Hi everyone!
How many years do you think it will take to Blender becoming the industry standard?
Thank you!
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I hope never, its simply not good for a lively market if a single program is THE standard.
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But Maya is the standard now, so whatâs the harm in Blender being the industry standard?
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No I dont think Maya is, there are others aswell if its now 3dsmax, houdini, zbrush, c4d and alike. I wish every innovative company success, but I also find the discussion on what is standard is heavily overrated. There are many examples where one can see that innovation declines as contenders become fewer. And drastic reduction in contenders is often a sign of a markets lifespan ending. So from a consumers perspective I wish that blender is able to grow and that the market is that open, that new companies still have room to grow, and dont get bought before they become too dangerous for others success.
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Define what you mean with âthe industry standardâ!
The term is thrown around often, but nobody defines it properly. There are many industries and many standards. Which are you talking about?
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For me, a standard is when I look at job openings like 3d visualizer. And the majority ask that you are familiar with Autodesk and Adobe products. So thatâs the industry standard as I experience it if I were looking for a job. Iâve never seen Blender as a requirement, and one of my goals is to bring that gap a bit closer.
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Almost 6000 results when I look for Blender on LinkedIn jobs. Including jobs at Apple, Adobe and Facebook.
Sure, some job postings will be about kitchen appliances. Probably youâll find more jobs with Maya as requirement. Nonetheless, there are plenty of Blender jobs out there.
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Good idea, never thought about filtering on Blender.
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Maya remains the app. that have contributed to the most productions in the movie industry, and it will remain that way for years to come because of how entrenched it is. Once an app. is entrenched it is very hard to dislodge, as otherwise it wouldâve declined significantly when XSI was becoming an app. ahead of its time (as opposed of dying off).
Houdini meanwhile has also been entrenched, but it is also becoming used more and more at the expense of Maya. Blender has also attracted a lot of attention especially since the 2.8 overhaul. Lightwave is almost unheard of now and Modo as well as Cinema 4D are (arguably) declining. Zbrush remains the only active app. capable of pushing extremely high polygon counts in a sculpt environment. 3DS Max remains entrenched in the game industry, though like Maya it has an issue with many users wanting to escape Autodesk and its licensing practices. Meanwhile, many of the <1000USD apps. (for lower end production) have long since either died off or have become zombie apps. with a snailâs pace of development.
In short, Maya and Max are still very much on the top of the heap, but the industry in general does not, at this time, have an app. that completely blows away anything else out there.
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OkâŚIâll play!
Letâs start with â Why do you care? Are you a Blender jedi-ninja and no studio will hire you professionally because theyâre all on Houdini/Maya/etc.? Or you just have some weird fetish for Blender to be used exclusively by all the top VFX houses for no particular reason?
What do you think the advantage would be? If you answered with more job opportunities for people with Blender skills, thatâs about the only benefit that I can see. Careful though, anyone who downloaded Blender and spent a few days scattering cubes will think theyâre more than qualified to work for WETA and will be sending in their resume; so if you think that the current Maya/Houdini market is crowded â you ainât seen nothing yet!
Letâs say Blender is the de-facto industry standard, what do you think that would accomplish? I can give you a bit of a hint â first of all the major players in the VFX industry would want to make sure they have the front seat at the Blender table so that their issues are resolved first. Things that might not be all that important or even interesting to you will become the forefront concerns of the Blender development team, while things that you probably really care about will be relegated to lower tiers. Secondly as the BF grows exponentially with programmers and finances, development actually slows down to a crawl due to the much more complex structure that has emerged. Various departments working on the different modules of Blender have less cross-communication and might accidentally step on each otherâs toes and create more bugs. Office politics and the much larger bureaucracy complicate things even further due to the immensely greater pressure. Even the smallest development decision becomes a multi-month process that involves a large committee of deciders.
Lastly, for Blender to be an industry standard, it would have to conform to existing industry standards and adopt conventions and workflows that so far it has chosen to ignore (i.e. Y-up as a small example). Working at the studio level compared to what the typical Blender freelancer experiences (which I assume is what you are) are two completely different worlds. When hundreds, if not thousands or people are dependent on reliability under stress, and hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line, there is very little tolerance for individualistic decisions on the part of the developers. Sure, people complain about Houdini and Maya, but fundamentally they âgot it where it countsâ when the pedal hits the metal. At the moment Blender is simply too unpredictable for that type of pipeline.
There seems to be this strange idea that VFX studios are ignoring the power of Blender simply due to sheer snootiness. Iâve got news for you â they would love nothing more than to save millions of dollars each year and switch to a software which is 100% free. The true reasons why they havenât adopted Blender as a principal workhorse is because they have tested it under stress and within their own production pipelines and it has failed. Every major player that works in the industry is monitoring Blender with each new release, hoping that it will be a true contender â but itâs simply not there yet. In addition, render engines such as Arnold and V-Ray donât work in Blender yet (although Renderman coming to Blender is a step in the right direction).
I would say stop worrying about what other people are using and be happy with what you got â a great DCC that works for your needs and allows you to create in the way that you enjoy!
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Itâs when .blend become the default standard for all 3D files.
Thatâs when you know Blenderâs really made it.
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Say it with me
We Want a Big Performances-Focused Update
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Iâm pretty sure it will be a Tuesday, around 4.30pm
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⌠and it will be an odd calendar week. 
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Itâs really not just about performance though. Blender Bob has done a number of videos commenting on the various issues that keep Blender from being widely adopted into the studio VFX industry and I donât believe a single one of them has to do with performance.
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Blender 3.0 will take some steps to address performance concerns at least (with the sizable performance bumps in editmode, OSD, Cycles, animation playback, and more), so the vast majority of areas should finally be faster than the same in 2.7x at least.
However, the next LTS release is not until next Spring, so the devs. should build on what they have to make 2.93LTS seem like a toy in comparison.
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Probably as soon as there will be a decent snapping system ⌠
Define âIndustry Standardâ
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I very much agree with those asking for a definition of âindustry standardâ.
Maya may be the âindustry standardâ. But only up to a certain level. Sculpting is mainly done in ZBrush, and converted back and forth from Maya/ZBrush. But you can use ZBrush with Blender (as far as I understand, Iâve never tried ZBrush, but Iâve watched some workflows using Blender/Zbrush).
For texturing, people use Photoshop. They export the UV layout from ie. Maya to Photoshop, and back into Maya.
You can do the same using Blender.
So the real question is not which software is the âindustry standardâ but which industry standard is used for certain tasks in the industry? You can do sculpting in Blender, but as far as Iâve understood, ZBrush has better tools for sculpting.
You can do texturing in Blender, but Photoshop (or GIMP/Krita, just to mention free open source alternatives) may be a better choice.
You can do animation in Blender, but from what Iâve read, Houdini may do a better job, when it comes to crowd control and other advanced stuff for animations.
In order to answer your question, we must get more specific on the comparisons between Blender, Maya and 3DS Max. What are these tools used for, and why do artists switch back and forth from, say, Houdini/Maya/Blender, ZBrush/Maya/Blender, Photoshop/Maya/Blender?
Whatâs really important here is to look at not only the differences between Maya and Blender (or 3DS Max) - but the similarities as well.
It really boils down to the BASICS of modeling, the BASICS of animation and the BASICS of texturing. Neither Maya, 3DS Max nor Blender are used for advanced sculpting, texturing or animation. They are tools which you use to build the foundation of your work.
Like if youâre building a house. Blender/Maya/3DS Max equals the foundation. ZBrush equals digging up the clay and forming the bricks. Photoshop equals baking the bricks. You then comine these bricks in Maya/3DS Max/Blender.
Rendering may equal the installations of electricity, water, internet access etc.
And the Video editoring etc. may equal the realtor.
Not to mention - common to both Maya, 3DS Max AND Blender is that if you want additional tools for the basics, you need addons - some free, some commercial.
Your actual question may be boiled down to this: When will Blender become the industry standard for the basics of 3D Modeling/Animation?
Perhaps⌠it already is?
When you install Blender for the first time, youâre asked which layout and shortcuts to use, depending your preferences. When you open Blender, you can choose to work with it as if it was a different product ie. Maya/3DS Max. Or you can customize your own setup.
And it really doesnât matter. Blender can import/export with a variety of formats, meaning if you prefer Blender, you can still work with other people, who work with other software.
If you can master the modeling, animation and texturing techniques in Blender, whatâs preventing you from using those skills in other software (provided the shortcuts are identical)?
Itâs exactly the same techniques and skills required. The only difference is the user interface of different products/software, which may take some practice to get used to.
Even the big commercial render engines - from VRay, Octane and even Pixarâs Renderman - are available for Blender.
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Nah 4 20 am. No scope.