Which commercial package is most similar to Blender?

Hello!

I found this on Blendernation and I wanted to ask which one best to buy. 3dsmax was mentioned, anything else that would be useful? Maya maybe? Sooner or later I’ll have to learn a proproietary package, so maybe I could reuse the tutorial then…

>Sooner or later I’ll have to learn a proproietary package
Why?

Because I want to find a job. Well, at least if Blender doesn’t enter the industry soon enough :wink: I’ll still have time.

But back to what I wanted to know, because mainly I just wanna do these tutorials, and I don’t know anything but Blender. so I can’t tell which tutorial to buy best!

I was try Rhino, 3Ds max, LightWave and Blender of course … all are to different from each other.
3Ds max is horrible, Rhino is good but to specific, LightWave is cool, but Blender is cool and fast so it is my choice.

P.S. I really cant understand why you cant make your job with Blender, but of course there are different jobs

But if you want job in some company it is likely 3Dsmax or Maya(rarely) (world is crazy … or we are)

Check out Houdini Apprentice PLE…it’s free and if you like you can purchase it for $99 and not have to deal with the blasted watermark. There may be some old versions of Maya PLE out there still, since AutoDesk cancelled the PLE and started using a thirty day trial version.

As for which is similar to Blender, IMO, most of the prominent packages do pretty much the same thing. The only glaring difference is the UI. It’s a personal choice.

I chose Houdini over Maya & 3DS to learn, simply because a fully functional PLE is available at no cost, giving me the time to learn it at my pace. And the $99 asking price is well within my reach, unlike $3495 for 3ds Max and $1995 for Maya Complete.

Yes, I have already been pointed to Houdini for VFX, and the license for non-commercial use. Seems to be excellent software, and Maya\max are simply totally unaffordable. Such prices are a joke. As a studio that gets paid, it should pay for itself at some point.
So basically, what you guys say is, that it doesn’t matter which tutorial version I buy, they’re all different, but basically the same? No special affinity to Blender?

i bet you to go and learn 3dmax.

you will see how much it sucks compared to blender,

slow
unstable
difficult to learn and remember how to do things
ugly oldschool UI

With the UI shots of Blender 2.5 I would say it is starting to look a lot like XSI.

If I had to pick something other than Blender I would choose Cinema4D.

I would choose Blender 2.5 :yes:

Wow, so many excellent answers! </sarcasm> Seriously, guys, this isn’t called the Other Software Forum for nothing.

I second Atom’s recommendation of Cinema 4D. If you really wanted to, you could even remap all relevant commands to the same as Blender AFAICT (though I haven’t tried, as it would be a lot of work). That being said, they are both a good fit for my way of thinking.

In Austria, you have to look at what kind of job you realistically could get. Not in film probably, but more likely in design. So, AutoCAD would be a good graphics package to learn. A quick survey of likely employers to see what packages they use. My son wants to do mechanical engineering or architecture, so he has learned AutoCAD, Inventor, and now Revit.

I think Blender 2.5 will make Blender more popular as a 3D package.

Thanks for the input :slight_smile:

I’ll just repeat my origoinal question once more: does it matter which tutorial (none is for Blender) I download or is there one package with higher affinity to Blender than others?

I’ll definitely buy the Houdini package and ZBrush. No matter how much I love Blender :slight_smile: And no matter how much YOU love Blender. 99USD is just worth it, compared to 8000, and Blender simply can’t compete with ZBrush, I’m convinced by now, for MODELLING strictly!!!

Right now, CAD/Archiviz etc. doesn’t fascinate me too much. I don’t just want to get “a job” - I have that already :slight_smile: During the course of my life I’ve met only ONE person dealing with 3d - so I hope we’re behind as always and things get jump-started a bit more.

Other than that, everybody seems to say something different. One says Maya, the other C4d, another Houdini. Mostly it looks like Maya. I’ll keep waiting though!

Anyway, before I catch flames: I’m very convinced that Blender will remain my tool of choice, if it’s possible THAT’S what I want. And I encourage each and everyone to buy Blender resources, books, DVDs, it’s not just the developers who can make it happen. It’s mainly us, the users, who can make it grow! This world is stll about money :wink: Even a bit of Blender needs to be.

This opinion is based on info I got from researching the subject myself, not from experience, I have only dabbled in other packages.

To learn a program other than blender, I would choose xsi. All programs I have used apart from blender have similar UI’s but there seems to be agreement that XSI’s is the most intuitive out of the TOP production-proven packages. I have not used any software that works similar to Blender.

XSI’s animation tools are pretty much up there with maya’s and it seems to have the simplest and best mental ray functionality. I have also heard people say that for modelling it is the only one that is actually reasonable, because both 3ds and Maya are terrible for modelling. But then again if you just want to model and render and dont care about animation, go for modo or silo. XSI is used in both games and film, but is not the package of choice for either.
If you want to work in gamedev, learn max
For films and special effects, learn maya or houdini (maya’s UI is very ‘stone-age’ and difficult though)
If you want to work for pixar learn maya and motionbuilder.

I’d go for Max ( yep, am a Maxer, but for a reason: had to learn it to work in game companies. And it went well. ) . If you are wanting more going for character animation, I’d go for Maya, perhaps XSI. But I’d go first for Maya.

…Anyway, I have animated with no probs (character Studio) in Max. In several occassions, depending on the company.

To answer your question you can use tutorials for other programs with Blender. The tools may be called something else or work slightly different, but as long as the tutorial isn’t for a specific aspect of the program that blender doesn’t have it should be alright.

 I guess it depends on how patient you are.  It could take longer to complete the tutorial if you have to keep translating stuff.  One example I can give is I was doing a tutorial for Maya and they said to create a locator which confused me.  In Blender terms that is an empty.  I have used C4D and they are called nulls.  So the same thing in 3 packages are named something different.

Thanks, linuxpimp! :slight_smile: That works!

About Max: it seems somewhat logical to learn Max, although I heard practically EVERYONE complain about it. So Maya would be “the Standard”… Although that one has the “stone age” UI if I remember correctly.
I’ll have to go for more than one package anyway, so thanks Phlopper for distinguishing them so nicely :slight_smile:

It is good to learn as many programs as you can. I was looking at Houdini because it was mentioned here and the $99 is for the apprentice version. Houdini Escape is just as expensive as the rest of the big boys. I am not sure if the apprentice licenses always for commercial work or not. I do like that they support Linux though. Corniger, what OS do you use as that may affect how others respond to your question