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This is actually the first time I've heard of Blender, and...wow. Every once in a while the free software scene totally blows my mind, and these folks really s

This is actually the first time I've heard of Blender, and...wow. Every once in a while the free software scene totally blows my mind, and these folks really seem to have the big-name tools in their sights. It's been a long, long time since I understood 10% of what a production-class modeling and animation tool can do, but maybe someone here knows: How does Blender compare to Maya, for example? What would this project need to achieve before folks would start switching?

steren 15y ago
I think Blender really is different from other graphics free-software: - It is baked by a very strong foundation. - It is used by real studios all over the world (and more and more used) - It is used by the scientific world a lot. - The new release cycle is around 10 weeks. And every release ships with awesome features. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cycle http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cy... - the community is strong, big and active. - it supports a lot of OS, and the experience is great in all of them. - The foundation is very user focused : * they create "open movies" to identify the needs and the weakness of the use of Blender is pro environement. You don't know about Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/) ? * they try to focus on real problems, not on eye-candy or extra-features that would impress but not be useful once.
spiralganglion 15y ago
Blender has been around for decades, and enjoyed a fair bit of popularity in the 90s when it was a great point-of-entry for budding 3D artists. Since then, it's fluctuated in its rate of evolution relative to the industry standard. It always had cutting edge features, but they were trapped behind a troublesome UI, while the big competitors made their tools ever easier to use. In recent years, the gap has been drastically closed due to a ground-up rewrite, completely new approach to the UI, and a tremendous effort to modernize. Unfortunately, Blender still has a bad reputation, a legacy from the previous design. What's more, many studios and schools have firmly entrenched workflows, or depend on custom extensions written for a specific tool. On the other hand, Blender seems to be enjoying popularity in the booming indie games community, where it integrates well with other free tools like Unity 3D. With the new design, I wouldn't be surprised if Blender's best and most-popular days were ahead of it. I see share growth coming from individuals looking to make great graphics on a shoestring budget, as opposed to big studios or schools adopting it instead of Maya or Max. I would argue that it is now roughly equivalent to those other tools in terms of features and usability. So, no real reason to switch (which requires expensive adjustments to existing workflows), but great incentive to adopt it in the first place (because it's free).
- trop 15y ago
  The scriptability of Blender has been a big draw for me. It's pretty deeply integrated with Python. One can even use it as an interactive 3D front-end for a substantial Python script. That is, let the script create and manipulate the objects, and just use Blender to view what is happening. In Blender 2.4 it was possible to keep a script continuously animating the scene, something I found tough to make happen after the 2.5 overhaul. Blender 2.4 also let scripts create UI components, such as entire control panels to influence the running script. The last time I checked in 2.5, this was either not possible or not well documented. But I'm not up to date on this. I'm also not familiar for comparison with the scriptability of Maya or other tools.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    Maya has multiple scripting facilities. It has its native language, MEL, but for a long time it has also supported Python scripts, more recently with a new API. In fact, much of its GUI is built using scripts that come with it. There is some lack of consistency between the different approaches, not just in the languages but in the presentation of the underlying data model, which isn't always helpful. Still, as a guy with a programming background, I actually found it easier to figure out how Maya works by playing with scripts and the underlying object model than by experimenting with the user interface. :-)
Silhouette 15y ago
> How does Blender compare to Maya, for example? I know some 3D guys who prefer the way Blender handles a lot of basic modelling tasks. Others prefer Maya. I get the feeling it's a lot to do with what you're familiar with these days, because they're both quite capable in terms of functionality but they both have quite powerful, complicated user interfaces. Unless something changed very recently, Blender still can't use FBX files properly. That alone is a deal-breaker for a lot of projects because FBX is very widely used in the rest of the industry. Also, for all the talk of community around Blender, Maya still has a far bigger user base and far more professional-level tools you can plug in if you need more than the standard offering. On the flip side, Blender is free and Maya costs several thousand. And to get Maya you have to deal with Autodesk, whose approach to customer service appears to be that they don't provide any. And the last two major releases of Maya have been absurdly buggy, to the point that Maya 2012 is already on 4 hotfixes and counting.
- someone_welsh 15y ago
  My experience of Autodesk is that customer services don't exist in order to maintain a healthy cottage industry of books and training courses.
to3m 15y ago
Two basic things missing, from my notes at the time (1 year ago, don't remember which version, think it was the latest non-beta at the time): <<< - Texture display in the viewport. Somewhat amazingly, Blender doesn't seem to support this. When you're doing UV editing, you can see the polygons that use the UVs you're editing mapped with the texture you've selected as being visible in the UV editor, but that's about it. The sort of textured display that I'd expect, where all polygons are displayed textured with the texture(s) from their material, doesn't seem to exist. - No N-sided polygon support. Yes, seriously. Quads or tris or nothing! So I think there's a mode where it works like MAX, where it works in tris but hides some of the edges to fool you (N-gons I think they call it), but I couldn't work out how to make this happen. (And there's some guy rewriting the mesh editing core to support N-sided polygons, but it's not done yet.) This caused me a big problem: Blender kept getting in my way! No way to create a rectangle with 6 verts, that's going to get an edge in the next step that splits it into two, because Blender will turn the intermediate result into triangles, forcing me to clean things up -- an extra step, that I didn't want, nor did I need. Now, maybe there is some special tool that I should be using, that does this in a Blender fashion -- but, seriously, I don't care. I can do things my way in every other package. >>> Blender is one of the very few programs that has successfully moved me to tears of sheer frustration (funnily enough, I am very unlikely ever to try using it again), but plenty of people get on with it fine so it could just be me. Regardless of my own inability to get to grips with it, I did think that the two limitations I describe above are kind of ridiculous for a 3D modelling package in 2010 - and I still think that. Every other package I've used just lets you jump in and create polygons with as many edges as you like, and shows you each material's texture in the viewport as you do it. Even if you can jump through some hoops to ge blender to do that too, that's too much - these things are basic features...
- bobbin 15y ago
  Blender has texture display in the viewport. N-sided polygon support will be there in 2.62
tintin 15y ago
"What would this project need to achieve before folks would start switching?" Nothing. This is a full grown set of tools. So it's just a matter of taste. I switched from 3DsMax to Blender. There is nothing missing. The footprint is very small and it is fast (startup time of 2 sec.). Plus developing addons in Python is very easy. Also a lot of professional render engines are having plugins for Blender lately (Vray for example). Just compare the price of other packages ;)

steren 15y ago

I think Blender really is different from other graphics free-software: - It is baked by a very strong foundation. - It is used by real studios all over the world (and more and more used) - It is used by the scientific world a lot. - The new release cycle is around 10 weeks. And every release ships with awesome features. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cycle http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cy... - the community is strong, big and active. - it supports a lot of OS, and the experience is great in all of them. - The foundation is very user focused : * they create "open movies" to identify the needs and the weakness of the use of Blender is pro environement. You don't know about Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/) ? * they try to focus on real problems, not on eye-candy or extra-features that would impress but not be useful once.

spiralganglion 15y ago

Blender has been around for decades, and enjoyed a fair bit of popularity in the 90s when it was a great point-of-entry for budding 3D artists. Since then, it's fluctuated in its rate of evolution relative to the industry standard. It always had cutting edge features, but they were trapped behind a troublesome UI, while the big competitors made their tools ever easier to use. In recent years, the gap has been drastically closed due to a ground-up rewrite, completely new approach to the UI, and a tremendous effort to modernize. Unfortunately, Blender still has a bad reputation, a legacy from the previous design. What's more, many studios and schools have firmly entrenched workflows, or depend on custom extensions written for a specific tool. On the other hand, Blender seems to be enjoying popularity in the booming indie games community, where it integrates well with other free tools like Unity 3D. With the new design, I wouldn't be surprised if Blender's best and most-popular days were ahead of it. I see share growth coming from individuals looking to make great graphics on a shoestring budget, as opposed to big studios or schools adopting it instead of Maya or Max. I would argue that it is now roughly equivalent to those other tools in terms of features and usability. So, no real reason to switch (which requires expensive adjustments to existing workflows), but great incentive to adopt it in the first place (because it's free).

trop 15y ago
The scriptability of Blender has been a big draw for me. It's pretty deeply integrated with Python. One can even use it as an interactive 3D front-end for a substantial Python script. That is, let the script create and manipulate the objects, and just use Blender to view what is happening. In Blender 2.4 it was possible to keep a script continuously animating the scene, something I found tough to make happen after the 2.5 overhaul. Blender 2.4 also let scripts create UI components, such as entire control panels to influence the running script. The last time I checked in 2.5, this was either not possible or not well documented. But I'm not up to date on this. I'm also not familiar for comparison with the scriptability of Maya or other tools.
- Silhouette 15y ago
  Maya has multiple scripting facilities. It has its native language, MEL, but for a long time it has also supported Python scripts, more recently with a new API. In fact, much of its GUI is built using scripts that come with it. There is some lack of consistency between the different approaches, not just in the languages but in the presentation of the underlying data model, which isn't always helpful. Still, as a guy with a programming background, I actually found it easier to figure out how Maya works by playing with scripts and the underlying object model than by experimenting with the user interface. :-)

Silhouette 15y ago

> How does Blender compare to Maya, for example? I know some 3D guys who prefer the way Blender handles a lot of basic modelling tasks. Others prefer Maya. I get the feeling it's a lot to do with what you're familiar with these days, because they're both quite capable in terms of functionality but they both have quite powerful, complicated user interfaces. Unless something changed very recently, Blender still can't use FBX files properly. That alone is a deal-breaker for a lot of projects because FBX is very widely used in the rest of the industry. Also, for all the talk of community around Blender, Maya still has a far bigger user base and far more professional-level tools you can plug in if you need more than the standard offering. On the flip side, Blender is free and Maya costs several thousand. And to get Maya you have to deal with Autodesk, whose approach to customer service appears to be that they don't provide any. And the last two major releases of Maya have been absurdly buggy, to the point that Maya 2012 is already on 4 hotfixes and counting.

someone_welsh 15y ago
My experience of Autodesk is that customer services don't exist in order to maintain a healthy cottage industry of books and training courses.

to3m 15y ago

Two basic things missing, from my notes at the time (1 year ago, don't remember which version, think it was the latest non-beta at the time): <<< - Texture display in the viewport. Somewhat amazingly, Blender doesn't seem to support this. When you're doing UV editing, you can see the polygons that use the UVs you're editing mapped with the texture you've selected as being visible in the UV editor, but that's about it. The sort of textured display that I'd expect, where all polygons are displayed textured with the texture(s) from their material, doesn't seem to exist. - No N-sided polygon support. Yes, seriously. Quads or tris or nothing! So I think there's a mode where it works like MAX, where it works in tris but hides some of the edges to fool you (N-gons I think they call it), but I couldn't work out how to make this happen. (And there's some guy rewriting the mesh editing core to support N-sided polygons, but it's not done yet.) This caused me a big problem: Blender kept getting in my way! No way to create a rectangle with 6 verts, that's going to get an edge in the next step that splits it into two, because Blender will turn the intermediate result into triangles, forcing me to clean things up -- an extra step, that I didn't want, nor did I need. Now, maybe there is some special tool that I should be using, that does this in a Blender fashion -- but, seriously, I don't care. I can do things my way in every other package. >>> Blender is one of the very few programs that has successfully moved me to tears of sheer frustration (funnily enough, I am very unlikely ever to try using it again), but plenty of people get on with it fine so it could just be me. Regardless of my own inability to get to grips with it, I did think that the two limitations I describe above are kind of ridiculous for a 3D modelling package in 2010 - and I still think that. Every other package I've used just lets you jump in and create polygons with as many edges as you like, and shows you each material's texture in the viewport as you do it. Even if you can jump through some hoops to ge blender to do that too, that's too much - these things are basic features...

bobbin 15y ago
Blender has texture display in the viewport. N-sided polygon support will be there in 2.62

tintin 15y ago

"What would this project need to achieve before folks would start switching?" Nothing. This is a full grown set of tools. So it's just a matter of taste. I switched from 3DsMax to Blender. There is nothing missing. The footprint is very small and it is fast (startup time of 2 sec.). Plus developing addons in Python is very easy. Also a lot of professional render engines are having plugins for Blender lately (Vray for example). Just compare the price of other packages ;)