Blender is better

Hey!
How do I convince my boss that blender is better than maya?
I’m a 3D artist working for a company(not very large) and we use maya for our work
as powerful as maya is I still believe that blender is better
I’ve talked to my boss before about this and he asked me about the render times
comparing cycles to arnold
I’ve seen arnold for blender but it’s not completely ready
I would like to convince my boss to switch to blender
how do i get the same render time for cycles as arnold?

Hi, it is nearly impossible to get a simple answer of a complex question.
Render time depends on so many factors, for example:
How “heavy” is the scene
Do you need it physical correct
Do you work on Anime or Arch-Vis scenes
Animation or Still render
What hardware you render on
and so forth

There are may scenes Cycles is faster as Arnold.
Try to convert a scene to Blender, make sure you can publish the scene to other Blender user and if you cant get suitable results by yourself,
post it on Blenderartists and/or Blender Foundation to get help.

Cheers, mib

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First, Blender is not necessarily better. So don’t go that route. But depending on what you do at your work, Blender could easily do the job.

Second, Don’t try to convince him. Show him. You can’t use Blender and produce as good or better results he is not going to get it. You want to convince him, take the assets out of Maya, set them up in Blender and render them. Compare render times and quality. Problem solved.

Your angle needs to be, not that Blender is better, but that it is more than adequate to do the job. And that Maya, in fact, might just be overkill. And money that does not need to be spent.

As far as Arnold goes, it completely depends on what you are doing. I have used Arnold, Renderman and Cycles. And they all have strengths. But… likely you can do it Cycles and there is no real need for Arnold. Because it sounds like you are doing still renders for product shots or marketing. Just a guess because you have not been specific.

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A transition is not a small task!

Please fill up this questions:

  1. How many CG Artist are in the team?
  2. How complex are your shots? ( advertising / visualisations /movie /…)
  3. Have you a lot VFX in your studio?
  4. How much does your 3D tools cost total? (Range is fine)
  5. Whats the averange income?
  6. Are there many blender freelancer around with do you know?

A transition can be costly because the pipeline needs to be changed. All file handling all commands and all shaders need to be updated. Tool specified limitations and API’s need to be relearnd. Custom tools need to be redeveloped.

You can calculate at least 6-12 months till you can use blender full productiv in the team. Whats also everybody in the team must be happy with the decision to move to blender! (Very important)

When you are a indie a change can go faster but the transistion cost must be calculated against the current cost.

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i guess the only way to do it is by results

show him similar or beater results, with blender and why he should switch to blender

thin,… thin maybe he might think of it !!!

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Good Post. But I would not necessarily say transition time would be that long or involved. Going to guess that it is a small company or some guy using Blender would not be having this conversation with his boss. :wink:

Regarding the other stuff, you are right. And more data is needed. And I would go further to say, communication skills need to be worked on. If the “convincing of the boss” is going anything like the OP then I would say, some thought needs to be put into the presentation of the idea. If I were his boss…

Just saying. :slight_smile:

rendering can be the worst part:\ it is hard to compare to the other renders in time.
If you can implement blender in some other part of the process that can help.
I just started working on a studio a couple of months ago, and was supposed to use max, I started with blender because it is free, and I said I was more used to it, since I didnt have to render, just model, at some point i could export stuff to max, no problem. but now Im actually animating and exporting game assets to unity in blender instead of max, and they didnt even have to get a max license for me yet :smiley: (“stealing” from AD feels great!) so, you can go all in and switch the entire workflow, that takes a bit hit for everyone, or you can just be a bit sneaky about it, and use blender where you feel comfortable and know it makes a better job, and be sure it ill not affect the workflow.
If you at some point start showing some results with it, stuff that just work, people might start to consider it.

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If he is intested in render time and render cost Blender is unbeatable.
Learn how to set up a Blender renderfarm on Amazon Web Services and show your Boss how a hundred Xeon Platinum processors (that is 7200 renderbuckets) mow through an animation.

You will need to learn how to set up the Brenda scripts.

2 Likes

Thank you for your reply :blush:
the scenes are not very heavy
there are times when we add particles but that’s it
mostly we need it physically correct
we work on product presentations
yes we render animations most of the time
we have 3gen i7 with 16gb ram and 4 gb graphics :sweat_smile:

Thank you for taking time to reply :blush:

  1. we are a team of ten 4- 3d, 2- 2d, 4- vfx/composition
  2. our shots are pretty basic
  3. no we don’t have a lot of vfx
  4. sorry i don’t know what you mean by 3d tools
  5. $100 to $150
    6.no there aren’t many blender users
    most people are prejudiced towards blender as it is free
    so they just assume it must be bad

is the income per day / week / month per person?

  1. when you have got other tools like zbrush / mocha / houdini / etc…

when the income is low and maya is a big cost then it could make sense to switch but then you need every member of the 3d artist team full support for this plan. if not then don’t switch! it could get a mess…

also when you don’t have got near you a long term blender user it could get a bit tricky mostly because in the beginning you need somebody that is a prof. for teach the team personally. later you can use remote support.
a maya user needs to be guided he doesn’t know blender so there must be a basic transition guide ( there are some simple tutorial on the net) and a shop transition guide for your custom process.

if you want to be the responsible person for the transition you need prepare yourself. really really good preparing!!!

  • make a plan how the learning session would look like
  • make a list of all functions that are currently used in maya and what are the blender functions
  • where could blender be integrated first (select a simple project with simple task’s and use blender in one of these task)
  • document the transition (could be a wiki with videos)
  • know the cost of failing!!! and clear that before you start!!!

i hope i haven’t forgotten something…

Thank you for your post :blush:
I’ll try showing him results
we don’t get much time for that but I’ll have to do it if I want him convinced
Thanks for your advice :blush:

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Really appreciate your reply :blush:
we mostly render animations not stills

that’s the income per month per person
the members would be cool with switching to blender
and I could handle the teaching part(I also teach blender professionally)
And the points are really helpful. Thanks :blush:

wow so maya is a huge price tag hopeful company doesn’t use a cracked version.

good luck!

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Try this option which I surprise it is not install yet. It is a plugin. However, this filmic looks great under the BGE in Blender 2.79 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53m-17Y_zJg

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And after all the demonstrations, and all the examples, and all the reading… the boss is still the boss. They may decide to continue using Maya despite any arguments, and they would not be “wrong” to do so.

Some decisions are just not up to the individual users.

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Please bear in mind, also, that “Product X” is almost never displaced in any company that has standardized upon it, because you will never be able to make the case that there is a return-on-investment (ROI), nor that the business risk would not be “off the scale.” License fees are simply a cost of doing business, amortized against the projects along with all other indirect expenses. Digital assets, estalished production lines, accumulated expertise, and the confidence that “we know how to get this project done, profitably,” far outweigh all other business(!) considerations.

And this certainly does not mean that you won’t find Blender in there also, doing important parts of the work, because today you most-certainly will.

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blender is not better than maya. If you need this job you need stop disturb your boss with words “blender is the best”.
Only in blender community people think that blender better than other apps. And there are more and more such people from year to year.
I work parallel with Blender and 3ds max for games, architecture visualization and movies. And I know alot about Blender limitations.
Blender is about 1/4 of all features of maya or 3ds max or other apps.
As long as people think that the blender is the best, the blender will never be the best, not even on the same level with others.
sorry if someone offended, my message is not for hate.
sorry for my English

Just tell him Next Gen was made in it :v:

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