Recently I’ve been introduced to Blender through a simulator game that relies heavily on its’ community to develop content. I’ve been thinking about diving in and learning Blender for my own personal use. I do have a basic artistic skill set and understand there is a large learning curve for Blender.
Here’s my question. If I become proficient and skilled with Blender, what opportunities are out there using Blender to get paid? Maybe earning a little extra income or even making it a full time source of income.
Blender is a tool. You could also ask the same question, “if I learn to use a word processor, what opportunities are out there using a word processor to get paid?”. It’s your skill as an artist which you get paid for.
Having said this, Blender is beginning to be taken seriously by studios worldwide. I had friends in Design School who kind of looked at me sideways for using Blender at the time, but then emailed me when they got Animation jobs where Blender was being used behind the scenes. Often, I find that jobs require other packages like Maya or 3DSMax, but these are because the particular studios have a well established pipeline which is hard to break from. Even so, they do recognise Blender now. Learn on Blender, hand in a portfolio showing what you can do. It’s your art they are interested in.
In the 3D world, it doesn’t really matter what tool or package you become familiar with, be it Maya, Max, or Blender. Just be really good at using it. If you are proficient in Blender your artwork will show that and even though you may not know Maya or Max or another “industry standard” software package a company will still be interested in you based of of what you can do in your demo reel.
If you become proficient in Blender and a company hires you uses Maya or Max, they will more than likely pay for your Maya or Max training to bring you up to speed on their workflow. The good thing about Blender is it prepares you to use other 3D software packages too.
Just be aware that there will be those you will put down Blender because it is a “free” program or because it’s open source.
Blender is already being used by top studios in major production workflows. It might not be the “main” package the studios use but its use is becoming more and more common. Companies and studios tend to be interested in results rather than the toolset that is used.
The reason the Maya and Max are such heavyweights is because Autodesk practically gives it out for free to the top studios that make movies like Avatar and The Lord of the Rings (ILM and WETA). Also, they hand it out to students like candy.
You skills in Blender are going to be the most important thing you can show a potential employer. If they are up to par, then you won’t have much problem getting onto the career path you want.
As an alternative to the very difficult task of finding a job in which you’ll use Blender, without counting your own luck in being the one that will be selected amongst thousand of candidate for it, you can always make models with Blender and try to have them sold on website like Turbosquid in different format, there are a lot of people doing that apparently.
Though unless you’re really talented, you’re not going to become rich of it, but if you’re able to build good models and lots of them you may be able to get decent money from this kind of commerce.
But look at such market if you decide to give a try, by example if you notice there are already a thousand of commercial models that are about a ww2 jeep, try to avoid wasting your time in building one and trying to sell it too, chances are very high your own jeep will never sell if there are already thousand of the same thing available already.
Nice, I was thinking about the topic the last days too. Blender is really nice and great but sometimes I get the feeling starting with MAX or Maya would be more “profitable” . I’m a autodidact & [a wee bit] geek who likes the idealistic things of Blender, Linux etc. - but like everybody else there are bills to pay.
Blender-People often say it doesn’t depend on which software you use, it’s all about your skills & talent. But I wonder why companies are looking for people how can us a “specific” software.
Just my 2c, perhaps it’s all nonsense and I’m way wrong …
Oh, one more thing
Why does the biggest blender community doesn’t have a job / hiring Section?
Come on guys, let’s spread Blender-work.
@Manderson, afaik, that’s because especially bigger companies have set pipelines, which means they want artists to work with the tools they know can work in their pipeline. In big productions I would imagine that it’s easier to get an artist that does know how to work with the tools supplied and that work in the pipeline than reworking the pipeline in order to fit a certain artist tools in it.
Still stuff like topology, modelling techniques, animation techniques etc are pretty much package independent (I mean the underlying principles not how to do it in a certain package) therefor it shouldn’t be too hard to learn a different package. But that’s just from what I’ve heard etc, I’ve only used blender