In Switzerland, graphics and creativ schools have to use Maya and Cinema4D, because they are the mostly used in professional purposes. But i guess, every student gets enough informations about other software in general and certainly about Blender! When i came out of my training, i would have loved to buy Maya or Cinema4D… But money wasn’t at the rendez-vous! 
Well, found Blender too…
I started with Blender when 2.45 was just being released as my starting programme. I have just purchased Houdini Apprentice HD 10 and am going to be using them side by side with each other. Blender is a great programme and is capable of professional looking stuff (I created in a test file that I lost and thought I backed up realistic grass in Internal and just messing around).
On a side note: After looking at various programmes for a long while I settled on Blender and then tried to move into TrueSpace but it unfortunately collapsed for my secondary programme:( which lead me to SideFx and Houdini Apprentice HD which incorporates Python now.
Alot of people are obsessive compulsive and just stuck in their way of just using one programme and no others which is sad because Major Studios can and do use other programmes than just the main one that they have chosen.
DJ
Hi,
As to the question of capabilities, both have strengths and weaknesses. Depends on the task at hand.
If he plans to teach working with motion capture, then Blender isn’t really suitable (although then he would likely be going with motionbuilder, not 3DS Max). For certain rendering stuff, especially if he is teaching architetual primarily, he will want to have VRay available as a plugin to Blender (same as with 3DS Max).
If he is planning to user 2.5 or later, then DXF would need to be imported via 2.49 first since that plugin is on hold for awhile.
If he wants to use directx shading pipeline for some reason, then he would need to use 3DS Max.
As to advantages of Blender - integrated sculpting tools; better UV mapping; integrated compositing and non linear video editing; integrated game engine.
the arguement about ‘what commercial studios use’ is questionable. Over at the technical director forum, most studios were dropping 3DS Max from their pipeline. Most were switching to either a mixed pipeline and using standardized formats, or switching to primarily Maya.
A user should know the basics of other 3D software, so they don’t need excessive training to get productive (I might even recommend using a 3DS Max or Maya hotkey setup for blender 2.5). However the school doesn’t need to teach using that software.
If this is europe, a lot of studios are switching over to Blender pipelines.
LetterRip
My point stands - It’s relatively easy to switch between Max and Maya, their interfaces and workflow are 90% similar. Switching between Blender and either one is basically like starting from scratch, which is why I’d argue that the commercial software is a more productive skill for students to learn (until 2.6 brings a more standard and widely applicable interface).
On the other hand, it’s a good point that with Blender, students would also be able to work from home.
There’s only one issue:
Your school can afford a 3dsMax class for students.
If yes, your teacher should teach 3dsMax to students and there’s no way Blender might replace the subject of study.
Main reasons:
-
3dsMax is an industry standard.
Students are learning to work with certain software packages to get necessary skills for their future work. 3dsMax provides quite a nice employment guarantee both for a freelancer and design studio employee. Blender provides guarantee to get job only for a freelancer (rarely for an employee).
Let us say we have the following situation: two completely identical candidates are looking for a 3d designer job. One has Blender in resume, another has 3dsMax. I can surely tell that employer will take the one with expertise in 3dsMax (simply because employer knows this software). -
3dsMax is heavily superior. Sure, you can learn basics with Blender. But so you can in 3dsMax. Talking about more sophisticated solutions and toolsets 3dsMax is way much superior and you won’t have to study a new software package if there’s a requirement to get into some certain solution which is quite popular on the market.
Okay, if your school:
- Cannot afford a 3dsMax class for students.
- Doesn’t want to get free trial versions for education.
- Doesn’t want to get into legal issues by pirating software.
and all three conditions are met, the choice is obvious: Blender.
zardoz,
the school isn’t switching ‘tomorrow’ - It would be on the next semester which would start after 2.6 is out. So the UI differences between Blender and other packages isn’t much of a deal.
Agent_AL,
where do you think ‘3DSMax is ‘heavily superior’’. Modeling - no; UV mapping - no; texturing - no (people do bodypaint if they need top flight 3D painting tools); rigging - for very basic rigging yes, for complex rigs no (the TDs mentioned while CAT is cool, it isn’t flexible enough for commercial pipelines so they end up using regular rigging methods); animation - for character based no; animation mocap based - yes but people use motionbuilder if they need good mocap tools; for rendering - yes - but… people use VRay if they need good architectual rendering. 3DS Max does have some superior plugins, but schools don’t get the plugin packs.
As to
- Cannot afford a 3dsMax class for students.
- Doesn’t want to get free trial versions for education.
- Doesn’t want to get into legal issues by pirating software.
2 isn’t an option since free trials are 30 days. A single class is 90 days, and most students will take multiple classes spread out over multiple years.
- isn’t an option
There are a number of options that should be of concern to schools, not just 1. There is a reason schools are switching to Blender in large numbers, and it isn’t just price.
LetterRip
Modeling - no
I thought people preferred Max to Blender when modeling because of the inclusion of Ngons and tons of other tools, (which would apply until Bmesh is in Trunk)?
Modeling in Blender will not advance much until Bmesh is in, but I imagine a lot of development of modeling tools once Bmesh is complete.
Ace Dragon,
he said ‘heavily superior’ - a different work flow isn’t heavy superiority. Some find the blender modeling tool workflow faster, others find 3DSMax faster.
Also the time frame for this change would be summer, which will have bmesh included by then,
LetterRip
Blender is a very good modeller, but people have their own style… max has many many tools, but personally I always found it convoluted and much prefer blender…
Maya can be customised into a very good modeller, but out of the box has an awful workflow and some absolutely terrible default behaviours… (splitting and joining objects shouldn’t be so painful…)
Blender (as you point out) doesn’t have ngons… or a “point 2point” cut tool or inset tool…
so much of this is personal preference…
My point stands - It’s relatively easy to switch between Max and Maya, their interfaces and workflow are 90% similar. Switching between Blender and either one is basically like starting from scratch
Absolutely NOT my experience…
Max and Maya are poles apart… (as is blender)…
when it comes down to it ( Ilearned blender most recently out of all these packages) superficially (selection, view nav, shortcuts etc etc) all comletely diverse with very little common ground…
at a deeper level they are all the same (seeing as they all provide tools to do teh samejob…
transferring from one to the other with no prior experience of the package but a high degree of 3d knowledge takes a similar amount of time…(assuming similar effort)
1 day…2weeks, 6 weeks, 1 year, 3 years…
if you only give it 1 hour without training materials then blender loses… but after two weeks of learning then I’d say the differences in learning curve are leveled… and after longer periods blender is actually easier ina lot of ways…
I can’t argue with your experience MichaelW, I can only state my experience, which was that after learning Maya in school, the transition to Max was extremely easy and everything seemed very immediately familiar. Contrary to my experience with Blender.
Yeah, well, maybe I’m holding a grudge that when 3ds transferred from dos to windows (and became max) it never seemed the same again…
Well , blender is free , so even if he’ll teach you 3DSmax , he’ll also be able to teach a bit of blender just to show different way of doing things.
Unless he really don’t wants loose time showing different method in both software.
Peace.
where do you think ‘3DSMax is ‘heavily superior’’
- Modelling - n-gons, splines, powerful polygon modelling plugins (polyboost, for instance). If you have no experience with 3dsMax (and you obviously don’t) just look for videos with feature demonstrations and see how really superior and convenient there modelling is.
- UV Mapping - 3dsMax UVW has nearly all the features Blender has + real 3d space manipulators for projections. Polyboost adds some really neat workflow making this process “heavily superior” in terms of convenience.
- Rendering - integrated Mental Ray says it all. Even scanline is far better than BI in terms of speed and precision.
Do you really consider that Blender being developed by enthusiasts might be as functional as 4000$ worth 3dsMax is?
Most developers are Blender enthusiasts, but Brecht and Ton are full time paid Blender coders due to the business format of the Institute and Campbell has been a full time developer during the Open Movie Projects.
Matt Ebb is currently on paid development time from the Institute due to a grant (though not developing now due to him being on holidays)
to quote Ed Burne talking about Allanis Morrisette: “ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” is not ironic… it’s just un-fortunate…
…if later on you found out that a spoon would have done the job… say you needed to take the lid off a tin of paint… now that’s ironic
90% of modelling is done with 5% of the tools, this is why personal preference is so prevalent…
many many modellers out there would pick max for modelling every day of the week, many many others would not touch it with a barge pole and prefer modo or lightwave or silo or blender…
“Functional” means different things to different people too… it doesn’t matter how much functionality an app has if you don’t need or use those functions… so yes, blender developed by enthusiasts can be more functional then $4000 worth of max
And where it counts blender offers an immediacy to modelling that you just don’t get in max or maya… modo/lightwave /silo also feel more immediate to me BTW! but everyone is different…
Blenders uv tools are excellent and fast but you need to know UV space… Given the choice between using a widget or using the blender tools its blender every time for me…and I’m sure I’m not alone there…
the thing is that every app has “unique” features and a list of stuff that it does better than other apps, a list of stuff that it does worse…
Which is why I say earlier in this thread that the only answer to:
“why use blender over any other”
is
“because I like it”
For me it’s mostly an interface issue I think. Over the years I’ve noticed that Blender works with me the best. It’s by no means perfect, but compared to 3ds max Blender feels much better. I haven’t really missed any max features, maybe just because of what has been said above - Blender feels good to me and I like it.
I my mind max has a terrible interface that I can’t work with anymore. Granted max has a bunch of nice features, but so what when despite of 4000$*of awesomeness using them feels like a struggle? When dealing with real-life deadlines, It’s still important to use the tools that work with you the best, and that’s a personal preference really. It’s perfectly fine to not use Blender too.
Point is: here in Switzerland, 3D Max is NOT considered as “professional”! I mean really. No school will teach 3d by any means. Industries and architects never use it. Maya and C4D are ruling. Some will mention it’s existence, because they will suspect soem of the young people to have heard about… but that will be all.