Why Blender Isn't 3D Industry Standard
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- In this episode, we talk about why Blender isn't the industry standard tool.
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just my 2c:
I'm in gaming industry for 20 years already and made couple of AAA games. I used mainly Max and Maya for modeling. I always ignored Blender because it was "just a toy for muggles". Since I tried the v2.8 for the first time and especially with addons like BoxCutter, HOps and DecalMachine I'm really struggling to get back to Autodesk. Blender really surprised me with it's modelling.
Yup, v2.8 surprised me asswell, I'm new at the industry and I starte using Blender, but didn't last very long form me, I now use Zbrush and Maya, but the new version of blender feels very good to me. Not that i'm going to change, but i will be keeping an eye to it.
What games did you make?
Add ons are a core strength of Blender. And that's also a selling point i think. With the right set of add ons, you have a piece of software that becomes more and more powerful!
I really hope some of the essential ones will get integrated as the years go by
Lmao modeling hasnt changed much
any good addons for node based rigging? this might tip the scales for me in blender. I hate how basic doing anything animation related is with the exception of node based particle effects, its otherwise very plain and outdated by more than a decade in this department
Take a drink every time they say: "guys we don't hate Blender".
Make sure you have an EMT nearby!
Thanks, I'm quite hydrated now.
No thank you, I need my liver to pay for software licenses.
ASooij9SIDUNPKlk aMASDa thantks for theheeee ideeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
they know they can't Say bed words about blender . because blender is ssooooo good....
2019 : Why Blender Isn't 3D Industry Standard
2030: How Blender took over the 3D industry
2031: How blender became sentient and took over the world in less than a year
2035: The Default Cube has mastered intergalactic space travel and is now our new galactic overlord. Praise The Default Cube!
@@X-3K 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
wow . certified dumbass
2025: How Blender being sold because owner really fucking tired of running this shit. Autodesk Blender boys.
@@X-3K theres actually a game about cubes being overlords.....and you play as a chicken. man, im sad I forget the name of it! Mort The Chicken?
2:17 "Maya has been tested for years"... Crashes every 5 minutes
2 years with Maya and it has crashed maybe 5 times at most. If it crashes that many times for you, then you're just terrible at it.
For instance, importing a file which is not mine, I don't think there is any skill invlolved (and the file opened worked the second time).
Also, if a software crashes, it's never the fault of the user (unless it's because your scene is too heavy)
@@anurandev7337 If you're doing simple tasks it's pretty stable. But when you get into complex tasks I've read many people saying that it crashes a lot on them. Surely they all can't be wrong, or "just terrible at it".
Delete that history yo
@@anurandev7337 Programs shouldn't crash. That's the long and short of it, regardless of user.
Blender is a good software to have in your pocket, when Maya isn't working correctly it's my saviour
Eww Maya
@@budgetstylestories8357 ewwww blender
@@Erwinfanreal12 ewwww Maya
@@Erwinfanreal12 ewwww maya
@@budgetstylestories8357 The name tho 😳😳😳
my 2c as a 25+ year Max/Blender generalist freelancer:
Why Blender is not seen as industry standard:
1. Perceived as a toy
2. No technical support
3. Lack of professional talent pool.
4. Scene file exchange. Other studio's want files they can use.
5. Lack of industry standard plugins like iToo Forrest Pack hampered by open source nature.
My thoughts on that:
Perceived as a toy
==============
Blender 2.8 is, imo, a game changer. Eevee alone is worth its weight in gold that other software lacks in. I switched from Max 2019 to Blender 2.7 / 2.8 and my work output quality has not changed, in fact I produce faster in Blender now than I did with 25+ years of Max software knowledge. We should look at software to solve problems or achieve goals quicker and if Blender can solve a problem that Max/Maya/Houdini struggles with then learn it, use it and add it to you toolbox. A flexible artist has a whole collection of software tools to complete a job.
No Technical Support
=================
As a freelancer I had what? 2 free calls to Autodesk to help with issues during each 12 month subs. The issues I found were crash bugs and the response was something like "we will let you know when that status changes". Max forums / Reddit are pretty much ghost towns. Vray (Chaos Group) were better at getting back to you and I commend their support though. Now Blender, if you have an issue there are lots of places to get almost real-time help from other users. It is a thriving community. If it is a serious bug in the software you could (assuming you can code) dive in, fix it, recompile. Or wait for a daily build that fixes it and more often than not, find a workaround. I am not sure if priority support exists for Blender but a studio could employ a programmer for that as you get the full source for free. Also, Blender crashes maybe once every 4 weeks when working. Max 2019 crashed 2 to 3 times a day on my last 20 mil+ poly project. I would much rather NOT have a need for urgent support.
Lack of professional Talent Pool
==========================
This is something that industry needs. I good supply of talented users in software x. I think 2.8 with its more natural UI and accessibility will gradually change this but until universities and colleges offer Blender courses more often this will stifle adoption.
Scene File Exchange
=================
This was my biggest hurdle. My colleagues in the industry wanted max files so when I switched to Blender that become impossible. Exporting as FBX is not a solution here and I have lost a few clients because of this. Rather than pay $200 per month for those odd jobs that require Max source files I decided to drop it altogether and just concentrate on Blender as most clients do not care what I use as long as the output is to their expectations.
Plugins
======
This is an issue where industry grade plugin developers need to protect their IP and with Blenders open source nature that makes it very difficult. Yes you can compile a copy of Blender just for your addon (e.g. VRay) but the pace of Blender fixes and releases makes that a constant job for plugin developers to recompile. This is one area I wish Blender could find a solution to. Some kind of API that is not bound by Blender's open source license and allow compiled linked addons. For instance I like to have a collection of render engines for different jobs, I am now limited in that area. I would also like to see plugins like iToo Forrest Pack make its way to Blender but again, difficult.
Finally:
I can understand why big budget studio's want to stick with corporate software tools but for freelancers and smaller studio's (
One thing that's worth noting regarding plugins and protecting IP is that no matter how good Blender gets, the foundation behind it is *very* firmly committed to keeping it 100% free and accessible. It isn't just similar software that doesn't cost any money - it's the product of a fundamentally different design philosophy. On some level, this will simply always make it less compatible with attempts to make money off of the software itself (as opposed to making money off what you produce in it, which is no problem).
That was an excellent post, by the way. Thanks for breaking it down like that.
Awesome post! Autodesk seems to have a heavier focus on Revit lately. It'a good move, since you have tons of support and a big community. I'd love to see a workflow between Revit and Blender ifc proof
Btw if you want some really crappy paid support try Rhinoceros or Allplan...
" Blender also brought back the "fun" to working in 3D due to its real-time semi-rendered viewports."
This is totally true, I have been into Blender since 2.3 and wanted to use it for years. I put it down did app dev for 10, now back. Used Lightwave3D for years, Newtek dropped the ball. Last year got into Houdini for the procedural game asset hda creation, still needed a direct modeler. So I bit the bullet removed 2.8 alpha that was still "alpha" and made me cry since it was "almost" there. Downloaded 2.8.1 within 2 weeks I am flying modeling with eevee and it's wonderful AO/Cavity render with colors.
Yup I agree with everything you have said and the future.
Well said :)
What? Do you want to plugins like iToo Forrest Pack ? Dude... just go to the Blender market! You literally have dozens of plugins that do the same thing and even BETTER!
I found performance in Blender with couple million poly scenes far better than in Maya LT.
Then again maybe that's LT being rubbish again.
@@Degartuo there are features in Maya I wish was in blender tbh.
One thing that will never change, lots of 3d users talking crap about software they know nothing about.
It's not about that at all, and they are not bashing Blender either. What they are saying is, that because of the very nature of Blender - being a free tool were an insane amount of people are developing a lot of different all around components without a real specialization (for now) - it can't be an industry standard. It is however a powerful base for future content and an amazing software for beginners.
Take Sketchup for instance. It's garbage, there is no sugar coating it... But for architects like me it's damn good, because is fast, simple, pre-production volume calculation works fine enough and the end-result (render output with Vray) is more than good enough for exteriors and quite brilliant for interior design. It's the use and specialization that matters, so even if you hate it (Maya being another good example) you'll use it in the industry. Blender for now is the opposite. Simple as that!
@ent|ty sunken cost falacy of every autoD user :)
hehe, true!
ent|ty, that’s not what they said at all. it’s not like they’re not getting a kickback from autodesk on every sale. Those applications are standard because they have dedicated support from the manufacturer and have long-standing pipelines and workflows. artists are familiar with those tools. Blender is great, but it’s still fairly new.
It reminds me so much in the audio industry of Reaper vs Pro Tools.
It would be nice if you coud talk more about what mistakes are being made in Blender training videos, which would you "get fired on day one" in a real production environment.
Something about using NURBS or booleans disrupting topology and making your object a mess.
I think it's a general problem of people new to the industry, not just Blender. You get the same thing with people out of education and training. For instance splitting a model into several meshes in order to save on polycount but creates z-fighting and poor shading.
What is it? Could you perhaps point out a single mistake they make?
Minor errors don't get you fired day one in virtually any studio; employers are rarely ever that fickle and unforgiving. A lot of what they saying seems questionable to me, just speaking as someone who's also "iN tHe InDuStRy".
@@downo teaching newbies to be over-reliant on the subsurf modifier for one. I started out on Blender back in the day (we're talking like 2.4) and I struggled for years to figure out why my models didn't look good. Wasn't until I switched to Maya for school that I learned why - I had been taught to model everything in Blender as incredibly basic shapes and then put a subsurf on it instead of actually learning how to do real topology. Maya thankfully got me off that crutch. IMO newbies should be taught to stay away from the subsurf until they get their basic hard surface modeling skills up to par, and THEN shown how to use a subsurf to further refine the model.
3:23 No you do not. I've seen obvious bugs in Max that have gone unfixed for years even though I try to report them when I can and pay through the nose for my licenses. I've come to realize over the years that with the license cost payments for Max you are probably paying for the next vacation or car of the CEO rather than improving the software. So having said this, to the surprise of probably no one, I've now started learning Blender and will be trying to move my production to it little by little until I can fully get rid of the abandoned cash milking machine called 3ds Max.
lol I get you !!
Which issue in particular?
@Jorge Esparza Turns out you're not a big hollywood studio.
@Jorge Esparza i dont believe that is true
@Jorge Esparza did you mean "
bureaucracy"? and no, i'm not going to do your job of convincing me for you, sorry. p.s. your defense was very lackluster and only made my disbelief grow exponentially, have a good day.
I'm a concept designer and Blender combined with a ZBrush Marvelous designer and Key shot is the best combination.
Do you ever make any videos on your workflow with these three software in your pipeline?
Im getting started with these three combined.
@Ben crawford Hi not yet because of my schedule but when I have some free time after the project I'm working on I will :)
Thank you, for your opinions. It is always good to hear professionals who talk without sugarcoating )
I come from the music industry, Protools used to be the industry standard, 20 years ago you have to pay quite a lot to purchase the software and its hardware, music is made in fancy studios built with millions of dollars, recorded and mixed all in Protools. But then revolution started, software like Ableton Live, Fruity Loops, Reason empowered the hobbyist, and till today basically everyone can make music with them, the music making entry-level becomes much lower because of them, there are so many so-called bedroom producers doing home recording in their garage, mixing and mastering their music in these new software, countless tracks being put out every day, and some of them become the top100 DJs, won Grammy... At the same time big studios used to dominate the record industry keep closing and became history.
But the argument that Protools has the best sound quality still exists and true today, so does vinyl is better than mp3, people believe the Beatles records made in Abby Road studio sound better than the digitally produced EDM albums getting so popular on Billboard. But none of these arguments has stopped the music industry moving forward.
My point is that the industry may not tend to choose the software that brings the best quality, the sad truth is that the industry will always pursue efficiency, imagine in the future if a company could sign 20 bedroom animators using Blender and Unreal Engine, creating 100 Netflix "Love, Death and Robots" style short animations in a year, it just has more odds some of these may get very popular because you have a larger base number, exactly the same reason why the big music labels are releasing so many similar sounding (in another word shitty) music every month. Compared to use a big budget and a big team spending a couple years make a big prodcution, this business pattern is just less risky, who knows if the 3D industry will go on the same path?
I dont know but yes that's a universal truth, not all companies go for best quality, there is space for all different ranges of quality and in most sectors, most companies are in the lower quality tier. They prefer to avoid costs and the risks that come with it. it's especially true when a company is just budding. Well even Nintendo started as a company selling cheap gadgets.
I also come from music production industry and just wanted to mention that the exact same discussion is going on in that scene as well. Which software is the best, is it Cubase, Protools, Ableton, Fruity, etc. And what most people don't understand is - if you're a crappy musician, there's no software that will make you sound good and/or creative and fresh.
Same is true for 3D - nowadays all packages are so good that you can make really amazing stuff with them. But if you're not talented and don't want to learn - then no Maya, Blender or 3DS Max will help you.
First of all I really liked the format of this discussion. I for one would like to see more videos like this, time permitting of course as you are busy people. I totally agree with your views on why Blender is not an industrial standard. It is nice that Blender can do a lot of tasks which other software can do but it is just not yet as smooth or as powerful as what the commercial software can do, and as it was previously pointed out, if companies are making billions of $/£ over a period of a couple of decades from a movie then spending say a couple of millions for Autodesk licenses is not at all unreasonable where the visuals and how the visuals and animations have to be perfect and as easy to-do as possible.
Blender has only just very recently gained some traction since 2.80 within more bigger companies (Ubisoft for example) and we are now seeing large and very established corporations ranging from hardware to clothing bands handing over very huge sums of money towards the further development of the Blender foundation, which they’ve never seen before.
When you consider the article Autodesk published recently comparing Maya to Blender and Autodesk’s move some months back offering Maya and Max at a heavy discount for students and small indie firms, I’m getting the feeling that Autodesk now considers Blender as a serious threat towards its 3D entertainment production products.
I think if Blender can maintain its pace of development and inwards cash flow Blender will reach a stand off in the next 5-10 years for becoming a industry standard between Maya, Max AND zBrush. Talk about David vs. Goliath!
Completely agree, Chris!
Oh Maya pisses me off so much, with it's LT version.
No plugin support... I mean, it limits you so very very much.
Fuck maya that software kept on crashing for me especially versions 2015, 2016, and 2017. I dont know why I bothered, i'm glad blender is there for the community.
@@kryptoid2568 ikr no on wants to bother with that shit the only people who can tolerate maya crashing are the ones who paid good money for it and because they dont have slightest of choices knowing they're stuck with that stupid software smh.
@@alexo2303 I personally prefer Maya over Blender (for the time being) as I have been using Maya for 6+ years for modeling, and Blender for Sculpting. This is only because I am well versed with Maya's layout and keybinds. I am slowly learning Blender for modeling atm to transition from Maya because of how far more efficient it is at rigging, animation, texturing, etc.
Alongside this, Maya will take upwards of 2 minutes to startup, and tends to crash often if you decide to go overboard on an action (such as smoothing too much, etc.)
Meanwhile, Blender takes less than 5 seconds to startup, and the ONLY time it has ever crashed for me was when I was sculpting and the topology kept intersecting itself, and it failed on calculating due to such.
I can't tell you how many times I've been incredibly frustrated at Maya for crashing constantly over the simplest action at times... Blender really is superior.
Houdini will keep being the industri standard for vfx.
Maya and 3ds will mostly be kept because of legacy. Smaller studios will start using Blender more and bigger studios will follow at some point. Of course maya and 3ds will still be there but Blender will disrupt the business...it already is.
In just a few month Epic, Nike, ubisoft, Intel, amd, nvidia, adidas, Tangent etc joined Blender.
oh no BIG VFX HOUSE n n NIKE OH NO MAYA IS DEAD.
@@puppy3908 That's not the point, having alternatives is good and it's cool to see how blender is being supported by big companies. Noone says maya has to die, it won't.
Epic, -Nike- , ubisoft, Intel, amd, nvidia, adidas, Tangent
Blender isint disrupting business because a handful of big companies are vested. The industry is huge. Majority use their proprietary software anyway
@@educate3d a lot more are adopting Blender than that list. Why do you think 3ds all of a sudden gets an indie license?
Archviz and game dev is bigger than film and that's where Blender will make a big splash first. Many are adopting Blender just for grease pencil too.
Ha... I didn't know there was such a plugin as retopoflow. I just used the snap to mesh default function from blender to do that, which i honestly prefer over Max's and Maya's.
Honestly the best thing one can do is study all software and figure out what's best for what in order to improve your workflow.
Blender is only starting out. But I think that it will be integrated more easily in the game industry instead of VFX and Cinema. People do have their preferences and the guys have a point, when artists make movies (or any other big-budget production) there's a need for guarantees that the process will run smoothly and as fast as possible (as we see in many rushed movie effects nowadays, speed is a priority). Having an entire crew learning how to use different software is time-consuming and most importantly, most of the people who know how to do their job are unlikely to have the motivation to learn new things. They are the minority👆👆👆. In my opinion, only the next generation of artist that learned Blender from the beginning is responsible for changing the current industry standard. And it will take at least a few years before Blender becomes a real competitor.
Completely agree. The future will change for sure, it just takes time
Good point, and if you go back far enough,all the mainstream packages started out this way, a bigger user base is what blender needs
@@buda3d2007 The problem is that most people view this as a competition when it's not. The more options the customer has the better and having a powerful (free) tool out there is a good way to even out the playing field. It just might influence other companies to have competitive pricing options, even the big ones.
Btw - www.guicmfreitas.com - Check it out!
Guilherme Freitas totally agree, I cringe every time someone proclaims software is rubbish because it’s either free or not free, a total waste of energy and missing all the well thought out points raised in this podcast, I think blender is just on the cusp of being a widely excepted standard and this for the most part will be driven by industry mostly and a growing user base attracted to its increasing pace of development as it snowballs into mainstream like other industry software had done 15 years ago. 2.8 is a big deal because they made blender more relevant by tipping the scales more into ease of use, that and throwing away its outdated components in place of newer more efficient and less cumbersome components and hopefully will continue to head in this direction.
@@gui_cmf Autodesk think that blender is a BIG competition.....that´s why they made the indie license...
The most important, and basic thing Blender needs to do, is adopt a movement and snap system like Maya.
D V & X hotkeys for moving the pivot, make such an incredible difference.
The other thing, is having better menus, like the tool windows in Maya that don't vanish.
For the first two points, I think I know a solution. For the snap system, you can turn on the magnet function and select where you want to snap to. Now for the pivot point, you can actually control where the pivot point is with the sidebar menu (Dunno the actual name. It was in a Daniel Krafft video, Press N and you'll find it somewhere there).
Now the last point is a bit finicky, because it is true that blender has that con. Sure you can press Fn 9 so it could come back if you haven't pressed anything else but it's still annoying.
@@nikkoa.3639 hotkey for pivot is , (comma)
You should invite someone from Tangent animation on how they used Blender to produce a netflix show.
there is a whole conference about that in the blender channel just search for bcon 2018
When talking about Industry, we're really talking about and looking at the BIG machine(s), the one(s) with all the money spent on it/them. (Pipelines!)
To run, it needs a reliable chain to deliver the power. It is probably quite wasteful, and prone to being pushed to the limits. It delivers, and generally with good to excellent results... Increasingly exceptional results. People are the spokes on the drive wheel, (so keep that in mind if your foot is the one on the peddle).
Literally, the money/time slide. Distance/Power/Speed/Reliability/Guaranteed result.... very expensive, for mass market consumption, high yield products, and accountable in costs.
Inversely, if you aren't in that machine, don't try to be unless you want to join it. There is a tendency for industry to look out and only see hobbyists too, but there is lots going on out there/here.
Blender is where heads meet on all sides. Good for the general progression of concepts and broader standardisation of new ideas from across the wider field. Good for everyone. Also accessible to those on new frontiers, access to tools that can transform something not traditionally associated with CG or often out of reach (e.g. archaeology, analysis of data, that kind of thing).
Great video. I am a Maya/zbrush/Substance/Fusion User. The same sort of discussion happens around Fusion. I think as a generalist at a small studio, it's hard to justify the cost of nuke. But I still want more flexibility than After Effects for compositing. I would love to see a video comparing Nuke to Fusion to AE to what compositing tools Blender has. Most of my work is done in render and I am mostly just grading and plus-ing up 3D renders.
a way to improve blender is not to think that it will get better alone. It's an open source project. A community project. The help of pros like you is very necessary.
Great Discussion
Speaking from a game industry i think the switch is going to be quicker.
There always been more open for you to use what you want in a studio so its been Maya/3Dmax/Modo but now Blender is joining that pool for modelling and with new juniors that joins the studios usually bring Blender knowledge with them. I see seniors picking it up and asking the juniors to show it to them. With that said ofc its going to take a newly open studio or a new IP to have the time for setting up something like Blender to be the main modelling software for the studio but there is already examples. Just look at a studios like Embark (ex-Dice CEO´s new studio).
we as a studio switched because as a medium sized game developer the prices really affect you. The maintenance went up from 600$ to 2000€ within a couple of years. For the money we shuffled free we hired another artist.
Really a sensitive topic but you still shared your insights. Appreciate that a lot. I think the main point that i agree with you is at 14:50. You should genuinely not care about the software. If it does the job well you will need to use it. We are doing this because we love doing 3D and not the software itself!
Where I also see Blender having an advantage to commercial tools is that is *is* in fact open. Where this advantage comes to play is that people who aren't on version lockdown of a stable release (and maybe that even includes some of the people working on production over the day and on their personal projects at night). Toolsets that aren't just tested behind closed doors and in limited Betas but truly in the open and with people behind it.
The only thing I really hope for is that Blender users can let go of feeling threatened when somebody propoeses a thing that might include severe changes. I mean that's not just a Blender thing - people who have been using a software for a long time often get defensive when they feel someone wants to change what they built up to learn over a long time. But I feel that Blender really has a ton of potential that commercial software does not have simply because it doesn't have the ties to a company. Blender's idea intrinsically is to be an evolving software from and for the users.
And what you may never underestimate is that Open Source can never be taken from you. Yes, I am looking at you subscription-only Substance Designer and Painter. :(
VFX is one thing, but the games industry is a different story. In the next few years I predict Blender/Houdini will become a more common pipeline. The 'migrate the entire pipeline' argument took a huge hit in the recent announcement that Ubisoft AAA(THE Ubisoft, not the Ubisoft anim studio that are already onboard) one of the largest game studios in the world, and hardcore 3dsMax shop since their founding in the 1990s, are moving their entire pipe off Max and onto Blender/Houdini.
I don't think anyone that has a decent grasp of the industry really thinks that Blender will dominate the film/vfx industry any time soon, but game industry is a different story. The fact that games doesn't rely on a serious Arnold-type render pipe makes a big difference.
It's weird how many people in the industry are using this completely non-industry standard software.
Yes, like 3 minor studios out of hundreds, lmao.
Do you have statistic how many users using paint3d? )) blender never will be standard, the last update shows what it's just for freelancer what should be learn it's new ui again, big studios can't use such tools
@@oBCHANo ubisoft is so small I didn't realize.
people in the industry using a piece of software does not equal industry standard
I think the gaming industry adopted Blender in open arms, especially for the indie developers..
The movie industry is a different game of software licensing and innovation..
I want to push back on a few of your points.
The first is that support is necessarily a factor with large studios as long as the studio is large enough to have in-house developers (generally any studio large enough to run on Linux they have the people), the source code is there meaning that the studio has ultimate control over software. This is a much bigger issue for smaller studios. For large production I would say that the multiartist / multifile workflow is not up to snuff (I am cautiously optimistic about static library overrides ), ability to handle large scenes and ability to integrate with other softwares in a pipeline (besides what you said about these studios already having well tested pipelines that they are not going to replace without good reason).
This leads to my second point, there are two ways you can handle software versions in a project. Treat it like commercial software (stick to a specific version that works) or treat it like in-house software (features get added, somebody if something goes wrong roll back to yesterdays version and get somebody to fix the issue asap). With blender you have the option of using it like a shared in-house tool, that means having at least one employee who's job is to use git to build local builds of Blender, look through individual commits if something breaks, disable those commits for the studio build, report problems upstream. As a hybrid artist developer I maintain a couple of patches to my own blender builds I don't think I would recommend it if Git wasn't so good at doing this sort of stuff.
Where I can see Blender really taking off in the near term is in the indie and small game studios, where you are producing assets that are being exported and compiled into scenes in a game engine, I think Blender is more than capable of this in it's present form.
I agree that the UV editor and re-topology tools need work. I would also like to see the non destructive/modifier based approach become as tactile ("fun") as the other modelling tools, and see better options for non destructive UV work.
"It's a circle of theft" - Basically sums up all software engineering
9:06 I've been using Max professionally for 13 years now and It certainly doesn't feel that way at all. I'd be surprised if Max was worked on by more than 3-4 interns nowadays. Complete stall in development.
It's fairly shocking when one of the biggest advertised new features for a full annual release is a chamfer update.
@@ElScottie Just some straight information. This is what was done recently in Max and what is coming in the near future. There was a stall indeed, not anymore since 2-3 years ago, and Max dev team is pretty big, not at all 3-4 interns:
area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-20202-and-public-road-map/
About chamfer, I can tell you that IF that chamfer feature was in Blender, everyone would be praising it as the BEST chamfer in class. Because it is just that - the BEST chamfer in ANY dcc. And it opens several doors for quick modeling in many instances. Combine it with booleans (either the old ProBoolean, the new Booleanm or even TyBoolean) and you'd be surprised.
David Almeida max and maya team is if i remember 6-8 people and that is all.
@@MaciekJutrzenka You're 100% wrong on that statement. I'm on Max Beta, and on Bifrost Beta for Max and Maya. And just the other day there was an event (Inside the factory) where you could meet the teams behind development. The number is orders of magnitude more than what you say.
David Almeida so what number we are talking about because last time person i trust was in autodesk HQ i got kinda diff view on stuff but maybe they mobilised for upcoming years as my source was in 2017.
Tho considering that u say it is more than 6 what the hell are they doing then? Playing supermario?
The Ubisoft studio that switched was a team of like 8 people who make the Rabids tv show, unless they've announced something else, I remember that being the case when they first joined the Blender thing.
I think the main issue is still performance when it comes to high poly counts compared to to other software. Other than that Blender is the most intuitive 3D tool I know.
LOL, no. It's a collection of fancy features from other programs that have been shoehorned into this program. It completely fails as a real professional program.
@@MAGAMAN Can't see that. Yes there are many features and of course also from other software, cause it has to work in similar ways after all. But most of these afaict work pretty good.
I rather see other software not evolving properly as they are caught in their pipeline functionality. It's personal preference after all, but I see the pros/cons on both sides.
Hi there FlippedNormals, I wanted to go ahead and make a post. I really appreciate the things you guys do and the way you educate everyone else. I always constantly see the same tutorials being thrown around with just basic stuff without teaching people how to just model things and practice. I myself am even guilty of this as well doing tutorials but over the years I have been learning, especially from other industry artists I have had a chance to meet with. I'm glad you guys are using blender along with the other software and agree strongly that its not about which software is the best but whats good for the right job. I've been using Blender for 8 years now but I have over three years now been taking courses on 3D modeling, specifically for video games. I had to adopt to use Maya and to be honest it was quite easy to transition because of my Blender knowledge. There are some things I couldn't do as fast in Maya but it was still fairly good and amazing for animation. I'm currently being mentored under one of my professors who has worked in the games industry for many years. He's like you guys in the sense that if your work is bad he will tell you but will give tips on how to improve. Grades don't matter but Quality over Quantity does. Overall I just wanted to say thanks for your quality videos and tutorials you do. I think with you guys and other top industry companies moving into Blender 2.8, there's a strong force here that can just help push blender even more forward and to be adopted a bit more into the professional environment.
Just as a side note, I'm working really hard at the moment trying to get in the games industry building a portfolio. For those who are as well, don't give up and listen to those who have worked in the industry as it helps prepare you. I see too many people fail getting there because they lose confidence or perhaps it's just not for them. Everything comes with practice and patience. Cheers friends!
Just looking at the title and not watching the video I can tell you why:
It's Free and Anyone can use it. In the entertainment industry (Which is what Blender is primarily used for) you are seen as less than human when it comes to 'Not Paying your Dues'. Blender is threatening the Movie Industry in this way, and that's not making them happy. So in turn they'll NEVER except Blender as an industry standard Until they only make it exclusive to people who are worthy, Give money to the Screen Actors Unions, and have people like you and me fork out thousands of dollars just to use it for a limited time.
If you owned a studio making million with Maya and someone says "Hi switch to this free software" would you convert your employees and risk it??
@@justshady studios are always looking to save money. Why wouldn't they? Unless the thought of Anyone can use it is a threat. I understand you point of view and to retrain employees would be on their minds, however there's not that much more training that has to be done than saying when Disney told their hand animations department to learn CGI or they'll lose their jobs.
Finally saw thoes faces behind the voice of many tutorials 👻
I had 3D animation classes in college degree and I am having it again now in my masters degree. None of the degrees were focused on 3D Sculpting and Animation btw, it´s just that where I´m from art degrees (specially digital arts) prefer to combine multiple forms of art instead of focusing on one. My masters tries to touch on 2d animation, 3d animation, illustration, script writting, sound design and character design for animation. Ofc it fails at every single one cause a couple of months won´t be enough for you to understand the basics of what you´re learning. This context is important imo. My 3D Animation Teacher tried to teach us Maya, starting with sculpting, I hated it and it was messy as fuck. My class asked if we could use Blender instead since it was free (no student version necessary) and it wasn´t as heavy on the pc as Maya, she declined because "It wasn´t the Industry Standard". I couldn´t care less and instead used Blender and followed some tutorials... I must say that I found Blender way easier and even fun to understand the basics than Maya.
Thank you, its nice to have an opinion what industry professionals are thinking about blender.
So one year after that, what do you think? Same or it is way better?:)
It is frustrating that they spend time addressing why free-as-in-beer software is not a meaningfully valuable aspect of Blender and never address the much more important and significant free-as-in-speech aspect. Blender isn't free to use, it's free to *own*. You can't get that for any price from the competition.
Blender isn't industry standard because it only got started to be taken seriously. for example, it didn't have any Studios who used it on big production scale until recently, tangent Animation,Barnstorm VFX, Ubisfot Animation Studio , i even heard that CD PROJEKT RED is using it for Cyberpunk 2077.
while Many Small & Indie Studios have already made the jump...the VFX industry might be less of that because switching piplelines & tools is not that easy but doesn't mean it couldn't be added in some departments & don't forget Autodesk has killed the perpetual license so people have no choice back then...the funny thing is you guys do make tutorials and sell courses for Blender but at the same time giving people the impression that you shouldn't learn it, this is like shtting on your own plate....if it's not your cup of tea then stick to teaching maya, max or whatever.
I have also noticed FN and others seem to be embracing Blender more. Maybe they just think more and more people are keen to learn it for their own indie projects.
I think it got a bad reputation because people see it as only a 'free 3d program', not understanding or knowing it started originally as an in house tool for an animation studio that generously released it to the public domain.
It's probably because they like it but saying its the new professional standard would be career suicide at the moment. They don't want to get people confused by all the new tutorials- it's a weird way to say they still use Maya/Max professionally. lol
There was a mention of someone finding grease pencil amazing, could that be elaborated upon? Like what usage and advantages there is in it that you wouldn't rather use a different tool for?
Switching to Blender is the best thing I have done in 2020!
Blender 2.8 made me restart my 3D modelling hobby as a former 3ds max user. Thats also when I found this awesome channel. Keep it up, guys!
I don't know about VXF but I do concept art and use blender everyday. The majority of concept artists at the studio and in the industry I know also use Blender. The addons are just so good. Personally I can't recommend blender enough!
I have a lot of respect for these two since they have XP and try to be as honest about their experiences but the Industry is hot garbage and we all know it. Just look at all the so called triple A games that aren't even playable at release, Movies that have lackluster vfx, horrid designs or are somewhat average yet still flop. The big tech companies like audodesk make most of their money by licensing with ad corporations, Engineering, medicine design all that jazz. Their exclusive club that only belongs to a select few skilled individuals that are milked and overworked has backfired on them. Why is it that games that come out nowadays are shittier and shitter? Sure they have better graphics but they barely work most of the time and when they do they make you pay more money for things they should have been in the game to begin with. This is about the management and the suits not the developers and artists. Blender is more than a software it's an idea for the industry. The idea that making something great is more important and powerful than profit. I Hope blender and more software like it rise up and puts these companies out of business. "Industry standard" Doesn't mean shit since the industry puts out shit more than anything else. Like you guys always say, it isn't about the tool itself but how it is used.
I came back to this video after altering my entire workflow. I used to work 100% in Blender. Now I use the Zbrush>Maya>Substance workflow because of the quality and reliability of the results.
Blender is an amazing tool for hobbyists and freelance 3D Artists, if you need to produce content without added costs on your part, Blender is the best, but it is nowhere near the industry standard tools in terms of precision, reliability and, mainly, raw power.
My computer has a lot less stress working with Zbrush or Maya as compared to Blender
Some studios aren't even using Maya 2019. If they wont switch to a new version, they wont switch to an entire new software.
In fairness, we wait a year before switching to the newest version of 3ds Max as well. Beta doesn't catch all of the bugs unfortunately so I usually wait until the 2nd or 3rd update before even consider using it. I'll install it just to see what's new, but that's about it. I just started 3ds Max 2020 a month ago, but still use 2019 for most things as nPower hasn't released a 2020 Translators plugin yet. Those that do a lot of CAD importing, Blender is a no go.
Jorge Esparza Which plugins import STEP, IGES, SolidWorks, SAT? And also while keeping all part names, local transforms, and hierarchy? There's DXF, Sketchup, OBJ, and the horrid STL. None of those are BREP/NURBS CAD imports which allow us to choose the tesselation we want for a given project while keeping the data for each part. They are mesh based, meaning the tesselation in the file you import, is all you get to choose from. That is not proper CAD importing. There is the Mechanical Blender branch that is still in development, but not available for anyone to try. So please, enlighten us with actual CAD importers for Blender. Not the mesh based formats named above. Take your time and search, because I actually did.
@Jorge Esparza Seriously? This is simple stuff. Being able to import the basic CAD file formats, and most of the leading native software format's part and assembly files has been in 3ds Max for years. Everything I mentioned in my previous comment, it does out of the box and more. This is not even adding in plugins like nPower Translators that brings even more formats and options to the table, which is also available for Modo and Maya. Heck, even Cinema 4D received a great update for importing actual CAD models properly. But I guess what I'm asking for doesn't exist in any software, even though I've been importing and exporting CAD data for nearly 15 years with these same requirements, and other software does have options for doing the same, except Blender (Houdini seems to be lacking as well). I don't expect Blender to be able to do native formats, because there's often licenses needed for that. But not to do the open formats, it's a shame really. I'd like to use it, but the workarounds to import CAD are laughable at best.
I'm still waiting for you to point me to all of the actual CAD importers Blender has. You mentioned one add-on that can't import any BREP/NURBS based files. What's taking so long? There's a shit ton of them, right?
@Jorge Esparza "Not even AutoCAD can do that" Are you using AutoCAD LT? Every other piece of industrial design software has zero issues with all of these common formats and even other native formats. I'd stop using AutoCAD as the de facto standard comparison for format support if it can't handle the basics.
So the conclusion is, there's no shit tons of add-ons for importing CAD formats into Blender? Strange, why would you say there was? And somehow I knew there wasn't. Could it be because I did do the searching that you said I didn't do? Maybe next time don't accuse someone of not doing the research when you didn't even attempt to do it yourself.
@Jorge Esparza No format imports everything, agreed. I don't want everything in an importer, what I ask for is basic assemblies with simple data already stored in exported or native formats, to be imported into the DCC package. That's it. Nothing magical, I'm not asking to change the parametric data or order, look at simulations, or manage the inventory, etc... I wouldn't work with less than what I request, nor would I expect any other professional to.
When Blender eventually gets a STEP importer, I expect near the same support for importing assemblies as I currently have. Or it will still be a no go.
Your gift here would be to stop spamming the comments sections with unnecessary remarks. That would have avoided this whole chain, and I'm sure others as well. That would be a Christmas miracle. Maybe make it your New Year's resolution?
Wow you guys are doing podcasts now :D
I hope you guys make it a weekly thing. Also good topic and was enjoyable to listen to.
I sat down to become defensive, but nope. Well reasoned discussion! I would really stress the "one keypress instead of two" point. That was a shocker for me when starting to learn Maya or Cinema 4d extrude tool and what other nonsense..
Also, Ubisoft stated that their television and animation department would be adding blender and thats a relatively small department at Ubisoft.
Probably cause the "industry" lies to put up paywalls and entry barriers wherever possible.
Krita for Art and Blender for 3D...
Hi there.
This was a really great talk !! I found it funny that you mentioned that there are so many people out there teaching blender which are actually misinforming, because when i saw the title of this vid i was like, omg is there now someone talking about the industry who only knew blender from his room and never had a foot in an actual studio, but i am very pleased to see that you guys absolutely know what you talk about.
I thought i add my opinion here now because we recently kinda dropped the idea of using blender in the studio i work for.
So first i do not work in one of the big studios, we currently have around 30 people and at the project peak we usually have around 150, so kinda mid sized if you want so.
I do work in pipeline, so i am involved in the decisions which software to use and developing tools aso...
Since around 2 years now we are actually wanna drop maya because it becomes more and more a liability than a solution since it ships with more bugs than features and we often spend more time making stuff work which is supposed to work already, than actually improving on things.
We do use maya mainly in animation.
So we were thinking on blender and actually wanted to use it on a project which we currently ramp up on but didn't because we simply could not find enough artists.
Also kinda a final decision was made a few weeks ago because we currently switch everything to USD since maya and houdini, which are the tools we use, released the USD implementation.
We did check on blender and there we found that it is not really on the roadmap yet, which did lead us in this case to drop the whole blender idea for now and stick to maya since USD has a lot more value to us.
This actually brings up one interesting point, which is that blender has an awesome community which at the same moment also is kinda a problem.
USD is a really good example for that, this is a workflow were only studios really benefit from and artists doing there stuff at home are potentially not even know about it, and blender gets mainly feedback from the community of course. So we do believe that this is one reason why blender has kinda troubles keeping up with industry standards, since the requests from the community do not reflect those.
All in all i have to say it was kinda a sad decision for me because i do believe that blender has great potential, but i guess it gonna take again a few years before we will pick it up again.
Interesting to hear your perspective! Blender dev Sybren Stüvel got basic USD compatibility running in his branch this summer. Despite being an open format, it seems to be non-obvious how to go about integrating it. Apparently the main obstacles are consistently translating between 1 big blend file and hundreds of interlinked USD files, and different feature sets.
Also: "If you have any knowledge or experience with USD, please contact me at sybren at blender dot org or the blender-coders chat channel as I would love to pick your brain." Maybe take him up on it, if you can find the time? :3
Blender strenght: It has everything
Biggest weakness: This "everything" is worse than other dedicated softwares
Yeah, but you don't always need substance painter or z brush, you only need them in more advanced stuff. The only thing I need an external program for (Houdini) are simulations.
Blender's tool set allows people to use what parts they need and use other programs for what they need more power for.
You can't make a movie with just Maya that hast to have a lot of cuts let alone composting
@@ProjectAtlasmodling "Blender's tool set allows people to use what parts they need and use other programs for what they need more power for."
Or you can just use that more powerful software and not use blender at all.
@@MAGAMAN well go pay $10,000 a year just to do very basic things because Maya doesn't do that and you just barely need that tool
I’m sure Ubisoft would transition to blender, because they don’t have the money to get an actual software to work with, they need to open a go fund me account because they need all the help they can get.
So i've came from 15+ years of using 3dmax and just started using blender when 2.8 came out. I will say while yes i see why it isn't / shouldn't be an industry standard for film.. literally anything else it could work for without an issue. Arch viz, great with eevee and e-cycles ( yes you pay for e-cycles) previz AMAZING toolset for a streamlined workflow to get things rolling, there are features that i've seen in blender that have JUST been introduced either basically the same time as in blender or slightly after which the fact that as you mentioned with some things with the comparing it to zbrush it still doesn't have some things blender does, it's wild to me that something that is an industry standard can in any way get passed up by the " new kid on the block". and from what you were saying yes i get it doesn't surpass any one tool over all in any fashion (jack of all trades master of none) the great thing about blender that you did commend is the community, anything you want added, can be added .. want a feature do it yourself, request it from the devs. In the 15 years of being in the industry i've found more ways to do thing in blender from a quick google search then things that i KNOW are doable in max the community is blenders biggest asset and the only thing holding it back from actually taking over is big company support.
the biggest issue with blender currently is the learning curve, I know it can be worlds faster but I'm just not there yet for modeling, it unlike max or maya seems to rely on you knowing all the shortcuts for a smooth workflow which while many of them are intuitive for sure still isn't great at all for someone trying to learn thats used other software for years.
as you mentioned yes while the community is great theres no " standard of practices" so you can get some very hacky ways to do things that aren't correct however. i know working on tight deadlines as i'm sure you guys do as well sometimes it doesn't matter if it's the "right" way to do it as long as it looks good. on the flip side they have also developed hacky ways to do things that actually work out VERY well.. for instance eevee can't do caustics but someone figured out a node setup to simulate fake caustics for both cycles and eevee, is it physically correct helll no, but depending on what you're using it for would i use it even in a production environment for the sheer time savings yuuuuuuuup.
You brought up cost wise and while yes thats not a "big" issue for big studios.. why isn't it ? yea sure they make billions of dollars a year but as you mentioned 400 employees 1k each for 1 piece of software now in any normal production environment theres never a 1 piece solution like you said so we'll say to make it simple easily over 1million a year just for licensing, that sure does buy a few more employees or more hardware for a farm to render quicker both things which would be immensely helpful to not get black panther vfx lol. In addition you still have to buy plugins for the standard software or write them to work both of which cost money.
i think 2.8 is really the beginning of it being a force to be reckoned with, it's added many industry standard type things to the software and i definitely could see large chunks of the film industry moving to it as a stop gap to stream line the workflow.
there are surprisingly more and more studios using blender and when their work is posted it's not like holy cow that must be an inferior software doing that or a "stylistic choice" it can look amazing... one of the things that i've said to my boss many times in regards to eevee which still kinda rings true even for the film industry. It's 90% or so of the way to a 3d max render when handled correctly but at literally 100x faster ( rendering something in 5-30 seconds a frame instead of 15-30 mins) does it matter? We all know that even with industry standard software how things look in motion can make or break a shot. So if it looks 90+ % of the way there thats bad news for the "staples" of the industry. the thing to remember is it's the artist that makes the work quality not necessarily the software. There are many industries that honestly COULD have blender become the standard in, film will be the last industry that would be able to be taken over because it has the highest standard
wow this was longer then i intended. LOL
Imagine if all these big vfx / animation studios took, say, half the money they're spending on Maya, Nuke, etc. and used it to either hire in house Blender devs or contribute to the Blender dev fund. I wonder how long it would take for Blender to catch up to the big guns.
@FlippedNormals Do you guys still feel this way? Now being 2022 and with Blender 3.4 version in Alpha?
3d industry standard? haha sounds a bit strange.. cause i remember flippednormals you were the modo users for a long time!
(I also changed from modo to blender)
I totally agree with what you're saying, and I'm experiencing it that way aswell (I'm still super early in my career), but there's one thing Blender excels at, which is straight Modeling (Not talking sculpting, of course). Maybe Modo can live up to Blenders Modeling toolset, but as an avid user of both Blender and Maya I can't for the life of me figure out why people would choose Maya over Blender in terms of Hardsurface modeling etc..
Blender is faster and more intuitive for modeling, it allows for certain proceduralism and its hot-key based workflow makes it quicker by magnitudes.
I'm one of those people who uses each software for their core strength (I use Zbrush for sculpting, Blender for Modeling, Maya for Retopo, rigging, animating and rendering, Nuke for Comp), so I wouldn't consider myself one of the classic Blender-Fangirls/boys, but I have yet to find a tool that is better at doing geometric modeling tasks, than Blender.
I even use 2.79 often, still, because Blenders attempt of being more "industry standard" with 2.8 actually took away a lot of that intuition and speed.
I would never expect Blender to be the new "industry standard full 3D package", but I could totally see it become popular in the Modeling part of the pipeline, and I'm a bit dumbstruck that there's so little people who picked it up for that.
Or Maybe my personal modeling workflow just resonates more with Blender and I could delete all of the above...
No I think your point is valid. I've modeled professionally in Maya, Max and Lightwave and think poly modeling in Blender easily beats them all. Granted I haven't worked on objects yet with the complexity of your average film asset done at DNEG, MPC, ILM etc. but I remember loading and saving complex maya files taking a ridiculous amount of time.
I feel the same. Pure modeling on blender is fast! And once you get the hang of the hotkeys it becomes even faster.
15:07 "I don't care about software". I can't say it better.
artist don't care but the boss care lololol
@@mpdmpd8118 They will care yes, but they will care more about your skills. They are looking for artist, they care about the art not the software, you can learn the software very fast, but the art needs years
people do care about their tools that's why thousands of people are commenting here first of all :D
I care about using Houdini....as no other software gives me such larger control over things when it comes to fx :)
@@vishwakarma00 And I care about using Zbrush as it is the best for what I do, but I care more about what I know so I can use it in an other software. Give me an other sculpting software and the basics are the exact same, anatomy is anatomy. If i'm looking for a job they will look at my portfolio first and then the software I know. Don't ever put the tool higher than the artist.
svi_graphics yes, that’s what I meant, tools help to develop your skills and that’s why they matter. In asset creation, you can use many tools, for example people can create textures in photoshop, substance and Mari as well, but if you know Mari and you have to create texture in photoshop, you will get frustrated for sure, cause it won’t give you those features, somehow it would affect the creativity of that person.
In effects, tools matter cause half of the software rather than Houdini don’t have solvers to simulated different things for example grains, or no procedural workflow. Production houses sees everything as they want better quality in less time, that’s why they are investing 1200 dollars per license for Houdini artists, cause of their skill in Houdini.
So in short, tools help to do better in less time, that’s what I meant. And tools also help you develop those skills :)
a friend of me uses Blender with arnold render in concept art for a netflix series... I think it is very strong in this stage, because it is not the final product, but having all the concept art roughs in 3D is still a speed up for later stages...
he is mostly doing concepting interior set design as much as i know...
im a professional 3d modeller in maya and zbrush , tried blender openly minded and willingly to learn another new software, but no, i just cant, there`s nothing blender can offer me in the actual combo im using, despite de fact that almost everything seems overcomplicated and alien for no reason (ie uv), despite de fact that vainilla blender lacks a lot of features that already exist in maya, and you have to spend good amount of money buying expensive blender addons to hit that spot, so no, blender its a big NO for me at the moment
To summarize, just because you have a swiss knife in your pocket you shouldnt try to chop down of a three with it
Blender is a hobbyist program at best. It tries to do too much.
@@justshady Dont get me wrong blender has a lot of cool features, its just that almost everything is based just on good will of indie devs, maybe in the near future a company get a good grasp of it, blender will become a more solid program, noways it just seems to be a sort of jack of all trades, that for sure can be used on a professional environment, but you have to spend lot of time figuring things out compared to well stablished and tested softwares like maya for example
Personally, the word Industry is being used in a singular manner. If we are talking about big industries such as Hollywood as an example, the points made are very fair and accurate in light of Hoillwood's current needs. That is also if if Hollywood was the only type of industry that existed. Blender may not fix issues in some of the big industries but i don't really think that is the point of Blender. I actually get frustrated when people try and convince others that Blender is better than Maya or Max as I feel they are missing out on a bigger picture. What I see in Blender is a piece of software which is attempting and mostly succeeding in creating a more level playing field no matter who you, your current skill-set or how much money you have in the bank. Blender enables individuals and teams the chance to get their feet wet in communities where learning is fun and open. Blender is 'Open Source' and that is not just the software itself. It is about the attitude, approach and the community that comes together to create. Blender is moving and growing faster than any other 3d tool that I can see and what I hope is that it challenges the concept of 'Industry'. Whether Blender is ever 'Industry' standard, I don't know. What I do know is that every year, Blender grows even more powerful. Anyway, themz be my two cents. Peace and props to the presenters and thanks for all of the good food for thought points made. Much appreciated.
Great video guys. I will be pointing people to this video from now on. I have had this question come up a lot lately, and i feel that with the increase of hobbyist / DIY community / Indie developers and streamers over the years, same way any topic over the internet now a days blows out of proportion so does the general "HYPE" of something with out it having real, solid and proven standardization for it. At the end of the day, a business needs to make solid reliable decisions and Autodesk has clearly done what it has over the years, consistently and reliably. I am also glad you mentioned zbrush's ability to generate "Hype" features but never really polishing it for pipeline uses. Again these software companies are also business and they know how to tap in to money making systems. Generating hype over a features drives sales, and allows for R&D tools to be quickly put out even if its 20% complete. I think Blender should keep doing what they are doing and i hope this type of competition one day forces Autodesk to rethink the way they spend there money for our entire entertainment industry, because over the years Autodesk has also become very lackluckster with yearly updates imho and honestly, that is because it has no strong competitors. That being said love them all, and slowly trying to learn blender on the side for indie projects to really see its true production potential.
Thanks for the support William!
I think you did a great job jumping in the wave of Blender 2.8 and making money out of it. You were (are) at the right place and at the right time and I can not but applaud you for running your bussiness with passion but also with the feet on the ground. You promote Blender because it makes sense to you and your products and that does not mean you would use it in a production environment or that suddenly you are resetting all your knowledge of other softwares. That is totally fair and if people fails to separate both things means they are not understanding the old mantra we have been saying aloud for so many years "The software is just a tool for a task. Use the one that fits better what you want. Period"
idk about you guys but Blender is kinda cute tho ...
why this software not industry standard
it do be lookin kinda fresh doe
Well one big plus for Blender, that artistic people don't see with blender is the fact it's open source. Now why is this good, well as you said in the video, if an artist needs some feature for closed source software, their company has to contact the softwares company and try to relay what their artists need (this is a hard thing to actually do well, so it's good to be in direct contact as much as possible). But with Blender since you don't have to pay the licence, you can in-house hire developers and get them to fix problems and add features you need, I think this is the thing that will push Blender forward even faster, especial now that there is a lot of growing interest into it.
I use Autodesk Software at work and used Cinema4D a while ago but still prefer Blender for my small projects and some experimenting!
The Great thing about blender is it's Flexibility where you can basicaly do many different things in the same environment whereas industry standardized Software is mostly optimized for only one specific task! ^^
So basicaly: Blender is my Jack of all trades ^^
Similar to why Adobe still dominate with programs like Photoshop, largely just that the majority of people already in the industry know those programs, and a lot of new people are being trained in them. All the systems are already set up making it super easy, and a lot of long time Maya/Photoshop people might not know alternative programs and studios wouldn't want to just lose all the people they've known for a long time to test out a new program.
I also can't completely talk from a Blender perspective, but Maya has so many tools and features to link directly in with other programs like C4D and Photoshop that it is just incredibly useful in a pipeline and is well established. Everything supports Maya.
Hey, i am Houdini, Blender, Clarisse user currently for over 10 years. And i can' agree in first half of video or mainly all of it because from 0:00 till around 25:00 u say a lot of missleading information. Let's start with support from autodesk, that is not true at all.. If u are not 900 people studio autodesk simply don't care my bug reports are still not even responded since 7 years. My 16, blender bugs that i reported where solved in 3-7 days. Next u say about custom scripts inhouse tools. Ekhemn but Blender is opensource u can litterary change whatever the heck you want u have all code of program open.
About nuke.. kinda true but not really there is a lot of studios that use fusion for example half shots for transformers where done in fusion. also AE is very popular for previz. but yeah nuke is the way to go.
blender compositor. yes it's performance is lacking but u say how for nuke u have vray. well gues what for blender compositor u have entire Blender + VSE so it is far supperior in that regard than nuke.
U also say how Blender is inspired by tools in maya, I am sorry but this is entirly not true. Because of 2 reasons. Autodesk is closed app u can't still it's code. in UI Blender is way ahead of maya. Blender UI is full vector meanwhile have funn useing maya on 4k monitor... But main point is. u say how Blender inspires from others... Yeah. meanwhile autodesk buys whole company and simply implement their stuff but that i think is not inspiration xD. Yes companies inspire from others. but Blender is ahead in many stuff.. for example Eevee / Cycles.. is the first DCC that introduces this workflow. Also Blender was the first to introduce IPR workflow so again. not really a valid point.
Blender dosn't recave like X tool 40% faster. Totally not true.. almost each ticked on dev page says how much each element is now faster. For example next month we will get tottaly written from 0 new boolean.. same with bevel tool. also 2.8 brings tottaly new dependency graph and viewport performance.. those are huge % gains. in single elements. cycles got almost 2 times faster with latest implementations and improvments. so again not true.
About dev size... not true. as auto desk is huge company and u mentioned max and maya is like 1% of it.. if i remember correct max+maya team is 6 developers.. Meanwhile Blender have more full time developers + all opensource comunity of anyone who want's to write can, for example my friend wanted extra option in noise texture he writted it build his own custom blender version and done. Now how many years would it take for autodesk to do this? how many years u waited for quad chamfer...
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Real reason why Blender is not industry standard/ Maya
It wasn't designed with that idea. Blender was designed to be closed system. where u make from START to END movie. without single export or import. That is why IO of Blender was allways dog shit.. that is why it never supported industry standard files.
As today, Blender lacks in 3 important elements. those are, Alembi&USD, openVDB, Deep rendering. Without those 3, it will never be industry standard. industry is about pipeline and blender was designed to be closed program simple as that.
25:20 jokes on you, my local bridge was drawn on paper!
Ive got to agree with you about the blender UI. Blender 2.8 UI actually makes some sense to use.
I use Maya because I don't want to take the time to learn anything else. :)
Don't have enough time to watch this before work, is this a video I can listen to without getting confused?
Yes, it's just them sitting there chatting :)
@@Aussie.Owlcoholic great, thank you so much
Unpopular opinion: right click select > left click select
ok boomer xD
not in 2.8 anymore
marcin sapiejewski I still use it in 2.8
Were you guys present at Blender Conference? By the way, since I'm new to 3D world, can you guys show us that how easier the UV editing is in other 3D softwares. I'd like to use them.
You can actually watch their retopology tutorials on blender and maya so you can see the difference
"Industry Standard by 2045"
I think the main reason Blender is so popular among indies and small studios (apart from $0 being a very attractive price point :D ) is because while it is different than the competing tools is that it has so many features packed into it. While it is true it cannot compete with ZBrush, Houdini, Maya,... particularly as far as the pool of specialized experts goes, it's a lot easier for "generalists" to do a bunch of things in the same tool. And quite often the results are the one thing that's better than good - they're good enough. :)
On the other hand, I do think Ubisoft's adoption is a brilliant thing for its evolution, particularly if they're really going to give to the community by adding to the tools and plugins, like Tangent Animations did when they used Blender for the entirety of Next Gen the animated movie in 2018.
I love Blender but you know what Blender has that other software doesn't have in great numbers? (and this is a bad thing for Blender). It is users who act unprofessional, can't go 10 minutes without hating on Autodesk (or insert your 'evil' corporation of choice here), have to throw Blender into every conversation (like crossfitters or vegans), or just can't understand why other people would pay for software when Blender is free. You also have these same people who themselves don't contribute to Blender development.
On the other side I’ve seen Autodesk / Maya users who are just as snobby and unprofessional towards Blender users, basically making fun of them because they’re poor and/or unenlightened. Of course Blender is going to have more of a rebellious spirit because the business model slaps subscription-based methods in the face, and the fact that there are at least handful of people who switch from these expensive subscriptions to free demonstrates some healthy competition. But yeah, the rude comments come from both sides ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@zucchini3D There are always users from any software who act unprofessional. However, in my experience, Blender users at large seem to have this attitude that somehow it makes them better somehow to not have to pay for their software. And people are constantly posting anti-Autodesk or anti-Foundry memes on facebook.
And it just makes Blender users look petty and childish.
Softimage's GUI may have looked off-putting, but it had the cleanest architecture of any general purpose 3D application I've ever used. Its internal logic, its grammar, was impeccable. Blender comes closer to an interface which is minimal and complete than its commercial comparators, which suffer from bells-and-whistles syndrome, accreting helper-features instead of calling on user's deep skills, and understanding of the tool. I think the main reason Blender is not commercial mainstream is contractual. If something goes belly-up, a production company needs to make that call, and have a (presumably paid) fixer on-the-spot NOW. And then if it doesn't work, there needs to be compensation. That's not really the open-source way, unless some semi-commercial spin-off gets well established. And a suite of specialised tools, each written by serious experts in their fields, must increasingly be preferable for high-budget projects. Until AI takes over...😐
I am so surprised to hear that Maya is good for UVing and rigging. Whenever I try to do either of those two things in Maya, it's always the worst experience, and my results are almost always unsatisfactory.
Being a veteran in the media industry, I should add something. If it comes to authoring a media product, the copyright thing comes in. If people work with specialized tools, each one with a relatively small task, no member of the crew is able to claim copyrights. So, the "boss" is the only creator and owns all the rights to the work which is used. No problem, but this explains why a production and especially visual development is managed that way. This is what the whole media industry is about: The permission to use the work of people for publishing and distribution. Again, no problem, but things like that should be mentioned, because they are essential for how the industry works. Its not a matter of software choice, in the first place, folks.
Just a thought here. This conversation would make so much sense if the founder of Blender has his say to answer why not. He made somethings clear regarding why Blender was created. In the future it would be nice if he's there to answer some key things
In brief, nothing is perfect, just use whatever suits you and enjoy your 3D journey :)
You said it!
13:44 "you can't just expect people to sit in their spare time and learn it", funny that you mention it. I know a big industry that does exactly that. Let's call it a "specific type retail". I worked 3 years selling stuff which I didn't know how they work, unless I sit down at home and actively search for some information or just buy that product myself. Problem is there were not just one or a handful, but tons of different products I had to sell. The only training sessions we had, were sitting in front of the computer once a year and click through some interactive slides about how to deal with customers and their privacy etc. Some product information always could be found on these computers as well, but you never had been given the time to look through, at all! It's funny how they always said, whatever a good salesman always knows how to talk his way into sales. And that indeed is how it is done for decades. So most info needed to sell stuff easier is either way acquired by buying or already owning these things myself, or by looking up at the internet in their spare time (which I believe no one really does willingly), or which basically is your main source of information - customers who ask for stuff and telling you some facts about these products, which you then go and use for selling on the next customers (even when not 100% sure if those infos are right or wrong).
So maybe this strategy will some day also be used in the gaming industry, because why not? Greedy companies always will find some ways to further raise their profit. So maybe changing to a free software soon might be the future and letting employees train in these software for themselves, because otherwise they risk loosing their job.
Has there been any changes to your stance on Blender overall with the release of 2.9 etc?
Blender keeps getting better and better that's for sure.
But in the grand scheme of things, no. It's still got a ways to go. But you also have to think about the investment that companies would have to make to switch to another pipeline.
@@FlippedNormals I totally get the investment in switching. Thanks for replying :)
Blender is not the industry standard because it's not the best, there's not much more to it. But it's great nonetheless and just as capable as any other software, so for hobbyists and small studios, the choice is quite clear. And as of 2.8, box modelling in Blender is an absolute breeze and probably the best in any 3D software, so I'm really looking forward to the future. Of course it's not going to beat ZBrush for sculpting in a long time, but if it gets good retopo tools, the sim engines get to the level of Houdini and are integrated in the node editor and Cycles is optimized better for hardware accelerated RT than the other render engines, we could potentially be looking at a Maya/Houdini/Katana replacement for almost every low/mid end production, let alone hobbyists.
I would totally ditch the sim part and leave that to Houdini. I mean this is heavy stuff we're talking about, you don't want to make Blender become heavier (sluggish) just for the sake of being an All-in-One tool. Blender should concentrate on what it does best : modeling, concepting, rendering... and better rigging tools please ^^
@@tetsuooshima832 It's only sluggish while you use the feature- it's not like you would be max simulating everything all the time you model lol. The way blender is built would not impact start up or run time at all. Houdini's loading and performance is based on their own optimization not a subset of being able to run a simulation.
In the calculation of the software license costs the possibility of having an in-house team working on blender, developing extensions and pipelines is missing, because this is possible with open source software, studios like embark already do this, without the software costs there is a budget that can be used. Nothing is more valuable than technical support in a running production, in the example of maya there is a dependency that can cause damage and therefore causes additional costs.
i think that the traditional way of thinking has to be broken up at this point and one should think about future possibilities. dependencies are always difficult, i have noticed that several times before. maya in particular has also proven to be less stable in production for larger projects.
thank you very much for this clip i especially like that the position of the artist working in the industry is represented. in fact we use blender as destructive modeling tool in production in combination with houdini as nondestructive procedural tool.
great format, thanks for the input. i'm looking forward to more!
Large studios like Pixar already have a lot of inhouse developers for making plugins. Being Open Source isn't an advantage for Blender; you can create Plugins for any software, and whether you are paying someone at Autodesk or someone at Blender to develop features for you makes no difference.
"Blender doesn't do any job as well as other specialised softwares". Put half the money that you have to pay yearly to use all those specialised softwares and it surely will. Plus you get the advantage that you don't have to find a way to go from one software to the next since you're using the same software from start to finish.
My point is: when you've got money to spend, spending it in the Blender Foundation might be as good of a decision as to spend it in all the other paid software
That's supposition. You don't know that to be true. There are tons of examples where companies have dumped money into products and had poor outcomes. Money doesn't always equal advantage.
I doubt that any big studio would be comfortable with turning away from the best software out there, only to throw tens of thousands of dollars at the Blender Foundation, on the basis that, maybe one day, it'll be worth it.
I indeed can't know for sure that it is what's gonna happen but I have confidence that it is simply because when you put that much money as those companies can in the Blender Foundation, you get a strong voice in how Blender is gonna spend at least part of that money so you could ask for it to be used in the parts that need to be improved for you to be able to use it in your production. Here again no guarantee but it is very likely that this is how it would happen.
I too doubt that any huge company with an established pipeline is gonna switch to blender because to them the areas of improvements are too numerous for Blender to be usable(but hey, one can dream). However, if a smaller studio starts using Blender, makes a hit and starts to grow then they will have to make the choice between switching to the more specialised and expensive tools or giving that money to the Blender Foundation to make incremental improvements each time they need something to be improved in Blender. In that case I think they would probably choose the second option.
I'm not gullible, I'm optimistic. I know there's still a long way to go for Blender to even have a chance to become industry standard in any regard but I have confidence that it has the potential to do it due to how the Foundation works and because Blender is already an incredible tool
@@anthonyjaccard3694 True. A lot of small studios are already either starting to include Blender in their pipeline, or completely switching to blender. It's pretty reasonable to think that this will eventually spread to bigger companies as Blender improves. But, there's a big difference between how small studios and big studios operate. While smaller companies have a higher concern for the costs, massive companies, like dneg, are much more result-oriented. If Blender doesn't have anything new to offer in their pipeline, then there's no reason to include it (it would be a net loss on their part, as they'd have to spend time and money training their artists), let alone use it as a replacement for other software. I think the best way to get blender in the movie industry isn't by having it replace the big bois; it's by having Blender inserted as a crucial tool in the pipeline. By no means will this happen any time near, however. Especially considering the countless compatibility issues it has with other software. Because of that, and because of the fact that the results you can achieve in Blender can be done much faster in their software, big studios would actually be harmed by trying to turn Blender into a significant part of the pipeline. If turning Blender into an industry standard is an objective, then the best bet is to wait for better releases, as opposed to having ILM adopt it now.
When it comes to big companies, we shouldn't compare Blender against 3ds Max with no plugins, for example. Of course, if that was the comparison, Blender would obviously win. In reality, though, we're comparing Blender against 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush, MD, Nuke, Houdini, Katana, Mari, Substance Designer, plugins, such as Krakatoa and Frost, and software built by the companies themselves. When compared to that whole collective, Blender doesn't have anything significant and different to offer.
2.8 was the biggest update Blender went through (at least, since 2.5). It turned Blender into something much more functionally similar to industry standard software; but, in my opinion, that's about all the 2.8 update really was. It was a huge leap for Blender, though, so of course, there was a lot of hype surrounding it. Unfortunately, I think this hype is really distorting how people see the progress of Blender. For example, EEVEE is a huge deal for Blender, but if you compare its volumes to Houdini's GPU accelerated volumes in the viewport (check out: "Houdini 17.5 Whats New"), it doesn't seem like much anymore, especially when you look at how little hype there was on Houdini's end. Features like that are just expected in high-end software.
Of course, there's a lot to be optimistic about. The recent funding from big game companies and the use of Blender in them means a lot to the future of open-source software. I'm as excited as everyone else to get my hands on a version of Blender with fantastic compatibility features, accelerated viewport and rendering, better simulation frameworks, etc. But it's important for us to realize that there are still countless major leaps Blender needs to make in order to become an industry standard for film VFX.
Brilliant stuff guys! I most agree with the comment about how much fun Blender is to use. I've been an editor for over 20 years, and now the world of 3D is finally accessible. Rather than ask my wife to build me something, which would normally end in an argument! I can dive right in and have a go myself. I'm slower than a slow thing, but it really is the most fun I've ever had in software.
You mention that there are a lot of tutorials for Blender which teach bad habits. Do you have any complete tutorial/course recommendations? I am about to start learning Blender, and I would prefer to not develop bad habits along the way. Thank you!
Finally, some long-awaited Blender content!
Its been at least some days! :D
can you do a remake of this review video....now after several improvements that happened...it could be different...or it already is
TLDR: The Large Studios Need to use it More often in order for them to Really Use it.
they must have a reason to use it more often.
You missed a whole lot in what they were saying. The real truth is that blender just isn't qualified to be used in large studios.
Compositing... "In the VFX industry that's exclusively done in Nuke". Some people at BMD might have something to say about that. I know it's usually Nuke (with stereoscopic done in Fusion), but Fusion has been around for almost 30 years.
Also let me add, people for a huge produciton si SUPER easy to find, because train some specialized artist is not a problem, you have time! the problem is to find people for small projects, fast paced projects, because you don't have time.
Sorry I disagree a lot with you, and I'm commenting as I heard the video because I cannot refrain myself
One think I don't understand is why people are so hell bent about the topic on Blender replacing other softwares in the industry. Well its a great piece of software and I myself use it to make environment art and it would be great for Blender to grow its standard and work alongside the big names like Maya, Zbrush or Houdini. But replacing other softwares become more of a harsh statement. Its like saying that I have a Google Pixel phone and a One Plus, which one should I choose? Both the things do the same, and evidently I am always gonna choose that thing that gives me results faster and that I am used to the thing.
I remember playing with Blender back in version 2.45 nearly 12/13 years ago. I was so addicted to its fluid sim engine, but I must say It really helped me get my first start in understanding 3D in general. Only now have I taken some interest in taking advantage of its awesome looking grease pencil. Almost feels like Harmony but with a powerful 3D modeling engine behind it. I'm really excited for Blenders future. :)
I think Blender is perfect for indie game projects.