I’d like to get your opinion on this : What are Blender’s weaknesses and strengths ?
I’ve been using Blender for some years now, but not deeply lately and not all his tools as I was focusing on some aspects of 3D. That’s why I’d like to get your opinion on this.
So when on my side I think about Blender and his strenghts, the points that come to my mind are these ones (This is a summary).
Advantages:
It’s free, opensource and powerful.
It’s a full 3D package that supports entirely the 3D pipeline (In few words, an application where you have everything you need for a production -> video edition, rendering, compositing, sculpting, even a game engine and so on…).
It’s big plus as you can pretty much take care of everything without exporting to another application, so It doesn’t break your workflow.
A nice and big community always willing to help, with tons of plugins and tutorials.
Drawbacks:
Maybe It’s UI ? This one can be a bit overwhelming at first, but I’m not sure I still have to say that because I think the UI wasn’t that good with the first releases of Blender, but for some time now I don’t think the UI is still bad or less overwhelming than any other 3D application.
Some renderer or 3D plugins that are not available (Which are developed for industry standards such as Maya or 3DSMAX).
If you want to get hired in a big company, you better have to learn another application such as Maya or 3DSMAX as well, as these ones are the industry standards.
Huge drawback for me right now is the Renderlayer-system which really sucks imho.
Another drawback might be the lack of a C/C++ API which makes it impossible to create modifier addons and high-performance plugins.
The colormanagement could definitely be improved too…
Blenders USP is its open source nature which allow you to set up enormous render farms for free. This is what no other program can do because even if you can afford a standalone license you probably can not afford to buy 100 render node licenses as well.
The GUI I see as a strength because most comparable programs such as Max or Maya have a lot less customizable GUIs.
Cycles is a great renderer. It´s ability to render images that are the same on GPU and CPU imporves the render farm point above. Its completely node based concept allows a lot more freedom than other renderers that confine you to “ubershaders”.
I dont get Blender GUI hate, in general, it’s simple and clean. How it works behind the scenes is a bit hard to predict, like fake user thing, or Undo.
Eh, another one of those threads. Could just continue among all others.
Maybe am off the track, but anyways… here goes from a different POV:
In short:
Weakness: - community
Strength: - community
Ideas & complaints are useless without actions. Which seems to me that majority of users just throw out and then force spectators/observers to accept as the only ‘order’ of things to be. (from experience, as i was the same)
Help self and others with a manual on ‘How one understands and perceives a thing assuming to be weak’? Explain your aspect from an objective view? What is the real cause, the reason of sickness (don’t just assume that removing symptoms will heal the wound)?
ie. every python script in every DCC app is SLOW! - it is not the weakness of a tool (usually it is the evolving hi-tech industry & impatient/inexperienced user. IMHO, the educational & bureaucratic/political system first needs to change, evolve. Stupid users break special tools (can’t cut&polish a gem without knowledge, can’t even make a decent wooden table without knowing… not taking ‘IKEA manual’ practice into account).
One needs to gain the perspective on all things artificial. Gain professional/experienced/skilled knowledge & learn how to create a proper explication, essay, paper…
For starters one also needs to understand, comprehend the open source principal VS NDA. As are total opposites. Don’t just go protecting the jungle by cutting down trees and making paths for tourists to profit from.
Needed to put it out.
Energy invested 'til now is enormous & there’s still a slow & long way to go (especially in the huge stupidity WE claim to have right to fight & kill for).
I work with it. Both apps has upsides and downsides related to GUI customization and overall GUI concept.
As a ‘base concept’ I find Blender’s GUI better, but there are some better implemented parts in Max (like custom icons, custom menus, etc.). I’m pretty sure these functions will be implemented in Blender.
Areas that are decent, but has areas of improvement;
-Workflow (has improved over the years, but several areas are still inefficient)
-UI (dev. has stagnated in some areas, but hopefully 2.8 gives another big push to both this and the above)
-Simulation (they work, but work needs to be done to make them play well with each other).
-Modifiers (they need to become node-based sooner or later, especially since development of the stack system has largely stopped in anticipation of it). Stuff like that is why I can’t use them as much as would like to.
-Hair (combing and the like is smooth, but currently is in great need of becoming more non-destructive).
-UV (good unwrap algorithms, but packing is not and the area in general is falling behind).
-Compositing (lots of tools, but there’s still a number of things that could make that area far better).
Areas that are weak;
-Particles (works good for object scattering and some advanced effects like smoke, but good luck trying to do basic stuff like fireworks). This will remain weak for sometime since the prospect of it moving to nodes has been delayed. In addition, particles seem to be largely non-functional with dupliverts and the like.
-Viewport (legacy OpenGL code and the lack of hardware instancing can make complex scenes a slog, but the viewport being modernized right now in the 2.8 branch will soon move this into the strengths category).
-Complex animation (the new depsgraph will resolve many of the shortfalls in that area, but the lack of things like posable proxies will continue to dog animators).
-Scene management (also being worked on, so this may also eventually move out of the weaknesses list).
You should verify this, as far as I remember the texture sampling offsets are different on the GPU (hardware samplers) and this can give a visible difference, especially with lower-resolution textures. That problem may have been fixed, though.
This isn’t true, the point of Python scripting is to tie together functionality that the host application provides, which is usually implemented in C/C++. That’s why the API has to be good to allow for efficient scripting. Python libraries like NumPy provide excellent performance for their domain.
The overhead of the Blender Python API ranges from very low to exceptionally high, depending on what need to do. A lot of functionality is only accessible through operators, which can be very painful and inefficient to use, because you have to juggle with the entire application state. The API also is not stable, so scripts often break. I consider this a big weak point.
Combined with the fact that the GPL license makes commercial plugins very cumbersome or even unfeasible, this makes Blender a rather unappealing target to do external development for, even if the installed base may be large.
