I can create anything and sell it on etc I make a full blown movie and make millions out of it and wouldn't have to give a penny to Blender if I didn't want to. However if I wanted to do that in Maya or Max because of there licensing, you technically don't own what you create. If you use the Indie version of Maya, I think you can earn up to like 100,000 USD. Which is a lot, but if you make more than that with the software. You then have to spend money to upgrade the license. The difference for me with Blender I own the tools to create, whilst with Maya it's like renting someone else's to do what I want to create. This is why Blender is hugely popular and when you read reviews from people. More and more studio's are investing and using Blender alternative nowadays, especially out of house studio's and it will continue to grow. So in a way it has become a studio standard. I think there will come a point, where these 3D studio's are going to have to adjust their pricing and licensing laws to stay relevant in the future. Film companies are going to have to force themselves into using Blender more as part of the workflow. Because as more and more people use Blender over Maya and Max they will need to understand the tide is changing. Maya is harder to learn. Subscription models for software DON'T WORK in this day and age. Most people outside of a multimillion dollar company, ain't going to spend thousands dollars a year to rent software it's not a viable option unless you get the other way. A lot of people that have got into 3D design have done because of Blender, not Maya or Max and with a lot of companies investing in the foundation of Blender, it's only going to get better and better. You have to remember software can only go so far... Change is coming...
Korea still using 3ds max and rigging using biped not even CAT bro.... thats like 15 years old system?. But they make the most addicting games. So basically Blender is not needed so far when u can get away with a 15 years old workflow and still make money. However that said i started to notice small indies studios are shifting towards open source softwares to avoid big Oopsies!~ like Unity did and some other like cough cough ado..
I think the biggest factor is probably customer support for Blender to which there isn't. With a license with the other software, you get technical support from the developer. But with Blender, you have to ask the community and even then, you may not find what you're looking for. But still I think Blender serves a purpose, allowing anyone with a computer to get their start in 3D modeling and animation and it don't cost you a dime.
A bit click baity title. Studios don't "hate" Blender. Blender just doesn't come into their equations for the reasons outlined. Blender is for use by small studios with tight budgets and individuals. I don't see anything wrong with any of this setup. One day it may change, with each succeeding generation having used Blender more in their spare time. But big software companies aren't going away any time soon.
i'm a blender fan, i use it for architectural work, and i've completely abandoned industry programs such as Revit, Maya, Autocad etc etc to fully embrace Open Source. For me blender is a life saver and to be honest i don't even wish it to be industry standard because i love the way it develops from all these incremental directions, and like you said, it's a jack of all trades. So i don't need to learn 50,000 programs like i did when working for industry.
Honestly, too much importance is given to VFX studios. There are many artists who don't care about working in these environments and live decently using Blender. People must learn to not care about commercial decisions especially if they come from studios with conflicts of interest with Autodesk. Personally, I am of the opinion that today's cinema has terribly worsened. Blockbusters can appeal to a young audience, but an adult interested in the story and well-woven dialogues, doesn't care about explosions or super-realistic monsters.... so no, this statement makes absolutely no sense.
Thing is, even those small adult interested movies with well-woven dialogue for audience who doesn't care about explosions still uses insane amount of VFX, unless if it took place entirely in room in modern time.
I jumped into Blender wagon as a completely new person to 3D. I was quite a rough start, as it was a bit overwhelming and I couldn't find the type of tutorials I'd want to use results from and I'd be able to keep up with at that time. But I have to say, the amount of overall progress since 2.8 is absolutely amazing. I work extensively with geometry nodes and with each update, I get more and more excited about new possibilities and optimisations. Most recently, I ended up "stealing" workflows from various AAA studios and just applying them to Blender environment. Nuts.
I work for AAA and Indie studios as a character artist. Although none of the AAA studios use Blender, largely due to too many custom Maya and Max related pipeines, all the indies (ones you have definitely heard of) use it across all art teams. The one important factor is that the indies all have artists who work relatively autonomously and frankly it doesn't matter what tools you create models on. At the larger studios we (often 100+ artists) have to work far more collaboratively and efficiently and need to use robust systems that allow custom pipelines, scripting and tools that can allow that. Blender isn't quite there yet in terms of intensive production environments.
I am doing my graduation thesis on Hybrid animation and I've discovered that even some of the big studios use blender for this purpose. Even Sony uses it for Spider-verse, the movie that revolutionized this method. I guess since it is a new pipeline they would have to spend similar time with other software as well. Grease pencil is also quite good.
As a Studio's point of view these points might be correct. but as an artist's point or from someone who is learning 3d, essentially starting with blender the person can get grasp of all the essential concepts and tools which are similar in high-end paid software's. Which then eventually help them to transition to any software later while working in a studio environment. Plus an efficient open-source software is a great advantage for new studio's coming up or even new film makers. It's also not just about how much support studios get, they can actually invest in the insane hardware required for massive 3d rendering and work. I believe it's more sooner than expected for studios to adapt to blender then partnering with these huge giants who just want to maintain a monopoly for an outdated crashing and bug filled software. (Excluding Houdini.. it's at another level) mainly Autodesk Suit.
As a Maya user that firstly started with Blender, I gladly admit that Maya is way better and more comfortable for animation. There's so many tools, especially AnimBot plugin, that makes the animation workflow so fluid
I first discovered Blender in 2001 with version 2 alpha. Then i participated in crowdfunding which released it as open-source in 2004 i think. To me Blender was a liberating experience. It was quite weird, you had to learn the keyboard, but once you did, operating it was spectacularly quick, like being directly connected from the brain to the 3D model. Why it wasn't more popular? Mhm it DEPENDS. See one of the most popular animation software back in the day in the late 90s early 2000s was Newtek Lightwave. It wasn't used in Hollywood productions but it was used a lot for TV series, advertisement, anime CG backgrounds, low-budget direct-to-video stuff. And early 2000s Blender wasn't really all that different in capabilities or approach. To showcase its capabilities, they created Elephants Dream short film in 2006, and then a new one every couple years. So ultimately it wasn't popular because it wasn't popular, not because it wasn't sufficient. To describe it as unusable before 2 years ago, when you only have 3 years of experience in it, is completely bonkers. Like yeah it has a steep learning curve, just like any CG software, though all for different reasons. What did you expect? Odds are, when you started le-learning it "from scratch" to learn new interface, this simply triggered a more systematic approach to learning, which was made smoother by prior experience, reducing cognitive load. It's not to say the redesign wasn't good or unnecessary, it's just that it's not nearly that dramatic. It was also absolutely NEVER slow. Look i could do million vertex scenes on an Athlon 750 with a Geforce 2mx and 128MB RAM, what the hell are you talking about. While Blender has continuously gained features and capabilities over 25 years, i think over time it has also lost a lot of its essential elegance, since it's originally designed like a second generation 3D software akin to Lightwave, not 3rd generation unlike Max, Maya and Softimage XSI, and always retained some of that legacy. The architecture is also a limitation. Also Max for modelling? Please, that's Modo territory if you want the best tool.
Blender is growing fast. The biggest crutch it has is its renderer, is not production ready (and also arguably its community rampant cringe). I can see blender taking over the modeling stuff really fast. For everything else, not so much. Its so refreshing to see an actual self aware blender user, lmao.
Most studios I've been at for the last 4 or so years at least have blender installed. It may not be their main, but it's invaluable as a file converter, or a good free seat for someone who only sometimes needs to mess with 3D (compositors, etc). As a Senior CG artist I wound up using Blender quite a few times for creating assets due to specific things I knew how to do quicker in it ...despite 20 years of Maya experience (Jeez I feel old now). The scale of companies will drastically change stuff like that though, how much control an artist has to use what they want, software wise, is generally not much, but as long as you can get it doing its job in the pipepine, most smaller studios will have no problem. Like he said in this video, most of these studios use Maya, Houdini, 3DSMax, ZBrush, etc. for their specific roles. So within those tasks you're unlikely to have as much freedom. Ambiguity in the pipeline can cost a LOT of money so its understandable to avoid it wherever possible. I've been lucky to be with some mid level studios that gave a lot of weight to their artist's expertise and they generally were ok with me using Blender as long as my work wound up in Maya, published on the pipeline, and passed the usual QA checks.
I'm sure the big reason is, as you said, support. It wouldn't suprise me at all if the big studios actually had a support person on site. Someone who worked for the 3D software company, but stayed with the production crew answering questions all day. Also, the person who decides which software to use is not the same person who is paying for it. Switching to Blender would not save this individual a single penney.
I started a vfx gig a few weeks ago. They asked what software I'd be using other than Nuke, I said Blender and I got a real condescending laugh back. They settled down and are all cool with it now. It's not in their rendering pipeline or anything so it's not really an issue.
That remark @8:00 is just bs. I mean, those assets they all made them themselves out bought them. Same as you ca buy or make them for blender. Its just an awkard intro for the sponsor
blender is a swiss army knife that can do everything okay. The great mods from the community make it somehow seem polished and better sometimes but it requires a lot of customization. While industry standards are often more specialized tools like Zbrush for sculpting, for example, which are simply top and work. That just comes with a certain price
For some reason, other softwares such as Houdini, ZBrush, C4D, Substance (and even AIs) have been integrated to production pipeline despite overlaps between them. But for some reasons, Blender is always actively disregarded (if not outright mocked) and excluded from the pipeline. The truth is, many Technical Artist Directors won't even test it like they did with the other softwares if at all and are even hostile toward it despite the fact that Blender is increasingly popular and powerful.
Great video! I've been in Blender now for roughly 3 years as well. I remember tinkering around with it back in the late 2000s and I've seen it come a long way. I also got a taste of Maya this year on my first professional CG gig. The production company got me a license to use it and it took me a few days to start animating in it. I definitely love the functionality of Blender and the general navigational tools better than Maya but I would say after getting used to it's graph editor, I found myself doing much better animating.
Best tool for Indie 3D and also 2D games, I render 3D Isometric models to then put them into a 2D Isometric game. I just love the accessibility of these tools. Also the skills that one learns with one 3D modeling program are transferable, even real pros say so all the time, so learning 3D with Blender is still really good.
3:44 Hasty generalization. Despite being the "swiss army knife" of 3D software, Blender is the clear winner for 3D modeling in particular. If you look at any surveys or polls on the matter, it's not even close. And calling it "garbage" for professional use is an insult to those who create stunning artwork with it.
I'm primarily a blender user. I've used it both professionally and privately and it's awesome; it can do everything I need it to. But the shear size of the blender community will skew any public pole in its favor. But I do appreciate your feedback!
Maybe because there are more blender users than any other software?? Blender is great but in modeling it’s not much better than Maya imo I just prefer the workflow but that’s a biased opinion not an objective fact
Yes only issue is who is making those polls and who is answering them. Its a good modeler for sure it just have a bit performance problems with larger polysets
@LEDs , Blender even for its strongest suit being 3D modeling isn’t the best program at doing it while still very good for most people’s general use. I’ve heard that a lot of companies will port things from Maya into stuff like z-brush if they want super hyper realistic detailing and cloth work for games like overwatch 2 and even the new street fighter games as some general examples which is a real strong suit of that program before moving it back into Maya. The other potential reason why pro companies might not want to use it may depend on file type as well, if the file type doesn’t match or causes issues when switching between programs and makes the pipeline more complicated than the software wouldn’t be a good candidate in their eyes. The other issue is when it comes to training employees who already know a specific software already. Most companies don’t want to spend millions of dollars trying to train their workers on a new program and find it easier to simply have new students learn the programs they already use before they enter the industry. While there are many parts of the pipeline where you can get away with maybe using a different than conventional program, it largely depends on the production but also whether the software can still integrate back into the full pipeline and the onus is on the individual to know the software and troubleshoot it on their own in their free time. I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with what Filmstop is saying here and don’t think it’s really productive to shoot the messenger so to speak, take it up with the companies themselves if you have an issue. All he’s doing is nicely explaining the situation as it stands so that the rest of us can understand it, not that he somehow thinks blender is the worst program in the world (he’s literally stated it himself that he loves to work in the program despite the drawbacks for pros in the industry)
Bender is a "Jack Of All Trade And A Master Of None" For texturing: Substance Painter, Mari, 3D coat Animation: Maya, Effect: Houdini, 3dsmax and plugins
Its a master of just pure modeling. Its leagues better than maya and comparable to max only faster. Also UVing in blender is much better than in either max or maya
@@ttmayor You know nothing about "Uving" if you think Blender is better than Max or Maya. As a matter of fact UVing inBlender is worse than it is in any other 3D program. Saying Blender is comparable to Max is another sign of your incompetence. It may be faster but it isn't comparable - Leagues better than Maya? Another lie - you probably have never modeleld in Maya. Stop it with your bullshit, it makes you look like an ignorant fanboy who is suffering from delusions.
@@teneesh3376having made the switch, blender crashed more on me than Maya, the main reason i switched is because modeling and rigging is easier to learn and do in blender but for animation I still believe Maya is better
@@ASchnackyI don’t know what your point is especially with the lol but 3d coat is still mostly used for hand painted texture, I don’t think they mentioned Mari for game assets and Marmoset is still a bit worse for texturing than substance and 3d coat but great for render tho
I find the 1.76m for those 2 months to learn blender a bit weird. Yes, it will cost money. But after that, you never pay for any new version or release since it's free. It's mostly because some state, it doesn't fit in their pipeline. Or it doesn't have professional support. I do wonder though. How faster blender does updates and fixes stuff. It's insane compared to payed programs, at least what I've read about it
I think blender is great for 3d artist starting out, they can learn all the skills need in production, but as you get into the industry every company has its own pipelines for each program and building a whole new pipeline around blender is just too expensive and time consuming, I don't use blender personally but I love that it is a program in the industry i think it helps to keep these other companies innovating and keeps competition going. I use to really hate blender mostly because when i posted on forums asking a specific question about a specific program i would get spammed by people saying have you tried blender.
one other thing I want to add is that most high level VFX / digital art schools teach max, maya, zbrush and not blender. So if a company is looking for qualified artists, its much more likely they will be maya users than blender. But at the end of the day the choice is on the artists end. Most of this software has interchangeable file formats for import and export, nothing is stopping you from modeling in blender, and than move that model over to maya to integrate it into their pipeline, even better, its possible to develop your own plugins for blender to smoothly transition into any pipeline. This is what I do, my studio has lots of proprietary tools made for maya that are needed to export into our custom game engine, but I still use blender for the majority of the work I do because I am just more comfortable and faster with it.
Forget about using Blender for rigging and animation in the entertainment industry. Maya is a beast. But I wish Blender has some love from other 3D related field
The current incentives for everybody who uses any 3d app - to also dive a little bit into blender so you can use the strong sides of both. Zero is very special number. If you are a tutor - your target audience are already 100 times bigger if you teach blender. Create an asset generator in Maya - and maya users can use it, create it in blender - and you got everybody as target audience for it. At some point big studios will face the fact that most new hires already know blender, but have 0 experience with other apps. Yes, it's unprofitable for big studios to retrain everybody into using blender, but everybody learns it outside of work little by little anyway.
Blender is a great tool with an awesome community, but, why is it not industry standard ? Very simple : Its Geometry Nodes and VFX capabilities will never be better then Houdini Its Sculpting capabilities will never be better then ZBrush Its Clothing Design capabilities will never be better then Marvelous Designer Its UV mapping capabilities will never be better then Rizom UV Mapping Its Animation capabilities will never be better then Cascadeur/Maya/3DSMax Its Texturing capabilities will never be better then Mari Its Video Editing capabilities will never be better then Adobe Premiere / Davinci Resolve Average Fanboy: But in the future.....after lots of updates.....you'll see!..... nope, still no go, they will need to build things from the ground up again if Blender really wants to compete with all those specialized tools. But other then that for small studios on a budget and people trying to earn a bit more income through online work/projects, its an awesome (and cheap) tool nonetheless. And yes i say Blender is cheap because you'll still be buying plugins to somewhat be able to work with it. 🙂
As I 3D art student and who attend every studio visit as much as I can, they do not hate it, infact they literally use Blender. Some studios including CD Project Red claims that it is better for modelling then other modelling softweres like maya and 3dmax.
Different strenghts between softwares. I personally use Maya for animation/rigging, 3ds max for modeling, and blender for weightpainting. Im a hobbyist though as i never could get a foot in the industry despite 4 years of effort. I mainly do animation. Im part of a mod project for TWW3 and we use maya for the humanik system primarily, but also because we all can help eachother. I occasionally do 3D modeling if i need objects in 3ds max for personal projects. Blender was the last thing i taught myself, and i found the weightpaint far easier.
The VFX and game market now are diversifying so much. Even small teams can produce top-tier visuals. And considering the use of AI, we can expect a drastic drop in production costs and amount of employees in the near future. The bulky mastodons of the industry won't be able to compete with hundreds of cheaper smaller studios, who will produce the same results quality-wise. And that's when Blender will shine.
to be honest i worked at big animation studio in Poland Our team was 15 people and we were working on 3ds max but we had one person who was working on blender just for some features that blender has.
the video lacks some important points like pipeline constraints and stuff, but it's more lucid than I thought it would be. It's more than a risk for big studios, it's a technical nightmare. Big Studios has a ton of custom tools, that work specifically with specific software, due to their API, way of working, and so on. When you try to ditch Maya and use Blender, as an example, you need to deal with tons of technical problems as well, because the whole pipeline will change. It's way more complicated than that and finally, the Blender license is pretty wild. If you build anything on top of Blender, this thing "legally" needs to be open source, even If it has a commercial license. That means if you built a Blender pipeline inside your studio and got sued, all of your tools would have to be made public and free. So yeah, that's a big issue for big studios with a bunch of custom tools, simulation engines, render engines, etc
The only ones obsessed with blender becoming industry standard are the users. Let's not forget that the creator of Blender just wanted a free program that every hobbyist could owned and used forever. That's it. His vision was never to make blender industry standard. So let it go, and use for the love of it, or abandon it and learn what the industry wants. It is up to you where you invest your time on. I use blender in my job and in my personal work every day, and it does the job very well.
i work for a large studio in games. blender is being used for its unique plugins like decal machine and hops and machine tools etc in the creation of 3d assets for the environment on a new game. in games we are cur seeing lots of studios turn to unreal now. why? user base...why? because the larger the user base the easier to find future employees who can hit the ground running. i think were only at the beginning of blenders giant user base becoming a force in the industry. the smart studio that will be a new studio will embrace it and enjoy this rich pool of people they can work with. last point, we use alot of software and its always being re-evaluated. no one package is an all or nothing in the cur pipe. more studios are going agnostic and using file formats to talk to their proprietary or rendering softs. usd for one, fbx for another. so package is less important now.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" said no Maya user ever. heh. Blender isn't going to disappear like when a big company like Autodesk kills off SoftImage, Combusion, Discreet, Fire, etc. etc. All that time spent learning an application and then it goes poof. Any Quantel users out there anymore? Corporate shareholder profit investment strategies to dictate a product's lifecycle? No thanks. Also, that kills off the conjecture that studios don't want to re-train all their workers. More like fire and hire is what saves them time getting up to speed quickly.
A common switch is archviz artists hating Max and seeing how much easier a lot of things are in Blender but then realising that Corona is the deal breaker. Then there are the Maxon subscribers that are spending £3000 a year and realising the geo nodes is as good as Maxon's tools but there's no Redshift or Octane. Blender will keep progressing there can be no doubt about that, but there are many things that still dissuade full switching.
Studios ofc can't ditch the old software, but I also think Blender is a bit much of a muchness, if you know what I mean. It's has modelling, unwrapping, sculpting, vfx, texture painting, rendering, compositing, video editing and so on. So perhaps studios are unwilling to bite the bullet when the commercial pipeline on their machines for the most part exceeds the capability of blender in each domain, outside of 3d modelling. If you have Max, Zbrush, Houdini, RizomUV, Marmoset and some high end rendering engine installed, do you boot Max out in favour of Blender for just modelling? The costs of annual license renewal and labour might be large enough so as to render the switch to the open source alternative constitute a small % of the overall figure. Max might be expensive, but ditching it could perhaps save you a few percentage points at most of the overall cost, and that's not factoring in hidden costs that may be associated with the free alternative. Anyhow, just my 2c.
Support. Support. Support. The right answer is the same for any FOSS application : support. Companies need support, they pay for support not a product. If any linux such as redhat or ubuntu is use in companies is because of available support.
I rarely consider myelf a fan of a company or product these days, because corporations are evil. But I proudly express myself as a Blender fan. Because when it is NOT about tackling a serious career but to just play and tinker in the 3D world without worrying about insanely expensive licences, Blender is the way to go. I love them for their approach - give you this insanely awesome tool for free, no questions asked. Without Blender, I wouldn't have built up meaningful 3D skills, because I could simply do it in a pace I prefer. Having to pay big sums for some professional 3D software, nobody would do that just because of personal interest without the intent of getting in the industry. Right now I am working on the first episode of my very elaborated animated channel, which would probably not happen without Blender. So to show some respect, my character is gonna wear a shirt with the Blender logo, custom design by me. Also, as soon as this show hopefully starts generating money, it is intended to donate a portion of that income to the Blender foundation. And if this channel would grow really big with merchandise and stuff, I'd happily offer this shirt from episode 1 so that it can be worn by people on the streets. Frankly, I don't think the Blender logo is a very beautiful thing, but at least it's unique and everybody knowing it, knows what it stands for. There simply is no way around liking those Blender people. Because there simply is no incentive to maximize profits, they truely just want to bless the world with something, people normally don't get the chance to just try without huge commitments. These people want to improve Blender further and further without always having one eye on your wallet. Bless those people.
2002 blender was an LSD inspired fever dream, it was totally bonkers ! Only got really good at V3, but most studios are well trained in Maya, its a standard requirement these days.
Hi! 👋 I’m a Pipeline Developer for a VFX and Animation studio. Apparently Blender licensing is a legal nightmare when it comes to capitalising on proprietary IP, so that’s why we don’t use it 🤷
I have a little software development studio, we also do a little of architectural visualization, product render and VR and we use blender in our pipeline. From my standpoint and after trying a ton of 3D software out there, blender has proven the most powerful tool in our arsenal. I'll take blender over 3ds max any day.
though I don't believe Blender will cause many studios to switch, I do believe over time, more and more of them will simply just adjust and adapt to using it as more new talent with primarily Blender experience comes in as well as Blender improving along the way as lets be honest, it moves dramatically faster than any of the other tools do in terms of improvement and added features
You should scroll back up and hit the like button so this can spread to more people!
Get Blender Kit Here - www.blenderkit.com/r/filmstop
* IMPORTANT NOTE - This video is not sponsored by Blender Kit. I use it and I get a small percentage of each sale through this link. Everything said in this video about them is my own opinion.
I think your perspective is slightly skewed, like you said, one app for modeling, one for animation, etc.
This is a production pipeline, and Blender is becoming a part of that.
Just look at Across the spider-verse, Blender became part of the pipeline because of Grease Pencil.
While Blender isn't being used in every pipeline, at every major VFX studio, it is being widely used across the world to make CGI, VFX, and animations for TV shows and commercials.
Add to this, that it's a tool that anyone with a computer that meets the specs, a tool to learn.
Blender is in a great place, and will only become a bigger threat to the market, as time goes on.
@@akuunreach I agree entirely. In retrospect I should have emphasized that more
@@filmstop7828 All good, you covered a good amount of why Blender isn't standard in pipelines.
One other major thing of note is after 2.8 Blender is being stuffed with half-baked and half-thought through features. Yes, now it's feature-rich, but it will take years if not decades to make these features work as intended or even design them properly. Most of those look cool on paper, but when they start working not as 'advertised', an artist has nowhere to go unless studio also rewrites parts of Blender for itself. Also, some of these features are inconsistent between Blender versions, being changed drastically or even cut. Obviously, when you plan out your production, this is a big issue.
@@ShadeAKAhayate Blender isn't alone here. Many software have this problem, add to that, Blender is one of the more stable programs. Usually only crashing if you do something silly, like subdivide one to many times.
Studios dont hate blender, no one has time to throw away 10-20 years of pipeline and start over learning a new software from scratch to rebuild it unless you start with blender
This. Exactly this. Although I did know of a studio (Tangent Animation) that switched almost completely over to Blender with some Houdini and produced excellent work. They were a relatively small studio and introduced Blender bit by bit over time. Ironically they went bankrupt after the higher-ups forced them to switch to Maya after they started on a major production already using their Blender pipeline.
@@Xero_Wolf Oh, my... what a step back ...
@Xero_Wolf it was not much "higher ups wanted to use Maya". Higher ups only care about production output, deadlines and budget. AFAIK Maya was introduced per supervisor AND artists working at tangent, and they wanted to glue it all back at Blender using USD.
Did not work. Production stalled, scene translation was not seamless, and Blender showed it was not capable to be the centralized hub they thought it could using USD. Maybe not entirely Blender's fault, but it certainly did not meet the specs needed to tie in everything.
bingo
Enjoy using 3DS Max forever, then.
We don't need Blender to be industry standard, the beauty in blender is it's versatility, the accessibility and price. It's good for everybody. Blender is not trash. It's just not for big studios.
I'm happy blender is not industry standard, in that case blender would be forced to become a mature boring corporate software with many restrains in its feature development. The best part of blender is that since is not tied to any standard it have the freedom to be fun and going some steps ahead with its own ideas.
Blender needs to exist and have its place not only because is free, but because it have a diferent role for a different target (mainly amateurish but majoritary), it fills a gap that has been becoming more noticeable since industry software became more prohibitive, closed and started to adopt the suscription model crap. If you are working on a studio none of that is a problem, but what about the other 90% of people who are students of hobbyst, they should be alienated until becoming worthy of touching a proper serious 3D software only aimed for high end industry productions?
People forget that industry is only a portion of the 3D world, software don't need to be "validated" by the high budget hollywood industry to be worth of being used, there are many other industries where blender have its place, not all studios work with huge pipelines with thousands of people. We have jobs in printable figures industry, advertising, visualization, indie content creation, videogames, etc...
Blender flexibility reminds me of another industry standard: Softimage, which was quite extended, especially in Japan. The industry uses what most people say they use, regardless of the actual functionality. Blender quality is industry grade, just, not the most published by "profesionals". Something I'm most grateful because keeps Blender away from their pressure.
If blender were industry standard amateurs wouldn't use it for their hobbies. Professional features are overwhelming for basic users and not fun to learn
ding ding ding ding ding
If blender ever got to the point where it COULD replace C4D, Maya and Houdini, you would want for it to become industry standard. It would mean that all your years learning it, could branch out into massive studios seamlessly, which isn't the case atm. Being industry standard is a great thing for its users. And as much as it's probably never gonna happen -and that doesn't take away from how awesome blender is- it would still be great for the community.
I work as a Senior Art Producer in a professional video game art studio, and I can say without problems that Blender is part of our work pipeline, in the same way as other commercial software is also part of our work pipeline.
I think when people say "Why do Studios Hate Blender?" it's because they naively think that Blender should be the only software they should use and throw away all the others. But reality doesn't work like that. We use the right tools for the right job. Sometimes it's Blender, sometimes it's Maya, and sometimes it's Houdini.
Blender is bad at texturing, so I texture in Substance Painter, the people that say "use blender for everything" are kids, new to 3D or don´t value their time.
@@TheOrijinalPajeet Depends what you're doing. For professional quality on some projects, sure, but industry standard levels of quality takes time. If you're a hobbyist, kitbashing, creating free content for fun, you'd save a lot more time by just using something like adobe stock and importing materials, megascans for some spare parts, and using some noise nodes and whatever else to make some quick masks, rather than spend all that extra time dealing with substance painter.
"use blender for everything" is a completely honest phrase to say as someone experienced with 3D that values their time enough to not want to burn out from doing the first sketch > blockout model, sketch over > simple 3D modeling, sketch over again and final 3D model process that you will be using in a studio, which takes much more time than hobbyist creation.
In fact, you save so much time by cutting those corners that you won't have to cut in a studio, that it sounds more like the kid is you.
@@translatedbird I make characters that are rigged and imported into unreal, with their props, haircards, the works.
Use blender for everything is not a correct phase, use whatever is most efficient for you is the correct thing to do. substance is a 5 click bake machine thats good at texturing, blender is none of these things.
You´re that kid, noob.
@@TheOrijinalPajeet
"You´re that kid, noob." summarizes your type perfectly. I wouldn't need to add anything else under normal circumstances, except the correction that the "5 clicks" is a gross simplification. With a blender addon you'd actually be baking close to the 5 clicks advertised, the big deal is that you won't have to bother exporting and importing to and from substance, and you won't need to have multiple apps open at once (just blender)
That's besides the point anyway, if you're trying to save on time, you wouldn't be using substance or blender to make the materials, you'd be importing materials and make masks to get the look you want.
Guess what program you rigged in, that's right. You probably animated it in it too. That's called a time saver.
What's the phrase?
Git. Gud.
@@translatedbird "With a blender addon"
What if the addon breaks and the dev stops giving a sheeet?.
What if the addon stops working in newer versions?.
What if the support ends? What then?
As a COMPANY you have to ask these questions.
I know addons exist, man, I prefer Substance for ease of use, simple.
Works out of the box.
>you'd be importing materials
I´m texturing IN SUBSTANCE. All the brushes I need.
I´m not importing jack besides color IDs from the sculpt.
Git good indeed.
Why the click bait title? no Studio HATE any software, they might not USE it but that is far from hating it...
I agree but this is a general problem on RUclips. If you don't click-bait the title you don't get any views. It sucks for viewers but creators have no choice.
There is a great video by Veritasium "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective" that explains the problem.
@@MemeticOnline yeah for sure it’s like this. And yeah sadly it works. Same as fake game ads.
It got you to click and comment, raising engagement, meaning the video gets pushed more by the algorithm :)
@@MaakaSakuranbo Yeah but we are engaging for the wrong reason. I like the content of this video but here we are talking trashy video titles.
@@MemeticOnline True, but Engagement is Engagement. Heck, if the title had been different you might not even have commented, lowering engagement
You missed a huge reason why studios wouldn’t use Blender in the early days. Not because it was slow (EVERY program back then was slow.) Blender’s open source EULA back in 2002 required users to release their source project files along with their movie, huge no from studios with licensed IP. Glad that changed.
I don't think he meant "slow" compared to today's software - obviously all were slow compared to today - but slow compared to the other alternatives. Which is very often the case with graphical acceleration for smaller software companies, especially starting out. And this is a much bigger reason the some might think. Things taking just 10-20% longer to do due to graphical performance is a HUGE waste of time and money. Not to mention a source of frustration for users.
Wow, that was a really harsh EULA. I am a passionated animator, who's working on his first episode of a very elaborate animated channel - and even for me, it would not to be considered just throwing my project files out there. I'd happily made ads for Blender, showing all my work with the program, but giving these files to other people to mess around with them and potetionally abuse my many handmade assets, I wouldn't.
I remember using blender back in 2002. It was also an inscrutable mess that nobody would consider using for anything serious. Very different from blender today.
@@marcfuchs6938Yes no way I would publish blend files of my characters and original acenes for my animations/series, not even for money. And if I wanna post something I wanna decide to monetize it or not. Very good they got rid of that eventually.
Are you sure about that? I remember there was a huge misconception for years about Blender's license, but I don't think it ever obliged people to release the project files along a film. But I might be wrong.
You didn't mention the most important thing: Blender does not have multimillion contracts with education institutions that push it onto students as part of their courses.
Fifteen years ago, I worked for a large international private institute focused on video and media education. They made massive amounts of money from students, but it seemed to me that there wasn’t much profit to be made from the software side. However, I must assume they had some kind of deal with Apple, as they suddenly started giving out iBooks to every new student. They claimed these laptops were "free" for students-right after raising tuition by $1,200, which was exactly the cost of those laptops. In other words, they effectively forced every new student to buy an entry-level Mac.
This was some type of big deal between an educational institute and a tech company. But I know something else: they definitely never had any “get paid to use our software” deals, beyond the standard price discounts available to educational institutions. Amusingly, they were also involved in a conflict with Adobe because Adobe refused to sell them educational licenses. I will not talk about the reasons, but Adobe really had good reasons not to do Business with that institute. As a result, the institute had to pay full price (!) for every Creative Suite (CS) version.
This situation led them to encourage us, the teachers, to switch to “free” software to save on licensing costs. It was embarrassing since we, as teachers, wanted to equip students with the skills needed to secure well-paying jobs, which meant using industry-standard software, not saving the institute a few dollars or euros by switching to free alternatives.
Nowadays, though, I feel differently about that last point. “Free” software has become a very good alternative, and I personally use Blender.
educatuion doesn't have that as well. It's just educators who learned the software and still the standard software in the industry.
Reminds me of an art achool in San Francisco that over time turned into essentially a massive real (erm, um fake) estate company that shuttered or got acquired by another art campus. I knew of or read about said school (maybe 2010-2014) compelling students to buy Mac laptops when many or some students already had art machines but just wanted formalization of their skills. Sadly, probably half or 3/4 of the students were foreign nationals whose parents wasted $50k to >$100k only to see their diplomas from that school mean next to nothing. I don't know what software they used, or whether students resorted to piracy. IIUC/IIRC, major software titles sometimes enrolled undercover students to determine what and how much piracy existed. Not sure if any findings led to implosion of the school, or if it collapsed under the weight of SF fining it for tax evasion/code violations, and acquiring unregistered wink-wink residences/biz sites run as biz sites/residences. Buying up and removing SROs from the housing market super-irritates the City and residents. But, SF is regarded by some as corrupt beyond even NYC, so, maybe that's how tons of SROs got removed from access to non-art students moving to SF? Well, til the house of card fell down.
But, a number of moving parts led to its demise. Its competitor is still around, but seems like a shell of its former self given how few of its student/staff limo vans can be seen.
I knew maybe 8 people who attended the now-long-ago imploded school. I make it a point to read the credits of 90% of anything I watch. I've never seen names of people I knew. Did see companies, but not people I knew maybe they went home and worked outside of the industry, or toiled in it unrecognized?
@@schnittmagier5515
For studio, switching is almost always out of the question. They can add blender into their tool set, but cannot ditch the old tools, else they can't open their old asset.
Nothing to do with not being able to open their assets. This is ridiculous. With the money they save from licenses they could hire someone to convert the assets. Blender is horrible for production of any important assets in a high end professional pipeline. Maya and 3dsmax are professional tools designed specifically for professional pipelines and Blender is not, and everything else is nonsense.
@@keelfly Conversion may not be perfect. It is a risk studio won't take. Business continuation is priority. Asset, other than data/model/drawing, also include pipeline, plug-in, filters, custom tools, etc.
@@keelfly "3dsmax are professional tools designed specifically"- it used to be a poors man Softimage, used mostly to model furniture and packaging. It wasn't better, it was cheaper. Then, with time, it became more professional and now is "industry standard".
With blender might happen the same - more features and (more importantly) growing user base might elevate it to the "industry standard" role. 5yrs ago there wasn't even discussion, now people are making animations on it.
@@keelfly sad but true
@@artephank Not true. 3dsmax was used for full pipelinestuff in game development around 96-2006 I would say that for gamedev it was THE goto software around 2000. Softimage lost traction and the new version came to late and was never truly adopted (sadly) - softimage was big in Japan during the whole period tho. Maya started really to rise in game dev from around 2000.
So no it was not used to do furniture, that max became more of an arcviz software is something that happened after mid 2000s
The fact that it’s not “industry standard” makes all the better. Means that new people can discover the world of 3D without the steep price tag.
We use to be a big 3DS Max user, but we transitioned to Blender at my studio without hesitation and never looked back.
Fanboy detected
I love this and will always support those who adapted to open source (and blender). Great stuffs.
I have worked in the industry for over 5 years, my longest experience was at Outpost VFX. I worked with people that worked at ILM, Digital Domain, Rodeo Fx, and Legion VFX and can confidently say that we don't "hate" Blender. At Outpost, we did have Blender downloaded (I did not use it as I was the Lighting Artist) but it was probably most likely for one thing. Modeling. Yes, we used 3DS Max and Maya for modeling a lot of the assets, but for smaller things you can use Blender because at the end of the day you can export it as an FBX or OBJ to the Texture artist to get it UVed and then so on and so forth. Blender can be a part of the pipeline like every other software in the industry, but I do not know why people think it has to be able to replace everything in the pipeline just because it can do everything decently.
I use blender as my main modeling software for my personal projects, then I bring it into maya to UV and texture with Substance. I personally like lighting in Arnold, so I light and render in Arnold, and I composite in Nuke.
For studios like Pixar, it won't replace it because it has in house software like how some game studios don't use Unreal because it has an in-house game engine. But if it doesn't become industry standard, so what! Continue making cool stuff with Blender! Why do you care? Cause you won't get a job? That is not true, because the workflow translates over software. Keep making art and stop worrying about things you don't need to worry about.
FACTS
People that keep repeating this idea that studios don't like and don't use blender are people that have no experience in working in medium to big studios. Stop making assumptions of things you don't know.
Blender is like that one superhero which doesn't gets sponsors, TV interviews, bright and shiny cape and suit. Blender helps EVERYONE in need (not only president's daughter) without asking for anything.
I’d say the opposite, I hear more about blender than any other software so it does have more exposure than anything else
What are you talking about ?? Blender have the biggest buzz in the 3d industry right now. Its super overrated and overhyped
@@saynapolygons Overhyped, maybe, but why would you say it's overrated? An insanely powerful software, whose competitors are only available for serious money, yet which is able to compete with them in every visual means, how is that overrated? I think it absolutely deserves any bit of fame it receives.
The borderline ret*rded, non-industry standard UI/UX asks for your sanity.
they do have sponsors such as Nvidia, AMD, EPIC, Adobe, Intel, Meta... there's a whole page about it on the official website.
In Morocco Blender is becoming industry standard for architecture renders but it depends if it's a small studio or freelancers, some bigger studios still use other software but it's starting to change a lot
3ds Max is not just a software specialized in modeling; it is used for designing interior architecture, environments, industrial products, and for creating animations in games. In fact, I use many different software, and sometimes I combine both Blender and 3ds Max because there are things that Blender can do that 3ds Max or ZBrush can't. I feel that this is a very impartial video, not biased towards any software. I hope that one day Blender will soon find its place in the CG industry
I'm ngl 3ds Max is probably the worst and most unnecessary software. It's just an ali express version of Maya
Max is supposed to be really good for architecture modeling, not just general modeling like Maya!
@RodneyKimbangu but architecture modeling is the same as normal modeling. Just much less detail and simple shapes...
@@RodneyKimbangu In my architecture school everyone hates 3ds max. it supposed to be the best for modelling, but in reality both blender, rhino, c4d is equivalent or better, except 3ds max is ugly and inconvenient. And crashes way more than all the other softwares listed.
@@ajtatosmano2 They hate 3dsmax, because they cant use it. You need to invest so many years for learning and its one of the harderst 3D softwares.
I feel like Blender is good for amateurs and hobbyist, but the program honestly leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of the modules are denied. Sure, they're getting better, but very very slowly. Animation tools, texturing tools, even the modeling tools. Lately, they've seemed to only focus on geometry nodes, which might be great if you're into motion graphics, but it's a big learning curve and most likely not the reason people use Blender. The deeper you dive into Blender, the more you realize how lacking the tools are. Blender is still a great tool, but the biggest reason people use it is cause it's free.
Mhm and geometry nodes, when you try it as an experienced Houdini TD, are pretty terrible. Same goes for simulation -- Everything is black boxed, bolted on based on some whitepaper, different sim engines dont talk to eachother, and the performance is not good. Blender is great for a treat but sucks as a meal. Great for making a cool smaller thing very easily, but falls apart under load.
@@patrickl9930 I agree. Simulations are an absolute nightmare to work with in Blender.
You didnt mention a few things here
1 - Pipeline tools : Large studios have their pipeline tools built with Maya, Max etc which makes them efficient in what they are doing. Be it Scanline or Weta, no one uses the softwares in its default state. Even in games industry it is like that. So their pipeline being built with these softwares makes them the most efficient in what they do.
2 - Educational License : Autodesk caught the market by giving away their softwares for free to learn for students and universities. This will make every student learning vfx workflows or game den workfllows already well adopted to the software, be it maya, max, etc, before they go job hunting so there is no need for VFX houses to hire someone and train them, they are already well versed in the software like animators knowing Maya, etc. This is the move that I feel made the Autodesk softwares entrenched in media and entertainment pipelines.
As someone who has used blender for years that has worked with industry professionals, the main problem Blender has (according to studios) is that it just does things differently sometimes that cause it to not work well with other programs.
As someone in vfx, one of its biggest flaws I have found is the lack of native ACEs support. Sure you can manually set it up it but it creates problems with lots of adddons and renderfarms. It’s kind of frustrating that they recently pushed the whole “AGX” profile when it doesn’t really get used outside of blender.
Another big development that blender hasn’t jumped on is USD and MaterialX, which other programs and productions are now becoming fully dependent on.
Using Blender in USD pipeline is pain as it will disrupt your scene graph and didn't support USD features like referencing and variations
There is a survey on the blender website until October 22, about the direction of development and new functions. The questions also include a point about full support of USD
First time I see not a "Blender Guru ultra hype - let's make a world in 3 minutes" video about Blender.
There is another reason why Blender is not a replacement / standard in the CGI industry.
It is pipeline stability.
As for maya - it is highly dependent on python. Next version of maya can have different python version included which might lead to rewriting some tools to be compatible again.
Not a big deal but usually those tools are developed in-house so there is always someone who will keep them up to date.
Writing tools for max, houdini things are kinda better. Those two programs have excellent backwards compatibility. You write tools nearly "once" and later there is almost no maintenance caused by changing program to newer version. As an example tools / scripts written for max 2007 version work flawlessly on max 2025.
In Blender you have LTS versions, which ( I hope ) keep this compatibility but it is also python related software.
Also Blender API is also something which is evolving with "cutting tails" in mind. Which is a good thing as they do not create their technical debt too long.
So from my semi personal experience, our tech pipeline team wrote custom exporter for Blender 2.81. Then Blender 2.82 came out and exporter stopped working.
So they fixed it. Then Blender 3.0 came out. Guess what ? And then 3.2 and so on...
Another bad thing is "3$" Blender addons. They work as long as their author has any reason to keep them on par with Blender progression.
If big studio will buy them ( cheap !! ) and rely on them in their pipeline, they are sitting on a ticking bomb.
Each move to newer Blender version will be a potential risk that those plugins they rely on, will not work AND their author will not support them anymore.
Then you have to keep your internal tools updated AND those external written bu God-knows-who.
Very GOOD and grounding video.
Studios don't hate Blender, on the contrary, it's a slow process for certain industries to adapt their workflow, and Blender still needs a bit to be on par with some of its competitors like Maya or 3dsMax. For example, for handling VERY large scenes, Blender is still behind, it can become chaotic. The real problem I see is that a large part of the Blender community has become very toxic, lately there is a slight rejection or mockery of those who do not work in Blender, and that is very bad. For my part, I have received criticism from Blender users when I tell them that I work in ArchViz and use 3dsMax, and on the contrary, every time I see a comment in the forums and groups about someone using Blender for ArchViz, what I see are comments about how it could be improved, that it is good that it is being included in that industry and the excellent results that are achieved.
The problem I have with Blender isn't that it is unintuitive, but that it feels unintuitive. When you've worked in-depth with an industry standard, student license or otherwise, it's a lot harder to transition or make sense of Blender. I see this as a form of payment through watching countless youtube videos and digging through reddit threads to try to understand something that industry standards document perfectly, and often with less hoops to jump through. Blender might technically be capable of the same results... but the industry standards have methodical thought out approaches to these problems. I really wanted to like Blender. It may technically be free, but you pay for it one way or another.
I think hobbyists might not understand how many features are missing from Blender that will cause a you to hit a brick wall in professional production. I'm a compositor and the lack of AOV options and deep pixel rendering makes Cycles kinda just... Dead in the water. I'm talking about features that you might not use every day, but then one day you REALLY need it. Deep is an example one of those things, sometimes there isn't really an alternative without massively sacrificing efficiency and/or quality.
There are HUNDREDS of these seemingly little pitfalls that Blender has, that a hobbyist probably doesn't even know is a thing, but they'll trip up professional production.
by deep pixel rendering you mean the multiple different render passes? Blender has that and all the .exr stuff so, is that what you mean?
@@carlomdlf No, deep data is data used in compositing (with Nuke) to simplify complex layering. A normal render might have a zDepth pass which tells you the depth of that one pixel, but it can only describe the depth of the whole pixel (it's aliased, when the RGB is anti aliased). You can't use AA on a zDepth, because it'll give you incorrect depth on anti aliased edges.
Deep images however, store multiple depth samples per pixel, containing information about each samples opacity, colour and depth. The deep engine in Nuke will automatically layer these samples when you merge multiple deep images together. Nuke can create deep data for comp stuff like projections and 2d elements (smoke, fire for example) on 3d cards, and then seamlessly layer them with deep renders from CG software.
It really simplifies complex layering in compositing. It originated at Weta and is now extensively used in VFX.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_image_compositing
Also a lot of people not understand how an Open Source system should work. They like to point out the missing things in a software but they never do anything for the 3d community by helping themselves to integrate it. If more people helped Blender, we would have the best 3d software for free and open source.
Blender is not trash
being open source, free, versatile and popular helps blender be accessible to someone like me
i could never get used to 3ds max or maya
The Gen Z will argue as big studios today is barely surviving. In fact most jobs are now outsourced to small studios. and USD pipeline is making its way to make CG, software agnostic.
Big studios put their names on the table, give some supervision and distribute the load to smaller studios.
Another fact is new gen artists are training themselves with Blender. My gen was trained with 3Ds Max. We will be obsolete by 15 years. It's an industry for young people.
Our old pipeline, plugins are being replaced with something new everyday.
Yes for sure. still 15 years is a looong time. Especially now when things are happening in the fields of generative AI content.
Also a player that many seems to miss is actually Unreal engine. It is step by step getting more and more content creating tools in it. Just check the change made the last 2 years. I would not surprise that for gameplay / game needs unreal will be the content generation package of choice.
When it comes to more advances simulations then it will be Houdini, unless Blender steps up there but it has looong way to go there. When I look at Blender today I actually see its biggest strenght as a free sculpting software. Maybe its there it can find itself.
i wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment. in vfx for film atleast most jobs still go to big studios. usd isnt making much things software agnostic, if anything its actually benefiting houdini, as solaris is by far the best implementation of usd anywhere. as for your last point they dont need to adapt to what new artists train themselves on, theres so many students graduating each year that come from schools where they are taught industry standard softwares. pipelines are incredibly expensive and risky to change, especially when there is no reasons to do so; houdini is miles better than blender for fx/env, maya is equal if not better for animation, rigging and modeling, etc. no point
@@luansmn
For Volume: VDB
For Surface: ABC
For Texture: PBR
For Procedural Shader: Material X
For Hierarchy Description: USD
For Render: Omniverse
These are the pipeline studios now are focusing on. And it will continue to emerge. The concept of capitalizing a feature is obsolete. Industry will change after us the old and rust. We used to make MEL script for rigging, now we have developed node based procedural rigging. It will be changed to a AI template soon.
So yeah, we could disagree but it doesn't even matter.
@@fahadhasn i honestly dont see how thats even relevant because you still need softwares to create those assets and blender isnt one of them apart from (maybe) some hardsurface at this point. also i have never heard of a single studio transitioning to omniverse lol thats just simply not true. i agree with you that the industry is continuously changing but it would take a while for blender to get there
@@luansmn Just be happy with yourself. It doesn't matter.
You make decent points, however you missed the mark on the real reason- studios don’t use off the shelf versions of software. There is decades of internal development of their tools that may run from something like Maya or Houdini in the film industry but the custom tools that make the movies you watch carry more weight than anything like software deals. Every studio I work for as a compositor has a different bespoke pipeline, each using the standards in film production differently- I think it’s crazy in certain ways, but it works for them and as an freelance artist I have to roll with it and get my job done.
Probably the best video I've seen on this topic. So many videos seem to ignore that even the most junior artists cost at minimum 10x as much as a maya licence.
I've heard anecdotally that Blender is now being taught in art, animation, and VFX schools. If we start getting sufficient numbers professionally trained students who want to enter the studio workforce, then Blender could become more main stream. I've also heard that many (mostly indie) studios already allow their artists to use Blender if that's their preference. I've noticed it being used in various behind-the-scenes footage for game studios. And I believe it's also a popular tool for some very high level concept artists who don't necessarily need to slot into the full pipeline with proprietary file formats.
You're right! Blender is way behind right now at the highest level of production, but in 10-20 years, or maybe even sooner, we very well could see it begin to become industry standard.
In fact, in my school blender was the ONLY 3D software they taught us. It has become super useful software, even if its not quite 100% there yet.
you absolute dame right....😅😅
Tbh, using only Blender in academic will stunt your growth and limit you,
Blender Hotkey and workflow is a bit different, some of blender of doing stuff is very incompatible with other software,
to the point that you basically learn everything from scratch again if you someday decided to use the real deal program like Maya or Houdini in the future.
i know, the Industry Standard Hotkey is a thing in Blender, but,
if you learn blender as your first 3d editor, you probably won't change your hotkey scheme,
and if you use Industry Standard hotkey as a newbie, you'll get alienated from thousands of Tutorial out there.
in term of Heavy Duty, Blender is not there yet,
Maya, Zbrush and Houdini is extremely Heavy Duty, you can throw super big stuff at it, and it will handle it with grace,
and the Export import support is very good, it can handle a lot of file format.
Blender is good for modeling, rendering, and tweaking stuff here and there,
but other than that, if you want to do Production level of Rigging, VFX, Animation, Procedural, Sculpting,
you have no choice but to reach the big boy stuff.
majority of Blender user never use any other software outside of blender,
they don't know what they don't know.
i use blender daily for like a Notepad equivalent of 3d Editor.
and i pretty much a 3d Program Agnostic, use the right tool for the right job
It is for almost a decade. Leftist teachers promote it and schools like it because they do not have to deal with licensing even free one. There are thousands who are taught with Blender. Their work is not up to par with people who are seeing their profession more seriously and professionally. More seriously dedicated and more methodical. Blender is a tool that not only it is preferred by amateurs, but also produces amateurs. And yes there are of course great artists working with Blender but they are the exception, and not the rule.
Everything I heard so far tells me professionals are already using it at home, thus minimizing that 'learning curve'. Studios are already using it for Pre-Vis since it is faster and easier to pump out prelims when all the tools are available in the same box. Schools are beginning to teach it. It's biggest deterrent right now is its limited capacity for handling millions of poly's, but there are people poking at it under the hood to optimize that code so in the near future that may be a non issue as well. I don't think it'll ever become an industry 'standard', since they all use a variety of tools to begin with, but I do see it as being added to the pipeline more and more.
I've been a plugin developer for 3ds Max and Maya for 11 years and in this video I hear something that I've thought before, but which later changed: I thought we needed to make big studios switch to our software. This DID happen, but very slowly, very little. But through the years, new studios popped up and gained momentum while using my software from the beginning. And this was an "aha!" moment for me :) I was around as these folks grew and got better and it was a great pleasure to see them become big. So with Blender, it might be something with delayed effect that kicks in after 5-10 years. Through which the software needs to survive, though.
And there's one more thing - with Blender, I, personally, never managed to do the things I tried to do - I wanted some averagely complicated things, and I always hit a wall of bugs or missing implementation. And since people lived through the same disappointment with my software and we managed to change it, I know for sure this is also just a matter of time, but also - of good prioritization and motivation.
A Blender issue that used to hurt me a lot was compatibility. Blender has to live in a world dominated by 3dsmax, Maya, and so on and show that it can handle what those other programs produce. For years, I had major problems trying to import 3dsmax models into Blender without suffering major glitches and bizarre-looking meshes in the conversion process. This hurt my ability to continue working with other artists' 3dxmax models or use off-the-shelf models from Turbosquid and elsewhere. Even today, the materials and textures don't always convert properly. That's what happens with any competing program. You have to be able to import Microsoft Word documents into LibreOffice and import Photoshop files into Affinity Photo without conversion errors too. These alternative programs at least *claim* to be compatible with Word files and Photoshop files. Blender doesn't even try because its developers know it isn't.
I really liked the way this video was made it was educational, informative and was not boring at the same time
I think you're missing an important aspect and it is that blender devs are full of shit sometimes. People would report that really important features you'd have in maya or maybe another big 3d software aren't available in blender, or it can't be done, and they would tell you "that's intended" and close your thread.
Let's not forget how they thought making right click select the only option was a good idea for like 15 years... if it weren't for Andrew Price we would still have another unusable piece of shit FOSS program. Which is sad because blender has a lot of potential to become industry standard, even more with addons created by its community, often for free or really cheap.
Agree with you on the Dev stuff. they do fix bugs pretty fast. Texture paint is a prime example of ignoring user feedback for a long time. The right click select was conceptually a good idea but in the end i'm glad they finally let it die. Lets hope they don't eliminate the 3d cursor to placate the masses. Its keyboard shortcut heavy workflow and infinitely configurable UI are things i miss in every other program. Oh and pie menus!
It is not conjecture, it is a very real and very common practice to make those sort of commercial deals for client retention purposes.
Workflow and their pipeline come first. Blender, while getting better all the time, is not worth restarting the process as you stated. The good news is that smaller studios are using Blender for a specific reason, such as price! Future generations are learning it and eventually, there is a good chance that eventually it will be used more!
6:00 yes this is the only real reason , support and stability + well planned roadmap
I can tell you. You are young. I started with Cinema 4D back in 1998. I got it from a friend, had to print out a 1000-page manual with my home printer and started to learn 3D. There were no RUclips Channels or anything that helped me out. Through the years, I got invested into the C4D community. But I struggled to get a job in Germany. Every big company was using 3dsmax. I finally found my first job after over 150 tries and was able to use C4D. During that time, I started to use 3dsmax at home, learning. In my second job, I started with 3dsmax and moved forward.
Today, my main tools in the game company I work for are Cinema 4D and 3dsmax, while all other artists use Blender. Most of them are juniors. It's totally fine. I learned to use Blender as well over the years, but are still blazing faster as a Senior Artist by using the tools I am used to for over 26 years. It might be easy for young people to say: Oh, just spend a couple of weeks with Blender, but there is much more to it.
Blender in my perspective wants to be a Jack of all trades and combines some strength of 3dsmax, C4D, Maya and other apps. But you will never get the modularity of Cinema 4D in Blender or even 3dsmax when working with modifiers, and how they interact with objects in the outliner because is it a complete different approach on using modifiers on an object directly.
Every app has its strengths and weakness. 3dsmax is excellent with exporting capabilities and I found it way easier to export from C4D to 3dsmax and then to Unreal Engine and not directly exporting from C4D to Unreal, since the FBX exporter works different.
I don't think Studios hate Blender. There is more to it.
First: You have customers and other companies surrounding you. I can give a simple example why it's the same with Gimp and Photoshop. If I used Gimp and exported in Photoshop Format, there is a chance of error. If the customer gets these files, and they are either not working or print different outcomes that would not happen if the files come from native Photoshop, I get into BIG trouble. We are talking in $10k+ trouble here. Blender in direct comparison had (or still has) horrible FBX export and maybe plenty of issues on other ends that other companies like Autodesk or Maxon don't have.
Second: Pipelines. You can't just use Blender when you have a complete Redshift or Houdini-Vex driven pipeline. Nobody cares that it's free when it can't do what the existing pipelines are capable of. There might be a day when all of this is possible, but that does not change overnight.
I want to be honest: I tried Blender many times in my life… since 1998. And many times I regret the time I spent on version 2.49 and earlier. Try it. It was horrible. With version 2.5 and up, it slowly started to evolve and got a lot more attention. And definitely, there are many artists who do excellent work with it. I bow my head to the people who create stunning art and animations with it.
It is capable of doing a lot, and probably the same that other applications can do. But you also can't just delete 30+ years of existing knowledge. Older artists in small to big companies may know a couple of tricks in 3dsmax, Houdini, Maya and C4D that a youngster with Blender would never expect to exist. Blender is cool. I love Blender! But I also learned what it can't do.
Suggestion for young artists: Definitely stick with Blender! This is what Cinema 4D was for me when I was young. However, also… keep your eyes open. Be open to try every 3D app. Try 3DCoat. Try Modo, Lightwave, 3dsmax, Houdini Indie/Free, C4D, Plasticity, ZBrush, Marvelous. -- And then… stick to the apps that YOU like, not that others tell you It's cool and swag and fresh to use.
XO
3D Boomer Dad
this video needs more views. Its such an interesting topic
For modelling I think it's really the best tool right now. it's regular modelling tools, hard surface addons, subd and the easy switch between modelling and sculpting makes it superior to the competition in this area. personally I think the biggest obstacle is that the internet is flooded with very good, but not top tier professional works done in blender and that makes pros think that it's because of blender's limited capabilities. in reality, it's because professionals get good by doing professional jobs in professional studios...and as a consecquence, they use other softwares. but ofc simulations, animations, rigging and texturing has better tools are the job of houdini, maya, and mari/substance.
You should try Modo
3dsmax is the best tool for polygons,
"addons" lmao, that's the problem. You have to buy addons to make stuff work out of the box.
@@FutureRulesat least it would still way cheaper than subscribe to Maya or similar here while those blender add-on only need to buy one time (check the video that compare the cost between blender with needed add-on and other software, then try to scale it for each computer your company need to use, and you will see how damn costly it is both short and long term. Of course that doesn’t mean you need to thrown out all the other tool, just one or two with Maya or similar so they at least can open or convert old projects -customer file there)
@@FutureRules you don’t need them, they just make your life easier, the expansion option with an open source program like Blender is endless
did you ever work in a vfx company? did you ever talk about this topic with someone who works in vfx? vfx companies don't hate blender, and many use them to some extent. and many of the experienced 3d artists like it, it has it's strong points.
some of your assumptions are right like bulk licensing, jack of all trades master of none, missing support (although autodesk support is pretty bad :) ) but you miss the big picture: production means many steps, pipeline, integration, developing scripts and plug-ins, finding blender users with production experience. also, last time i checked the docs it was missing a lot (maybe it's better now, i dont know).
in short it's a totally different world compared to a one (-2-3) man team doing some nice stuff at home.
everyone sees that blender develops insanely fast, has some great features and in my experience many people in vfx like it. i'm not a pipeline td but what i saw and heard blender has some inherent problems which are hard, maybe impossible to fix, but it's tools are getting better all the time.
ahh! and "industry standard" is a stupid term! industry standard for what?
@@villain42
Our standard, pleb.
@@Dr.W.Krueger your standard for what? you spoke but didn't say anything apart from scolding me, moron. :D
it's a stupid and childish "answer" from someone hwo is probably smart (if your name is not a lie)
clickbait title. we all know why, plus many studios incorporate blender and many other softwares.
"Support" is absolutely a huge reason for large companies purchasing expensive software licenses. On the surface, it doesn't make a lot of sense to blow money like this when you might not ever even need the support, but when every day of missed work due to technical problems can cost a company hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars, the support fee seems miniscule in comparison to what it promises.
Every big-business-company I've worked for dumps mind-blowing levels of cash to secure a support license even when extremely good free options are available and this at least _seems_ to apply to every industry if the company is large enough.
I wouldn't say Studio's hate blender, but other 3D companies definitely do. Imagine you're renting out your software for thousands of dollars a year. And a company comes along and provides an alternative to your software that is FREE growing bigger and better all the time and is getting a bigger percentage of users over your software?
I've seen a lot of users moving from Max and Maya to Blender, as a graphic designer vfx artist myself.... I find Blender does what I need it to do. Let's face it Maya and Max crash as well, all software is prone to crashing at times.
The future of software isn't Subscription based! It's Open Source. The majority of users don't want to be locked into software based on how much you pay a month to use it. Unless you get hold of the software some other way.... (Argh Jim lad)
The problem with software like Maya and Max is that it's Closed Source, in Blender as part of the GNU General Public License. I can create anything and sell it on etc I make a full blown movie and make millions out of it and wouldn't have to give a penny to Blender if I didn't want to.
However if I wanted to do that in Maya or Max because of there licensing, you technically don't own what you create. If you use the Indie version of Maya, I think you can earn up to like 100,000 USD. Which is a lot, but if you make more than that with the software. You then have to spend money to upgrade the license.
The difference for me with Blender I own the tools to create, whilst with Maya it's like renting someone else's to do what I want to create.
This is why Blender is hugely popular and when you read reviews from people. More and more studio's are investing and using Blender alternative nowadays, especially out of house studio's and it will continue to grow. So in a way it has become a studio standard.
I think there will come a point, where these 3D studio's are going to have to adjust their pricing and licensing laws to stay relevant in the future.
Film companies are going to have to force themselves into using Blender more as part of the workflow. Because as more and more people use Blender over Maya and Max they will need to understand the tide is changing. Maya is harder to learn.
Subscription models for software DON'T WORK in this day and age. Most people outside of a multimillion dollar company, ain't going to spend thousands dollars a year to rent software it's not a viable option unless you get the other way.
A lot of people that have got into 3D design have done because of Blender, not Maya or Max and with a lot of companies investing in the foundation of Blender, it's only going to get better and better. You have to remember software can only go so far...
Change is coming...
Studios also spent a lot of money in custom tooling that they don't want to rewrite.
Korea still using 3ds max and rigging using biped not even CAT bro.... thats like 15 years old system?. But they make the most addicting games. So basically Blender is not needed so far when u can get away with a 15 years old workflow and still make money. However that said i started to notice small indies studios are shifting towards open source softwares to avoid big Oopsies!~ like Unity did and some other like cough cough ado..
I think the biggest factor is probably customer support for Blender to which there isn't. With a license with the other software, you get technical support from the developer. But with Blender, you have to ask the community and even then, you may not find what you're looking for.
But still I think Blender serves a purpose, allowing anyone with a computer to get their start in 3D modeling and animation and it don't cost you a dime.
A bit click baity title. Studios don't "hate" Blender. Blender just doesn't come into their equations for the reasons outlined. Blender is for use by small studios with tight budgets and individuals. I don't see anything wrong with any of this setup. One day it may change, with each succeeding generation having used Blender more in their spare time. But big software companies aren't going away any time soon.
i'm a blender fan, i use it for architectural work, and i've completely abandoned industry programs such as Revit, Maya, Autocad etc etc to fully embrace Open Source. For me blender is a life saver and to be honest i don't even wish it to be industry standard because i love the way it develops from all these incremental directions, and like you said, it's a jack of all trades. So i don't need to learn 50,000 programs like i did when working for industry.
Honestly, too much importance is given to VFX studios.
There are many artists who don't care about working in these environments and live decently using Blender.
People must learn to not care about commercial decisions especially if they come from studios with conflicts of interest with Autodesk. Personally, I am of the opinion that today's cinema has terribly worsened. Blockbusters can appeal to a young audience, but an adult interested in the story and well-woven dialogues, doesn't care about explosions or super-realistic monsters.... so no, this statement makes absolutely no sense.
Thing is, even those small adult interested movies with well-woven dialogue for audience who doesn't care about explosions still uses insane amount of VFX, unless if it took place entirely in room in modern time.
I believe blender is growing within the industry. The issue is that Autodesk creates tight ecosystems that make it hard to escape.
And you can never own Maya, no matter how much you pay Autodesk.
@@kalidesu i mean duh its a company that needs to make money just like any other company, why would they let you buy out a copy to keep forever?
I jumped into Blender wagon as a completely new person to 3D. I was quite a rough start, as it was a bit overwhelming and I couldn't find the type of tutorials I'd want to use results from and I'd be able to keep up with at that time.
But I have to say, the amount of overall progress since 2.8 is absolutely amazing. I work extensively with geometry nodes and with each update, I get more and more excited about new possibilities and optimisations.
Most recently, I ended up "stealing" workflows from various AAA studios and just applying them to Blender environment. Nuts.
this video sponsored by autodesk
I work for AAA and Indie studios as a character artist. Although none of the AAA studios use Blender, largely due to too many custom Maya and Max related pipeines, all the indies (ones you have definitely heard of) use it across all art teams. The one important factor is that the indies all have artists who work relatively autonomously and frankly it doesn't matter what tools you create models on. At the larger studios we (often 100+ artists) have to work far more collaboratively and efficiently and need to use robust systems that allow custom pipelines, scripting and tools that can allow that. Blender isn't quite there yet in terms of intensive production environments.
yeah i am happy that blender is not industry standards
because the industry freaking sucks at the moment
and its hard to get too or out anyway
So it’s Autodesk’s fault no one can get work?
@@brenolad its kids fault , they are working for free for portfolio. And people from poor countries because they do work for 3 dollars
no correlation
@@saynapolygons sorry for needing to put food on my table lol
@@saynapolygonssorry for living in a poor country ig
I am doing my graduation thesis on Hybrid animation and I've discovered that even some of the big studios use blender for this purpose. Even Sony uses it for Spider-verse, the movie that revolutionized this method. I guess since it is a new pipeline they would have to spend similar time with other software as well. Grease pencil is also quite good.
Finally somebody said it
As a Studio's point of view these points might be correct. but as an artist's point or from someone who is learning 3d, essentially starting with blender the person can get grasp of all the essential concepts and tools which are similar in high-end paid software's. Which then eventually help them to transition to any software later while working in a studio environment. Plus an efficient open-source software is a great advantage for new studio's coming up or even new film makers. It's also not just about how much support studios get, they can actually invest in the insane hardware required for massive 3d rendering and work. I believe it's more sooner than expected for studios to adapt to blender then partnering with these huge giants who just want to maintain a monopoly for an outdated crashing and bug filled software. (Excluding Houdini.. it's at another level) mainly Autodesk Suit.
As a Maya user that firstly started with Blender, I gladly admit that Maya is way better and more comfortable for animation. There's so many tools, especially AnimBot plugin, that makes the animation workflow so fluid
And the picker too! Don't forget the picker
@@ISAACreate Indeed! though I think Pickers can also be done in Blender. Or can't they?
I first discovered Blender in 2001 with version 2 alpha. Then i participated in crowdfunding which released it as open-source in 2004 i think. To me Blender was a liberating experience. It was quite weird, you had to learn the keyboard, but once you did, operating it was spectacularly quick, like being directly connected from the brain to the 3D model.
Why it wasn't more popular? Mhm it DEPENDS.
See one of the most popular animation software back in the day in the late 90s early 2000s was Newtek Lightwave. It wasn't used in Hollywood productions but it was used a lot for TV series, advertisement, anime CG backgrounds, low-budget direct-to-video stuff. And early 2000s Blender wasn't really all that different in capabilities or approach. To showcase its capabilities, they created Elephants Dream short film in 2006, and then a new one every couple years. So ultimately it wasn't popular because it wasn't popular, not because it wasn't sufficient.
To describe it as unusable before 2 years ago, when you only have 3 years of experience in it, is completely bonkers. Like yeah it has a steep learning curve, just like any CG software, though all for different reasons. What did you expect? Odds are, when you started le-learning it "from scratch" to learn new interface, this simply triggered a more systematic approach to learning, which was made smoother by prior experience, reducing cognitive load. It's not to say the redesign wasn't good or unnecessary, it's just that it's not nearly that dramatic. It was also absolutely NEVER slow. Look i could do million vertex scenes on an Athlon 750 with a Geforce 2mx and 128MB RAM, what the hell are you talking about.
While Blender has continuously gained features and capabilities over 25 years, i think over time it has also lost a lot of its essential elegance, since it's originally designed like a second generation 3D software akin to Lightwave, not 3rd generation unlike Max, Maya and Softimage XSI, and always retained some of that legacy. The architecture is also a limitation.
Also Max for modelling? Please, that's Modo territory if you want the best tool.
Blender is growing fast. The biggest crutch it has is its renderer, is not production ready (and also arguably its community rampant cringe). I can see blender taking over the modeling stuff really fast. For everything else, not so much. Its so refreshing to see an actual self aware blender user, lmao.
Most studios I've been at for the last 4 or so years at least have blender installed. It may not be their main, but it's invaluable as a file converter, or a good free seat for someone who only sometimes needs to mess with 3D (compositors, etc). As a Senior CG artist I wound up using Blender quite a few times for creating assets due to specific things I knew how to do quicker in it ...despite 20 years of Maya experience (Jeez I feel old now).
The scale of companies will drastically change stuff like that though, how much control an artist has to use what they want, software wise, is generally not much, but as long as you can get it doing its job in the pipepine, most smaller studios will have no problem. Like he said in this video, most of these studios use Maya, Houdini, 3DSMax, ZBrush, etc. for their specific roles. So within those tasks you're unlikely to have as much freedom. Ambiguity in the pipeline can cost a LOT of money so its understandable to avoid it wherever possible. I've been lucky to be with some mid level studios that gave a lot of weight to their artist's expertise and they generally were ok with me using Blender as long as my work wound up in Maya, published on the pipeline, and passed the usual QA checks.
I'm sure the big reason is, as you said, support. It wouldn't suprise me at all if the big studios actually had a support person on site. Someone who worked for the 3D software company, but stayed with the production crew answering questions all day. Also, the person who decides which software to use is not the same person who is paying for it. Switching to Blender would not save this individual a single penney.
I started a vfx gig a few weeks ago. They asked what software I'd be using other than Nuke, I said Blender and I got a real condescending laugh back. They settled down and are all cool with it now. It's not in their rendering pipeline or anything so it's not really an issue.
That remark @8:00 is just bs. I mean, those assets they all made them themselves out bought them. Same as you ca buy or make them for blender. Its just an awkard intro for the sponsor
blender is a swiss army knife that can do everything okay. The great mods from the community make it somehow seem polished and better sometimes but it requires a lot of customization. While industry standards are often more specialized tools like Zbrush for sculpting, for example, which are simply top and work. That just comes with a certain price
For some reason, other softwares such as Houdini, ZBrush, C4D, Substance (and even AIs) have been integrated to production pipeline despite overlaps between them. But for some reasons, Blender is always actively disregarded (if not outright mocked) and excluded from the pipeline.
The truth is, many Technical Artist Directors won't even test it like they did with the other softwares if at all and are even hostile toward it despite the fact that Blender is increasingly popular and powerful.
Great video! I've been in Blender now for roughly 3 years as well. I remember tinkering around with it back in the late 2000s and I've seen it come a long way. I also got a taste of Maya this year on my first professional CG gig. The production company got me a license to use it and it took me a few days to start animating in it. I definitely love the functionality of Blender and the general navigational tools better than Maya but I would say after getting used to it's graph editor, I found myself doing much better animating.
I appreciate it! Glad you've made so much progress
Best tool for Indie 3D and also 2D games, I render 3D Isometric models to then put them into a 2D Isometric game. I just love the accessibility of these tools.
Also the skills that one learns with one 3D modeling program are transferable, even real pros say so all the time, so learning 3D with Blender is still really good.
3:44 Hasty generalization. Despite being the "swiss army knife" of 3D software, Blender is the clear winner for 3D modeling in particular. If you look at any surveys or polls on the matter, it's not even close. And calling it "garbage" for professional use is an insult to those who create stunning artwork with it.
I'm primarily a blender user. I've used it both professionally and privately and it's awesome; it can do everything I need it to. But the shear size of the blender community will skew any public pole in its favor. But I do appreciate your feedback!
@@filmstop7828 i dont think he has ever studied the, Berkeley gender bias case of 1973. Aka the Simpson's Paradox.
Maybe because there are more blender users than any other software?? Blender is great but in modeling it’s not much better than Maya imo I just prefer the workflow but that’s a biased opinion not an objective fact
Yes only issue is who is making those polls and who is answering them. Its a good modeler for sure it just have a bit performance problems with larger polysets
@LEDs , Blender even for its strongest suit being 3D modeling isn’t the best program at doing it while still very good for most people’s general use. I’ve heard that a lot of companies will port things from Maya into stuff like z-brush if they want super hyper realistic detailing and cloth work for games like overwatch 2 and even the new street fighter games as some general examples which is a real strong suit of that program before moving it back into Maya. The other potential reason why pro companies might not want to use it may depend on file type as well, if the file type doesn’t match or causes issues when switching between programs and makes the pipeline more complicated than the software wouldn’t be a good candidate in their eyes.
The other issue is when it comes to training employees who already know a specific software already. Most companies don’t want to spend millions of dollars trying to train their workers on a new program and find it easier to simply have new students learn the programs they already use before they enter the industry. While there are many parts of the pipeline where you can get away with maybe using a different than conventional program, it largely depends on the production but also whether the software can still integrate back into the full pipeline and the onus is on the individual to know the software and troubleshoot it on their own in their free time.
I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with what Filmstop is saying here and don’t think it’s really productive to shoot the messenger so to speak, take it up with the companies themselves if you have an issue. All he’s doing is nicely explaining the situation as it stands so that the rest of us can understand it, not that he somehow thinks blender is the worst program in the world (he’s literally stated it himself that he loves to work in the program despite the drawbacks for pros in the industry)
Thanks for wasting my time
Bender is a "Jack Of All Trade And A Master Of None"
For texturing: Substance Painter, Mari, 3D coat
Animation: Maya,
Effect: Houdini, 3dsmax and plugins
Its a master of just pure modeling. Its leagues better than maya and comparable to max only faster. Also UVing in blender is much better than in either max or maya
@@ttmayor You know nothing about "Uving" if you think Blender is better than Max or Maya. As a matter of fact UVing inBlender is worse than it is in any other 3D program.
Saying Blender is comparable to Max is another sign of your incompetence. It may be faster but it isn't comparable - Leagues better than Maya? Another lie - you probably have never modeleld in Maya. Stop it with your bullshit, it makes you look like an ignorant fanboy who is suffering from delusions.
However, blender is a lot more stable than Maya. That alone makes me use blender over maya
@@teneesh3376having made the switch, blender crashed more on me than Maya, the main reason i switched is because modeling and rigging is easier to learn and do in blender but for animation I still believe Maya is better
@@ASchnackyI don’t know what your point is especially with the lol but 3d coat is still mostly used for hand painted texture, I don’t think they mentioned Mari for game assets and Marmoset is still a bit worse for texturing than substance and 3d coat but great for render tho
I find the 1.76m for those 2 months to learn blender a bit weird. Yes, it will cost money. But after that, you never pay for any new version or release since it's free. It's mostly because some state, it doesn't fit in their pipeline. Or it doesn't have professional support. I do wonder though. How faster blender does updates and fixes stuff. It's insane compared to payed programs, at least what I've read about it
I think blender is great for 3d artist starting out, they can learn all the skills need in production, but as you get into the industry every company has its own pipelines for each program and building a whole new pipeline around blender is just too expensive and time consuming, I don't use blender personally but I love that it is a program in the industry i think it helps to keep these other companies innovating and keeps competition going.
I use to really hate blender mostly because when i posted on forums asking a specific question about a specific program i would get spammed by people saying have you tried blender.
one other thing I want to add is that most high level VFX / digital art schools teach max, maya, zbrush and not blender. So if a company is looking for qualified artists, its much more likely they will be maya users than blender.
But at the end of the day the choice is on the artists end. Most of this software has interchangeable file formats for import and export, nothing is stopping you from modeling in blender, and than move that model over to maya to integrate it into their pipeline, even better, its possible to develop your own plugins for blender to smoothly transition into any pipeline.
This is what I do, my studio has lots of proprietary tools made for maya that are needed to export into our custom game engine, but I still use blender for the majority of the work I do because I am just more comfortable and faster with it.
Here's the full quote: "A jack of all trades, a master of none, but often times better than a master of one."
That doesn't apply in this context though
Forget about using Blender for rigging and animation in the entertainment industry. Maya is a beast. But I wish Blender has some love from other 3D related field
Glad your back to posting 👍
The current incentives for everybody who uses any 3d app - to also dive a little bit into blender so you can use the strong sides of both. Zero is very special number. If you are a tutor - your target audience are already 100 times bigger if you teach blender. Create an asset generator in Maya - and maya users can use it, create it in blender - and you got everybody as target audience for it. At some point big studios will face the fact that most new hires already know blender, but have 0 experience with other apps. Yes, it's unprofitable for big studios to retrain everybody into using blender, but everybody learns it outside of work little by little anyway.
SO very glad to have found your channel.
I am sure that big VFX studios won't switch to Blender, but what I am certain about is that Game Development studios will use Blender.
Blender is a great tool with an awesome community, but, why is it not industry standard ?
Very simple :
Its Geometry Nodes and VFX capabilities will never be better then Houdini
Its Sculpting capabilities will never be better then ZBrush
Its Clothing Design capabilities will never be better then Marvelous Designer
Its UV mapping capabilities will never be better then Rizom UV Mapping
Its Animation capabilities will never be better then Cascadeur/Maya/3DSMax
Its Texturing capabilities will never be better then Mari
Its Video Editing capabilities will never be better then Adobe Premiere / Davinci Resolve
Average Fanboy: But in the future.....after lots of updates.....you'll see!..... nope, still no go, they will
need to build things from the ground up again if Blender really wants to compete with all those
specialized tools.
But other then that for small studios on a budget and people trying to earn a bit more income
through online work/projects, its an awesome (and cheap) tool nonetheless.
And yes i say Blender is cheap because you'll still be buying plugins to somewhat be able to work with it. 🙂
Never say never 🙂
the answer is monopoly
As I 3D art student and who attend every studio visit as much as I can, they do not hate it, infact they literally use Blender. Some studios including CD Project Red claims that it is better for modelling then other modelling softweres like maya and 3dmax.
Different strenghts between softwares. I personally use Maya for animation/rigging, 3ds max for modeling, and blender for weightpainting. Im a hobbyist though as i never could get a foot in the industry despite 4 years of effort.
I mainly do animation. Im part of a mod project for TWW3 and we use maya for the humanik system primarily, but also because we all can help eachother. I occasionally do 3D modeling if i need objects in 3ds max for personal projects. Blender was the last thing i taught myself, and i found the weightpaint far easier.
The VFX and game market now are diversifying so much. Even small teams can produce top-tier visuals. And considering the use of AI, we can expect a drastic drop in production costs and amount of employees in the near future. The bulky mastodons of the industry won't be able to compete with hundreds of cheaper smaller studios, who will produce the same results quality-wise. And that's when Blender will shine.
What the hell are you talking about
It's the very fact that, while blender may not be the best at anything regarding 3D modeling, we shan't deny its general purpose design.
to be honest i worked at big animation studio in Poland Our team was 15 people and we were working on 3ds max but we had one person who was working on blender just for some features that blender has.
3dsMax for the win. TyFlow, Vray and Forestpack make 3dsMax an Environment Art beast. Prove me wrong.
the video lacks some important points like pipeline constraints and stuff, but it's more lucid than I thought it would be. It's more than a risk for big studios, it's a technical nightmare. Big Studios has a ton of custom tools, that work specifically with specific software, due to their API, way of working, and so on. When you try to ditch Maya and use Blender, as an example, you need to deal with tons of technical problems as well, because the whole pipeline will change. It's way more complicated than that
and finally, the Blender license is pretty wild. If you build anything on top of Blender, this thing "legally" needs to be open source, even If it has a commercial license. That means if you built a Blender pipeline inside your studio and got sued, all of your tools would have to be made public and free. So yeah, that's a big issue for big studios with a bunch of custom tools, simulation engines, render engines, etc
The only ones obsessed with blender becoming industry standard are the users. Let's not forget that the creator of Blender just wanted a free program that every hobbyist could owned and used forever. That's it. His vision was never to make blender industry standard. So let it go, and use for the love of it, or abandon it and learn what the industry wants. It is up to you where you invest your time on. I use blender in my job and in my personal work every day, and it does the job very well.
i work for a large studio in games. blender is being used for its unique plugins like decal machine and hops and machine tools etc in the creation of 3d assets for the environment on a new game. in games we are cur seeing lots of studios turn to unreal now. why? user base...why? because the larger the user base the easier to find future employees who can hit the ground running. i think were only at the beginning of blenders giant user base becoming a force in the industry. the smart studio that will be a new studio will embrace it and enjoy this rich pool of people they can work with. last point, we use alot of software and its always being re-evaluated. no one package is an all or nothing in the cur pipe. more studios are going agnostic and using file formats to talk to their proprietary or rendering softs. usd for one, fbx for another. so package is less important now.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" said no Maya user ever. heh. Blender isn't going to disappear like when a big company like Autodesk kills off SoftImage, Combusion, Discreet, Fire, etc. etc. All that time spent learning an application and then it goes poof. Any Quantel users out there anymore? Corporate shareholder profit investment strategies to dictate a product's lifecycle? No thanks. Also, that kills off the conjecture that studios don't want to re-train all their workers. More like fire and hire is what saves them time getting up to speed quickly.
A common switch is archviz artists hating Max and seeing how much easier a lot of things are in Blender but then realising that Corona is the deal breaker. Then there are the Maxon subscribers that are spending £3000 a year and realising the geo nodes is as good as Maxon's tools but there's no Redshift or Octane. Blender will keep progressing there can be no doubt about that, but there are many things that still dissuade full switching.
Studios ofc can't ditch the old software, but I also think Blender is a bit much of a muchness, if you know what I mean. It's has modelling, unwrapping, sculpting, vfx, texture painting, rendering, compositing, video editing and so on. So perhaps studios are unwilling to bite the bullet when the commercial pipeline on their machines for the most part exceeds the capability of blender in each domain, outside of 3d modelling. If you have Max, Zbrush, Houdini, RizomUV, Marmoset and some high end rendering engine installed, do you boot Max out in favour of Blender for just modelling? The costs of annual license renewal and labour might be large enough so as to render the switch to the open source alternative constitute a small % of the overall figure. Max might be expensive, but ditching it could perhaps save you a few percentage points at most of the overall cost, and that's not factoring in hidden costs that may be associated with the free alternative. Anyhow, just my 2c.
Support.
Support.
Support.
The right answer is the same for any FOSS application : support.
Companies need support, they pay for support not a product.
If any linux such as redhat or ubuntu is use in companies is because of available support.
I rarely consider myelf a fan of a company or product these days, because corporations are evil. But I proudly express myself as a Blender fan. Because when it is NOT about tackling a serious career but to just play and tinker in the 3D world without worrying about insanely expensive licences, Blender is the way to go. I love them for their approach - give you this insanely awesome tool for free, no questions asked. Without Blender, I wouldn't have built up meaningful 3D skills, because I could simply do it in a pace I prefer. Having to pay big sums for some professional 3D software, nobody would do that just because of personal interest without the intent of getting in the industry.
Right now I am working on the first episode of my very elaborated animated channel, which would probably not happen without Blender. So to show some respect, my character is gonna wear a shirt with the Blender logo, custom design by me. Also, as soon as this show hopefully starts generating money, it is intended to donate a portion of that income to the Blender foundation. And if this channel would grow really big with merchandise and stuff, I'd happily offer this shirt from episode 1 so that it can be worn by people on the streets. Frankly, I don't think the Blender logo is a very beautiful thing, but at least it's unique and everybody knowing it, knows what it stands for.
There simply is no way around liking those Blender people. Because there simply is no incentive to maximize profits, they truely just want to bless the world with something, people normally don't get the chance to just try without huge commitments. These people want to improve Blender further and further without always having one eye on your wallet. Bless those people.
2002 blender was an LSD inspired fever dream, it was totally bonkers ! Only got really good at V3, but most studios are well trained in Maya, its a standard requirement these days.
Hi! 👋 I’m a Pipeline Developer for a VFX and Animation studio. Apparently Blender licensing is a legal nightmare when it comes to capitalising on proprietary IP, so that’s why we don’t use it 🤷
Interesting, thanks for adding to the discussion
I have a little software development studio, we also do a little of architectural visualization, product render and VR and we use blender in our pipeline.
From my standpoint and after trying a ton of 3D software out there, blender has proven the most powerful tool in our arsenal.
I'll take blender over 3ds max any day.
though I don't believe Blender will cause many studios to switch, I do believe over time, more and more of them will simply just adjust and adapt to using it as more new talent with primarily Blender experience comes in as well as Blender improving along the way as lets be honest, it moves dramatically faster than any of the other tools do in terms of improvement and added features