As I mentioned in other threads, Blender has had the fortune of seeing the rate of innovation in most apps. slow way down (which is why we are talking about things like Eevee, Cycles X, and Everything Nodes). FOSS (as anything more than a hobby solution) would not have stood a chance had Max, Maya, XSI, and C4D retained the same innovative streak they used to have (which I can say because we have Houdini and Clarisse as examples of what could’ve been).
It is a ‘glue app’ for sure (in that it does not provide a full suite of DCC tools), but for the workflows they are targeting (scene assembly and rendering), no other app. can match it.
That sounds like when I brought some rigged characters into Unreal. They had detailed clothes made in Marvelous Designer that Blender only managed about 1 fps with. In Unreal, it was real-time with proper lighting and shading.
At the archviz studio I work for, one of the big reasons we haven’t attempted a switch to Blender is because of the massive size of many of our scenes. Blender just cannot handle all the vegetation we regularly use.
I would also mention the stuff that Ian Hubert did for Salad Mug. The scenes look huge! Sure he’s using some clever tricks, but at the end of the day who cares how the sausage is made as long as it tastes good?
