I think a lot of people using Blender are non-professionals just using Blender for the fun of it.
But as of what I know of Blender (I am currently only a newbie), you can create animations that looks just like those you see in documentaries and even movies.
Which is why I am wondering: Why do people and companies spend thousands of dollars/euros on commercial 3D applications like Maya, 3Ds Max, Lightwave etc. even for creating simple animations and simple 3D-modelling?
I understand that Blender has a steep learning curve which might give some explanation. But if you begin with Blender and you have never used any other 3D-application in your whole life, I don’t see how Blender can have any competition: Blender is free and advanced software.
I am just a newbie, and I don’t know all the functions of Blender. But if I can, and if I manage to do some decent 3D work in Blender, one thing is certain: I will publicly tell, either in the video or the description, that I used Blender to create my works. As long as Blender stays free, it deserves to be the first choice of use, unless you need to do something which currently can’t be made in Blender because that function isn’t implemented in Blender.
My personal experience with Blender is that it was very difficult to learn.
I knew back in 2003 that Blender existed, but I never used it. Then just a week ago, I had to choose: Save some money to buy a commercial 3D-application - or go for something free or in-expensive. I chose Blender, and I am getting more and more happy I am using Blender and not something commercial. You know… 2/3 of one’s yearly income on some license to use on ONE pc, for a SINGLE user? No way!
Today I am happy I finally learnt the basics of Blender. I use to joke about it saying I used 127 uninstalls and 128 installs of Blender before I got used to it.
People have their biases about free opensource programs and don’t want to admit the fact that a free program can outdo the program they have invested big bucks into.
I think the biggest problem is lack of support from other companies. Nowadays you have to have a software that fits your workflow, that can be used with RealFlow, Fume, V-Ray, Thinking Particles and other software. Blender is based on its community, there are no exporters provided by authors of other applications. Creating your workflow around Blender requires hiring a programmer for vary scripts and fixes.
Foss seems to have the reputation of being low quality. When I first came across Blender two years ago, I thought the images it showed were stolen, because no free software can be that good… right? (btw didn’t one company ripped people off by selling Blender and posting stolen cg works back in January 2011?)
Also, one thing companies have is money, why use free software that is most likely low quality when you can get maya? It cost just $5000, it must be good… right? It does seem that profesionals are looking into Blender more.
I’m looking at a 3DArtist magazine thats on my desk. Lech Sokolowski made a good model of a house with Blender. I find it interesting to see Blender in these magazines. I see Andrew Price’s tutorials in 3D World. Blender won the Award from 3D World for best update in software of the year, and Sintel also won an award. CG Society gave Blender 4th place in their 2011 Retrospective. All of this is pushing Blender forward. I wouldn’t be suprised to find more and more studios using Blender now.
Blender is not 100% perfect
-old style internal renderer from 90’s
-new cycles renderer do not support (yet) all features or have no advanced features
-basic import/export, sometimes buggy
-basic video editor - no fun using it
-no color managemet ICC
But i like Blender, many changes was added to it.
Since we have v2.5+ and cycles i think it makes no sense to buy a expensive software for most people.
Companies buy their software based on plugins they need for their project, if they need FumeFX to create a good fire simulation they will buy 3ds Max as it is currently the only software that FumeFX will work with.
If Blender could finally get a stable API and release only one major version per year I think that we could see a lot of commercial plugins developed for it but as it stands now it is too much of a hassle to develop plugins for Blender.
Blender seems to like to change things(just for the sake of changing things) way to much and that breaks
tons of 3rd party plugin’s/addons/script so it keeps people away.
just my opinion.
I nearly bought a commercial application. I am happy I didn’t, I am not a professional and it would rip me off about 100 % of my old age retirement savings.
As for FumeFX and the like, I don’t see why people would buy 3Ds Max just for that. If you need to do “simple” 3d animations of some ancient buildings, landscape and the like, why spend $3000 for a one time, single user, single pc license? Is fire and smoke effects really that much worth?
It will take a very long time until major 3D companies would even consider switching to blender. It does sound harsh, but it is the truth. Main reasons are that the big companies have loads of cash and paying 20k for software (maya, render engines, plugins etc) is nothing to them. Also, another reason that they have accumulated loads of inhouse scripts and tools for those specific applications, and recreating those custom tools and scripts for blender would take lots of time and manpower. Also, if they move to new software all they would not be able to use their past projects in any way.
There is just no reason for them to switch.
however, I think that blender is getting into many small scale studios and production companies. Small companies care about the cost, and will take the opportunity to save money as long as they can still get the work done.
There are much more small companies than big ones and if more and more small companies move to blender, the commercial applications will suffer financially. They will either have to take the prices down to stop people from running away, or put them up really high so that the big companies would compensate for the losses done by the small companies moving to FOSS.
If prices reach a really high level, then even the big studios might start considering blender
Anyway, it is an amazing piece of software, and it serves a huge number of artists all around the world regardless of their financial status. That is what really matters.
Yes, this is quite a huge problem. But it’s pretty general in the FLOSS community. It takes an extra effort to keep your plugins up to date.
Anyway, I’m not an artist but a programmer so having the source code for my vector editor is a very huge plus. And you can interface with Blender in many ways which is also a very good thing.
As the software improves and stabilizes, the user base will also increase. For companies currently using other software it would be stupid to switch, but new ones starting out will eventually prefer using Blender for their work.
Blender is good at many things but not really the best at anything, for modeling, texturing and rendering it is more than good enough but when it comes to simulations it can’t even compare to the commercial plugins available.
To a studio $3000 might be more cost effective than getting a free program to generate similar effects. They often offset costs like that to their clients. It’s just the nature of business.
Blender does get used professionally though. Here is an article from awhile back showing it being used on the TV show Mythbusters. It does well in the indie game markets too, though that’s kind of halfway between hobbyist and professional.
A few thousand dollars for software is a drop in the bucket for a large company. The people that work at those companies are already very experienced with the software and most students coming out of college are trained in that software. There’d have to be a very good reason for them to switch to blender.
Blender is unusable because big companies don’t switch to it.
I can not do anything useful in Blender because big companies don’t know it
If the big companies accept Blender as a good tool, then I’ll make good things with blender.
Sorry, but I don’t have to wait abc123 (endi) here
