8 ms·

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Blender has done far better than most open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard. I don't think we

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Blender has done far better than most open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard. I don't think we can realistically say that Maya is beaten until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree, on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been.

manifoldgeo 1y ago
The studio that makes Evangelion moved from 3DS Max to Blender as their primary 3D software according to this article: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...
- adamhartenz 1y ago
  The fact you can point out specific examples of when Blender is used says a lot. It tells me it is the exception.
  - frontfor 1y ago
    Agreed. You haven’t really won until it stops becoming noteworthy and “oh look X is using Blender!!” Nobody talks about how Linux dominates the server space anymore. Nobody talks about how “git is winning” or getting “battle tested”. These are mundane and banal facts. I don’t believe the same has happened to Blender yet.
- MichaelEstes 1y ago
  That is not a very big studio or very big production, Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It’s a constantly changing API that doesn’t allow for the extensibility needed to get a major project out the door, just the fact that only a Python API is provided is enough for most people who have worked on massive scenes with massive amounts of data to consider it a non starter.
  - wlesieutre 1y ago
    I'm sure "major project" is a subjective label, but Flow made headlines earlier this year with an Academy Award (Best Animated Feature) and Golden Globe (Best Animated Feature Film) https://flow.movie/ https://flow.movie/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-interview-with-director-gints-zilbalodis/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-intervie...
    - jsheard 1y ago
      Flow is good filmmaking expressed through low-tech production, which is totally valid, but it doing a lot with a little isn't going to stop Disney from one-upping themselves with the next Zootopia movie so Blender needs to handle that angle too if it's going to become a catch-all solution for all kinds of production.
      - wlesieutre 1y ago
        For sure, it was made by a small team and rendered on a single computer using the Eevee renderer (the fast partially-rasterization one). It's a major project, just not an enormously huge bleeding edge major project. Here's hoping Blender can keep on rolling toward those types of capabilities.
  - _bent 1y ago
    Not disagreeing that usage in large productions is something that Blender isn't really designed for, but I don't think that it's for a lack of Python API features (if a studio wants something specific it could just maintain an internal fork) or the ever changing Python API surface (the versions aren't upgraded during a production anyways)
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    VFX studios have been using Python APIs for twenty+ years, backed by C. They were one of the first industries to use it. That's where I learned it, around the turn of the century.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
_bent 1y ago
What Blender achieved is that lots of university programmes have started teaching Blender or becoming 'tool agnostic'. Studios have also started diversifying their pipelines (this coincidences with studios adopting Unreal and increasing usage of Houdini). So while Maya is currently the standard, I don't believe that it's growing. It'll probably be around still in 20 years, with lots of studios having built their pipelines and tooling around it, with lots of people being trained in it, and because it's at the moment still better than Blender in some aspects like rigging and animation (afaik).
underscoremark 1y ago
Blender is the go-to for struggling artists/developers, and industry outsiders, like me. I'm stuck at Blender 2.93.18 because I don't have the budget for better hardware, let alone a Maya license! However, even that version of Blender still gets it done for me. And also, how can you say Blender is not battle-proven? I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux isn't battle proven.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Why not use a later version? Is it much heavier? I haven't used blender much. It's too focused on animation. I mainly make more engineering style things for 3D printing. Even though it can technically do that, the interface just rubs me the wrong way somehow. And i can use Fusion 360 for free.
  - underscoremark 1y ago
    It's a hardware issue. Blender 3.0+ requires a graphics card and drivers with OpenGL 4.3 support. I don't have that hardware. I have used Blender for 3D printing, though. Architectural design, as well. The interface is a rub at first, and then again after you get used to it and have to use something else. :-)
- jerbearito 1y ago
  > until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree
- oblio 1y ago
  > I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux isn't battle proven. Those are different niches. Not even Apple has managed to budge Window out of corporate environments, though it is a lot more present than 20 years ago. I imagine it's similar with Blender and Maya: do they fill the exact same space? Or is Blender adopted by different types of companies (probably smaller)?
  - 1y ago
forgotoldacc 1y ago
Depends on the industry. Within game development, I don't know a single person not using Blender. People who were big into Maya and 3DS a few years ago have pretty much all moved on.
qwertox 1y ago
Maya's API is so much better than Blender's. You pay the fee for the OS that Maya is, but the API is so much better than anything open source. Like Postgres is an OS for databases. Blender is not yet there. IIRC you need to compile entire Blender just to change a node.
- mroche 1y ago
  Blender gives you two paths for extension: a) fork it and layer your changes directly onto the app, or b) you create a plugin via the Blender Python API. For vendors, the former is obviously a no-go. The latter has the issue of be throttled by Python, so you have to effectively create a shim that communicates with an external library or application that actually performs compute intensive tasks. Most (if not all) industry DCCs provide a dedicated C++ SDK with Python bindings available if desired.
  - bobajeff 1y ago
    I'm curious as someone who's thinking of making a blender plug-in that will need to use some native-ish (not C++ though) libraries/modules for performance. What are the issues with using a Python interface instead of a dedicated C++ SDK?
    - mroche 11mo ago
      The Python API is limited by Python itself. You're restricted to a GIL environment, so your ability to maximize throughput and reduce latency will be limited. For small/average scenes this may not matter for your addon, however larger scenes will suffer. There are a few popular options to developing Blender functionality: 1. Extend Blender itself. This will net you the maximum performance, but you essentially need to maintain your own custom fork of Blender. Generally not recommended outside of large pipeline environments with dedicated support engineers. 2. Native Python addon. This is what 99% of addons are, just accessing scene data via Blender's Python interface. Drawbacks mentioned above, though there are some helper utilities to batch process information to regain some performance. 3. Hybrid Python Addon. You use the Python API as a glue layer to pass information between Blender and a natively compiled library via Python's C Extension API. With the exception of extracting scene data info, this will give you back the compute performance and host resource scalability you'd get from building on Blender directly. Being able to escape the GIL opens a lot of doors for parallel computation.
mroche 1y ago
> on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been. Super small nit (or info tidbit), but it doesn't take away from your overall message regarding production and scene scale. Pixar does not and has not used Maya as the primary studio application, it's really only used for asset modeling and some minor shading tasks like UV generation and some Ptex painting. The actual studio app is Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed over the years since its earliest productions. All other DCCs are team/task specific. Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC. Walt Disney Animation Studio (WDAS) does use Maya as the core app last I saw, but I don't know if they've made any headway with evaluating Presto since 2019...
- jsheard 1y ago
  Good to know! > Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed > Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC. I guessed that's a typo though and yeah, the Dreamworks animation tool is called Premo.
  - mroche 1y ago
    > I guessed that's a typo though and yeah, the Dreamworks animation tool is called Premo. Bah, I thought I proofread that! Yes, super late night typos strike again...
flohofwoe 1y ago
> open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard IMHO that's only still true because large studios can't afford to move their entire highly customized production pipeline which they had built around Maya for nearly three decades to any other tool (Blender or not), even if they desparately want a divorce from Autodesk. Autodesk basically has them locked in and can milk them until all eternity or the studios go bankrupt. I bet that the next generation of CGI and game studios will be built around Blender (and not based on the quality of those tools, but because of Autodesk business practices). (edit: somehow my brain switched Adobe and Autodesk - forgiveable though because both use the same 'milking existing customers' strategy heh)

manifoldgeo 1y ago

The studio that makes Evangelion moved from 3DS Max to Blender as their primary 3D software according to this article: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...

adamhartenz 1y ago
The fact you can point out specific examples of when Blender is used says a lot. It tells me it is the exception.
- frontfor 1y ago
  Agreed. You haven’t really won until it stops becoming noteworthy and “oh look X is using Blender!!” Nobody talks about how Linux dominates the server space anymore. Nobody talks about how “git is winning” or getting “battle tested”. These are mundane and banal facts. I don’t believe the same has happened to Blender yet.
MichaelEstes 1y ago
That is not a very big studio or very big production, Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It’s a constantly changing API that doesn’t allow for the extensibility needed to get a major project out the door, just the fact that only a Python API is provided is enough for most people who have worked on massive scenes with massive amounts of data to consider it a non starter.
- wlesieutre 1y ago
  I'm sure "major project" is a subjective label, but Flow made headlines earlier this year with an Academy Award (Best Animated Feature) and Golden Globe (Best Animated Feature Film) https://flow.movie/ https://flow.movie/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-interview-with-director-gints-zilbalodis/ https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-intervie...
  - jsheard 1y ago
    Flow is good filmmaking expressed through low-tech production, which is totally valid, but it doing a lot with a little isn't going to stop Disney from one-upping themselves with the next Zootopia movie so Blender needs to handle that angle too if it's going to become a catch-all solution for all kinds of production.
    - wlesieutre 1y ago
      For sure, it was made by a small team and rendered on a single computer using the Eevee renderer (the fast partially-rasterization one). It's a major project, just not an enormously huge bleeding edge major project. Here's hoping Blender can keep on rolling toward those types of capabilities.
- _bent 1y ago
  Not disagreeing that usage in large productions is something that Blender isn't really designed for, but I don't think that it's for a lack of Python API features (if a studio wants something specific it could just maintain an internal fork) or the ever changing Python API surface (the versions aren't upgraded during a production anyways)
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  VFX studios have been using Python APIs for twenty+ years, backed by C. They were one of the first industries to use it. That's where I learned it, around the turn of the century.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

_bent 1y ago

What Blender achieved is that lots of university programmes have started teaching Blender or becoming 'tool agnostic'. Studios have also started diversifying their pipelines (this coincidences with studios adopting Unreal and increasing usage of Houdini). So while Maya is currently the standard, I don't believe that it's growing. It'll probably be around still in 20 years, with lots of studios having built their pipelines and tooling around it, with lots of people being trained in it, and because it's at the moment still better than Blender in some aspects like rigging and animation (afaik).

underscoremark 1y ago

Blender is the go-to for struggling artists/developers, and industry outsiders, like me. I'm stuck at Blender 2.93.18 because I don't have the budget for better hardware, let alone a Maya license! However, even that version of Blender still gets it done for me. And also, how can you say Blender is not battle-proven? I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux isn't battle proven.

wkat4242 1y ago
Why not use a later version? Is it much heavier? I haven't used blender much. It's too focused on animation. I mainly make more engineering style things for 3D printing. Even though it can technically do that, the interface just rubs me the wrong way somehow. And i can use Fusion 360 for free.
- underscoremark 1y ago
  It's a hardware issue. Blender 3.0+ requires a graphics card and drivers with OpenGL 4.3 support. I don't have that hardware. I have used Blender for 3D printing, though. Architectural design, as well. The interface is a rub at first, and then again after you get used to it and have to use something else. :-)
jerbearito 1y ago
> until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree
oblio 1y ago
> I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux isn't battle proven. Those are different niches. Not even Apple has managed to budge Window out of corporate environments, though it is a lot more present than 20 years ago. I imagine it's similar with Blender and Maya: do they fill the exact same space? Or is Blender adopted by different types of companies (probably smaller)?
- 1y ago

forgotoldacc 1y ago

Depends on the industry. Within game development, I don't know a single person not using Blender. People who were big into Maya and 3DS a few years ago have pretty much all moved on.

qwertox 1y ago

Maya's API is so much better than Blender's. You pay the fee for the OS that Maya is, but the API is so much better than anything open source. Like Postgres is an OS for databases. Blender is not yet there. IIRC you need to compile entire Blender just to change a node.

mroche 1y ago
Blender gives you two paths for extension: a) fork it and layer your changes directly onto the app, or b) you create a plugin via the Blender Python API. For vendors, the former is obviously a no-go. The latter has the issue of be throttled by Python, so you have to effectively create a shim that communicates with an external library or application that actually performs compute intensive tasks. Most (if not all) industry DCCs provide a dedicated C++ SDK with Python bindings available if desired.
- bobajeff 1y ago
  I'm curious as someone who's thinking of making a blender plug-in that will need to use some native-ish (not C++ though) libraries/modules for performance. What are the issues with using a Python interface instead of a dedicated C++ SDK?
  - mroche 11mo ago
    The Python API is limited by Python itself. You're restricted to a GIL environment, so your ability to maximize throughput and reduce latency will be limited. For small/average scenes this may not matter for your addon, however larger scenes will suffer. There are a few popular options to developing Blender functionality: 1. Extend Blender itself. This will net you the maximum performance, but you essentially need to maintain your own custom fork of Blender. Generally not recommended outside of large pipeline environments with dedicated support engineers. 2. Native Python addon. This is what 99% of addons are, just accessing scene data via Blender's Python interface. Drawbacks mentioned above, though there are some helper utilities to batch process information to regain some performance. 3. Hybrid Python Addon. You use the Python API as a glue layer to pass information between Blender and a natively compiled library via Python's C Extension API. With the exception of extracting scene data info, this will give you back the compute performance and host resource scalability you'd get from building on Blender directly. Being able to escape the GIL opens a lot of doors for parallel computation.

mroche 1y ago

> on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been. Super small nit (or info tidbit), but it doesn't take away from your overall message regarding production and scene scale. Pixar does not and has not used Maya as the primary studio application, it's really only used for asset modeling and some minor shading tasks like UV generation and some Ptex painting. The actual studio app is Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed over the years since its earliest productions. All other DCCs are team/task specific. Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC. Walt Disney Animation Studio (WDAS) does use Maya as the core app last I saw, but I don't know if they've made any headway with evaluating Presto since 2019...

jsheard 1y ago
Good to know! > Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed > Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC. I guessed that's a typo though and yeah, the Dreamworks animation tool is called Premo.
- mroche 1y ago
  > I guessed that's a typo though and yeah, the Dreamworks animation tool is called Premo. Bah, I thought I proofread that! Yes, super late night typos strike again...

flohofwoe 1y ago

> open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard IMHO that's only still true because large studios can't afford to move their entire highly customized production pipeline which they had built around Maya for nearly three decades to any other tool (Blender or not), even if they desparately want a divorce from Autodesk. Autodesk basically has them locked in and can milk them until all eternity or the studios go bankrupt. I bet that the next generation of CGI and game studios will be built around Blender (and not based on the quality of those tools, but because of Autodesk business practices). (edit: somehow my brain switched Adobe and Autodesk - forgiveable though because both use the same 'milking existing customers' strategy heh)