The other day in the work I showed Blender to my partners

After five years working with Blender the last week I showed in the studio Blender to my partners in a presentation of 2 hours. All people know that I use blender (I never use other 3D suite, only zbrush) but except one nobody know the program, the highlights, pipeline,… The presentation was for ten partners, all 3D artist, some juniors and other with many years behind. In a first moment I though that the presentation will be a failure and people will be boring but after two hours of presentation I turn my head and all people was impressed, all of them wanted blender features and like we tell in spanish “Estaban con los ojos como platos”. Two expressions resume the reaction.

  • I want this in the next production! (laughs)
  • Why does not everyone use this program?

The reaction was really positive, and other things that people told was “It can’t be so perfect, must have some problems”. At the end I see people going outside of the room with the same sensation that you have when you go out of cinema with kids after a action movie. I know that few people will change the program or will try Blender, because it’s a big step. But in resume, Blender is a tool with great ideas and with a little presentation the soft sells by itself. Then my question, debate idea and a open question to Blender Foundation is ¿Why it’s not the general impression of the 3D artist? ¿Maybe some marketing errors? no marketing? Maybe BF must search other publicity way.

I’m a 3D artist for videogames and I don’t see any attempt for BF to take this industry when Blender with a few changes will be the perfect tool to videogames developers. Actually only Modo is a competitor in this industry and Blender could surpass it with any problem, but I don’t see work in this direction.

PD: Maybe I will send this to BF but I hate the mailing list and IRC. If somebody want link this to a member of BF will be better.

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I want resume a few the hightlights of my presentation. All my partners are 3dsmax users and I take consideration of this point to make the presentation.

  • Blender stability and reliance with huge scenes and files, even with low-spec PC.
  • Coherence and simplicity to manage mesh data (vertex color, vertex weight, UVs, custom normals) and don’t have the impression of “black box” like 3dsmax.
  • 3D view with good design
  • Blender modeling pipeline, hotkeys, cursor,… way to scale, move and rotate objects.
  • Blender mesh workflow where you don’t lost info with changes (like seams, sharp edges, custom normals,…)
  • UV tools and the coherence with the 3D view tools, selection
  • Retopology tools (retopoflow, bsurfaces)
  • Sculpt Tools (only dyntopo because multiresolution for my is not realiable)
  • Paint tools

I would have liked to watch your presentation :slight_smile:

As to your question, I was recently asked by a studio to create a small technically challenging effect in PFlow for 3DSMax. Which I did.

In my free time I also created the same effect in Blender and showed them the result of what a FREE package can do (it looked great too) and why do they not use Blender, they said “Because none of our clients use it, no other studio uses it so we can’t communicate files” which is fair enough. This particular job was a small part of a much bigger production so I needed to do it in their tool set, and their clients tool set so everybody could work together. The only solution is like you tried and get more studio’s to use Blender I guess.

In movie industry this could be. But in game industry the 99% of the works are assets in FBX format. We work with outsourcing and all studios only send us a FBX file, we don’t know the software they used. In FX maybe this is important but in the vast mayority of pipeline nobody care about this, only with animation it’s normal use maya and change the program is a problem because you could break the animations, bone system,… For example, in my studio we use (between us and the outsourcing)

  • 3dsmax
  • Maya
  • Blender
  • 3D Coat
  • Substance
  • UV Layout
  • Zbrush

Nobody care about the origin of the assets. And the program is not a problem.

Ok, so you are talking about just the games industry. In that case you just use the tool that your employees understand and there are many Max/Maya users compared to Blender I would have thought. However I think Blender is brilliant and more people should switch, obviously it has huge cost savings and no constant subscription rubbish and you get the source code. It is a strong argument. Obviously there is a learning curve that will put some off.

Inb4 BeerBaron attack on Blender.

Ton has said several times that FBX format is not desirable for a total open source application like Blender. FBX is owned by Autodesk and I kind of understand that it would be fundamentally wrong implementing Autodesks own API in Blender.

I think that this is the big obstacle of Blender. Like company you want to work with a usefull software, not with ideologies or egos. You don’t want fight with nobody, you want tools and if your industry have a standard format use that and if you one day have enough weight in the industry (like pixar, autodesk or similar) you would create your own standard.

And really think that it’s a problem for the people, because the software don’t want to make happy the user, want make happy to the developer. Nobody trust in a software that don’t want to respond to the desires of the user.

One example of this is the custom normals… BF make the custom normals but without any way to work with this, and a guy with a few time make YAVNE, one of the greatest tools that I have seen in my live. Without this plugin blender in AAA games have few chances.

Blender Foundation is an ideology. Like Linux.

Maintain and improve the current Blender product via a public accessible source code system under the GNU General Public License

It’s one of their goal as a foundation.

This goal is not opposite to have a FBX exporter. In Krita they use a lot of private formats and it’s open source. Also Blender have a lot of file importer and exporters of other companies and image formats.

https://krita.org/en/item/announcing-the-krita-foundation/

Krita doesn’t have the GPL as a goal. Breaking a goal for a foundation it might get shut down.

I tell the same, to have an FBX exporter is nothing opposite to that goal. Rightnow blender have one and nobody have seen a black hole in BF

we need to write an ai using openGym to fix the exporter everytime autodesk breaks it :stuck_out_tongue:

Goal? This insane concept of subjective “ideology” for “professional” software is only a detriment to the software’s success. The goal should be success, not ideology.

If you want to transition someone off of a format like FBX, then not only does a viable alternative need to be present, but it actually has to be USED. FBX, like PSD file formats are what unify the current professional pipeline between multiple applications, even if not desirable long term it is necessary.

Furthermore, GPL? What is so great about it? Nothing. Its not that blender is loving GPL but that its kind of stuck with it now. In retrospect, it was a pretty regretful move since there are other open source standards that are not so limiting. When licensing Cycles, they were smart to use Apache 2.0 instead of GPL. Is Cycles suddenly not part of the GPL goal? Are you going to suggest it not be in Blender?

Also keep in mind, the BF was happy enough to take money from Epic Games in relation to further developing FBX. Why do you think that is? Because the game dev pipeline uses it. Hell, even Dota 2 assets on the steam workshop have to be uploaded in FBX. Guess what? Blender gets $ from Steam Workshop donations. If you want to denounce inclusion or development of FBX in Blender, understand what the repercussions as well.

2cents

There’s been improvements to the I/O functionality for Collada and Alembic in the most recent release cycle, so Ton is doing what he can through the promotion of open formats (there’s been talk about supporting .gitF as well according to some tweet many months ago, but there’s been no work on that so far).

I don’t know about the GPL having been nothing but bad news for Blender (as it prevented the proliferation of commercial Blender forks that offer nothing whatsoever in return, and also not forgetting the fact that a permissive license would’ve allowed Autodesk, Maxon, The Foundry, and others to literally copy parts of Blender’s code into their apps. or have a copy of the source on hand with the purpose of mining it). Now some might argue that the GPL allows for commercial app. developers to base an implementation on what Blender does, but they cannot just directly use the code from Blender’s source.

On the flipside, it does prevent the clean integration of commercial render engines and technologies like substances (some of which are industry-wide standards now), but over ten years after the fact, even switching to a fork like Bforartists is not going to fix it if you see it as an issue.

Doesnt matter how good they are if studios and other applications dont make the transition. The point is that first you have to get people onto a platform that offers both solutions, then promote the use of alternatives. If FBX for example isnt working right or isnt present, then Blender just wont be an option period. As the OP explained, he was able to impress his co-workers with what Blender can do by bringing it in with him. Part of the process, when it comes to success, is getting blender into the established pipelines first.

I don’t know about the GPL having been nothing but bad news for Blender (as it prevented the proliferation of commercial Blender forks that offer nothing whatsoever in return, and also not forgetting the fact that a permissive license would’ve allowed Autodesk, Maxon, The Foundry, and others to literally copy parts of Blender’s code into their apps. or have a copy of the source on hand with the purpose of mining it). Now some might argue that the GPL allows for commercial app. developers to base an implementation on what Blender does, but they cannot just directly use the code from Blender’s source.

There is nothing wrong with “the proliferation of commercial blender forks”. In fact that would be a GOOD thing. Its not as if Blender ceases to become freely available. In the same vein, commercial plugins appearing for Blender havent been a detriment to it either. In fact, its helped Blender.

As you noticed too, its not as simple as being able to just copy and paste code. Even now Autodesk can look at what Blender does and learn from it (not that they have to), so its not really an issue… even outside of GPL.

On the flipside, it does prevent the clean integration of commercial render engines and technologies like substances (some of which are industry-wide standards now), but over ten years after the fact, even switching to a fork like Bforartists is not going to fix it if you see it as an issue.

Exactly this. It is far more limiting in the long run. Blender exist right now as an Island, but the industry as a whole is one big software ecosystem with pipelines crossing multiple applications. Blender needs to exist within that network, not be its own isolated island off in distance. There should always be the option for integration with existing technologies.

In some cases, Blender is already in the network by way of the small and medium sized studios using it (oftentimes with other apps.).

I also don’t see much of an issue with the ‘island’ comment as long as the BF continues to get an increasing number of paid developers to expand its capabilities as a one-stop shop for everything needed for 3D (ie. no having to hop between 3, 4, or more applications every few minutes as assets are made and edited). There was even a comment on a recent CGsociety thread (about whether working with CG is no longer fun) where someone lamented the fact that pipelines continue to get longer as an ever higher number of apps. get used with every project (which in turns lengthens the process of creating an asset and dramatically slows down the rate of iteration).

Sure, there’s the concept of using the best tool for the job, but eventually, I could see it get tiring if iterating on a model means sending it through 3-4 different apps. once again before it actually lands in your main DCC program.

Eh its not so much that the issue with the pipeline getting longer, but that expectation are greater. Look at an old Quake game and then look at the newest version of Doom, or old Tomb Raider vs the new releases. Early pixar films vs the new ones.

There is just more expectations in regards to detail and quality. Software has developed to meet and accomplish those expectations. You could say its actually gotten easier, but it doesnt feel like it since the expectations are greater.

I honestly see CGI becoming just like normal sculpting, and painting, once “deep vr” hits.

I think mocap/force feedback exoskeleton is the next irritation of cgi.

(feeling clay that does not exist, subtle details with finger tips etc)

10 years or less I would Imagine.

No need to have 20 tools you switch between, instead I think we may see tool tips one buys at a market, like paint brushes or hammers now.

It’s really weird for the proffesionals to talk about ideology and open source. In my presentation I never talk about “It’s open source” because nobody care about it. I use blender and I don’t care about the ideology of some people, I use blender because is a good software. Open Source for me is a feature that have some good things but in general it’s a lot of bad things.

FBX right now in the game industry is a STANDARD. Not alembic, not collada,… FBX is the format. And you don’t need upgrade FBX every three months, because no program make this, even autodesk programs. Something similar happens with Substance, actually it’s a standard in the industry. Actually it’s a external suite and the library is not neccesary, but in a future maybe it will be, other programs have a good support of this, not blender.

Told that blender don’t needs FBX is like told that you have blender like hobby, you don’t work with it and you don’t know that need the industry. Epic put money in FBX for blender for one reason.

Eventually people make standards not Autodesk…