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.
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
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doing anything animation related is with the exception of node based particle effects, its otherwise very plain and outdated by more than a decade in this department
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
Here's my take - We understand that Autodesk have been the kings of 3D design and animation for the last 15-odd years and have been the #1 company in the industries of games, films, television and even architecture if I'm correct to say, but the thing is Blender has been around since 1998, which for the last 20 years continued to develop and work as a major open-source tool that enables more people to get into 3D design and animation. With the release of Blender 2.8 this past year, it has been progressing to the next step in becoming a professional tool in the terms of how the UI looks and it's navigation, how people can operate the software via hotkeys and certain tasks etc. We get the fact that users and artists that have the knowledge of Autodesk software like Maya and 3DS Max are likely to be more in the pipeline of working with AAA game studios and even with other major production companies of Film and TV, but the bottom line is, those that have the knowledge of a Maya or a 3DS Max can afford to pay out for the privilege, if we look at how much the subscription model is with Maya or 3DS Max, people are paying out £1000s / $1000s per year in order to produce work in Autodesk software for commercial purposes, whereas Blender has unlocked the doors massively for anyone who wanted to get involved in 3D production like myself and has made it crystal clear that it can be used for any purpose including commercial. Not to be forgetting that more people turn to Blender because there is a larger community online and there are more resources made available on platforms like Social Media and even on RUclips. 1st time users can learn Blender instantly via RUclips depending on the version of Blender they are using. A friend of mine who owns his own production studio decided to turn away from Autodesk and go to Blender because small-companies like his were unable to keep up with the licensing fees that Autodesk are demanding on a yearly basis. If you are a small-time artist like I am who wants to produce good quality content on a budget, you would look at the alternatives like Blender and even 3D-Coat which is the alternative for Zbrush, because they are either free or one-off payment softwares that can be used for any purpose. Take this into account: Going off topic a little bit - If you are a multimedia designer that is looking to cut off the subscription model entirely for content production, you're best tools would be Blender, Hitfilm Express/Pro, 3D Coat, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Inkscape, GIMP, and even Blackmagic Fusion. All those softwares in question are either free or you pay a one-off fee for that particular software. Round all of them up together, you're paying around anywhere between £800-2,000 - that is nearly the amount you pay for just 1 year's subscription of 3DS Max or Maya. So going back to the subject, I feel that people are turning to Blender because of the large community and open access, if Autodesk wants to maintain themselves as a proper superpower in the industry, they have to take the steps into what other software is doing, and stop continuing to let artists pay extortion fees. We know they do an INDIE version of their software for a cheaper but there is too many restrictions, hence why Blender is the next best thing.
You could have just written "Blender is free" which at the moment seems to be the strongest selling point. Having a larger community isn't necessarily a good thing, the community is huge because the software is free and everybody can jump in but also most of this user base is doing very low quality crap, it's like it is more important to do a lot of stuff to fill social networks instead of doing good stuff at a lower rate. Having a huge community also means you have to filter much more useless information and artwork which takes time and a lot of frustration.
@@leecaste That's perfectly understandable and I'm sure a lot of us would accept that statement, but to be in all honesty the user base that is doing very low quality stuff are either non experience users who are 1st timers of the software, or don't fully understand the fundamentals of 3D yet. When I first started I was still green with the software, but i got better and learned the fundamentals when i did my university work and got to know more of 3d softwares like Lightwave, including other important things like mapping, nodes, render quality etc. I wouldn't exactly say most of the user base does low quality crap, I would say 50/50 because there are brilliant artists who use Blender and produce professional quality work. Go and look at Agent 327 from Blender Animation Studios, Next-Gen which is a Netflix film, and other great works from users who have done time-lapses and tutorials. In all honesty, it goes the same with Autodesk, who's to say that someone who has 3DS Max or Maya don't produce the great quality found in AAA games or elsewhere despite paying for the software.
@@leecaste Not much of a con but more of a preference for you. Fact is more user=more content, more discussions=more progression. Industry standards ofc got a lead on quality art because they've been mastered by professionals for years, meanwhile we got blender who recently just got a boom in population.
Ashleybradbury I'm not saying that using Autodesk products outputs high quality by default, maybe the proportions are the same but in absolute terms getting rid of 100 crap tutorials to find one useful is way more time consuming and frustrating than getting rid of 10. Also as a huge amount of users are beginners, most of the content made in blender is done for beginners, just check the titles here in youtube, common keywords are easy, fast, quick, dirty, beginner, etc. Finding advanced stuff is very difficult.
5 лет назад+725
Quote of the Day: "Maya isn't fun to use. It's boring. It's a tractor."
@@halafradrimx Gotta disagree with you here, bro. But maybe it's just because I'm still new to all this, and maybe you're just done with CG tools being in any way exciting.
@@halafradrimx while i agree blender is much more complex, it's so much faster than maya so I disagree that complex=boring. blender shortcuts make everything as fast as you can move your fingers, which kinda makes it more fun
I disagree..it is very easy to to learn Maya, believe it or not I taught Maya to a friend over Voice. Once you have the basics down it is very easy to get a project going. It is very streamlined. I found Blender 2.8 a Huge step forward towards that end but there is still some steps to go. Blender has the advantage of accessibility though, and this is its main strength. Maya is not accessible with ease. Especially among people who do not want to do this for professional reasons. Such as Game Modding. No one is going to pay a License to get Maya to Mod a game they play with some buddies. But Blender is very accessible for that purpose, and much much more, Art and Professional Grade Content Creation.
As a long term Maya user ,after trying out blender I must say: Finally there's a good competition for Maya as it's been stagnant in last few years, hopefully that will change
@@kangtheconqueror8359 learn both if you're able to. Fundamentally they work the same, Blender is just more reliable, has a better community, more stable etc, and it's free, vs Maya at it's cheapest is at least $300 a month to use.
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.
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!
A video comparing Blender to Maya with respect to modeling, animation, rigging, texturing, dynamics, hair, cloth, fluids, miscellaneous simulation would be super helpful. Nothing beats a video over broad generalized comments.
@@FlippedNormals yes . Side by side comparison would be much better . People will still complaint that you are new to blender so you dont know how to get this done. Collab with a blender expert and do a maya vs blender video.
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".
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
@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.
2 years on a follow-up to this conversation would be nice, now that Blender 3.x has made some great strides (geometry nodes, improved sculpting, fluid sim, realtime compositing etc)
@@as-em3ye yep it has come to the point that big studios can't ignore Blender (and Unreal) cos since they're accessible to everyone, and with a thriving ecosystem, an entire generation has grown up playing with them and then taking those skills ahead professionally. And let's face it given the fact that there's a ready pool of talented resources, and no licensing costs, it does make an attractive proposition to them given the render quality of the leading Autodesk/Maxon solutions and blender/ue being almost indistinguishable.
I’m curious to see an update to this in another year or two. I absolutely agree with your reasons and the logic behind studios not switching their pipelines, but as programs get more predatory, and Blender stays Blender with adding features like the new hair system and animation and such, it’d be interesting to revisit this!
for some reason i envisioned you both looking completely different. nice to see you both in the flesh. love your videos, they have been super helpful to me.
Hello Guys, Thank you for this quite interesting point of view about blender. I remember the time Maya came out (yes, I was using Wavefront, alias, and TDI if it means something for you) I'm using 3D software for more than 3 decades. So independently of my expertise, I can't pretend the same as yours, I have a kind of advantage because I saw the emergence of new softwares, several times. And Maya was the new guy decades ago. Interestingly enough, everybody was saying, about Maya, what you are actually saying about Blender. I know the context is different; the industry is much more mature and big now; however, your prediction about many years to flip from Maya as the primary tool to blender as the main tool, will not happen so progressively. I' have the impression we are at a tipping point (see Malcolm Gladwell). I predict a rapid change when about 30% of the studios will use blender. That's probably the threshold. And as you said, Ubisoft using blender is a quite good sign. Blender will remain a universal tool. For this, I believe it is already better than Maya as it is easier to use than Maya and much more open to in house development. It's actually wholly made for collaboration (I believe it's not the case with Maya) On the other hand, even if Autodesk is massive I think that only a handful of developers are actually working on Maya (not a lot probably) So on principle, I agree with you guys it still hard to switch to blender, but for new studios, small and medium-size studios, they should consider doing so as it might give them an edge as for them, the license price is a real problem, and the training is not (so much). The change will happen, I think, it's not evitable now, and who will jump first and when is also not a question: Ubisoft did. ;P
Thanks for you input Philippe! We're super excited to see what the future brings for Blender. And as time goes by, we will just see more adoption happening
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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?
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.
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.
3:44 I feel like Blender's current variant of funding actually kind of addresses that. It's functionally perhaps a bit different, but big studios and corporations absolutely could take the money they'd normally use towards licensing and essentially buy a Blender developer who works on Blender in general and also, for a fixed time budget, directly responds to studio wishes to get bug fixes or features that are specific to what that studio needs right now. Effectively that could probably be pretty similar to what studios get from support. But of course that *does* cut into the "It's totally free" narrative. I'm not quite sure how the balance works out there. That being said it's definitely a very different model to what these companies are used to, and so this also will take convincing and time to get more companies in board (although the partners thus far are very promising) Lots of great points.
@Brandon Brown I actually think it really depends on studio size. Eventually the cost of more licenses will outweigh the cost of a developer. For, paradoxically, smaller studios that might not yet be true, 'cause you can't hire, say, a tenth of a dev, at least currently
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
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..
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!
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).
Of course the software isn't "going to be as good" as the "specialist" software. But then again that's not what makes blender revolutionary. It is the fact that it is quite competent, open source, and free. An issue I think people haven't come to terms with is that the traditional model of software dev is simply too expensive and unsustainable. No industry should have a "cost of operation" that doesn't directly contribute to a final product. The thing with maya and Zbrush is that they are specialized for a industry built on division of labor, namely CGI house and "AAA" development. They are built to have zero downtime, as the licensing fee contributes to overhead. Simply being idle costs money. Scale that to dozens of employees and you get extreme costs. So blender isn't the fastest. So what. I either spend 4000 a year on maya, 10000 a year on realflow, 3000 a head on nuke, 1000 a head on Zbrush. Or I spend that on equipment and labor. And the trend for companies going to these subscription models just means less and less people will use the software, because when it costs money just to passively Possess the right to open the software, why would I sink that money into them? It would be like a tool company selling subscription to pocket knives and drills. Another factor is the fact that I use linux. I fucking despise windows and mac. I despise a company fucking with my expensive hardware and fucking with my personal data. I despise companies raping my wallet and snooping on my data. I hate windows using 25-40 percent of my cpu for fucking background processes. I can use blender on linux and use all of my ram, Cpu, and Gpu for just blender. No fucking Cortana, No fucking Siri/Icloud, No fucking Adobe Cloud bullshit. Just being able to render to goddamn EXR like god intended and then comping to PNG, And mastering in davinci studio. All done on linux. No wasting cycles, infinitely scaleable, and free. The bottom line is the tool is not the mark of quality artistry. People have been making games and movies for decades with "primitive" stuff. We need to stop wasting money and time on Vampire Tech. I rest my case.
I kind of agree, but my time is worth more than money, so if I can get a software that saves me X amount of time, that's like saving X amount of money, and with a software like for example ZBrush this calculation easily gets positive. Blender is a baseline for me, and most people probably don't need more than that, but if you do need a faster process, then spending the extra money can be worth it in the long run. The same is true for Linux. It takes a long time to learn all the ins and outs of your operating system, deal with the things that Windows or Mac gives you intuitively without needing to learn nearly as much. So in the end it comes down to how much you value your time. If you think your money is more important than time, get Linux, get Blender. But if you think your time is worth more than money, you should reconsider which software gives you the most bang for your time.
@Jorge Esparza You're writing in hypotheticals, but Linux has been sponsored for decades now, even by Microsoft, and it's still extremely far from standard in Desktop space.
The thing is that you`re taking about Maya as if that program was better than Blender...and that`s not true. In fact, Maya is only better than Blender on Rigging.
@@Luxalpa it doesn't "take a long time" to learn linux. Anyone with a modern distro can be up and running in a few hours. Modern distros take the tough stuff out of the linux installation process. In my experience it's faster to setup any linux desktop than a windows system. Additionally; while there is more software available on windows most of it is crap. As for Zbrush, I rarely if ever sculpt. To me scupting is objectively the worst method of 3d modeling, beacause you have to retopo. Where as with Sub-d, loopcut, knife and poking, you can easily generate the surface you need and bonus, not need to worry about remeshing. For me when I do sculpt it's only after the base mesh is complete, and only for details or smoothing. With game design and animation less is always more. The biggest reason I use the software I do, is because I refuse to have my operating costs be anything more than labor and power. I can squeeze way more performance out of my rigs when they're running linux, cause linux is super light. Plus I can do fancy things like have ramdisks at a native level. Which utterly removes any disk IO, speeding up the processing of caches. There is a lot of great software that already does the fancy stuff. The only proprietary software I use regularly besides game engines is Davinci Resolve Studio. Which has a one time purchase and does all the postproduction I'll ever possibly need. I just hate the idea of using adobe or Autodesk. They cost too much and run too poorly without really giving a benefit.
@@smashedlegends In a way yes. But that is rapidly changing. Plus I find blender rigging as it is just fine. Most people use autorig pro or rigify, or just rig it themselves. It's not that hard. Once you learn that every value in blender can be driven by python scripts or can use constraints driven by other drivers it astronomically increases the power and quality and speed of your rigging. Also. Auto IK. Probably the most understated option in the pose tool bar. I rarely if ever have to rig IK unless its for the Hip/pelvis leg IK(for foot placement/squatting). best part is it uses the FK transforms, which means arcs are no sweat. I learned how to do rigging by reading and studying other rigs. Which you can do because it's all open.
This was a particularly valuable and interesting video for me as I've taught Blender for nine years. About three years ago I was persuaded by one of my colleges to change the course to Maya and I'm struggling with it. It's very hard to get first and second year students to the point where they're productive with it, even though many of them are game design majors and would be using it professionally (this is University of California at Santa Cruz). Before, even using Blender 2.78 and earlier, this large class was mostly producing wonderful work by the end of a ten week quarter. I'm very much in two minds as to whether to switch back to Blender, particularly since 2.80 is so much more accessible. You make a lot of interesting points - thanks.
If its not in the job requirements for triple AAA studios im not gonna waste my time learning it. Auto Desk provides people with a student version to learn on. You get all the software, just cant make money off of it. Create the assets or animations in the student version then buy the LT version and export the files when you are ready to do so then cancel subscription. you get to sell your product and Autodesk gets their 30 bucks
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.
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.
Definitely true "Blender is not industry Standard" according to VFX and the movies, but there a other industries and disciplines ever since strongly related to "3d industry tool sets". Some of these like Arch-viz, Gaming, Sciences, Industrial design, budget/experimental films etc. have their own pipelines mostly much more flattened but they also need to model they need to render and they need to post their productions. For me Blender reached its critical level to become productive for Arch-Viz (this is what we do Rhino/3dsmax/Nuke/PS). Some reasons for us to use it as our main DCC-kit (besides the Community and open Source aspects) are: -Super lightweight 2secs to launch. -Cycles Evee combination consistency makes it easy to step from lookdev to previz to final rendering. -Great interface since 2.8! cleaned up functions on your fingertip, flexible viewport configurations, nice design, flat structure. -Industry Standards [sic!] like Cryptomatte, Alembic, Open SubD, BSDF shaders, OSL, and python of course... is not nothing -Revamped on a daily basis by the needs of the community and not the marketing department. -No plugins needed (for us so far). -Many features where it is lacking are currently under development (mostly distributed rendering for us). -Better support from the community, AD never helped me with my issues. If you asked me a year ago i said no way to go for arch-viz, today i think it is the only way (for us) to go. Let me bet on Blender will become Huge!
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.
I've been learning Maya at college since 2018 while I've used Blender 3D from when I was 15 until now (which is roughly 7+ years). Many fellow students have issues with Maya such as the amount of unusual, unnecessary but mostly unhandy crashes, the workflow being an absolute pain because of the hundreds of menu's you have to go through to do a thing that Blender can do in one keyboard short-cut and the general factor if it being highly complicated to get into, no matter whether you switch or just started. I've shown Blender to a few students both from my currently year (1st - 2nd year) and people from the 3rd and final year. I've also shown this to teachers. All of the people I've shown Blender to are highly impressed with how much more and better functionality on certain areas Blender has compared to Maya. Here's my analysis of both the software: I'll start off with Maya's outstanding positive sides: 1. One of the positive sides from Maya, I think, is the fact that the animation editor and rigging are made more efficient than Blender currently provides. There's many tools that make animating in Maya really advanced. Blender just misses out on a few things. 2. The second one I'd say is the very convenient UV unwrapping process. There's again a lot of tools here that make the UV'ing life a bunch easier. Tools like 'Orient Shells', 'Straightening Shells', 'Stacking (Similar) Shells', and the general workflow in my opinion are amazing. Blender doesn't contain as much tools **by default** (check out TexTools (github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender#installation ) as Maya provides and honestly properly UV unwrapping in Blender can be quite tough without plugins. The most negative sides of Maya: 1. It's extremely expensive to purchase. I get that if you're a company that has a sweet income, this wouldn't hurt too much. However, for individuals or people just getting started, paying $195 a month, $1545 a year or $4170 for 3 years for a single license is simply insane. Especially since getting used to the workflow for newcomers especially seems to be complicated and it has many flaws that need addressing. 2. Which brings me to the second point. Maya has many disturbing and visible bugs that really seem to bother many fellow students. Think about frequent, random crashes, messed up UV's or meshes on startup for no reason, a super large start-up time and more. 3. The general workflow seems super complicated and time intensive. There's so many menu's to go through to get one single thing done, so many settings to change and similar things which makes the modelling process time consuming. Blender 3D's outstanding positive sides: 1. First and foremost, Blender is 100% free. I know, this has been repeated by others, but to make my analysis complete I thought it'd be good to include it as well. Just to bring a quote from the video: "What Blender can do right now, other software can do as well" (at 1:40). This means that Blender is basically able to do the same or at least similarly, for a $0 price instead of the $195 a month in Maya. 2. Secondly, Blender's workflow is super easy to get into. There's plenty of super helpful tutorials out there to help you get a general idea of Blender. Then try to memorize the shortcuts, or use a shortcut-sheet, and voila: all that's left is building up experience. Many things in Blender are based on shortcuts while also providing GUI buttons. In case you can't remember them all, every function that has a shortcut assigned will be shown at the right of the GUI button. 3. Blender barely crashes unless it's actually for a reason: I've had Blender crash because I accidentally filled in an insanely high subdivision value. Makes sense that it'll reach my laptop's limits, right? Maya, on the other hand, had crashed for unknown reasons many times. As said in the video "... is they have a well-tested piece of software ..." (at 2:03) but at the same time, Maya still contains so many issues while Blender is fairly stable. The most negative sides of Blender: 1. The UV unwrapping process could use improvements. Right now it simply lacks a lot of tools compared to Maya. (Resolved! I was introduced to a life-saving plugin called TexTools (github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender#installation ) that actually includes all of this!) 2. Moving the pivot can be disturbing, since you have to use the 3D cursor, however there are plugins out there making this possible. (Resolved! This was actually added in Blender already!) Additional notes: 1. Maya: "... what you get with that cost is support..." (at 3:26) "... that doesn't exist for Blender." (at 3:42) This is absolutely false! While there may not be a line to call or a direct answer (unless it's a known issue with a solution found online), since it's open source, many developers working on Blender across the world are able to fix an issue or hear suggestions out and push it to the origin. Example: Blender 2.80 has gotten a massive overhaul including but not limited to the Grease Pencil tool. This was something that the community wanted for some time, and it's been implemented now. 2. I guess it also depends on what your goal is with the software. For example: Blender is to me the perfect tool for many things, exceptions being UV unwrapping (although plugins can improve this). It works with what I'm doing perfectly fine. 3. Have you ever heard of easily cloning components in Maya? Yea, me neither. However, Blender does actually allow this. There's a few more of these core features which Maya lacks (and vice versa). 4. Blender starting process is super-duper fast! When you launch the software it'll take a few seconds until it's fully loaded. Another thing is that Blender appears to be optimized so well that it's only 77 - 157 MiB (varies by operating system) (src: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software) ) while Maya is a whopping 4 GB for installation (src: knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya-2019.html ). DISCLAIMER: I don't mean to start any issues, I just wanted to give my opinion on this.
Peter Coenen literally this was MY experience too. Step by step. Taught blender to some fellow students since I hated Maya (even though I knew how to use it quite well too since I had experience in 3D before starting my degree)... they were all blown away, and this was with 2.72. In all honesty these guys don’t know ANYTHING about Blender. I don’t even know why I am still subbed, I don’t really think they know what they’re talking about 90% of the time.
Just a word of caution from somebody who was a student not too long ago (finished 2015) and has been working in VFX since. There were a few students in my course that were big fans of Blender. They would try to convince everyone to use Blender, compare features (often very ignorantly), and even do their class work in Blender. None of these people are working in the industry now. They couldn't get past their love for Blender, bite the bullet and just learn Maya. I won't go into depth defending Maya, but just to touch on a few points you made: 1. "It's expensive". Yep, but if you're working for a company that isn't an issue. For freelancers there is now Maya Indie, and it really isn't THAT expensive considering it's your main tool for your job. It's a fraction of your yearly income. 2. Bugginess. Yeah it has a few bugs. But it is actually far more stable than Blender for big scenes/polycounts. Recent releases have squashed hundreds of bugs. 3. "Workflow is complicated". I can never understand this... The Maya hotbox is the secret to working fast in Maya. I have never met a fellow 3D artist that doesn't know how to use the hotbox. You're also free to make hotkeys if you so wish. 4. Cloning. I suppose you're talking about Blender's array modifier? That's exactly what the Mash toolset is, except Mash is faaar more powerful. It's kinda what Blender animation nodes is trying to be. Totally agree on Blender startup time being amazing. But regardless, I'm a Houdini fanboy, don't get me started on how great Houdini is ;)
Peter Jansen idk man, that’s your experience. For me it was the complete opposite, I’m one of the few working from my class and I was “that kid” who studied Blender on his own. We were taught maya and the other kid who actually works for the industry from my clsss is essentially the other kid who did NOT want to use Maya and did his modeling/sculpting in ZBrush and retopo with other tools. Painter for texturing. You talk about all these glitches, but the truth is I’ve had around 100x more glitches in the little I used Maya as opposed to the over 4000 hours registered by my Steam Blender app. Given that my Maya scenes were smaller than a pig’s butthole, I doubt Maya’s performance on big scenes is something to call home about. Maybe it’s gotten better, sure, but Blender hasn’t had stability issues at least since 2.71 which is when I started using it. I’ve had less than probably 40 crashes over the last 6 years. With Maya i had 40 crashes In less than a semester using it around 4 times less than I do Blender (as we were forced to use it in class, and ironically I still knew how to use it better than most of my friends since I had taken courses on Maya beforehand, so it wasn’t my fault the software was acting stupid I can guarantee you that). 2) I don’t know what you mean with that “hotbox” you just said, but regardless I doubt it’ll be faster than just imputing commands which is how I work in Blender (where you can also set hotkeys up so...). Blender besides has made a great job out of copying Maya’s best features (so thank you Maya, I really do thank you for your good design choices, however if I can have them for free I will simply do that). 3) Maya Indie is actually QUITE expensive. You say it’s our whole suite but it really isn’t, i have to use Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter and Designer, ZBrush.... 3D modeling, texturing, UVs... etc. Ultimately doing everything on the same tool is probably not what you wanna do if you wanna save a lot of time up (production needs). Besides, Maya Indie has all the limitations that essentially turn it into a “learner tool”. Just like ZBrush Core, it’s not enough for professional work. One other thing is, you do VFX right? It’s a very different industry than 3D modeling for games, so perhaps that’s why we have our differences. Maya might be better for this, I don’t know... although to be honest I’ve never seen Maya do anything special with particles or any kind of physical system for simulations anyway. I wouldn’t know. Ultimately if I were to do any VFX I would probably just pay for Houdini instead, we all know that’s where VFX is really at. Obviously we’re all allowed to have our differences and think whatever we want, but I really can’t say I agree with your comments on Blender, as I’ve literally never had any issue with any of the things you mentioned (fast input methods, no crashes... etc). It really doesn’t matter in the end, people will say whatever they want about Blender; but there’s a reason why Ubisoft is now hiring Blenderers and adopting it as it’s main engine for trailer production, and clearly that’s just them trying it out. If it works for them they will probably standardize it across their company as it will save them tons of money. Once that happens I guarantee you, suddenly, “blender will be a great tool for production”. No big AAA companies supported Blender up to this point, but as that keeps changing, the image Blender had will too. If most of your friends didn’t get a job with Blender it probably has more to do with either them not being great at what they do than the software itself or the other strong possibility is that: well... AAA companies don’t want you to use Blender, cause they don’t use it. You can’t blame that on the software though, as we are taking about non-subjective qualities of these suites : clearly that’s not a reason to say Blender is bad, although it might be a reason to say Blender is not the tool you should learn if you want a regular job in games (but as I said on my last paragraph, that is changing quite a lot recently anyway). Regardless, I can still open up Maya and do 80 % of the stuff I do in Blender anyway, it just would be slower for me as I find the tools more convoluted. Ps: i was kind of the fastest modeler in our class btw and that was literally because I only used commands to do my work (which is what you should be doing regardless of which software you’re using; going into menus kills productivity). Ultimately we all know 3D is so complex and has so many pipelines that you might be using an entirely different suite of programs for your like of work than the ones I use and we could both still be doing great work. Let’s not forget more than 50% is actually about the artist and not the tool, so I think we are all entitled to our own preferences :). I hope I didn’t come off rude! I don’t mean to be so, I’m just opinionated lol. My bad!
@@EnriquePage91 Well said! Really loved that input. :) I recently viewed a few videos about Blender 2.81 and I must say I'm even happier now that Blender will have a proper pivot editing tool. This is one of the 2 biggest issues I had with Blender (as mentioned in my analysis) soon to be resolved! Really excited to see the new sculpting tools & functionalities as well! The hierarchy fixes seem really slick as well. All Blender needs after that is more tools for UV-unwrapping and then I'd say it's more than ready to become THE new industry standard.
@@EnriquePage91 1) Glitches and scene size performance. Yes Maya is known to be buggy. Maya 2017 was absolute god awful, unusable trash. 2018/2019 actually squashed hundreds of bugs and smoothed out some of the underlying tech that was added in 2017 that made it so buggy. As a result, these latest versions are surprisingly stable. In terms of scene performance, Maya has parallel evaluation on GPU/CPU for deformers and rigs, and will soon merge the unofficial USD implementations into the core app. Recent releases have made huge strides on scene opening times. 2) The hotbox is the radial menu that comes up when you hold right click, or a key + right click, or spacebar for all the menus. I didn't say Blender couldn't make hotkeys... I was alluding to the point that many Blender fans claim Blender can do that Maya can't (use of hotkeys). 3) Maya Indie is dirt cheap. If you can't afford Maya Indie, then obviously it's not for you. It'd take no more than a day or two to pay off the cost, and you have it for a year. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it has tonnes of limitations, it is full Maya, no render restrictions, no watermarks. The main restriction is you can't make more than 100K USD per year with it. That is extremely reasonable. We have Houdini and Blender to thank for that (competition). 3.1) What do you mean "you say it's our whole suite"? I didn't say that? Obviously every artist/studio is going to use a different mix of software. I personally use Houdini, Nuke, Redshift, Maya, Resolve etc. I don't even have a problem with Blender as a modeling tool, I think it's great for that. I just personally wouldn't use it for mostly anything else, see next paragraph: 4) Yes, I work in VFX, but my core skill is actually compositing (in Nuke). Obviously Houdini is the better tool for specifically FX (particles, simulations). But Maya is quite capable too, the fluid solver won an Academy award for technical achievement. The Nucleus solver is a unified rigid/particle/cloth solver which is plenty powerful (far more than any default Blender solver). The Bifrost procedural effects graph is a houdini-esque effects graph with some really world class solvers in there (from their acquisition of Naiad). Not to mention all the incredible plugins available for Maya. Outside of specifically FX, Maya is an extremely powerful general VFX tool, I use it ALL THE TIME in conjunction with Nuke for environment geo for projections, lining up cameras, rendering quick little additions to my comps with instanced geometry etc. I actually don't think there is a better 3D DCC for this sort of quick work. But again, Houdini absolutely takes the cake once things get complicated. 5) The people I know that neglected Maya for Blender focused too much time bickering about software instead of creating art. Obviously they weren't going to get a job in VFX if they weren't proficient with Maya. I defend Maya here, but I secretly hate it, because I think Houdini does most things far, far better. 6) Blender is having a far greater impact in games than VFX right now, which is definitely a point of difference between us. Let's also not forget that Maya's core strength is in Animation. A typical VFX suite of software might be Maya for box modeling, Zbrush for sculpting, Mari for texturing, Maya again for animation, Houdini for FX and procedural geo, Katana+Arnold/Clarisse for lighting and rendering, Nuke for compositing. A smaller studio may use Maya for FX + lighting also, but obviously the other tools are far better for that. In the real world, the price of software is such a non factor when you consider the cost of hiring an experienced artist for a role. Studios won't flock to replace their pipelines with Blender, or any other software just because it's free. If the software allows their artist to shit out more work, then that's where the money is. This is why procedural/rule based software like Houdini/Katana/Clarisse are picking up a lot of steam. For VFX, Blender just isn't there in terms of feature set, and Maya is a proven workhorse with a huge talent pool.
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?
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.
Me reading some individual's comment fighting over and defending their software of choise. What a fascinating topic aside from Autodesk and Adobe licensing issue. 🙄
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.
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.
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!
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.
It's possible to care about both. Specifically I'd agree if we only talk about the utility of software but the issue for people like me and others who do care is is the politics of huge corporations like AD and Adobe and how they abuse their market dominance.
This is a big part of it. Let's face it, the industry as is right now grew out of us dicking around with pirated 3d/2d software as a hobby, fell in love, became really good at it, and started companies to sell our skills. If Blender can capture the minds of these hobbyists, which is definitely the current trajectory, it is to be expected these same people will grow their own companies and sell their own products with Blender at it's core. Naturally Blender will have to adapt to their needs or wither away, with the open source nature of Blender, this hopefully means a lot of sharing among one another as part of the culture of Blender, which can quickly snowball into an amazing, very feature heavy piece of kit. If and when these 'new' companies get big and powerful enough to force competition with the industry standard ones, only then will these be forced to switch to Blender and we will start seeing real movement. Blender was always around of course, but never quite good enough, especially in the UI/usability department. IMO workflow is king, and this is why the vision of 2.8 is such a game-changer. UI/usability is something open source suffers from, linux has the same issues. Having many disconnected coders work on the same piece of software is fantastic is terms of adding features, fixing bugs, etc. UI/UX however requires a dedicated focus to wrap all these features into a clean and usable front-end, which is very hard if not impossible to do without some kind of central coordination. Personally I feel that a big chunk of the Blender foundation funding should therefore be funneled into such a focus at all times, which is likely already happening as we speak.
@ent|ty Money is what makes you a pro. That is all. If you get paid for what you do, you are a professional. That is the essential meaning. Even if you are a 'bad' artist, if you get paid for it, you are a pro. Doing things for yourself vs doing things for a client, has very different needs.
You mention things that are shown in tutorials that are wrong for production such as using bullion for sculpting. Do you happen to have a video on what those issues are and the correct ways to do things?
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... --------------------------------------------------- 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.
Sculping in blender (2.79) feel like: "AuououououououououooOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo :D" but the 2.81 there are some improvements which is great. Z brush is still the King besides Cmon guys its just a Tool.
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.
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!
There are similarities to a former industry standard in graphic design, Quark Xpress. In the early 2000's they were challenged by an upstart, InDesign, and though professionals didn't see any reason to change, Adobe who owned InDesign, upped the ante steadily, making it have better features but also catering to the professional. It didn't help that Quark cost an arm and a leg. So yes, an industry standard is hard to dislodge, but it can be done.
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
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?
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
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..
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.
As a viewer, I don't see that non-sense naivety of people saying that Blender is ready for industry. Actually, even with 10+ years of use of this tool as a half hobbyist half freelancer I clearly see the problems that you've pointed on the video. I personally use your word as absolute truth because of your experience, portfolio, and sincerity of thoughts. Blender is an amazing tool for people like me, here in Brazil/for my currency, an individual license of Zbrush reaches 4 times the minimum wage, it's crazy expensive! Now if I want to add Marvelous, Houdini, Substancer Painter, and Adobe CC I need to charge a crazy amount of money for my work. As a starter on the field, at least with Blender I can get up on that ladder and eventually have this system less dependent on only one software.
Really great video, I'm thrilled to get this kind of perspective! It was really helpful to hear the thoughts and critical feedback on all of these different softwares from people with such a diverse experience in and out of the industry. Thank you so much for answering many questions I've held on to for years about how Blender stacks up to each of those industry leaders. I'm definitely going to stay tuned for more videos.
I think the most important thing Blender does is allow artists coming from a 2D or more stylized background create results that look very appealing and capture the essence of their artwork all within one tool. In terms of realism I don't think it's there, but for stylized works it is a lot more artist friendly after 2.8 and can be a fantastic tool for freelancers and independent artists, not just hobbyists. Another thing that it does is it makes 3D accessible to potential artists from countries outside of North America and Western Europe who might not have access or funds to obtain tools like maya or zBrush. What I love about this video is how you highlight that artistry is more important than the tool. I see too many tutorials where the focus is exclusively on the tools, often times not even explaining the principles, and that gives beginners and hobbyists the wrong idea about what constitutes a 3D artist. That being said, since the artistry is more important than the tool it means that more artists now have a free all in one tool to bring their worlds and stories to life independently. This will not make it industry standard because as you guys mentioned there are so many specialzied tools that are just better at what they do, but it does give a whole new wave of artists the tool to express themselves in the medium of 3D and I think that's cool. Just my 2 cents.
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"
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.
@@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.
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
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.
Summary: Blender is good at many things, but it still can't beat out tools like Nuke, ZBrush, Houdini, Katana, etc which have been stress tested in the industry for years. Seriously, grab an educational license of Nuke or Substance, and you'll see the difference. Just because Blender can do something decently, doesn't mean it can compare to the industry standard. Cost of retraining + loss of productivity from retraining not be worth the cost of instead just staying with Maya. I read in *Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier* and I remember when they were making budgeting making Pillars of Eternity, they estimated it cost about $10 000 / month to pay for one employee, w/ all the equipment and health insurance. Assume $2000 of that $10 000 is spent on software (so you spend $288 000 for employing one employee for 3 years) , what do you think is the better payoff? A few thousand for a 3 year maya license, or a few months of loss productivity from switching software, and from retraining (which could mean pushing back deadlines, which could mean wasted money in the marketing department, etc). The cost of a maya license is negligible in comparison. Thousands of dollars already put into developing specific tools for Maya. Blender has a lot of cool tools, but it isn't even close to Maya when it comes to having specific tools that are needed in a production environment. Chicken and the Egg, if you want to hire for blender, it'll be hard for you to find anyone, but if you want to get hired by learning blender, theres no one hiring. No one gives a shit about what tools you're using. No one has this great love of Maya or of Nuke, they just love the best tool for the job. e.g. I know a studio which switched from adobe premiere (or was it after effects?) to Nuke the moment they found out how much faster Nuke is. This weird love for blender... doesn't happen in other softwares for a reason. People don't fall in love with a wrench brand because it's the coolest, the use the best wrench they can get, and if they find a better one, they'll ditch the old one. Hostile UI design until like, literally just now. Maya has had 15 years of becoming the industry standard in UI design, everyone is used to it. For Blender to have the right click and left click be the direct opposite until last year is... Oof. edit: It's gonna take a while. Only recently did they get that massive cash boost from Epic, Ubisoft, etc. other tools have been rolling in money for years. It might take 10 or even more years for it to become industry standard. I'll edit in more things while I watch the video
Completely agree. I find it strange when I say I use Maya and have a whole bunch of blender users start blasting me for it saying how much better their tool is. I used to use Photoshop for texturing, then the quixel suite came out and I used that (still technically Photoshop but you know what I mean), then substance suite came out and I'm using that. Same with 3D I started way back with milkshape, switched to max, then finally Maya. I don't have some special connection to my tool and feel the need to devalue other artists because they use something different. Blender is a great piece of software, so is Maya, so is max. I've seen great artwork made in pretty much every program, even wings3D. People try to sway me from my chosen software by showing me amazing art made in blender, so I show them amazing art made in Microsoft paint and tell them to stop using their chosen texturing software, just to prove my point haha. We all love art, let's stop caring about the brush or the canvas and start caring about the art
I get most tools from harbor freight. They are cheap, usually get the job done, and can be returned just about any time you have an issue. Screw snap on, craftsman, etc. I use Blender for the same reasons, I get the job done (which means it was done just as well), and spend a lot less money. If something is wrong there is a wealth of support or other plug ins to add on. It's about financial efficiency to a lot of people. Blender is popular because regardless of using Maya or any other software it's still hard to earn a solid paycheck modeling these days. You couldn't be more wrong on hiring Blender artists. There are loads of people who will take payment to model in Blender and are VERY GOOD. But you are correct in that the stigma of hiring a Blender artist is inferior to Maya or Max is correct, and it's because of the kind of communication people like yourself use on the subject. "The software doesn't matter" but then proceed to go on about why the software matters. It either does, or it doesn't. In my opinion, the software doesn't matter. I dont care what UI you use, what buttons you use, what tools you use. If the model is good, it's good. Blender has been around for about 15 years too bud, the control scheme of Maya doesn't matter. I used Blender's control scheme the whole time and don't like Maya's setup either... You could always customize it to match anyways. It's silly they had to make a preset for you to get that and feel catered to. This is exactly where other software users get an elitist perspective on the subject, and why there is beef with Blender users. You don't do your homework, and spew a bunch of garbage. No wonder you fight with Blender people all the time. All you see is the studio perspective and forget there are literally thousands if not millions of professionals modeling at home. Studios and big budgets are not the dictators of professional work. Skill is.
@@dangerouskoin4874 Hey, plenty of valid points. I never said any specific tool mattered in my post though. I moved from software to software as I found myself more comfortable using one over another, or I was able to get results quicker. I'll just have to assume that you were pointing you reply to the original poster, because as I said I'm definitely software agnostic and I think Blender is just as good as Maya or Max or Cinema4d or whatever. It's just personal preference
And let's say u give blender 10 years or so. It is quite a small amount of time, make and rig three robots u been proud of and that time flew by already.. Give something else a small attention for a while and 10 years are easily gone, i-e fishing, building your house, kung-fu or meditation, blender is on its way too... to higherness. That is the source of strange lovehood blender gets, that is why the dream, the elephant's one, that is why, we all can't argue a single minute about concrete talks of how to makes this done the quickiest and most effective in-the-dustry- accurate way, but everyone showing extra love and attention to blender here, are people who believe, whose voice tries to reach higher to say: this is us. Opensource plus python-editable soft. Make add-ons Eat various workflows and digest em to create your own Concept ideas faster Contribute and be helped Vehicle that Free dream and design yourself out of slavery. Please look at what blender represents as an idea, as a revolutionary-aspiring one and then let that make sense for why blender exists and tries its best. Then you may go back to the routine of your best-shot-payable-or-not-workflow-suite that helps you the best right now and that noone is actually complaining about since it makes the job done like it is expected. Blender fights that workflow, recklessly and freely, and for almost no reason at all but pride. To not be a slave when you are an artist, a creator, a conciever of things. That is also why hobbyists are giving enormous love to it... they are not enlocked by the industry rule that much. But ironically they see the point.
Great video!! I needed a idea of which software to use and what's happening in the market and you guys made it is very clear. I hope you guys keep making such videos. Thankyou. :D
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.
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.
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!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
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
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?
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....
Here's my take - We understand that Autodesk have been the kings of 3D design and animation for the last 15-odd years and have been the #1 company in the industries of games, films, television and even architecture if I'm correct to say, but the thing is Blender has been around since 1998, which for the last 20 years continued to develop and work as a major open-source tool that enables more people to get into 3D design and animation. With the release of Blender 2.8 this past year, it has been progressing to the next step in becoming a professional tool in the terms of how the UI looks and it's navigation, how people can operate the software via hotkeys and certain tasks etc.
We get the fact that users and artists that have the knowledge of Autodesk software like Maya and 3DS Max are likely to be more in the pipeline of working with AAA game studios and even with other major production companies of Film and TV, but the bottom line is, those that have the knowledge of a Maya or a 3DS Max can afford to pay out for the privilege, if we look at how much the subscription model is with Maya or 3DS Max, people are paying out £1000s / $1000s per year in order to produce work in Autodesk software for commercial purposes, whereas Blender has unlocked the doors massively for anyone who wanted to get involved in 3D production like myself and has made it crystal clear that it can be used for any purpose including commercial. Not to be forgetting that more people turn to Blender because there is a larger community online and there are more resources made available on platforms like Social Media and even on RUclips. 1st time users can learn Blender instantly via RUclips depending on the version of Blender they are using.
A friend of mine who owns his own production studio decided to turn away from Autodesk and go to Blender because small-companies like his were unable to keep up with the licensing fees that Autodesk are demanding on a yearly basis. If you are a small-time artist like I am who wants to produce good quality content on a budget, you would look at the alternatives like Blender and even 3D-Coat which is the alternative for Zbrush, because they are either free or one-off payment softwares that can be used for any purpose. Take this into account:
Going off topic a little bit - If you are a multimedia designer that is looking to cut off the subscription model entirely for content production, you're best tools would be
Blender, Hitfilm Express/Pro, 3D Coat, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Inkscape, GIMP, and even Blackmagic Fusion. All those softwares in question are either free or you pay a one-off fee for that particular software. Round all of them up together, you're paying around anywhere between £800-2,000 - that is nearly the amount you pay for just 1 year's subscription of 3DS Max or Maya.
So going back to the subject, I feel that people are turning to Blender because of the large community and open access, if Autodesk wants to maintain themselves as a proper superpower in the industry, they have to take the steps into what other software is doing, and stop continuing to let artists pay extortion fees. We know they do an INDIE version of their software for a cheaper but there is too many restrictions, hence why Blender is the next best thing.
You could have just written "Blender is free" which at the moment seems to be the strongest selling point.
Having a larger community isn't necessarily a good thing, the community is huge because the software is free and everybody can jump in but also most of this user base is doing very low quality crap, it's like it is more important to do a lot of stuff to fill social networks instead of doing good stuff at a lower rate.
Having a huge community also means you have to filter much more useless information and artwork which takes time and a lot of frustration.
JC your response makes little sense. So the fact that you pay for 3dsmax means you will have superior quality work? Oh pls!
@@leecaste That's perfectly understandable and I'm sure a lot of us would accept that statement, but to be in all honesty the user base that is doing very low quality stuff are either non experience users who are 1st timers of the software, or don't fully understand the fundamentals of 3D yet. When I first started I was still green with the software, but i got better and learned the fundamentals when i did my university work and got to know more of 3d softwares like Lightwave, including other important things like mapping, nodes, render quality etc. I wouldn't exactly say most of the user base does low quality crap, I would say 50/50 because there are brilliant artists who use Blender and produce professional quality work. Go and look at Agent 327 from Blender Animation Studios, Next-Gen which is a Netflix film, and other great works from users who have done time-lapses and tutorials. In all honesty, it goes the same with Autodesk, who's to say that someone who has 3DS Max or Maya don't produce the great quality found in AAA games or elsewhere despite paying for the software.
@@leecaste Not much of a con but more of a preference for you. Fact is more user=more content, more discussions=more progression. Industry standards ofc got a lead on quality art because they've been mastered by professionals for years, meanwhile we got blender who recently just got a boom in population.
Ashleybradbury I'm not saying that using Autodesk products outputs high quality by default, maybe the proportions are the same but in absolute terms getting rid of 100 crap tutorials to find one useful is way more time consuming and frustrating than getting rid of 10.
Also as a huge amount of users are beginners, most of the content made in blender is done for beginners, just check the titles here in youtube, common keywords are easy, fast, quick, dirty, beginner, etc. Finding advanced stuff is very difficult.
Quote of the Day: "Maya isn't fun to use. It's boring. It's a tractor."
Blender isn't fun to use either.
In fact, Blender is much more complex than Maya and thus much more boring.
@@halafradrimx I agree with both comments.
Although Blender is becoming more fun to use than it was. And the UI really rocks.
@@halafradrimx Gotta disagree with you here, bro. But maybe it's just because I'm still new to all this, and maybe you're just done with CG tools being in any way exciting.
@@halafradrimx while i agree blender is much more complex, it's so much faster than maya so I disagree that complex=boring. blender shortcuts make everything as fast as you can move your fingers, which kinda makes it more fun
I disagree..it is very easy to to learn Maya, believe it or not I taught Maya to a friend over Voice. Once you have the basics down it is very easy to get a project going. It is very streamlined. I found Blender 2.8 a Huge step forward towards that end but there is still some steps to go. Blender has the advantage of accessibility though, and this is its main strength. Maya is not accessible with ease. Especially among people who do not want to do this for professional reasons. Such as Game Modding. No one is going to pay a License to get Maya to Mod a game they play with some buddies. But Blender is very accessible for that purpose, and much much more, Art and Professional Grade Content Creation.
As a long term Maya user ,after trying out blender I must say:
Finally there's a good competition for Maya as it's been stagnant in last few years, hopefully that will change
Very much! We're excited.
I feel the same way about Max - it doesn't even seem to have much of a community anymore.
@@FlippedNormals So just learn Maya and not Blender? If i want to work professionally that is.
@@kangtheconqueror8359 learn both if you're able to. Fundamentally they work the same, Blender is just more reliable, has a better community, more stable etc, and it's free, vs Maya at it's cheapest is at least $300 a month to use.
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!
A video comparing Blender to Maya with respect to modeling, animation, rigging, texturing, dynamics, hair, cloth, fluids, miscellaneous simulation would be super helpful. Nothing beats a video over broad generalized comments.
That's a great idea, we'll add it to the list of future videos!
There’s plenty of these types of videos out there. Or try both out for yourself.
@@FlippedNormals yes . Side by side comparison would be much better . People will still complaint that you are new to blender so you dont know how to get this done. Collab with a blender expert and do a maya vs blender video.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2 years on a follow-up to this conversation would be nice, now that Blender 3.x has made some great strides (geometry nodes, improved sculpting, fluid sim, realtime compositing etc)
Just revisited my comments from 3 years ago and must say: I was true, Blender became huge An epic story which still goes on.
@@as-em3ye yep it has come to the point that big studios can't ignore Blender (and Unreal) cos since they're accessible to everyone, and with a thriving ecosystem, an entire generation has grown up playing with them and then taking those skills ahead professionally. And let's face it given the fact that there's a ready pool of talented resources, and no licensing costs, it does make an attractive proposition to them given the render quality of the leading Autodesk/Maxon solutions and blender/ue being almost indistinguishable.
I’m curious to see an update to this in another year or two.
I absolutely agree with your reasons and the logic behind studios not switching their pipelines, but as programs get more predatory, and Blender stays Blender with adding features like the new hair system and animation and such, it’d be interesting to revisit this!
for some reason i envisioned you both looking completely different. nice to see you both in the flesh. love your videos, they have been super helpful to me.
Thanks for watching!
@c haha similar but it's because of the deep voice xD
Considering they are computer guys and Scottish.. I was expecting to see the very pale skin of my people.
@@aegisgfx They're not Scottish :)
@@aegisgfx They are clearly latin. You can hear it in their Spanish speaking accents.
I really like this format of both of you sitting down in front of a camera and having a discussion, keep up the good videos and good work guys!
Hello Guys, Thank you for this quite interesting point of view about blender.
I remember the time Maya came out (yes, I was using Wavefront, alias, and TDI if it means something for you) I'm using 3D software for more than 3 decades.
So independently of my expertise, I can't pretend the same as yours, I have a kind of advantage because I saw the emergence of new softwares, several times. And Maya was the new guy decades ago.
Interestingly enough, everybody was saying, about Maya, what you are actually saying about Blender. I know the context is different; the industry is much more mature and big now; however, your prediction about many years to flip from Maya as the primary tool to blender as the main tool, will not happen so progressively. I' have the impression we are at a tipping point (see Malcolm Gladwell).
I predict a rapid change when about 30% of the studios will use blender. That's probably the threshold. And as you said, Ubisoft using blender is a quite good sign.
Blender will remain a universal tool. For this, I believe it is already better than Maya as it is easier to use than Maya and much more open to in house development. It's actually wholly made for collaboration (I believe it's not the case with Maya)
On the other hand, even if Autodesk is massive I think that only a handful of developers are actually working on Maya (not a lot probably)
So on principle, I agree with you guys it still hard to switch to blender, but for new studios, small and medium-size studios, they should consider doing so as it might give them an edge as for them, the license price is a real problem, and the training is not (so much).
The change will happen, I think, it's not evitable now, and who will jump first and when is also not a question: Ubisoft did. ;P
Thanks for you input Philippe! We're super excited to see what the future brings for Blender. And as time goes by, we will just see more adoption happening
@@FlippedNormals Gosh you reply quick!
@@philippecoenen I mean I see it happening with Houdini before it happens with blender, but we'll see
People were saying about Maya what we are saying now about Blender? To think Blender is actually older than Maya :D
@@bra5081 there about the same age. That said blender took the seanic root
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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...
I'm freaked out by this video. I always thought Morten's voice was Henning's and vice versa.
We get that a lot 😅
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)
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?
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.
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.
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
3:44 I feel like Blender's current variant of funding actually kind of addresses that. It's functionally perhaps a bit different, but big studios and corporations absolutely could take the money they'd normally use towards licensing and essentially buy a Blender developer who works on Blender in general and also, for a fixed time budget, directly responds to studio wishes to get bug fixes or features that are specific to what that studio needs right now.
Effectively that could probably be pretty similar to what studios get from support. But of course that *does* cut into the "It's totally free" narrative. I'm not quite sure how the balance works out there.
That being said it's definitely a very different model to what these companies are used to, and so this also will take convincing and time to get more companies in board (although the partners thus far are very promising)
Lots of great points.
@Brandon Brown I actually think it really depends on studio size. Eventually the cost of more licenses will outweigh the cost of a developer. For, paradoxically, smaller studios that might not yet be true, 'cause you can't hire, say, a tenth of a dev, at least currently
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..
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!
Probably cause the "industry" lies to put up paywalls and entry barriers wherever possible.
Krita for Art and Blender for 3D...
So one year after that, what do you think? Same or it is way better?:)
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).
Of course the software isn't "going to be as good" as the "specialist" software. But then again that's not what makes blender revolutionary. It is the fact that it is quite competent, open source, and free.
An issue I think people haven't come to terms with is that the traditional model of software dev is simply too expensive and unsustainable. No industry should have a "cost of operation" that doesn't directly contribute to a final product. The thing with maya and Zbrush is that they are specialized for a industry built on division of labor, namely CGI house and "AAA" development.
They are built to have zero downtime, as the licensing fee contributes to overhead. Simply being idle costs money. Scale that to dozens of employees and you get extreme costs. So blender isn't the fastest. So what. I either spend 4000 a year on maya, 10000 a year on realflow, 3000 a head on nuke, 1000 a head on Zbrush. Or I spend that on equipment and labor. And the trend for companies going to these subscription models just means less and less people will use the software, because when it costs money just to passively Possess the right to open the software, why would I sink that money into them?
It would be like a tool company selling subscription to pocket knives and drills.
Another factor is the fact that I use linux. I fucking despise windows and mac. I despise a company fucking with my expensive hardware and fucking with my personal data. I despise companies raping my wallet and snooping on my data. I hate windows using 25-40 percent of my cpu for fucking background processes. I can use blender on linux and use all of my ram, Cpu, and Gpu for just blender. No fucking Cortana, No fucking Siri/Icloud, No fucking Adobe Cloud bullshit. Just being able to render to goddamn EXR like god intended and then comping to PNG, And mastering in davinci studio. All done on linux.
No wasting cycles, infinitely scaleable, and free. The bottom line is the tool is not the mark of quality artistry. People have been making games and movies for decades with "primitive" stuff. We need to stop wasting money and time on Vampire Tech.
I rest my case.
I kind of agree, but my time is worth more than money, so if I can get a software that saves me X amount of time, that's like saving X amount of money, and with a software like for example ZBrush this calculation easily gets positive. Blender is a baseline for me, and most people probably don't need more than that, but if you do need a faster process, then spending the extra money can be worth it in the long run. The same is true for Linux. It takes a long time to learn all the ins and outs of your operating system, deal with the things that Windows or Mac gives you intuitively without needing to learn nearly as much. So in the end it comes down to how much you value your time. If you think your money is more important than time, get Linux, get Blender. But if you think your time is worth more than money, you should reconsider which software gives you the most bang for your time.
@Jorge Esparza You're writing in hypotheticals, but Linux has been sponsored for decades now, even by Microsoft, and it's still extremely far from standard in Desktop space.
The thing is that you`re taking about Maya as if that program was better than Blender...and that`s not true. In fact, Maya is only better than Blender on Rigging.
@@Luxalpa it doesn't "take a long time" to learn linux.
Anyone with a modern distro can be up and running in a few hours. Modern distros take the tough stuff out of the linux installation process. In my experience it's faster to setup any linux desktop than a windows system. Additionally; while there is more software available on windows most of it is crap. As for Zbrush, I rarely if ever sculpt. To me scupting is objectively the worst method of 3d modeling, beacause you have to retopo. Where as with Sub-d, loopcut, knife and poking, you can easily generate the surface you need and bonus, not need to worry about remeshing.
For me when I do sculpt it's only after the base mesh is complete, and only for details or smoothing.
With game design and animation less is always more.
The biggest reason I use the software I do, is because I refuse to have my operating costs be anything more than labor and power. I can squeeze way more performance out of my rigs when they're running linux, cause linux is super light. Plus I can do fancy things like have ramdisks at a native level. Which utterly removes any disk IO, speeding up the processing of caches. There is a lot of great software that already does the fancy stuff. The only proprietary software I use regularly besides game engines is Davinci Resolve Studio. Which has a one time purchase and does all the postproduction I'll ever possibly need. I just hate the idea of using adobe or Autodesk. They cost too much and run too poorly without really giving a benefit.
@@smashedlegends In a way yes. But that is rapidly changing. Plus I find blender rigging as it is just fine. Most people use autorig pro or rigify, or just rig it themselves. It's not that hard. Once you learn that every value in blender can be driven by python scripts or can use constraints driven by other drivers it astronomically increases the power and quality and speed of your rigging. Also. Auto IK. Probably the most understated option in the pose tool bar. I rarely if ever have to rig IK unless its for the Hip/pelvis leg IK(for foot placement/squatting). best part is it uses the FK transforms, which means arcs are no sweat.
I learned how to do rigging by reading and studying other rigs. Which you can do because it's all open.
This was a particularly valuable and interesting video for me as I've taught Blender for nine years. About three years ago I was persuaded by one of my colleges to change the course to Maya and I'm struggling with it. It's very hard to get first and second year students to the point where they're productive with it, even though many of them are game design majors and would be using it professionally (this is University of California at Santa Cruz). Before, even using Blender 2.78 and earlier, this large class was mostly producing wonderful work by the end of a ten week quarter. I'm very much in two minds as to whether to switch back to Blender, particularly since 2.80 is so much more accessible. You make a lot of interesting points - thanks.
the problem is probably not software but the way you teach it.. i have the completely different reaction when i show people maya/max/houdini
But can using it land you a job? Where you would use their software.
If its not in the job requirements for triple AAA studios im not gonna waste my time learning it. Auto Desk provides people with a student version to learn on. You get all the software, just cant make money off of it. Create the assets or animations in the student version then buy the LT version and export the files when you are ready to do so then cancel subscription. you get to sell your product and Autodesk gets their 30 bucks
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.
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.
@FlippedNormals Do you guys still feel this way? Now being 2022 and with Blender 3.4 version in Alpha?
Definitely true "Blender is not industry Standard" according to VFX and the movies, but there a other industries and disciplines ever since strongly related to "3d industry tool sets". Some of these like Arch-viz, Gaming, Sciences, Industrial design, budget/experimental films etc. have their own pipelines mostly much more flattened but they also need to model they need to render and they need to post their productions. For me Blender reached its critical level to become productive for Arch-Viz (this is what we do Rhino/3dsmax/Nuke/PS). Some reasons for us to use it as our main DCC-kit (besides the Community and open Source aspects) are:
-Super lightweight 2secs to launch.
-Cycles Evee combination consistency makes it easy to step from lookdev to previz to final rendering.
-Great interface since 2.8! cleaned up functions on your fingertip, flexible viewport configurations, nice design, flat structure.
-Industry Standards [sic!] like Cryptomatte, Alembic, Open SubD, BSDF shaders, OSL, and python of course... is not nothing
-Revamped on a daily basis by the needs of the community and not the marketing department.
-No plugins needed (for us so far).
-Many features where it is lacking are currently under development (mostly distributed rendering for us).
-Better support from the community, AD never helped me with my issues.
If you asked me a year ago i said no way to go for arch-viz, today i think it is the only way (for us) to go. Let me bet on Blender will become Huge!
Still can't import or export fbx properly.
@ There is plugin on blendermarket for importing\exporting fbx.
@ that's on AD though. FBX is not an open standard and the only option for a project like Blender is to reverse engineer the file format.
I want to try to get into ArchViz. Can you point me in the right direction?
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.
I've been learning Maya at college since 2018 while I've used Blender 3D from when I was 15 until now (which is roughly 7+ years).
Many fellow students have issues with Maya such as the amount of unusual, unnecessary but mostly unhandy crashes, the workflow being an absolute pain because of the hundreds of menu's you have to go through to do a thing that Blender can do in one keyboard short-cut and the general factor if it being highly complicated to get into, no matter whether you switch or just started.
I've shown Blender to a few students both from my currently year (1st - 2nd year) and people from the 3rd and final year. I've also shown this to teachers. All of the people I've shown Blender to are highly impressed with how much more and better functionality on certain areas Blender has compared to Maya.
Here's my analysis of both the software:
I'll start off with Maya's outstanding positive sides:
1. One of the positive sides from Maya, I think, is the fact that the animation editor and rigging are made more efficient than Blender currently provides. There's many tools that make animating in Maya really advanced. Blender just misses out on a few things.
2. The second one I'd say is the very convenient UV unwrapping process. There's again a lot of tools here that make the UV'ing life a bunch easier. Tools like 'Orient Shells', 'Straightening Shells', 'Stacking (Similar) Shells', and the general workflow in my opinion are amazing. Blender doesn't contain as much tools **by default** (check out TexTools (github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender#installation ) as Maya provides and honestly properly UV unwrapping in Blender can be quite tough without plugins.
The most negative sides of Maya:
1. It's extremely expensive to purchase. I get that if you're a company that has a sweet income, this wouldn't hurt too much. However, for individuals or people just getting started, paying $195 a month, $1545 a year or $4170 for 3 years for a single license is simply insane. Especially since getting used to the workflow for newcomers especially seems to be complicated and it has many flaws that need addressing.
2. Which brings me to the second point. Maya has many disturbing and visible bugs that really seem to bother many fellow students. Think about frequent, random crashes, messed up UV's or meshes on startup for no reason, a super large start-up time and more.
3. The general workflow seems super complicated and time intensive. There's so many menu's to go through to get one single thing done, so many settings to change and similar things which makes the modelling process time consuming.
Blender 3D's outstanding positive sides:
1. First and foremost, Blender is 100% free. I know, this has been repeated by others, but to make my analysis complete I thought it'd be good to include it as well.
Just to bring a quote from the video: "What Blender can do right now, other software can do as well" (at 1:40). This means that Blender is basically able to do the same or at least similarly, for a $0 price instead of the $195 a month in Maya.
2. Secondly, Blender's workflow is super easy to get into.
There's plenty of super helpful tutorials out there to help you get a general idea of Blender. Then try to memorize the shortcuts, or use a shortcut-sheet, and voila: all that's left is building up experience. Many things in Blender are based on shortcuts while also providing GUI buttons. In case you can't remember them all, every function that has a shortcut assigned will be shown at the right of the GUI button.
3. Blender barely crashes unless it's actually for a reason: I've had Blender crash because I accidentally filled in an insanely high subdivision value. Makes sense that it'll reach my laptop's limits, right? Maya, on the other hand, had crashed for unknown reasons many times.
As said in the video "... is they have a well-tested piece of software ..." (at 2:03) but at the same time, Maya still contains so many issues while Blender is fairly stable.
The most negative sides of Blender:
1. The UV unwrapping process could use improvements. Right now it simply lacks a lot of tools compared to Maya.
(Resolved! I was introduced to a life-saving plugin called TexTools (github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender#installation ) that actually includes all of this!)
2. Moving the pivot can be disturbing, since you have to use the 3D cursor, however there are plugins out there making this possible.
(Resolved! This was actually added in Blender already!)
Additional notes:
1. Maya: "... what you get with that cost is support..." (at 3:26) "... that doesn't exist for Blender." (at 3:42)
This is absolutely false! While there may not be a line to call or a direct answer (unless it's a known issue with a solution found online), since it's open source, many developers working on Blender across the world are able to fix an issue or hear suggestions out and push it to the origin.
Example: Blender 2.80 has gotten a massive overhaul including but not limited to the Grease Pencil tool. This was something that the community wanted for some time, and it's been implemented now.
2. I guess it also depends on what your goal is with the software.
For example: Blender is to me the perfect tool for many things, exceptions being UV unwrapping (although plugins can improve this). It works with what I'm doing perfectly fine.
3. Have you ever heard of easily cloning components in Maya? Yea, me neither. However, Blender does actually allow this. There's a few more of these core features which Maya lacks (and vice versa).
4. Blender starting process is super-duper fast! When you launch the software it'll take a few seconds until it's fully loaded. Another thing is that Blender appears to be optimized so well that it's only 77 - 157 MiB (varies by operating system) (src: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software) ) while Maya is a whopping 4 GB for installation (src: knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya-2019.html ).
DISCLAIMER: I don't mean to start any issues, I just wanted to give my opinion on this.
Peter Coenen literally this was MY experience too. Step by step.
Taught blender to some fellow students since I hated Maya (even though I knew how to use it quite well too since I had experience in 3D before starting my degree)... they were all blown away, and this was with 2.72.
In all honesty these guys don’t know ANYTHING about Blender.
I don’t even know why I am still subbed, I don’t really think they know what they’re talking about 90% of the time.
Just a word of caution from somebody who was a student not too long ago (finished 2015) and has been working in VFX since. There were a few students in my course that were big fans of Blender. They would try to convince everyone to use Blender, compare features (often very ignorantly), and even do their class work in Blender. None of these people are working in the industry now. They couldn't get past their love for Blender, bite the bullet and just learn Maya.
I won't go into depth defending Maya, but just to touch on a few points you made:
1. "It's expensive". Yep, but if you're working for a company that isn't an issue. For freelancers there is now Maya Indie, and it really isn't THAT expensive considering it's your main tool for your job. It's a fraction of your yearly income.
2. Bugginess. Yeah it has a few bugs. But it is actually far more stable than Blender for big scenes/polycounts. Recent releases have squashed hundreds of bugs.
3. "Workflow is complicated". I can never understand this... The Maya hotbox is the secret to working fast in Maya. I have never met a fellow 3D artist that doesn't know how to use the hotbox. You're also free to make hotkeys if you so wish.
4. Cloning. I suppose you're talking about Blender's array modifier? That's exactly what the Mash toolset is, except Mash is faaar more powerful. It's kinda what Blender animation nodes is trying to be.
Totally agree on Blender startup time being amazing.
But regardless, I'm a Houdini fanboy, don't get me started on how great Houdini is ;)
Peter Jansen idk man, that’s your experience. For me it was the complete opposite, I’m one of the few working from my class and I was “that kid” who studied Blender on his own. We were taught maya and the other kid who actually works for the industry from my clsss is essentially the other kid who did NOT want to use Maya and did his modeling/sculpting in ZBrush and retopo with other tools. Painter for texturing.
You talk about all these glitches, but the truth is I’ve had around 100x more glitches in the little I used Maya as opposed to the over 4000 hours registered by my Steam Blender app. Given that my Maya scenes were smaller than a pig’s butthole, I doubt Maya’s performance on big scenes is something to call home about. Maybe it’s gotten better, sure, but Blender hasn’t had stability issues at least since 2.71 which is when I started using it. I’ve had less than probably 40 crashes over the last 6 years. With Maya i had 40 crashes In less than a semester using it around 4 times less than I do Blender (as we were forced to use it in class, and ironically I still knew how to use it better than most of my friends since I had taken courses on Maya beforehand, so it wasn’t my fault the software was acting stupid I can guarantee you that).
2) I don’t know what you mean with that “hotbox” you just said, but regardless I doubt it’ll be faster than just imputing commands which is how I work in Blender (where you can also set hotkeys up so...). Blender besides has made a great job out of copying Maya’s best features (so thank you Maya, I really do thank you for your good design choices, however if I can have them for free I will simply do that).
3) Maya Indie is actually QUITE expensive. You say it’s our whole suite but it really isn’t, i have to use Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter and Designer, ZBrush.... 3D modeling, texturing, UVs... etc. Ultimately doing everything on the same tool is probably not what you wanna do if you wanna save a lot of time up (production needs).
Besides, Maya Indie has all the limitations that essentially turn it into a “learner tool”. Just like ZBrush Core, it’s not enough for professional work.
One other thing is, you do VFX right? It’s a very different industry than 3D modeling for games, so perhaps that’s why we have our differences. Maya might be better for this, I don’t know... although to be honest I’ve never seen Maya do anything special with particles or any kind of physical system for simulations anyway. I wouldn’t know. Ultimately if I were to do any VFX I would probably just pay for Houdini instead, we all know that’s where VFX is really at.
Obviously we’re all allowed to have our differences and think whatever we want, but I really can’t say I agree with your comments on Blender, as I’ve literally never had any issue with any of the things you mentioned (fast input methods, no crashes... etc).
It really doesn’t matter in the end, people will say whatever they want about Blender; but there’s a reason why Ubisoft is now hiring Blenderers and adopting it as it’s main engine for trailer production, and clearly that’s just them trying it out. If it works for them they will probably standardize it across their company as it will save them tons of money. Once that happens I guarantee you, suddenly, “blender will be a great tool for production”.
No big AAA companies supported Blender up to this point, but as that keeps changing, the image Blender had will too.
If most of your friends didn’t get a job with Blender it probably has more to do with either them not being great at what they do than the software itself or the other strong possibility is that: well... AAA companies don’t want you to use Blender, cause they don’t use it.
You can’t blame that on the software though, as we are taking about non-subjective qualities of these suites : clearly that’s not a reason to say Blender is bad, although it might be a reason to say Blender is not the tool you should learn if you want a regular job in games (but as I said on my last paragraph, that is changing quite a lot recently anyway).
Regardless, I can still open up Maya and do 80 % of the stuff I do in Blender anyway, it just would be slower for me as I find the tools more convoluted.
Ps: i was kind of the fastest modeler in our class btw and that was literally because I only used commands to do my work (which is what you should be doing regardless of which software you’re using; going into menus kills productivity).
Ultimately we all know 3D is so complex and has so many pipelines that you might be using an entirely different suite of programs for your like of work than the ones I use and we could both still be doing great work. Let’s not forget more than 50% is actually about the artist and not the tool, so I think we are all entitled to our own preferences :).
I hope I didn’t come off rude! I don’t mean to be so, I’m just opinionated lol. My bad!
@@EnriquePage91 Well said! Really loved that input. :) I recently viewed a few videos about Blender 2.81 and I must say I'm even happier now that Blender will have a proper pivot editing tool. This is one of the 2 biggest issues I had with Blender (as mentioned in my analysis) soon to be resolved!
Really excited to see the new sculpting tools & functionalities as well! The hierarchy fixes seem really slick as well.
All Blender needs after that is more tools for UV-unwrapping and then I'd say it's more than ready to become THE new industry standard.
@@EnriquePage91
1) Glitches and scene size performance. Yes Maya is known to be buggy. Maya 2017 was absolute god awful, unusable trash. 2018/2019 actually squashed hundreds of bugs and smoothed out some of the underlying tech that was added in 2017 that made it so buggy. As a result, these latest versions are surprisingly stable. In terms of scene performance, Maya has parallel evaluation on GPU/CPU for deformers and rigs, and will soon merge the unofficial USD implementations into the core app. Recent releases have made huge strides on scene opening times.
2) The hotbox is the radial menu that comes up when you hold right click, or a key + right click, or spacebar for all the menus. I didn't say Blender couldn't make hotkeys... I was alluding to the point that many Blender fans claim Blender can do that Maya can't (use of hotkeys).
3) Maya Indie is dirt cheap. If you can't afford Maya Indie, then obviously it's not for you. It'd take no more than a day or two to pay off the cost, and you have it for a year. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it has tonnes of limitations, it is full Maya, no render restrictions, no watermarks. The main restriction is you can't make more than 100K USD per year with it. That is extremely reasonable. We have Houdini and Blender to thank for that (competition).
3.1) What do you mean "you say it's our whole suite"? I didn't say that? Obviously every artist/studio is going to use a different mix of software. I personally use Houdini, Nuke, Redshift, Maya, Resolve etc. I don't even have a problem with Blender as a modeling tool, I think it's great for that. I just personally wouldn't use it for mostly anything else, see next paragraph:
4) Yes, I work in VFX, but my core skill is actually compositing (in Nuke). Obviously Houdini is the better tool for specifically FX (particles, simulations). But Maya is quite capable too, the fluid solver won an Academy award for technical achievement. The Nucleus solver is a unified rigid/particle/cloth solver which is plenty powerful (far more than any default Blender solver). The Bifrost procedural effects graph is a houdini-esque effects graph with some really world class solvers in there (from their acquisition of Naiad). Not to mention all the incredible plugins available for Maya. Outside of specifically FX, Maya is an extremely powerful general VFX tool, I use it ALL THE TIME in conjunction with Nuke for environment geo for projections, lining up cameras, rendering quick little additions to my comps with instanced geometry etc. I actually don't think there is a better 3D DCC for this sort of quick work. But again, Houdini absolutely takes the cake once things get complicated.
5) The people I know that neglected Maya for Blender focused too much time bickering about software instead of creating art. Obviously they weren't going to get a job in VFX if they weren't proficient with Maya. I defend Maya here, but I secretly hate it, because I think Houdini does most things far, far better.
6) Blender is having a far greater impact in games than VFX right now, which is definitely a point of difference between us. Let's also not forget that Maya's core strength is in Animation. A typical VFX suite of software might be Maya for box modeling, Zbrush for sculpting, Mari for texturing, Maya again for animation, Houdini for FX and procedural geo, Katana+Arnold/Clarisse for lighting and rendering, Nuke for compositing. A smaller studio may use Maya for FX + lighting also, but obviously the other tools are far better for that.
In the real world, the price of software is such a non factor when you consider the cost of hiring an experienced artist for a role. Studios won't flock to replace their pipelines with Blender, or any other software just because it's free. If the software allows their artist to shit out more work, then that's where the money is. This is why procedural/rule based software like Houdini/Katana/Clarisse are picking up a lot of steam. For VFX, Blender just isn't there in terms of feature set, and Maya is a proven workhorse with a huge talent pool.
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?
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.
can you do a remake of this review video....now after several improvements that happened...it could be different...or it already is
Me reading some individual's comment fighting over and defending their software of choise. What a fascinating topic aside from Autodesk and Adobe licensing issue. 🙄
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 :)
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.
Which rigging tools are missing?
Switching to Blender is the best thing I have done in 2020!
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!
"It's a circle of theft" - Basically sums up all software engineering
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
Agree people who art zealots about software miss out on the art.
This is a big thing - for us its about the love for the art and not for specific tools
That love for the software goes away when you really start making stuff.
It's possible to care about both. Specifically I'd agree if we only talk about the utility of software but the issue for people like me and others who do care is is the politics of huge corporations like AD and Adobe and how they abuse their market dominance.
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.
Thank you, its nice to have an opinion what industry professionals are thinking about blender.
Hey, I was wondering if you can make a video about burn out and how to deal with it
Great video. Industry vs Hobbyist point was so on point. Very important while reading comments out there.
This is a big part of it.
Let's face it, the industry as is right now grew out of us dicking around with pirated 3d/2d software as a hobby, fell in love, became really good at it, and started companies to sell our skills. If Blender can capture the minds of these hobbyists, which is definitely the current trajectory, it is to be expected these same people will grow their own companies and sell their own products with Blender at it's core. Naturally Blender will have to adapt to their needs or wither away, with the open source nature of Blender, this hopefully means a lot of sharing among one another as part of the culture of Blender, which can quickly snowball into an amazing, very feature heavy piece of kit.
If and when these 'new' companies get big and powerful enough to force competition with the industry standard ones, only then will these be forced to switch to Blender and we will start seeing real movement.
Blender was always around of course, but never quite good enough, especially in the UI/usability department. IMO workflow is king, and this is why the vision of 2.8 is such a game-changer.
UI/usability is something open source suffers from, linux has the same issues. Having many disconnected coders work on the same piece of software is fantastic is terms of adding features, fixing bugs, etc. UI/UX however requires a dedicated focus to wrap all these features into a clean and usable front-end, which is very hard if not impossible to do without some kind of central coordination. Personally I feel that a big chunk of the Blender foundation funding should therefore be funneled into such a focus at all times, which is likely already happening as we speak.
@ent|ty I mean, it's just if people pay for it or not. That quality part subjective as hell.
@ent|ty Money is what makes you a pro.
That is all.
If you get paid for what you do, you are a professional. That is the essential meaning.
Even if you are a 'bad' artist, if you get paid for it, you are a pro.
Doing things for yourself vs doing things for a client, has very different needs.
You mention things that are shown in tutorials that are wrong for production such as using bullion for sculpting. Do you happen to have a video on what those issues are and the correct ways to do things?
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.
Which animation tools are missing?
Sculping in blender (2.79) feel like: "AuououououououououooOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo :D" but the 2.81 there are some improvements which is great. Z brush is still the King
besides Cmon guys its just a Tool.
So where you suggest to go for more professional (correct) Blender training?
Rutracker
@@BU-sj2gn your mom does Blender training? Sweet
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.
How much would it cost to buy all those softwares?
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!
There are similarities to a former industry standard in graphic design, Quark Xpress. In the early 2000's they were challenged by an upstart, InDesign, and though professionals didn't see any reason to change, Adobe who owned InDesign, upped the ante steadily, making it have better features but also catering to the professional. It didn't help that Quark cost an arm and a leg.
So yes, an industry standard is hard to dislodge, but it can be done.
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
Which mic you are using.
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?
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
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!
idk about you guys but Blender is kinda cute tho ...
why this software not industry standard
it do be lookin kinda fresh doe
I wanted to know,
which rendering software is more powerfully between cycles and Arnold ?
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..
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.
Finally saw thoes faces behind the voice of many tutorials 👻
any thoughts on modo?
As a viewer, I don't see that non-sense naivety of people saying that Blender is ready for industry. Actually, even with 10+ years of use of this tool as a half hobbyist half freelancer I clearly see the problems that you've pointed on the video. I personally use your word as absolute truth because of your experience, portfolio, and sincerity of thoughts.
Blender is an amazing tool for people like me, here in Brazil/for my currency, an individual license of Zbrush reaches 4 times the minimum wage, it's crazy expensive! Now if I want to add Marvelous, Houdini, Substancer Painter, and Adobe CC I need to charge a crazy amount of money for my work. As a starter on the field, at least with Blender I can get up on that ladder and eventually have this system less dependent on only one software.
Really great video, I'm thrilled to get this kind of perspective! It was really helpful to hear the thoughts and critical feedback on all of these different softwares from people with such a diverse experience in and out of the industry. Thank you so much for answering many questions I've held on to for years about how Blender stacks up to each of those industry leaders. I'm definitely going to stay tuned for more videos.
I think the most important thing Blender does is allow artists coming from a 2D or more stylized background create results that look very appealing and capture the essence of their artwork all within one tool. In terms of realism I don't think it's there, but for stylized works it is a lot more artist friendly after 2.8 and can be a fantastic tool for freelancers and independent artists, not just hobbyists. Another thing that it does is it makes 3D accessible to potential artists from countries outside of North America and Western Europe who might not have access or funds to obtain tools like maya or zBrush. What I love about this video is how you highlight that artistry is more important than the tool. I see too many tutorials where the focus is exclusively on the tools, often times not even explaining the principles, and that gives beginners and hobbyists the wrong idea about what constitutes a 3D artist. That being said, since the artistry is more important than the tool it means that more artists now have a free all in one tool to bring their worlds and stories to life independently. This will not make it industry standard because as you guys mentioned there are so many specialzied tools that are just better at what they do, but it does give a whole new wave of artists the tool to express themselves in the medium of 3D and I think that's cool. Just my 2 cents.
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"
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.
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
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 didn’t know there was a Arnold Render option in Nuke? Where can I find that? 6:37
Summary:
Blender is good at many things, but it still can't beat out tools like Nuke, ZBrush, Houdini, Katana, etc which have been stress tested in the industry for years. Seriously, grab an educational license of Nuke or Substance, and you'll see the difference. Just because Blender can do something decently, doesn't mean it can compare to the industry standard.
Cost of retraining + loss of productivity from retraining not be worth the cost of instead just staying with Maya. I read in *Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier* and I remember when they were making budgeting making Pillars of Eternity, they estimated it cost about $10 000 / month to pay for one employee, w/ all the equipment and health insurance. Assume $2000 of that $10 000 is spent on software (so you spend $288 000 for employing one employee for 3 years) , what do you think is the better payoff? A few thousand for a 3 year maya license, or a few months of loss productivity from switching software, and from retraining (which could mean pushing back deadlines, which could mean wasted money in the marketing department, etc).
The cost of a maya license is negligible in comparison.
Thousands of dollars already put into developing specific tools for Maya. Blender has a lot of cool tools, but it isn't even close to Maya when it comes to having specific tools that are needed in a production environment.
Chicken and the Egg, if you want to hire for blender, it'll be hard for you to find anyone, but if you want to get hired by learning blender, theres no one hiring.
No one gives a shit about what tools you're using. No one has this great love of Maya or of Nuke, they just love the best tool for the job. e.g. I know a studio which switched from adobe premiere (or was it after effects?) to Nuke the moment they found out how much faster Nuke is. This weird love for blender... doesn't happen in other softwares for a reason. People don't fall in love with a wrench brand because it's the coolest, the use the best wrench they can get, and if they find a better one, they'll ditch the old one.
Hostile UI design until like, literally just now. Maya has had 15 years of becoming the industry standard in UI design, everyone is used to it. For Blender to have the right click and left click be the direct opposite until last year is... Oof.
edit: It's gonna take a while. Only recently did they get that massive cash boost from Epic, Ubisoft, etc. other tools have been rolling in money for years. It might take 10 or even more years for it to become industry standard.
I'll edit in more things while I watch the video
Completely agree. I find it strange when I say I use Maya and have a whole bunch of blender users start blasting me for it saying how much better their tool is. I used to use Photoshop for texturing, then the quixel suite came out and I used that (still technically Photoshop but you know what I mean), then substance suite came out and I'm using that.
Same with 3D I started way back with milkshape, switched to max, then finally Maya. I don't have some special connection to my tool and feel the need to devalue other artists because they use something different. Blender is a great piece of software, so is Maya, so is max. I've seen great artwork made in pretty much every program, even wings3D. People try to sway me from my chosen software by showing me amazing art made in blender, so I show them amazing art made in Microsoft paint and tell them to stop using their chosen texturing software, just to prove my point haha.
We all love art, let's stop caring about the brush or the canvas and start caring about the art
I get most tools from harbor freight. They are cheap, usually get the job done, and can be returned just about any time you have an issue. Screw snap on, craftsman, etc. I use Blender for the same reasons, I get the job done (which means it was done just as well), and spend a lot less money. If something is wrong there is a wealth of support or other plug ins to add on. It's about financial efficiency to a lot of people.
Blender is popular because regardless of using Maya or any other software it's still hard to earn a solid paycheck modeling these days. You couldn't be more wrong on hiring Blender artists. There are loads of people who will take payment to model in Blender and are VERY GOOD. But you are correct in that the stigma of hiring a Blender artist is inferior to Maya or Max is correct, and it's because of the kind of communication people like yourself use on the subject. "The software doesn't matter" but then proceed to go on about why the software matters. It either does, or it doesn't. In my opinion, the software doesn't matter. I dont care what UI you use, what buttons you use, what tools you use. If the model is good, it's good.
Blender has been around for about 15 years too bud, the control scheme of Maya doesn't matter. I used Blender's control scheme the whole time and don't like Maya's setup either... You could always customize it to match anyways. It's silly they had to make a preset for you to get that and feel catered to. This is exactly where other software users get an elitist perspective on the subject, and why there is beef with Blender users. You don't do your homework, and spew a bunch of garbage. No wonder you fight with Blender people all the time. All you see is the studio perspective and forget there are literally thousands if not millions of professionals modeling at home. Studios and big budgets are not the dictators of professional work. Skill is.
@@dangerouskoin4874 Hey, plenty of valid points. I never said any specific tool mattered in my post though. I moved from software to software as I found myself more comfortable using one over another, or I was able to get results quicker. I'll just have to assume that you were pointing you reply to the original poster, because as I said I'm definitely software agnostic and I think Blender is just as good as Maya or Max or Cinema4d or whatever. It's just personal preference
I just love it when you end post by 'i will edit more by watching the video' but u actually started it with 'summary :'
And let's say u give blender 10 years or so. It is quite a small amount of time, make and rig three robots u been proud of and that time flew by already..
Give something else a small attention for a while and 10 years are easily gone, i-e fishing, building your house, kung-fu or meditation, blender is on its way too... to higherness.
That is the source of strange lovehood blender gets, that is why the dream, the elephant's one, that is why, we all can't argue a single minute about concrete talks of how to makes this done the quickiest and most effective in-the-dustry- accurate way, but everyone showing extra love and attention to blender here, are people who believe, whose voice tries to reach higher to say: this is us. Opensource plus python-editable soft.
Make add-ons
Eat various workflows and digest em to create your own
Concept ideas faster
Contribute and be helped
Vehicle that Free dream and design yourself out of slavery.
Please look at what blender represents as an idea, as a revolutionary-aspiring one and then let that make sense for why blender exists and tries its best.
Then you may go back to the routine of your best-shot-payable-or-not-workflow-suite that helps you the best right now and that noone is actually complaining about since it makes the job done like it is expected.
Blender fights that workflow, recklessly and freely, and for almost no reason at all but pride. To not be a slave when you are an artist, a creator, a conciever of things.
That is also why hobbyists are giving enormous love to it... they are not enlocked by the industry rule that much. But ironically they see the point.
Great video!! I needed a idea of which software to use and what's happening in the market and you guys made it is very clear. I hope you guys keep making such videos. Thankyou. :D
I use Maya because I don't want to take the time to learn anything else. :)
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.
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
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!