@Marcog
Yeah so much so that I think Autodesk is going to plan another assassination attempt
In a more serious note
It’s great!
Cycles is finally catching up to the industry standard renderers
bad ui is the reason pros don’t use blender? I don’t think so.
I’m sure a professional 3d modeller has dealt with worse UI
Look at Zbrush and hell look at max… I mean… look at maya
To this day I have no clue what any button in maya does, at all, except for maybe the add light button but that’s about it
Cycles is the real reason they don’t use Blender,
It’s too noisy for production.
I’m happy to see that the dev team is working on cycles, really am.
Honest noob question… I would assume that’s normal for the dev team to work on Cycles, since imo, it’s superior to Blender Render? I mean, is there another alternative to Cycles for Blender?
The microdisplacement code was technically not from anyone on the core team, but more developers are always good to have.
I think right now, some of the recent Cycles improvements are being done to meet the production demands of that new full length Agent movie (such as the multi-threaded spatial splits which finally makes that option practical).
As a matter a fact that is not case at all. Cycles is really similar to Arnold and Arnld is one of most used render engines in production nowdays (animation and film). For archviz that is partially true, especially interiors. Lukas denoising could help there a lot, I hope.
Not sure if users can actually use the initial stuff yet (which is screen-space subdivision), but it’s good to have what is one of the last things standing between Cycles and the status of full production renderer.
Well I have to admit Blender’s UI but also workflow can be for sure a roadblock.
The workflow is pretty smart G for move in every mode - but when you try to teach
Blender you really start seeing how unrefined the UI is in some areas.
Max or Modo or Maya or C4D are just in those areas more efficient - thats sadly the truth.
So there is a lot more to learn with Blender than others.
But besides that I think also marketing and existing market saturation is a factor that often
promotes other apps.
I am not so sure about Cycles as an engine being an issue.
Studios not using blender has nothing to go with UI, Cycles, open source hatred, or any of the other crazy conspiracies that pop up around here from people who have never stepped foot in a production studio. It comes down to two simple things:
1.) Extending Blender’s functionality is a pain in the ass. Maya has become the king of production despite its godawful shortcomings because it is essentially a host application for external modules. You’d be hard pressed to find a big studio that is using more than a couple of the built-in tools that Maya ships with. Building entire new physics/particle/hair/smoke/etc. plugins is painless due to a well-documented, all-encompassing API and countless print and online learning resources dedicated solely to MEL or C++ Maya add-on development. Blender on the other hand has a very rigid and slow python-based extension system with questionable API docs and very few resources aside from looking at other peoples’ code (which often is poorly designed, even for included addons).
2.) Blender has no official support. You can rip on Autodesk all you want (lord knows I do), but when you have a problem as a studio, they are ON TOP OF IT. If they can’t talk you through an issue, they’ll send someone to your studio, and if that doesn’t work they’ll likely create a custom build for you and include the fix in their next release. And it’s not a “hope to catch someone on IRC” deal. It’s 24/7 access. Using a 3D package in a commercial environment is a stressful endeavor. Time lost is literal money lost, and running into a showstopping issue simply cannot wait for a small group of coders to maybe, possibly get around to the issue at hand, or to train a valuable member of your team to learn the applicable areas of the source code in Blender’s case. Even if it were an option, touching much of Blender’s code is scary and dangerous for a production environment. Many areas of code touch other far away areas of code in seemingly pointless ways, and fixing one issue can create 5 others. Professional on-demand support is probably the single biggest issue for any studio without the means to do all of their software completely in-house.
Damn I wish I was a big studio, because Maya’s support for small studios and freelancers is just about as bad as not having any support at all. Fixes take forever or not at all. Tech support rarely leads to any kind of solution. I frankly have enjoyed far superior support from blender devs and community than I ever had while on an autodesk subscription.
For large studios, though, im sure its a different story.
And as for the plugin architecture… Sadly it’s all true. All of it.
I do. A recent example off the top of my head, from the Nimble Collective blog (emphasis mine):
I’ve been in the animation industry for a long time – almost 20 years! I’ve used many 3d animation applications in my time…
…Blender is one of those applications that I’ve downloaded in the past, but have never really given it a fair shake. Each time I opened it I was immediately thrown by the selection paradigm (right mouse button? really?) and the confusing interface. I would open the package… try and pick the cube… get frustrated… and then close the tool, only to download it again a year or so later.
Blender’s target audience is 3D artists. So to me, if Industry Veterans with 20 years experience across multiple applications struggle figuring out how to simply select a cube, that is a huge red flag that the software has a serious design flaw that needs addressed. I mean if you had a TV where the buttons on the remote performed functions completely different than how the user expected, that TV would not do well on the market because everyone would find it frustrating to use. That is what happens with Blender.
I don’t recall ever seeing someone saying Cycles was a reason they didn’t use Blender. The 2.5 UI, Bmesh/Ngons, and Cycles are probably the three major changes since I’ve been using it that made people start paying more attention to it.
I use to have this game where I would give my nieces the same tutoring lessons I was giving my classmates. And something I found was that a 6 year old girl would learn algebra/trig faster then a 26 year old adult.
I just had my niece (now 14) load up blender and asked her to select a cube, It took 3 minutes for a full on noob to do that.
[QUOTE=fahr;3035397]Damn I wish I was a big studio, because Maya’s support for small studios and freelancers is just about as bad as not having any support at all. Fixes take forever or not at all. Tech support rarely leads to any kind of solution./QUOTE]
I cannot speak for Maya but it seems that based on what package you use the support quality is different.
Alias can be pretty slow (also a small market) and with Fusion360 they have a Tag with my name when I post or report an issue and they call me if there are issues.
AD is a very big company but how the resources are split seems to be really the deciding factor for the quality of support.
I clarify that I do not know much of the industry, or anything
I really think the UI is not a problem for professionals. And I guess the industry has enough money to create powerful render farms and forget about the noise problem.
¿But what about particles system and physics simulations? ¿Is Blender at the same level of others (in terms of features, but mostly about performance and speed)?
You can change the shortcuts though. I don’t see why people would quit instead of trying to change the settings. I could understand this in zbrush or something where you can’t customize everything but in Blender you (generally) can so I don’t see why people would try customizing first.
It’s not so easy for someone who don’t know Blender.
In other softwares you cannot change the select button, so you don’t think you can and so you don’t change it.
