How does Blender’s popularity compare with others like Maya, Houdini?
How many people use Blender?
In my opinion, it is slightly under Lightwave but above Truespace in terms of popularity. Perhaps on par with Animation Master.
Who cares? The important question is whether or not Blender works for you.
whats maya and houdini…lol:D
I’d say, Blender is popular enough to have such a good working community like this one. Now, who cares for exact numbers if you have that already?
I do think, though, that since professional studios work with other software, Blender is rather unpopular among the professionals, who like to stick with their current packages like Maya or Max (no wonder, since it works for them). Among the hobbyists, I’d say that Blender is far more popular - again, no surprise, looking at the great price and the tools it offers 
A thought just occurred to me: for a long time, many people (including myself) have speculated that the big companies like Adobe, Discreet, etc., tolerated the piracy of their flagship software in the hobbiest market, because it was a significant feeder to eventual legitimate purchases (more people using and gaining skills means more call for that software in the commercial realms later).
If Blender is providing an excellent alternative to people pirating major 3D softwares, will this not have an effect down the road on the unofficial “popularity engine” that the big guys have been tacitly running? Of course, one could argue that the releases of the Personal Learning Editions of certain very expensive software products was a response to this.
Just a thought.
Hey, Guys. =D
Well… I was reading on CGSociety Wiki about Maya, and I saw this:
The most important feature of Maya is its openness to third-party software, which can strip Maya completely of its standard appearance and, using only the Maya kernel, can transform it into a highly customized version of the software. Apart from its intrinsic power and flexibility, this feature in itself made Maya appealing to large studios which tend to write quite a lot of custom code for their productions using the provided software development kit.
Probably all of you have thought the same as I: What the heck? Blender is open-source! Talk about flexibility here! So… Blender has reason for popularity among studios.
For curiosity, I´ve downloaded Maya PLE. I did not used it extensively, but I found it as hard to learn as it was Blender. Blender´s learning curve is often named as it´s major weakness/“unpopularity issue” by the professionals.
But, as said, whatever works for you, it´s fine. The job is done? The client/audience is pleased? So the piece of software is not important.
About popularity, I know it´s not the best source, but it may help to see what people look for in Google:
Blender Vs Maya:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=blender%2C+maya
Blender Vs 3DSMax:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=blender%2C+3DSMax&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Blender Vs XSI:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=blender%2C+XSI&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Blender Vs Cinema 4D:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=blender%2C+Cinema+4D&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Cheers!
Most of those results were for blenders, not Blender 3D.
Yech… don’t mention Animation Master in front of me!
Did anyone else notice the irony at SIGGRAPH? Animation Master was just a short distance away from the Blender booth. The AM guy was constantly yammering about how AM could do this, that and the other thing, for such a “low” price. All I kept thinking was, “hey, Blender can do all of those things, and it’s free. And open-source, too.” It started to annoy me very quickly.
Yeah, this is a great possibility. That´s why I wrote that Google trends is not the best source to know it.
Blender could mean “kitchen appliance for chopping or liquefying food”, and Maya could also mean “Native American peoples of southern Mexico and northern Central America”. 
A bit of off topic here, but by typing “blender” on Google, from the first 10 search results, i´ve got 7 related to Blender 3D.
Cheers
virgillio
well maybe they use maya because of what you can do with it?
only because blender is open source it will not make the job better,
we have have had enough of these Blender vs <input commercial 3D app here> threads, so this is locked.