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This seems to be becoming a serious tool for professional use, right? Are people switching over from Maya, Rhino and others? Are any movie studios using Blender

This seems to be becoming a serious tool for professional use, right? Are people switching over from Maya, Rhino and others? Are any movie studios using Blender as their main tool now? I imagine that Blender is becoming more and more of a tool for students who now don't have to pay anything to have a good 3D modeling tool.

gary_0 6y ago
Some newer game companies are using Blender, I think. It's definitely making inroads -- I've seen it mentioned in job postings. But larger companies tend to have decades-old pipelines that tightly integrate Maya/3DS/etc, so they're not going to switch any time soon.
dagmx 6y ago
Tangent animation in Canada did Next Gen on Netflix with Blender. Most of the major film studios have huge pipelines in Maya and Houdini etc... Until recently, Blender wasn't even interested in partaking in a pipeline (Tons' own words at SIGGRAPH 2017) Recently that has shifted and blender is looking to be able to be integrated into pipelines Which might help adoption. Such things as supporting Pixar USD and the VFX reference platform. In addition to that, Blender did an overhaul of their UI and renderer that brought a lot of interest in. I expect to see Blender in studios sooner rather than later, but I don't expect it to supplant the existing DCC packages. There's still a lot of friction to working with other DCCs, still a lot of performance issues with larger scenes, and then there's issues with support, extensibility and licensing. Corporations are averse to GPL and Blender is all GPL. They might get more adoption if they dual licensed their plugin API. Also since it has no C api, it's not attractive from an extensibility perspective. Finally, the major studios like to have support contracts to expedite fixes to blocking issues. Blender doesn't have such a thing. Yes , it's open source but it requires crewing up for something that a support contract would cover .
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > Also since it has no C api, it's not attractive from an extensibility perspective. Blender is very extensible via its Python API
  - dagmx 6y ago
    Sure, but you take a massive performance dive marshalling things through Python. Additionally the Python API is only semi stable between releases. If you want to add performent extensions to Blender, it requires maintaining an entire fork of the app. Contrast this to other DCCs, where they almost all provide compiled plugin support (usually C++) and API stability is largely guaranteed between releases. This makes Blender very unfriendly for production pipelines. Add to that, Blenders Python extensions don't have a very friendly UI story via ghost, whereas other DCCs largely provide a Qt + PySide2 backing. Fwiw I'm very much pro blender, having rolled it out to artists in production settings, but I am far from recommending it in any core production pipelines unless the studios are willing to maintain an entire fork of the app.
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Thanks for laying that out. It's very interesting. Maybe it's on the Blender roadmap to become attractive to movie studios, but I haven't checked. A question on pipelines: are those different from what's mentioned on Blender's Pipeline page? [1] > Finally, the major studios like to have support contracts to expedite fixes to blocking issues. It seems like blender has something along those lines provided by the Blender Institute [2] >> Co-Development with Blender Institute >> If your company or studio has specific development targets or needs, you can contact the Blender Institute to discuss options. >> We will hire or involve the developers for topics that align well with the Blender roadmap and benefit the contractor well. Such agreements can have milestones and deliverables. Co-development will especially work well when aligned to other projects that run in Blender Institute. Only projects that involve multiple months of work will be taken in consideration. [1]: https://www.blender.org/features/pipeline/ https://www.blender.org/features/pipeline/ [2]: https://www.blender.org/foundation/ https://www.blender.org/foundation/
  - dagmx 6y ago
    For pipelines, studio pipelines extend to far more than just the file format as I/O. It's things like integration of asset management tooling, referencing setups and the ability to send data easily between applications and departments. Blender has alembic support which is great for geometry, but its USD support is still nascent and limited to export. Additionally because it doesn't use Qt, it's hard to integrate tooling that can otherwise be shared between apps. (note there are third party projects to integrate Qt in Blender). It's also only recently that Blender has started following the VFX reference platform, which previously meant that all your dependencies and Python code needed to be redone to support Blenders versions. The support for things like OCIO etc is also relatively new. With regards to the Blender foundation and support contracts, it's quite different than what a traditional support contract offers. Usually a support contract means you have a dev that responds to your companies needs, where they'll support you with custom builds of the software if needed, including back porting patches to your production locked version. The Blender foundation instead takes donations towards development of future versions of Blender and it's still very hard to convince them to support specific studio needs. You're most likely NOT going to get backports of fixes to a production locked version of Blender. It's only recently (2.83) that they've started having LTS releases.. ---- To caveat all of this, I'm not saying Blender shouldn't be used for productions. It's very capable. I'm just providing perspective on why it's not finding a strong foothold against incumbents even when it has some very strong on the surface features that Maya doesn't for example at an infinitely better price. I have confidence that the Blender foundation are moving in the right direction after what seems to be a cultural and priorities change with 2.80 onwards. Part of the 2.80 changes also brought a lot of outside funding from Epic, Ubisoft, Facebook and more that I believe will help steer Blender well in the future to unseating Maya etc. I don't see Blender unseating Houdini anytime soon though.
justinclift 6y ago
Khara, creators of the popular Japanese EVANGELION series, officially started moving from 3ds Max to Blender last year: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...
tjpnz 6y ago
For big budget Hollywood work it's still primarily Maya/internally developed tools. Interestingly I've seen more people working in the industry adopting Blender for side projects.

gary_0 6y ago

Some newer game companies are using Blender, I think. It's definitely making inroads -- I've seen it mentioned in job postings. But larger companies tend to have decades-old pipelines that tightly integrate Maya/3DS/etc, so they're not going to switch any time soon.

dagmx 6y ago

Tangent animation in Canada did Next Gen on Netflix with Blender. Most of the major film studios have huge pipelines in Maya and Houdini etc... Until recently, Blender wasn't even interested in partaking in a pipeline (Tons' own words at SIGGRAPH 2017) Recently that has shifted and blender is looking to be able to be integrated into pipelines Which might help adoption. Such things as supporting Pixar USD and the VFX reference platform. In addition to that, Blender did an overhaul of their UI and renderer that brought a lot of interest in. I expect to see Blender in studios sooner rather than later, but I don't expect it to supplant the existing DCC packages. There's still a lot of friction to working with other DCCs, still a lot of performance issues with larger scenes, and then there's issues with support, extensibility and licensing. Corporations are averse to GPL and Blender is all GPL. They might get more adoption if they dual licensed their plugin API. Also since it has no C api, it's not attractive from an extensibility perspective. Finally, the major studios like to have support contracts to expedite fixes to blocking issues. Blender doesn't have such a thing. Yes , it's open source but it requires crewing up for something that a support contract would cover .

sangnoir 6y ago
> Also since it has no C api, it's not attractive from an extensibility perspective. Blender is very extensible via its Python API
- dagmx 6y ago
  Sure, but you take a massive performance dive marshalling things through Python. Additionally the Python API is only semi stable between releases. If you want to add performent extensions to Blender, it requires maintaining an entire fork of the app. Contrast this to other DCCs, where they almost all provide compiled plugin support (usually C++) and API stability is largely guaranteed between releases. This makes Blender very unfriendly for production pipelines. Add to that, Blenders Python extensions don't have a very friendly UI story via ghost, whereas other DCCs largely provide a Qt + PySide2 backing. Fwiw I'm very much pro blender, having rolled it out to artists in production settings, but I am far from recommending it in any core production pipelines unless the studios are willing to maintain an entire fork of the app.
LockAndLol 6y ago
Thanks for laying that out. It's very interesting. Maybe it's on the Blender roadmap to become attractive to movie studios, but I haven't checked. A question on pipelines: are those different from what's mentioned on Blender's Pipeline page? [1] > Finally, the major studios like to have support contracts to expedite fixes to blocking issues. It seems like blender has something along those lines provided by the Blender Institute [2] >> Co-Development with Blender Institute >> If your company or studio has specific development targets or needs, you can contact the Blender Institute to discuss options. >> We will hire or involve the developers for topics that align well with the Blender roadmap and benefit the contractor well. Such agreements can have milestones and deliverables. Co-development will especially work well when aligned to other projects that run in Blender Institute. Only projects that involve multiple months of work will be taken in consideration. [1]: https://www.blender.org/features/pipeline/ https://www.blender.org/features/pipeline/ [2]: https://www.blender.org/foundation/ https://www.blender.org/foundation/
- dagmx 6y ago
  For pipelines, studio pipelines extend to far more than just the file format as I/O. It's things like integration of asset management tooling, referencing setups and the ability to send data easily between applications and departments. Blender has alembic support which is great for geometry, but its USD support is still nascent and limited to export. Additionally because it doesn't use Qt, it's hard to integrate tooling that can otherwise be shared between apps. (note there are third party projects to integrate Qt in Blender). It's also only recently that Blender has started following the VFX reference platform, which previously meant that all your dependencies and Python code needed to be redone to support Blenders versions. The support for things like OCIO etc is also relatively new. With regards to the Blender foundation and support contracts, it's quite different than what a traditional support contract offers. Usually a support contract means you have a dev that responds to your companies needs, where they'll support you with custom builds of the software if needed, including back porting patches to your production locked version. The Blender foundation instead takes donations towards development of future versions of Blender and it's still very hard to convince them to support specific studio needs. You're most likely NOT going to get backports of fixes to a production locked version of Blender. It's only recently (2.83) that they've started having LTS releases.. ---- To caveat all of this, I'm not saying Blender shouldn't be used for productions. It's very capable. I'm just providing perspective on why it's not finding a strong foothold against incumbents even when it has some very strong on the surface features that Maya doesn't for example at an infinitely better price. I have confidence that the Blender foundation are moving in the right direction after what seems to be a cultural and priorities change with 2.80 onwards. Part of the 2.80 changes also brought a lot of outside funding from Epic, Ubisoft, Facebook and more that I believe will help steer Blender well in the future to unseating Maya etc. I don't see Blender unseating Houdini anytime soon though.

justinclift 6y ago

Khara, creators of the popular Japanese EVANGELION series, officially started moving from 3ds Max to Blender last year: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...

tjpnz 6y ago

For big budget Hollywood work it's still primarily Maya/internally developed tools. Interestingly I've seen more people working in the industry adopting Blender for side projects.