Come one guys, we can talk about BIG companies and of course they have different requirements and standards… but do ALL the small and medium sutidios use the standards?
NO… can you explain to me why 3dsmax survived SO MANY years without Alembic? It is a theoretical standard but it lacked OpenVDB until this year I think, Alembic implementation was not good either, no particles at all for example, no prt support, it was lacking a lot of things, and even in that way, a lot of studios used it even without plugins.
The industry standard is ok, but a small or medium independent studios don´t have to fit in the standards at all, what that studio needs is to do it´s job the best the studio can, and some times the standards are not needed at all, and there are TONS of small and medium studios out there that work to clients directly in their own productions, and there are times when those standards are not used at all, or are used in a different way.
I don´t care in Blender makes it or not, what I care is about the growth of Blender, about communicating the benefits of Blender over other platforms, and it has MANY benefits over Max and Maya, but you can keep saying “if this plugin is not compatible… I can´t use it” or “if all the standards are not on it it won´t make it”… ok keep saying that, meanwhile a lot of small and medium studios are embracing it, specially after the Autodesk´s madness.
Will Sony or Pixar use Blender? I don´t know… I don´t care…
Do Sony or Pixar have enough Developers of their own to maintain an internal secret Blender fork with their own customized tools? You can bet that…
Do Pixar use Substance in their movies? I don´t know… I doubt it… so what is the standard about and who uses that standard?
We can talk about standards in file formats, like Alembic, OpenEXR (wich BTW just a few softwares use the real standard with Deep information), OpenVDB, and a bunch of other standards that, what a curious thing, are OPEN standards and can be implemented in Blender.
Do you think all the studios using Maya do their FX inside Maya? Or maybe they use Houdini and mix both packages? Or maybe use RealFlow? Or maybe use any other thing?
A standard don´t mean “we use that and just that…”, a standard is something that is usually the picked tool by many people, but I don´t understand how Modo, or C4D or 3dCoat survive if they are not standards…
Come on, there are different standards, there are different industries, and there are different levels of production, a small studio won´t need the same as Sony or Pixar, and maybe the lack of substance as a plugin is not a problem because textures can be used.
Again, this is my opinion, and I think a lot of people is seeing the benefits of Blender, being a standard or not, for me Blender is now our standard and we will use it along side other packages like Houdini or Real Flow for example, and we can use it with Vray or Corona or we can use Cycles wich is awesome.
Cheers!