Why are other 3d modeling programs so insanely expensive?

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21

@Ace_Dragon, I appreciate you making that point, but I’m coming from a different direction. I’m not a Blender fanatic, and I’m not saying it’s the best. I do want to see it succeed, as I like to see open source software in general do well, but I’m not even a regular user. I have dabbled in it (and cg in general) and have watched the industry for many, many years. So my perspective is that of a general industry observer, not a Blender user per se.

So what I wrote before is just my analysis of the reality (as I see it) of the cg software industry at this moment. I could definitely be wrong by having some mistaken assumptions, but I’m not making these assumptions and observations out of some kind of passion one way or another. I just believe a couple of relatively uncontroversial things that when put together add up to a likely logical conclusion.

First, I believe that Blender has been very successful in growing and improving the product over the years. Perhaps its been slower or in a different direction than some have wished for, but it’s certainly been steady, and certainly growing. Second, it’s very difficult to compete with “free”, particularly if the choice is “free” or $1000+. Plus the competitors need to make a profit on top of the development and other costs.

I only see one direction that this can go in, barring a few exceptions (like products that are very deeply entrenched, like Maya, or others that spend significantly in R&D, like Houdini), artificial limitations (like license incompatibilities, lack of ancillary services, patent claims), or potential internal instability (like mismanagement, sabotage, or community conflict). I admit, however, that these items I’ve listed could stop Blender from killing all (or any) commercial competitors!

Note that I’m not even saying that Blender is an ideal replacement for any commercial competitor right now, but just that it’s growing stronger and stronger and moving faster and faster, while some of the commercial alternatives seem to be barely moving. Eventually Blender will reach them, and it will have a $1000+ club in its hand, swinging wildly. Maybe the competitors will have a $1000+ shield to protect them, or maybe not.

22

@BlenderTurtle - larger businesses are wary of GPL, both for it’s sometimes fuzzy rules and the ardent nature of it’s supporters.

As a basic example, lets say a studio develops an add-on for Blender. It’s all internal, so all fine and well, no rules being broken. Now they need to sub-contract some work to another studio, and to ensure the results are consistent they would share that plugin. But whoops - they’re now distributing. Is that permitted by the GPL - yes? no? Depends who you ask. Even the chance of legal action, no matter how small or ridiculous, is too much for most. Not to mention the risk of being targeted by open-source evangelists looking to score publicity points against a Big Bad Corporation. Compared to the modest cost differential of paying for a known license, even if closed source, is a business no-brainer.

23

Thanks, @dgorsman, for the explanation. That makes sense, and I hadn’t thought of that scenario. So it seems that the big studios could split into two directions: either keep paying for the commercial licenses and abiding by restricted access to the software they license, or adopt the whole open source philosophy and share any enhancements they make. I expect that most studios will go with the first option, at least for now. But I think we may eventually start seeing more studios choosing option two. Whether they’re relatively successful with that strategy we may see others follow suit.