Is Autodesk trying to commit Suicide?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
427

I think you are making good points. But I talk from the experience in my studio as well as my experience working with clients and large companies. And while I can respect you have another opinion, I can only go by what I know works for me as a freelancer and in my studio, and my experience with companies.

All studios work with a multiple app workflow. This is quite common. Specialists apps and apps that just do things better and faster.

If you are a Blender studio - like mine - and you are open minded you find a nice way to integrate other software that saves time and money all the way around.

That is how it works here for me. And if you have another experience, that is perfectly fine.

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428

The world is a very big and very poor place. Where I used to live I don’t think I ever encountered a graphic design or print shop (even the best, busiest, and most expensive shops in the country) or video production or architecture firm that wasn’t using pirated software because they couldn’t keep on all the employees they needed AND pay their bills AND make a small profit to justify existing AND spend so damn much on software AND charge their clients an amount resonable enough to get their business.

429

But for a lot of smaller shops “good enough” is exactly what they need,
I mean in its current state of blender, would you really recommend someone a license of max for a small shop wich only does a small archviz stills project every 3 months ?
And this is the userbase what blender currently eats away from the sales of 3d vendors.

But yeah agree on the part that blender needs to be a lot faster on the import front / handling large datasets

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430

So, then they should use Pentium with 8G ram and integrated graphics card for work.

431

Good points!

Yeah the thing is, this is exactly what Blender did to the market 11 years ago. It has only grown since. It is funny I was having arguments on the LightWave forms 5 years ago about this very fact.

So in my opinion it is not about making something “good enough’ or some kind of compromise. It is the fact that for many applications and companies or clients Blender gives you all you need and more.

It can be, is and has been for a decade the central app in a lot of freelance and small studios,

I speak as a freelancer who came through those post 2.5 years. And I have not only been freelancing solid with no other income sources for 10 years I built a studio on that basis.

That said the money I made from Blender allowed me to expand my toolset. First to XSI then to Maya and Motion Builder as well as external texturing apps and of course Zbrush.

And kept that same mindset in my studio. And so, this means renting software only as much as needed.

I know for a fact that I can speak for other midrange studios that software cost is an issue. It is a huge issue. Software management-deciding who and when artists need specialist apps - is essential to staying in a budget and also taking advantage of commercial specialists apps is imperative to staying competitive and working efficiently.

These days are even more competitive than ever.

You have to be better artistically and have the best tools more so than in the past.

We are a long way from getting specialist quality out of Blender for some key areas.

Even studios that use Maya use it in a pipeline with other specialist apps.

But for modeling UV and rendering Blender delivers a parallel with almost everything.

Animation mileage may vary.

And 3rd party rendering can round out the package.

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432

If price is such decision factor for large facilities, how come Houdini ruled market in recent years (which is most expensive app out there)? Because it can deliver what no other app can. Because it scales so well. Because you can automatize a huge portion of production with it. Because they have top notch support. Because it follows industry standards, usually among first app that implement those. Because innovative solutions. Those are all decision factors, beside pricing. I am using Blender from 2006, pricing did not change, but it got more popular in recent years, just because of interesting features like bmesh, UI, Cycles, Eevee. And competition was several times more expensive back than. Price is important factor, especially for Indies, but I would not focus my product only on that tbh.

433

While I agree mostly, the significant portion of the reason Houdini’s popularity skyrocketed in recent years was addition of the Indie pricing tier, which made it possible for regular, non corporate mortals to get their hands on the power of Houdini, which in turn improved the supply of artists with Houdini skills tremendously.

Prior to that, the only way to legally get your hands on Houdini was if you worked in really big studio, and could use it during the day there. There was already apprentice version I think, but if you have a version that you can’t really use in production, it’s a big discouraging factor, since most artists usually gain the real experience with the software when using it in production, not in a limited, non commercial capacity. Sure, personal projects are valid source of skill improvement too, but only on a real job you can safely determine if the tool can get it done.

So it’s not as onesided. Yes, price is not generally a decision factor, but it is one when the pricing is as steep as Houdini’s prior to the existence of indie.