Professional Opinions on Blender's Viability

I recently attended the Montreal International Game Summit event. Though I went as a student, and used the event to network, I had an ulterior motive: I spent some time picking the brains of professional developers about the feasibility of using Blender as a tool in their pipeline for creating games. I compiled some information that I received that will hopefully make an impact on the development of 2.50.

Keep in mind that these are NOT just my opinions, these come from industry professionals, artists, and executives. As such, they are very difficult to discount out of hand. That said, I do now tend to share these opinions, for the most part.

Firstly, I was amazed but the generally positive view of Open Source and Blender specifically, especially from Insomniac Games(they already use open source programs and have even open sourced parts of their engine). I think that there is an assumption in this community that users of other programs are closed minded to the prospect of using Blender, when in fact, this is not necessarily the case.

By far, the largest complaint I received was regarding the interface. We tend to complain that every time there is a new Blender release, the announcement threads on forums like CGSociety are essentially hacked by complaints about the UI. This cannot be handed off simply to a bias towards Maya or Max. The fact is, Blender’s interface, while foundationally strong, is quite mangled on the surface. I will not spend time re-iterating William Reynish’s UI paper, but there is some merit in this argument. Complaints were related specifically to the layout and location of buttons, and that there is poor implementation of any sort of heirarchy (i.e. the outliner). From the artists that had used Blender, I did recieve comments that once artists understood and worked with the interface, it was very positive, and they could model swiftly. However, getting to that point was a nightmare, and the time that training would take was not attractive or feasible in a production environment.

One of the attractive features of Blender for developers is it’s Open Source nature. They really like that it can be re-tooled to fit their pipeline. However, they have found that the code is firstly, poorly commented, and secondly, very poorly documented. Companies need to be able to dive in feet first and be able to make necessary changes quickly in order for this to be an attractive option. Not being a programmer, there is not much more I can add here.

Another stumbling block for artists trying to learn the software is the absence of reliable documentation. Personally, I learned from hundreds of different sources how to use Blender, often using tutorials dating from the 2.25 days that I had to figure out. The Blender Wiki is a great step in this direction, but, it is still somewhat unreliable. Companies and artists want to have every feature of Blender documented accurately to the most current version, and they want all of this information in an easy to find and navigate place.

One often cited reason for not using Blender is that, like I said, it is difficult to learn, and there is very little incentive to actually try to learn it. There is little that makes Blender unique from the standpoint of Maya or Max users. Most artists are trained to use those other programs, and they have no reason to switch to another, more difficult program to learn that will afford them no further functionality. Sure Blender can sculpt and composite video, but it does these things much more poorly than ZBrush or Final Cut Pro. So they will learn those other programs rather than Blender, and use them in tandem with their modeling software.

I have this entire next section devoted to the GE, because, of all parts of Blender, this recieved the most negative comments. The largest issue I learned was that the BGE tries to please everyone, and by doing so, it pleases no one. It’s not good enough at any one thing for a company to use it to produce anything. While it does support snazzy GLSL effects, there are somethings that it needs to have at the base level that are absent. First, there is no system for creating a GUI in game. Secondly, supporting bitmap text only is an enormous block. Realistically, the time spent managing the arbitrary formatting of bitmap text prohibits anything complex being built. An RPG for example would be incredibly difficult if it used any dialogue. From a design perspective, the BGE is impossible to work with since there’s no good way to store or organize huge types of information (lists of assets, lighting setups, etc.). The pipeline is very clunky as well. Lightmapping a scene is a good example of this. I’m not going to keep covering more specifics, but the point is, the engine is not feasible, and never will be feasible without some of these things. It will also not be feasible if it still tries to tackle all game types.

These are the main criticisms I received. My sincere hope is that the devs pay attention to this writing, as, like I mentioned, these are not my opinions, but the input of industry professionals on the viability of Blender. These should not be dismissed out of hand like I said. I’ve seen a tendency for people to dismiss complaints about Blender instead of trying to rectify the issues raised. This hurts everyone involved. It prohibits the growth of Blender, and turns people off of what is really, fundamentally a fantastic programs and open source achievement.

I hope this is wisely considered.

-Brandon

Edit: I also hope that the release 2.50 is very closely considered by the devs. I wouldn’t mind waiting for a year or more for things to be well implemented. 2.50 really has the potential to enable Blender to become a viable competitor, and I would hate to see it squandered.

I think better I dont say anything.

Why is that Endi? I would love to hear what it is you have to say. I posted this thread to get a bit of discussion going.

A lot of what you say is completly true. Especially from a users perspective.

A lot of the UI thing will be addressed in 2.50. I’ve got no idea if there will be a push to cover more stuff in the Blender Wiki and make it more accessible. There are still no real docs I could find on the new particle system. Large parts of it are unwritten and I had to learn by trial and error.

I think if anyone was going to make a game, and they didn’t have an on-board coder they would a. Be clinically insane or b. use an off-the-shelf solution. Nobody is really going to use the BGE to make a real game. I don’t know why Apricot did. I love the new GLSL stuff to make game models, but I use it to preview what it will look like in the game engine I’m targeting, not to use in the BGE.

That tied with Tea-Monster’s comments, I get the impression that you’re calling Ben2610, Campbell, Brecht, and others clinically insane for even bothering to develop the BGE?

Admit it, it’s heaps better than it used to be. Heck let’s haul Ton and Erwin to the lunatic asylum for creating it in the first place and just have no real good intergrated engine that doesn’t cost $$$.

Nobody is really going to use the BGE to make a real game. I don’t know why Apricot did

‘Real’ games are possible, I personally made two games with the GLSL and I modeled the interface, put in main-menu’s and help sections, and I know that you can make your bitmap text better by making it use GLSL rather than a simple TexFace material.

Yo-Frankie was only made in a few months, and look at the work being done by Deloince JP in the BGE forums.

Your point about the BGE is definitely true Tea. There is however I think a market for the BGE if it plays it’s cards right. If you look at the popular Torque engine, the BGE is easily capable of the graphics in that engine, but it’s not organized well enough to be viable as a dev tool, nor does it have the level of documentation of Torque. If the BGE focuses more, it could well be very successful. Bascially, the point I’m making is that if we don’t change the engine, but change the way we interact with the engine, there really is potential there.

Edit: CD: He’s not talking about the developers of the engine, but people trying to use it to produce a product. You are very right, the engine is much better than it used to be. I don’t doubt that you created games using it, but to create something of the scale needed to be commercially viable, the GE will need to support much better organization. About bitmap text: I know it’s better, but until TrueType fonts (or something along those lines) are supported, the engine is not viable. I’m not voicing my opinion here, but what was given to me at the summit (this specific comment was given to me by the programmer of the indie Orbus Gameworks).

Well i find that all quite true. Some problems though can be because it is free ( i mean about the documentation and such) like i think usually the big commercial programs would pay someone to write their huge documentation every time the program changed and pay people to give 24hr support etc?

Some of these things should be fixed in 2.5 as well? like the ui and the code.
You know the ui was never difficult to learn for me straight up, before blender i tried out anim8or but that was very limited. So i tried blender, read a couple of tutorials and it was easy to find what i wanted. Now im trying to the maya ple and its very confusing and complicated compared.

good post btw

Fish: I’ve also had that problem with the PLE, but I think it is based more on my prejudice from having used Blender than Maya’s interface. That said, much of Blender’s interface is far better, but like I said, the buttons are really poorly organized. William Reynish describes this very well in his UI doc (see 1st post).

Companies and artists want to have every feature of Blender documented accurately to the most current version, and they want all of this information in an easy to find and navigate place.

So right you are! There are some if not a lot of functions/ buttons that are poorly documented. And by that I mean ‘they’ spend only a mere super technical line from the NaN days to explain something.

And another thing, your post makes it sound like it’d be better to call this thread. “Professionals, all of them think Blender sucks worse than a paint-clogged bugle”

At least it sounds like that to me, I don’t know why they get the impression you can’t make anything good in Blender and would only appeal to fans of MSpaint. The point is the open projects proves Blender is the app. that can be professional, and various artists are actually able to get good renders out of Blender, that Broken and his studio actually found you can do half decent work with the program.

I don’t doubt that you created games using it, but to create something of the scale needed to be commercially viable, the GE will need to support much better organization. About bitmap text: I know it’s better, but until TrueType fonts (or something along those lines) are supported, the engine is not viable. I’m not voicing my opinion here, but what was given to me at the summit (this specific comment was given to me by the programmer of the indie Orbus Gameworks).

The size of the games I’ve made since Apricot, are about Arcade size but bigger than the average flash game, one has 24 levels, another is mini-golf with 18 holes.

The other I have it set so I can tack on 10 courses over time if I wanted to, you may say that organizing your scenes would be a big problem. Actually my method is putting a letter or number like 1: or A: and use that to sort the levels.

Using that method to organize the scenes is very handy, since Blender puts them in alphabetical order. So you have like

AA
AB-------AZ
BA-------BZ
CA-------CZ

You would put colons after the letters and give it the actual name then.

CD: That’s certainly not the case.

Firstly, I was amazed but the generally positive view of Open Source and Blender specifically, especially from Insomniac Games(they already use open source programs and have even open sourced parts of their engine). I think that there is an assumption in this community that users of other programs are closed minded to the prospect of using Blender, when in fact, this is not necessarily the case.

I simply focused on the places they said need improvement, since that’s what this thread is for.

That said, it really is prohibitively difficult to develope a full game in Blender. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but developers could save a lot of money choosing another more efficient engine, and they do. I’m talking about making Blender an attractive option, which, currently, it’s not.

Okay, but I edited my post to show you how I sometimes organize scenes in the scene menu, it works quite well. As for assets, it does help to name them too, generally it helps to have the same copies of the object linked and if you need to add 100 objects, you can bunch them in groups of similar objects.

While, I love the BGE, I completely agree with all of your points. I would love to see these improvements.

CD: I’m not saying that it is impossible, but compared to other engines, it is ridiculously difficult. And while this is the industry perception, it has a lot of truth.

Moguri: complete agreement. This event was a very good wakeup call to me because it wasn’t a case of people hating Blender for Blender’s sake, but that it simply didn’t afford what they needed.

rofl badass I lol’d

to Dim though I have to say I disagree with what you say pertaining to the game engine, what other engines have you used that you are comparaing blender to?

I have to say that there are other ways of displaying text than using that bitmap technique for example

Honestly, I think the UI is fine. It’s not that hard to learn, and once you learn it, you can model fairly quickly. But I really think in-game text needs to be fixed. I’m getting kind of sick of bitmap fonts. Did anyone say or mention anything about the logic bricks?

I think the fine folks at the Blender Institute realize all of these points already, and are either addressing them or don’t really care. Yes, the UI could be improved, and they know what the problem areas are, but at the same time, although unconventional, it is still actually fast once you learn it. The BGE is, at the moment, a nice way to create game prototypes, because everything is integrated. It would take an “insane” amount of development to be able to get it up to current standards, which does not mean it can’t still be used to make fun games.
Blender, being open source and not “the number 1 app,” really allows it to have a nice sense of individuality and experimentation, and more importantly risk-taking. There are attitudes of pushing things and trying new things that would be shunned in other apps, but in reality could be much better ideas. It may be a shock from the standard adobe interface, but that is not neccessarily a bad thing.

To further my point I give you this. A rather decent way of allowing organization of lots of scenes
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3807/example7le7.jpg
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/example7le7.jpg/1/w260.png

A: scenes are the stuff that you can check before the course
D#: scenes are the holes, ‘D’ is the letter of the course, ‘A’ is simply there to ensure hole 10 doesn’t sort before hole 1, and the # can help locate front or back 9.

For a new course I would have ‘E1’ or ‘EA1’ all the way to ‘Y’ because Z is used.

with the documentation issue, you’ve definitely hit the nail on the head, especially for “pro” users (ie people who use the software to make money). I imagine that the code commenting is the same too (not being a dev, I’ll have to take your word for it).

the root of all this is of course the fact that Blender is open source. No-one who commits to code has any obligations to comment their code properly, or provide anything but perfunctory documentation for any features they build. If Blender continues to snowball exponentially in the way it has done this past year, then this problem will only get worse without dedicated people to document and comment code.

FYI i never found Blender’s interface difficult to use as it was my first foray into 3d… maybe that has something to do with it?

Kay: Personally, I’ve used CryEngine, Dunia, Torque. I know two of those are next-gen engines, but what I’m concerned with is the way the data is organized, nothing to do with the engine itself. However, this really is not about me or my experience, this is about what professionals have told me directly.

Jay: it’s hard to learn because it’s very disorganised. See Reynish’s UI doc for details. Basically, a lot of self learning could take place, but because everything’s in a weird place, it’s very difficult to do so.

sausage: I know that fundamentally the UI is strong, but it is very disorganized. Again, check out the UI doc. At the top level, they may decide that Blender should stay as is. I however would be very disapointed, because I would love to use it professionally and see others do the same.

CD: Check my above post, as my answer is still relevant.

Edit: Dan: same here. Starting with Blender was easy for me. Coming from other programs is difficult though. Because Blender’s buttons are not well organized though, it does limit the amount of self teaching possible, and most things must be learned explicitly. This definitely hampers learning speed.