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Nice to see more professional commercial projects picking up Blender. It helps to see what are the things missing or suboptimal for "expert" users of the system

Nice to see more professional commercial projects picking up Blender. It helps to see what are the things missing or suboptimal for "expert" users of the system. Blender and OBS Studio are very good examples of FOSS software that are the best at what they do and can easily offer competition to even the commercial alternatives. Most of all their design and UI language is consistent - something very rarely seen in FOSS software. And they have incredible depth of features 90% of which are overkill for the casual user but the experts sure do appreciate them. And the best part is the well-thought of extensibility and API story. Both of them have a very good community of plugins and extensions which add very useful features without feeling out of place.

blooalien 5y ago
I first learned 3D graphics on Lightwave 3D on Commodore Amiga ages ago, and since then have tried many other 3D applications, many of which (like Lightwave) cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. True Fact: Blender beats every single one of them hands down in every way that I can think of. :)
- regularfry 5y ago
  Funny, there are UI affordances I remember from Lightwave 8 and 9 that I still miss when I'm using Blender. Capability-wise the set of functionality is streets ahead (although if I could find a reasonable approximation to LWCad I'd be deliriously happy), but the UI just doesn't click as nicely for me.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    Don't get me wrong; I did really love Lightwave. It was prolly my favorite by far before I got my brain wrapped around the Blender workflow. You can thank YouTube (and some amazing tutorial creators there) for me bein' able to finally grok Blender enough for it to replace all my other 3D tools properly. I think one of my favorite things still to this day about Blender is how heavily customizable the UI is. How easily you can recreate your favorite workspace layout from whatever software you're most comfortable with. I still tend to set me up a tab with a Lightwave-like 4 pane 3D view just because it's sometimes still useful to me. :)
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Isn't the reason why 3DSMax is so popular(or at least was haven't followed this in decades) because of the abundance of plugins? I never used any of these enough to understand what the advanced differences were, but 3DSMax definitely seems easier to use than Softimage and Maya. I'd assume one of the reasons why softimage died was precisely for that reason.
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    The thing I miss from 3ds Max is that you could have a non-destructive workflow for basic primitives because the geometry of simple objects like a cylinder just lived at the bottom of the modifier stack and you could change them later. Once you need to edit the mesh you have to “apply” that geometry and lock it in, but it’s handy to be able to go back and say “When I merge these objects the topology flows better with 24 faces around the cylinder instead of 16.” Haven’t used it too recently, but in blender I think that still means deleting the object and making a new one to replace it.
    - jtxt 5y ago
      Blender also has modifiers and can do many things non destructively. (Been a while since I've used Max heavily though.)
      - wlesieutre 5y ago
        Yes, but the geometry is not a modifier. The “how many rings/segments” configuration shows up during primitive creation, the geometry is generated, and that’s your geometry unless you want to delete it and make a new one. You can see what I’m talking about in 3ds here: https://youtu.be/Dp9Ozs3HjzY?t=120 https://youtu.be/Dp9Ozs3HjzY?t=120
        jtxt 5y ago
        Yes, I know what you mean now. (Perhaps they could add primitives to the modifiers for a similar workflow.) You can setup parametric primitives other ways though, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHL7jRo6mM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHL7jRo6mM Or putting a screw modifier on a curve... ( torus, sphere, any lathed object...) Or there's likely a number of different ways using geometry nodes. Granted it's not currently simple and intuitive though.
- wondenderboy 5y ago
  no you haven't - coz if you did - you know that there were no yt or pdf/html tuts around + the manuals were rly terrible. so you had to tinker with each and every program and ui from scratch yourself to see how it works. my basic test with every 3d package since then was to create a plain scene, add simple objects, textures, lights and camera to see how it behaves - and the only program that failed this test since 1988 is blender. I simply was not able to create a simple scene and render it with this program without hours spend on stupid tuts and learing keyboard shortcuts. and yes, the basic 3d principles are the same since then. So if u were around back then u would knew that even with the original lw & cinema 4d in 1989 on amiga or maya 1.0 on pc you could get results easier than with blender... ...and yes I refuse to use this crap ui for this reason. where blender shines tho is as a converter for some rare object formats, using the free plugins.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    Have you used the latest iteration of Blender? The UI is about two orders of magnitude less user hostile now. It's like three clicks to create a scene such as you described. I hated the previous UI:s but now the whole system in Blender is really coming together.
  - pksebben 5y ago
    this is simply not a universal experience. For myself, having no background in using other 3d software, I found blender 2.8 to be incredibly intuitive. I'm aware that the previous versions ui had a bad rap, but if a total newbie like myself can get the hang of it, it can't be all that bad
  - ChrisClark 5y ago
    >no you haven't
- jtxt 5y ago
  There are ways it's not better over other tools, but many of those are being addressed, because it's a strong open source project with increasing resources. Maya has a one up on the character animation tools, with addons like Studio Library for a pose library, though now Blender 3.0 in October(ish) will have a very similar feature. And there's others like lattice in the graph editor that Blender does not have yet. Houdini is awesome for node based procedural animation and simulation, now Blender has Geometry Nodes, as a step in that direction...
  - blooalien 5y ago
    Geometry nodes are fun as hell. You played with them yet? I wasn't a fan of all the node based stuff at first, but it's really grown on me…
    - capableweb 5y ago
      If Blender comes close to Houdini in the future in terms of procedural workflow, especially with physics, then Blender has a real chance at conquering the space.
  - cthalupa 5y ago
    The "Node Everything" project is producing such exciting stuff. Animation nodes and now geometry nodes have made some really amazing things possible. Geometry nodes have been iterated on so quickly, too! Pretty sure Blender is going to be best in class, or very, very, close for basically every portion of 3D cg work within the next 5 years.
- plufz 5y ago
  But does it really beat every single one? I’m a blender user myself and really like it but I was under the impression that most professionals use Maya. And I guessed for some reason?
  - failrate 5y ago
    It is what they are frequently trained on in school. That is one reason for it to be an industry standard.
  - MathYouF 5y ago
    I'm also a sort of amateur at 3D modeling (though my background is in VR programming so I have a lot of exposure to it) so take my knowledge with a grain of salt, but afaiu there's a few different steps: Modeling: Maya is best, Blender is a good substitute Sculpting/topology: Zbrush is best, Maya is runner up, Blender is a good substitute UV Unwrapping: All the above are good at this Texturing: Substance Painter is best, Blender is a good substitute Animation: Maya and Blender are comparable So as far as I understand the cool thing is, aside Blender is essentially a nearly as good replacement for Maya, and can do everything to an adequite degree for high quality production. The only things Blender is decidedly not an equal substitute for is Sculpting compared to Zbrush and Texturing compared to Substance Painter. Again, I'm not an expert, but I think the above is roughly accurate.
    - blooalien 5y ago
      I keep hearing really good things about Substance Painter from a ton of folk. I'ma really have to prolly have a proper look at it sometime soon-ish.
      - Tomte 5y ago
        It's now Adobe's, though, so no more lifeteime licenses, only subscriptions. 50 dollars a month (with introductory price of 25 dollars).
        5y ago
animal531 5y ago
I have one big problem with Blender, and that's all the upgrades its been through. As a result when you're trying to figure out how to do something you can't just google a youtube video because inevitably it'll be of a different version. So you'll see a guy telling you, "now click the little x button" etc. Of course in your updated version the x button has long since been replaced by something else.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think in most cases it is relatively easy to find the button in the new version, there are exceptions though. Hotkeys didn't change for ages I think. But I would still recommend to use the version of Blender from the tutorial. If you get familiar with the rendering pipeline, you will find those buttons more easily.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Blender has become so awesome in the latest versions. I think switching from other software is quite easy, even if some things work differently. It also has an industry standard preset for hotkeys... I use it as an amateur, but there are really good tutorials that allow you to render high quality scenes in a day or two. I use the occasional 3D model on a website, and the pipeline from our industry CAD software to the web with an short detour through Blender works flawlessly.

blooalien 5y ago

I first learned 3D graphics on Lightwave 3D on Commodore Amiga ages ago, and since then have tried many other 3D applications, many of which (like Lightwave) cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. True Fact: Blender beats every single one of them hands down in every way that I can think of. :)

regularfry 5y ago
Funny, there are UI affordances I remember from Lightwave 8 and 9 that I still miss when I'm using Blender. Capability-wise the set of functionality is streets ahead (although if I could find a reasonable approximation to LWCad I'd be deliriously happy), but the UI just doesn't click as nicely for me.
- blooalien 5y ago
  Don't get me wrong; I did really love Lightwave. It was prolly my favorite by far before I got my brain wrapped around the Blender workflow. You can thank YouTube (and some amazing tutorial creators there) for me bein' able to finally grok Blender enough for it to replace all my other 3D tools properly. I think one of my favorite things still to this day about Blender is how heavily customizable the UI is. How easily you can recreate your favorite workspace layout from whatever software you're most comfortable with. I still tend to set me up a tab with a Lightwave-like 4 pane 3D view just because it's sometimes still useful to me. :)
rjzzleep 5y ago
Isn't the reason why 3DSMax is so popular(or at least was haven't followed this in decades) because of the abundance of plugins? I never used any of these enough to understand what the advanced differences were, but 3DSMax definitely seems easier to use than Softimage and Maya. I'd assume one of the reasons why softimage died was precisely for that reason.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  The thing I miss from 3ds Max is that you could have a non-destructive workflow for basic primitives because the geometry of simple objects like a cylinder just lived at the bottom of the modifier stack and you could change them later. Once you need to edit the mesh you have to “apply” that geometry and lock it in, but it’s handy to be able to go back and say “When I merge these objects the topology flows better with 24 faces around the cylinder instead of 16.” Haven’t used it too recently, but in blender I think that still means deleting the object and making a new one to replace it.
  - jtxt 5y ago
    Blender also has modifiers and can do many things non destructively. (Been a while since I've used Max heavily though.)
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      Yes, but the geometry is not a modifier. The “how many rings/segments” configuration shows up during primitive creation, the geometry is generated, and that’s your geometry unless you want to delete it and make a new one. You can see what I’m talking about in 3ds here: https://youtu.be/Dp9Ozs3HjzY?t=120 https://youtu.be/Dp9Ozs3HjzY?t=120
      - jtxt 5y ago
        Yes, I know what you mean now. (Perhaps they could add primitives to the modifiers for a similar workflow.) You can setup parametric primitives other ways though, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHL7jRo6mM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHL7jRo6mM Or putting a screw modifier on a curve... ( torus, sphere, any lathed object...) Or there's likely a number of different ways using geometry nodes. Granted it's not currently simple and intuitive though.
wondenderboy 5y ago
no you haven't - coz if you did - you know that there were no yt or pdf/html tuts around + the manuals were rly terrible. so you had to tinker with each and every program and ui from scratch yourself to see how it works. my basic test with every 3d package since then was to create a plain scene, add simple objects, textures, lights and camera to see how it behaves - and the only program that failed this test since 1988 is blender. I simply was not able to create a simple scene and render it with this program without hours spend on stupid tuts and learing keyboard shortcuts. and yes, the basic 3d principles are the same since then. So if u were around back then u would knew that even with the original lw & cinema 4d in 1989 on amiga or maya 1.0 on pc you could get results easier than with blender... ...and yes I refuse to use this crap ui for this reason. where blender shines tho is as a converter for some rare object formats, using the free plugins.
- fsloth 5y ago
  Have you used the latest iteration of Blender? The UI is about two orders of magnitude less user hostile now. It's like three clicks to create a scene such as you described. I hated the previous UI:s but now the whole system in Blender is really coming together.
- pksebben 5y ago
  this is simply not a universal experience. For myself, having no background in using other 3d software, I found blender 2.8 to be incredibly intuitive. I'm aware that the previous versions ui had a bad rap, but if a total newbie like myself can get the hang of it, it can't be all that bad
- ChrisClark 5y ago
  >no you haven't
jtxt 5y ago
There are ways it's not better over other tools, but many of those are being addressed, because it's a strong open source project with increasing resources. Maya has a one up on the character animation tools, with addons like Studio Library for a pose library, though now Blender 3.0 in October(ish) will have a very similar feature. And there's others like lattice in the graph editor that Blender does not have yet. Houdini is awesome for node based procedural animation and simulation, now Blender has Geometry Nodes, as a step in that direction...
- blooalien 5y ago
  Geometry nodes are fun as hell. You played with them yet? I wasn't a fan of all the node based stuff at first, but it's really grown on me…
  - capableweb 5y ago
    If Blender comes close to Houdini in the future in terms of procedural workflow, especially with physics, then Blender has a real chance at conquering the space.
- cthalupa 5y ago
  The "Node Everything" project is producing such exciting stuff. Animation nodes and now geometry nodes have made some really amazing things possible. Geometry nodes have been iterated on so quickly, too! Pretty sure Blender is going to be best in class, or very, very, close for basically every portion of 3D cg work within the next 5 years.
plufz 5y ago
But does it really beat every single one? I’m a blender user myself and really like it but I was under the impression that most professionals use Maya. And I guessed for some reason?
- failrate 5y ago
  It is what they are frequently trained on in school. That is one reason for it to be an industry standard.
- MathYouF 5y ago
  I'm also a sort of amateur at 3D modeling (though my background is in VR programming so I have a lot of exposure to it) so take my knowledge with a grain of salt, but afaiu there's a few different steps: Modeling: Maya is best, Blender is a good substitute Sculpting/topology: Zbrush is best, Maya is runner up, Blender is a good substitute UV Unwrapping: All the above are good at this Texturing: Substance Painter is best, Blender is a good substitute Animation: Maya and Blender are comparable So as far as I understand the cool thing is, aside Blender is essentially a nearly as good replacement for Maya, and can do everything to an adequite degree for high quality production. The only things Blender is decidedly not an equal substitute for is Sculpting compared to Zbrush and Texturing compared to Substance Painter. Again, I'm not an expert, but I think the above is roughly accurate.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    I keep hearing really good things about Substance Painter from a ton of folk. I'ma really have to prolly have a proper look at it sometime soon-ish.
    - Tomte 5y ago
      It's now Adobe's, though, so no more lifeteime licenses, only subscriptions. 50 dollars a month (with introductory price of 25 dollars).
      - 5y ago

animal531 5y ago

I have one big problem with Blender, and that's all the upgrades its been through. As a result when you're trying to figure out how to do something you can't just google a youtube video because inevitably it'll be of a different version. So you'll see a guy telling you, "now click the little x button" etc. Of course in your updated version the x button has long since been replaced by something else.

raxxorrax 5y ago
I think in most cases it is relatively easy to find the button in the new version, there are exceptions though. Hotkeys didn't change for ages I think. But I would still recommend to use the version of Blender from the tutorial. If you get familiar with the rendering pipeline, you will find those buttons more easily.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Blender has become so awesome in the latest versions. I think switching from other software is quite easy, even if some things work differently. It also has an industry standard preset for hotkeys... I use it as an amateur, but there are really good tutorials that allow you to render high quality scenes in a day or two. I use the occasional 3D model on a website, and the pipeline from our industry CAD software to the web with an short detour through Blender works flawlessly.