If the instructor already knows Max, I would go with Max. As much as I like Blender, its more awkward when the instructor is teaching with software he/she isn’t familiar with.
There’s also free 3DSMax for the students? If so, then just quit asking here and go for it. It’s an “industry standard” and that means industry workers must use it or die from starvation. Blender’s only used by communists on strike and filthy atheists who don’t pray for any enterprise God.
I would use 3ds Max if I had to, but the students doesn’t really have a saying in this. It still depends on the economy of the school.
I think the main question is: Can your teacher teach blender as well as he can teach 3ds max?
Otherwise both programs can do what you need. It’s all about the teacher, as always…
Well, if he learns it, I’m sure he can.
[note: It came up quite long, sorry for that, hope it helps]
I think Blender has several aspects that can make you choose it. I don’t know all the other softwares well enough, but I have an idea.
I guess your teacher will not care much about it’s price, he will care more for if you will be able to do what you need to do, and how efficiently.
One big advantage of Blender is it’s speed. Not only fast for processing things, but has fast workflows which let you be productive in short time. This is very important nowadays when you go out to work, everyone want things done fast. And Blender can.
Also fast to open. This may not seem important, but when you have a buggy app, or very resources hungry, and it has bugs, you will be opening that app more often than you think. And if takes five minutes to open, you lose very precious time, lose patience, and you start working with fear. You are uncertain when it is going to blow up on your face.
So this bring to the next fast aspect: “fast saving”. In that other app, if it tends to crash, you will start to need to save things more often because you don’t trust it enough, and each time you save a relatively big project it can take quite some time. And if you do it often, you will keep adding tension to your nerves if you’re near a deadline.
Other aspect is “selections”. Let your teacher select things in the app he wants to teach and then in Blender, in a relatively crowded scene. Selections is what we do the most in a 3D app, Blender handles this Beautifully.
In most cases you will have to only click once in Blender, and without much precision from your side, and if you selected the wrong element, Blender has a priority order for the next elements that will be selected.
This is very important not to want to throw you screen against the wall, and to work fast. You will not need to click many times without no luck, then rotate to find a better angle to see if there you have luck, and so on.
That makes you work more comfident and fast because you always know what will happen, and you know Blender will do it right, thus letting you get results Fast.
Talking about fast, UV tools are also fast, anda good set of them.
Also posing subdivided characters is possible at a reasonable speed.
Blender has everything integrated. For instance you have an integrated compositor, you don’t need to export things to work in other soft, that can be a big waste of time. If you want to test something in your render and then see how it would look in your composited result, you just press One key, that’s all.
Imagine if you have to do this several times, because you are doing several tests. In other apps you have to export each and every time you try… in Blender: “press a key”.
You have everything you need in one place: You can model,:do projection paint texturing, do retopology, bake normal maps, displacements, colors, animate… And sculpting is integrated… this is a great thing. You can have a high-res model right in your scene being deformed by an armature for instance (or any other modifier), and is workable without exploding your computer.
Also you can modify the base topology of a sculpted character, and keeping all the displacements!! which app can do this? Z-brush? Mudbox?.. ask those to do some animation. Or to be so integrated with the animation package to be able to do some tweaks here and there to the sculpt and keep working without needing to do the exportation process.
The list is long (and I’m sure don’t know all and forget many) like for instance the “everything can drive anything” possiblity. Other apps can do similar, but not sure if at the extent Blender can (maybe XSI ICE?). And when having the ability of doing “anything drive anything” is very important that Blender has everything integrated, because the possibilities are inmense. For instance you can drive the brightness of the scene in a node of the compositor depending on, for instance, the angle of any object you choose in the scene.
In packages where there is not such integration as in Blender, such things are not possible.
I guess seeing all the benefits would take hours. Two very important to tell your teacher are “Speed” and “Integration”.
You will be able to do the job Fast (high requirement nowadays) and without unnecessary stress, which is a virtuous circle for being productive (they want you to be that).
And yea, your teacher will be saving you several thousand dollars on software, but CG people don’t care much about that, they like much more you to be fast, so don’t tell him about the price.
Thanks eclectiel for the precise answer 
I hope my teacher can see does advantages to.
hi,
Tell him (Your teacher) ,that he should see 2.5 development update thread, and I think he should change his opinion 
Yeah I already told him about it 
First of all, I just quickly browsed through the responses after reading the initial post, so I hope I’m not repeating too much of what has already been said. If I am, I apologize in advance, and hope you can just take my original thoughts from this post.
I have used, and probably will use other 3D software, including commercial and open source packages. If a place where I want to work uses a software, I’m going to use that software. There’s nothing emotional, or sentimental, or personal about that decision. I have been using Blender for a very short time, and I do not my pledge a monogamous allegiance to it, or any other software. I will continue to use Blender as long as it remains as powerful, free, and well documented as it is today. With that being said, I am impressed with Blender due to the reasons I just stated, and I wish I had learned to use it sooner. Most of the reason I didn’t is because I was once in a similar situation as Nesrail, and I used my instructor’s judgment in lieu of my own. Now that I have that very long disclaimer out of the way, I can actually attempt to address the topic at hand.
No offense to you Nesrail or your instructor, but I’m tired of hearing this scenario time and time again. It’s like a bad case of deja vu that won’t quit. When I read the title of your topic I thought, “Oh no, not again.”
Everyone here has listed some really great reasons why to use Blender, so I won’t get into those. If your question to your instructor was “Why use Blender over any other software?” your instructor’s response should most appropriately be “Why not?”
I think when you mentioned Blender to your instructor, the responsibility became his or hers to bear. That is, if the decision to use Blender solely or even partially relies on your instructor as opposed to your university. If your instructor does have input to add, then your instructor should assume responsibility to inform his or her students of the option to use a powerful and creative tool with which to create their art, and or gain employment. The instructor should also assume responsibility to the university that he or she teaches for in order to save the university funds that might very well be better spent elsewhere.
The dilemma you, your fellow classmates, the instructor, and the university face is the possibility that prejudice and ignorance about Blender may rob everyone involved of a potentially synergistically beneficial experience. Despite the decision made by your instructor or university, I hope everyone involved has the presence of mind to fully research for themselves whether or not Blender is an opportunity they will take advantage of.
In addition to all of the great features and resources that were named before this post, I would like to add that if the decision is as much of your instructor’s to make as you have presented it to be, then I urge you to show your instructor other instructors who are using Blender. For example, Kernon Dillon @ blendernewbies, John Williamson @ montagestudio, Sebastian Koenig, Jason Welsh, Pablo Vasquez…Apollos @ Blenderunderground, any of the tutorials @ Blendercookie… etc. In my humble opinion, the conflict is not as much about 3D studio max vs Blender as it may appear to be, or even commercial vs open source. Since Blender is capable, the issue may very well be or become a matter of knowing 3d and cg concepts fundamentally vs knowing how a particular software works. Another obstacle that you and your instructor may face is the fear that his or her job will be obsolete if he or she, or the university realizes how much free education exists for a free software that is powerful enough to compete with many of its high end counterparts and surpass many of its low end ones.
There’s so much more that can be said about this, so I’ll let others say it.
Before I sign off though, I’d like to add that if your university or instructor decides not to use Blender, perhaps you can start a Blender Users Group for your university. Also…and this is for everyone…if you want to learn 3D, learn 3D, not Blender, not Max, not anything else. If you want to write a note to a friend, there is less of a tendency to get distracted by whether or not a number two pencil is better than a pen. So please, just write the note! A great resource for this is guerrillacg dot org
Jeez, I didn’t realize this post was gonna be this long. Thanks for reading. I think I’m going pick this up on my blog, or over at blendernewbies.
Absolutely, if your workplace needs you to use a particular piece of software, you use it. I used Maya (shudder…) at my last job.
And getting experience with a range of different software is useful not just to be able to hit-the-ground-running at new jobs, but also it helps solidify the concepts and techniques as something separate from the software (which is really important, IMO).
If your school is planning on only teaching with a single 3d package, they are doing a disservice to their students. If your school is trying to choose between Max and Blender, I say use both. Swap them out from time to time, so the students can see how the concepts and techniques transfer between them. It will help them wrap their heads around it, and will also make it easier to pick up other software in the future.
How should he teach you if he know nothing about Blender?
Just save your energy and ask him to install Blender for school machines, so anyone can use Blender if want to. You can use them side by side. You don’t have to pick ONE and ONLY
I’m sure by learning 3ds max, you will learn to be better Blender artist than you can imagine. Must be frustrating if teacher wonder “Where is hmm… skin modifier? Let’s check from internet!”
A contributing factor is also the support and community that surrounds a product, as far as that is concerned the blender community is second to none.
lots of things, money, projects and some people just do it for credit or fun.
Blender is more than capable of doing everything you need. The only real pluses are that you get either mental ray or v-ray to render with, Which means much better looking portfolio pieces.
I’ve not used Max, but from what I’ve heard, there will be a lot less crashes involved for students with Blender.
I am going to say stick with Max though. There is only ONE reason that I’ll give for this, but it’s very important; When the students leave school and apply for work at a studio, the guy who knows how to use Max inside and out is going to get a better chance at the position than the Blender guy.
I’ll be blunt. Your instructor is full of crap.
If he had said he wont be using Blender because he doesn’t have enough experience with it, I wouldn’t mind – but for a multimedia and web design instructor to say that Blender isn’t good enough for his needs is downright insulting.
I’m guessing this guy must have a kick ass portfolio, right?
Ha! Multimedia design at Teknisk Skole? There’s one in Århus, so I’m assuming that’s the one you’re attending.
Anyway, Blender is very capable of producing professional output. Compared to Max it has some advantages and drawbacks. Depends what you want to do.
I am ith blender all the way on this topic one way i can explaine this is that it is
FREE FREE FREE
Before i got blender i was thinking about 3d max and i was amazed when i saw the price and i rejoiced on the fact that it was free.
Tell your teacher to get blender it very cost effective and is simple to learn as long as you no the hot keys
I’d say a school should be teaching a commercial software such as Max, that will be the most helpful for students in the future if they want to get into the industry.
Once 2.6 comes out, however, it can be keymapped to be similar to commercial programs and it will become useful for learning general concepts that can be applied to any program.
In summary, once 2.6 comes out, its the best deal for education since its free. But right now, students should learn a commercial program because it will be the most helpful skill once they are out of school.
I agree with this line of thinking. However, here’s why I think Blender is the best choice.
If “what you can do with a 3D software” is the most important thing, what’s the most important factor in achieving great results? I think it’s practice. Blender has an advantage here, because it’s free and portable, it can be run anywhere. Students can run it at home, instead of just school lab time. Students who develop an interest in CG can really go crazy with the software, and it can become a passion without financial obstacles.
More opportunity = more practice = better results.