Why Do Big Video Game Studios Avoid Blender?

[@basicbluetrash]

Started learning Blender at the end of 2022. When you get past the learning curve you realize it's a miracle that it's free.

[@Foogi9000]

Blender is great honestly. Maybe it's because i'm simply too poor but i really hate the idea of paying $5000000 for a program.

[@keenheat3335]

the learning curve drawback is almost entirely eliminate by chat ai, tbh.

[@BrentonWoods774]

@@Foogi9000 Piracy is an option.

[@BrentonWoods774]

@keenheat3335 Yeah, people massively overestimate AI. So far, it's not that great.

[@yashuastryfe125]

@@BrentonWoods774 BUT it is good shit basic questions when learn programs holy shit its good at that

[@Nevil_Tan]

I did report a bug to Autodesk and 3 years later they responded and said oh yes that is a bug. After 6 years that bug still is there. but any time i report a bug for Blender, in less than 24h someone respond and fix that bug for next release.

[@nairocamilo]

good old difference between the bigass Enterprise, where your complaint was filtered through ladders and ladders of hierarchy to actually end up in a Representative's point of view VERSUS a community driven open-source one.

[@uis246]

If you worked on Blender Foundation's demo movie, you pdobably would got response and fix in 24 minutes. :)

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

I think the reason no. 1 is more of a perception problem. The main reason why corporates won't adopt Blender is mostly the bad reasons.

[@thronosstudios]

I think the video above is a bit of a corporate shill fest. There's so many success stories about Blender it's easy to lose count

[@tlilmiztli]

Right, and then you have half-assed, not finished tool like Extrude Manifold that should work equally good like smart extrude in max and maya, but from 2021 people are asking if it will ever by fixed and nothing happened.

[@sm5574]

"It's a lot easier to throw money at the problem than to solve it yourself." A VP I once worked for loved to say, "If you can solve the problem by spending money, then it isn't a problem; it's an expense." Corporations love expenses because they're easy to predict, easy to control, and easy to explain to investors. It's hard to explain at your earnings call why a 6-month project is in its 18th month when there's a similar product available for a few thousand dollars.

[@Jekiterio]

but what if both are on the same speed but the other one is cheaper :O

[@andythebouncer]

​@@Jekiterio It's kind of hard to see the organizational challenges when you're an independent artist, but they're real and expensive. I'll start by saying that Blender is incredible for a FOSS project. I'm a huge free, open-source software fan-- I've probably spent 10k hours of development time contributing to free, open-source software-- and I also worked as a developer for a decade before becoming a tech artist. Before that, I worked in code-level support for some big commercial software companies. It's WAY more complicated than the cost of the software itself. Consider a big project with dozens of artists working towards a looming deadline: how many payroll hours for full-time specialists are wasted while some technical person tries to work around something? Let's say you've got a team of 20 in-house artists working on something which, after benefits, get paid the equivalent of $40/hr, and a pipeline problem holds them up for two days. That's about $12,000 of payroll money. How about the in-house team you'd need to do that? You can't hire some JS developer to work on Blender-- the skills to do 3d graphics programming are *expensive.* Like, a bare minimum of $150k per year in salary, plus way more in benefits. Then, consider that if you have more than one problem at once, you've only got one developer! You're back to square one. Even worse, if it goes on long enough, how many more contract artists will they have to hire out of desperation to try and make their contractually obligated deadline? At that point, the cost of the software itself is a tiny fraction of the equation. The video kinda glosses over the underpinnings of corporate software support infrastructure, generally-- not only do they have people who can answer support questions, they have entire layers of structure to deal with progressively bigger problems, right up to coding fixes on the fly. Suppose a bug holds up a company with many product licenses. In that case, they've got multiple levels of support to diagnose and troubleshoot the problem and, if need be, an entire giant team of developers to bang out a patch in no time flat. At the same time, their QA department can do some lightning-round testing to make sure it's not going to screw anything up. Since they have multiple big customers, they can justify having big teams do this stuff that can bang out these problems quickly because they will be helpful to many customers. It's not a panacea-- dealing with the support infrastructure of those big companies sucks-- but you've probably got legally binding service-level agreements and leverage over your licensing renewals because there are multiple competitors out there. But then again, what if your company can make use of those expensive in-house technical people for other things? What if the Blender project seems to be putting a bunch of development time into things that are critical for your studio and the corporate companies are moving away from them? There's no one-size-fits-all answer, here. And for individuals? It's almost certainly not worth buying a big-name DCC license, except maybe specialized tools like Houdini Indie Z-Brush or Substance Painter if you need them. However, you don't have to go far beyond that before the economy of scale in corporate vendors can be a huge boon. in most situations, the licensing cost of the software is just one item on a massive list of expenses.

[@MrQuantumCodes]

@@Jekiterio I use both Blender and enterprise software like Maya and Max and while Blender is great for the things it does, the thing is, enterprise software are meant to do one thing each instead of doing everything in one software. So while if you compare everything in Blender with everything in basically any paid software by itself, Blender would always win but big companies have different teams each focused on a single task each and so they would rather choose a software that's best for the job. For example, yes, Maya and Max suck at sculpting, but Maya's animation and Max's modelling and simulation tools combined with plugins are on a completely different level. And the sculpting team will just use zbrush, which does that job at a completely different level than blender.

[@4ngelf]

​@@JekiterioThen that's a bad investment

[@Mewsashi-cz9fo]

No, it works like the millitary, these corporations have to justify spendings for maximum tax optimization, it's a matter of loopholes

[@afkololol]

I'm in triple A for 15+ years as an artist. Blender is awesome, better than the older 3D programs out there, but two big reasons it's not used in the industry much: 95% of the workforce are trained on Max or Maya. A lot of people have years and years of experience using / building workflows with these programs already. Retraining everyone would be a huge pain in the ass, unpredictable, and expensive. Some people would likely take months and months to get back to their previous level of skill and productivity. Some nifty plugin they've used for years might not have an equivalent etc. The other thing is that toolchains/engines are integrated with those old softwares too. Most studios have a bunch of custom in-house tools to get data in or out of the engine, clean things up on export, check for certain things, etc. All of these tools would need to be rewritten. Like all software the new ones would probably be shitty and buggy for a while. This is not something you want to have to go through unless it's really worth it, vs just keep using stuff you know has worked fine for years. So yeah you could save a few thousand dollars a year per artist by moving to Blender - but are you gonna delay production for weeks or months to let everyone train on new software, build new tools to replace the current ones that work fine and have shipped several games already? This is the sortof thing you can do with a new company, studio, or project starting from scratch that doesn't need to use tools / an engine from a previous game perhaps. Basically, the hassle of switching to Blender to save a few k per artist is not really worth it, vs doing something that could make your game much more successful, like spending another month on polish at the end of production.

[@videogames25854]

It's basically the same for everything, not just individual tools, at least for older studios. Why don't they use Unity / UE more? Because there's been workflows developed internally for years or decades with in-house software. When Sega AM2, an arcade game developer, released their first UE game, it was almost entirely industry newcomers never credited in anything else before. Even in music production, people still hang on to 20 year old mac towers running ancient versions of pro tools and other software.

[@qoph1988]

Exactly. The shift will happen when the older systems become so sclerotic that it makes sense to re-train a new group. This has happened before, I remember Lightwave...

[@Navhkrin]

​@@qoph1988Blenders major problem is that it cripples brutally with high resolution meshes where as in Maya or Houdini can handle those like champ. Furthermore, being donation funded greatly limits amount of workforce they can pour onto it, though they are doing amazing job with what they have, it won't ever be Unreal of 3D modelling

[@DankMemes-xq2xm]

@@Navhkrin I will never understand how Houdini can handle so much high poly stuff going on at the same time. That software is magic.

[@renisrrenis9225]

​@@Navhkrinwhen you have no clue what you are talking about:

[@kurushimee]

As an indie game dev I pop in here just to say that I haven't yet personally met a single indie dev who used anything but Blender

[@denseacat]

i use 3dmax and blender, since blender's consistency suck me bolls. shift click to select different polys but ctrl click to select whole line of them? while literally WHOLE WORLD and ALL OS using inverted approach? thats not good. oh, and get this, in inspector its actyally INVERTED AGAIN, jsut so you dont get ANY good feels from usin the blender, heh.

[@roofoofighter]

@@denseacat you can change the keymap in Blender, it’s fully customizable.

[@denseacat]

@@roofoofighter and if you change it, all tutorials will be incorrect. Very good approach.

[@roofoofighter]

@@denseacat all the commands have a menu or tool you can click on, you don’t have to do keyboard shortcuts only. Also you said shift and ctrl were opposite of what you preferred, I merely gave a workaround. Once you get past tutorial stage you will have muscle memory built up. It’s really not a big deal.

[@denseacat]

@@roofoofighter my friend, you see, it is a problem. I already have muscle memory built up. Ive used windows for 20 years, linux for around 10. 3d max for 15. All these operational systems and software have common basic controls, left click for selection, right click for menu.. ctrl for single select, shift for whole. But blender contributor wanted to stand out. This is not good behavior

[@jackpak]

I had to learn Maya in university for games development and we all still spent most of our times self-teaching through KZbin

[@TheCantinaChannel]

College is amazing in its uselessness

[@vast634]

Outside of networking I dont see much that those game development programs bring compared to just doing things and learning from many free resources.

[@trinityx3o522]

I paid a shit ton of money for what was supposed to be a course covering all aspects of GAME art. As I actually started attending their lectures, it turns out, all the faculty was from film production background. Biggest waste of money

[@vast634]

@@trinityx3o522 Likely the lecturers where not really interested into games, just used it as a jumping board to stay in media somewhat close to film.

[@buda3d2007]

Big question, did your teachers have any notable industry experience? This does matter, academics folding back into academia is educational cancer, people need studio expereince to know how to apply the software knowledge to an actual job, not just learning the interface through youtube, its sad that people pay big money for nothing in a college :(

[@wolvAUS]

As a modder for Cyberpunk 2077, Blender is our bread and butter. We’ve configured it such that it’s very easy to get meshes from the game into Blender with materials and vice versa.

[@DerFinder]

Eyyy another CB2077 Modder, what mods have you worked on if I may ask?

[@tharoog]

If you look at Artstation you can see that some CDPR artists used Blender for assets and for concept art.

[@umarcga7823]

A professional 3D artist and by now it's a pretty stupid assumption that blender is avoided by studios.

[@captainblood9616]

You legend!

[@justchris846]

What’s one of the best resources for learning Blender ?

[@zbop220]

Remember, Blenders not free. In 2002 the community bought a one time perpetual floating no seat limit license for €100,000 with free lifetime upgrades. More seriously it does need donations. Its the only software i really dont mind paying for, because its not forced.

[@SimplCup]

wait what, someone just paid the developer a bonkers amount of money for it to be forever free and open source? daym

[@zbop220]

@SimplCup yeah basically. It was basically a Kickstarter way before kickstarter.

[@whitygoose]

ton rosendaal is truly one BASED bloke ​@@SimplCup

[@psy237]

​@heavengrrl well if that's not a sentence that contradicts itself then I don't know what a contradiction is lul

[@awlect]

​It would contradict itself if the word "upgrade" wasn't there. I'm confused about your comment.​ @@psy237

[@daveyhu]

Just saw a tech talk today where Sony Santa Monica (a very well known studio) had a slide that said "Rise in junior artists who know Blender". The talk was about how they use Maya as their game editor but sounded like they're actively trying to move away from it. So I think in 5 years we'll see a lot more studios adopting Blender for real.

[@zackakai5173]

"So I think in 5 years we'll see a lot more studios adopting Blender for real." I'm going to tell you as someone who's been using Blender for the better part of the last two decades (and also has quite a bit of experience with other packages like Maya), I've been hearing this claim for as long as I've been using the software. I wouldn't hold your breath.

[@lpnp9477]

I worked there for a stint, but as sound engineer. Probably one of the nicest and most relaxed offices I've ever been in. Had pizza delivered literally every day, enough for everyone.

[@daveyhu]

@@lpnp9477 Damn nice!

[@JohnSmith-wg3pl]

Studio don't care what Jr uses. There are million of Jr who can use Max and Maya.

[@resentfulsoulofthetoilet589]

Funny I just remembered "the making of god of war" in God of War's treasures section and how they mentioned they used maya... 3ds max was already on decline back then

[@Janovich]

Used Maya for 8 years as a rigger/animator and switching to Blender was the best decision I ever made.

[@ranze_1]

Why did you switch and say which is the best decision you ever made ?

[@Janovich]

@@ranze_1 because maya is a slow unoptimized outdated software. I no longer worked in a studio so I finally had opportunity to leave it behind and switch to another software. Blender has been a breath of fresh air it is designed way better. More robust and used friendly in almost every regard. The only thing i miss about maya is the solid MEL Python integration, other than that good riddance.

[@dmennenoh]

@@Janovich But Blender also has amazing Python integration. What is it you miss about MEL/Python that's not in Blender? Also Geometry nodes... so powerful. I used to be a Max guy - used it since it was 3D studio. Switched to Blender some years ago and just love it. Has some UI features still no other software has and all should.

[@mygetawayart]

not a 3D artist, but i'm an illustrator and comic artist, and for as long as i've worked digitally, i've always used Clip Studio. When i went to the academy to learn digital illustration, though, they wanted me to use photoshop and i HATED IT. I just couldn't get used to it, no matter how much i tried, so eventually i was able to convince them to let me keep using CSP (i could save in .psd anyway) so i totally understand artists not wanting to switch to a different program.

[@TheCantinaChannel]

I haven't tried Clip Studio yet, but I do really hate photoshop, what makes it worse is that it wasn't even meant for painting.

[@mygetawayart]

@@TheCantinaChannel I think CPS is a lot more user friendly. It has some less more advanced features but it's not a software meant for photo editing. It's original use is making Manga (used to be called Manga Studio back then). It's still full of numerous amazing features and oftentimes when my professors said "you can only do this in Photoshop" I'd go home, check on CSP and prove them wrong. Price-wise also, CSP is i think $40 (but it's very often on sale at $20), pay once and have it forever, whereas you need to sell your kidney, liver and testicles for a Photoshop monthly or yearly subscription.

[@trued7461]

I feel like as long as you can save as a .psd its fine, and the end result will always be a flat image i guess, maybe i just dont know enough about that pipeline but it doesnt seem as nuanced as 3D haha

[@mygetawayart]

@@trued7461 yeah, you can. At school i Had to use PS because it's all they had on their computers but at home i worked with CSP, then saved the files as .psd and showed them on PS at school.

[@shodan2002]

Why does it matter you get your work done so it’s fine

[@nuqrs]

Every time I hear something about "infinite growth" I think about how Warner Bros cancelled the already-made Batgirl movie in order to make their numbers look nice.

[@GrimK77]

I read rumor that the movie was so progressive and symbolic, they actually killed Batman, so the Batgirl could take over... which would make it so damaging to Batman brand, Zaslav ordered erasure of movie, as it was cheapest way out.

[@tornadophantom4027]

​@@GrimK77 That's why it's a rumor because it's the dumbest thing ever. Far worse things have happened to Batman as a character. Nothing is sinking that ship at this point.

[@GrimK77]

@@tornadophantom4027 Touch the grass, because you're becoming too dense for your own good. I said about Batman brand, not Batman character. If you can't tell between WB business irl, and fictional Batman storyline, you're not mentally qualified to have this discussion. It even doesn't matter if rumor is true or not.

[@tornadophantom4027]

@@GrimK77 That's my point, stupid. The Batman brand has survived Batman being a fucking caveman. Killing him won't even put a scratch on it.

[@JansHeikkinen]

@@GrimK77 Are you stupid? They obviously meant that if worse things have happened to the character without affecting the brand, then your idiotic rumour wouldn't either.

[@toastedchoom4347]

Blender and Godot actually have great intergration now, you can save your blend files straight into your godot project folder, godot updates your files there with all your textures and lighting, and you can just drag and drop it in. Still not unreal, but for Indie's and hobbiest it works fantastic.

[@dawsonpate7385]

Man I was so happy when I saw that blog update. Blender to godot is still iffy for some stuff but overall has been pretty fantastic. It's a pipe dream but I so wish nodes export would automatically bake textures for export instead of having to do it manually

[@nikolaievans2432]

Godot is really meant for learning and not to make actual games they said that themeslves

[@dawsonpate7385]

@@nikolaievans2432 I tell u one thing godot has been great for . . . Applications . . . Integrating c++ modules into godot and using the built in UI just way faster than working with native setups

[@sargentgullible2794]

@@nikolaievans2432 *ahem* Cassette Beasts.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

@@nikolaievans2432 That's was said for Blender too. It's still true in many cases. I wonder, if Godot too will come of age with time.

[@RavenStorm332]

so what you're saying is that the execs of the gaming industry are asset flippers

[@TheCantinaChannel]

there's a reason why these execs love AI so much

[@angel_of_rust]

woke asset flippers at that

[@ginogatash4030]

​@@angel_of_ruststop being cringe.

[@perseusn4336]

​@@ginogatash4030Tell that to Concord, dust born, suicide squad, etc, etc, etc, etc.

[@different_stuff]

@@ginogatash4030 why do you cringe at facts?

[@Darkenbox]

I worked as an intern at ubisoft, and everyone used blender and houdini

[@Fighter05]

I know a lot of studios that use Blender. Blenders biggest issue is its native bone orientation and armature system is different from Unreal Engine which was built around Maya; going way back to Unreal 3 (Mass Effect, Gears of War era). Its always been Maya for UE. Unreal wants skeletal meshes to perform and be imported in a certain way. You need to have a good understanding of how Unreal wants things to be to get correct exports of characters and animations from Blender. But that is true for a lot of game engines in-house or off the shelf. They all have quirks. Legacy code and technical debt are huge in game engines. We have just been adding features on top of features for along time now. The cost of Maya is why studios want to use Blender though. You often will partner with an art house for primary asset production and then your in-house artists will maintain and adjust those assets during development. Building things as needed, retexturing as needed etc. But over the course of 2-3 years of a dev cycle, maintaining Maya licenses for your entire studio during that time is actually pretty costly. Its tens of thousands of dollars a year. Blender is more then capable when it comes to creating/editing static meshes and the fact its free means you can scale your art team without needing to scale your software budget. Blender is almost a default installation on almost every dev PC because of this. Its an extremely powerful tool given its cost; it is pretty much the defacto 3d generalist tool out there. We hire the artist not the software though. If you feel comfortable with any piece of software to do your work we will purchase it for you.

[@funtecstudiovideos4102]

Isnt there addon for blender to fix that issue? Unless its outdated or something

[@coolchouzhao]

​@@funtecstudiovideos4102 there does exist an addon called "better fbx import/export" that makes blender bone orientation compatible with the rest of the industry programs, better yet the addon have an options to specifically export rigify rigs

[@chrisb3685]

@@funtecstudiovideos4102 Auto Rig Pro has an export to unreal that fixes bone orientations and renames bones to be compatible with Manny. I know there are others, like better FBX exporter that fix bone orientations for game engines. But that's the thing, you need a blender technical artist on staff to help fix problems as they arise.

[@PhuongLe-hb9ig]

@@funtecstudiovideos4102 kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYCqiWaEl65oabs

[@calcifer6135]

@@funtecstudiovideos4102 yep, with the gamerigtool plugin you don't have to worry about orientation and can easily rig in blender to ue5

[@Deydren]

My two cents as someone who has worked in the games industry for 12 years: I have been working with blender exclusively for my entire career. The games industry is big and while market penetration for "new" tools and workflows can be slower for big companies like ubisoft, it also contains an enormous amount of small to medium dev studios that have been way more comfortable moving away from maya and max over the past years. Especially since blender had the 2.8 UI overhaul, it became much easier to onboard max and maya users. And blender has everything they need to do the job without the price-tag, which is actually a huge consideration for smaller studios.

[@MangaGamified]

Some said studios can't estafa investors with free softwares, like overquoting the number of licenses and their duration, but purchased less if not far less and for shorter duration. That's why they only use the most expensive versions of each type.

[@iamsatanjr]

​@@MangaGamified doubt that's a valid reason, since that would be fraud - which is not something you'd want to get on a hook for as a big company. While samller companies may be tempted to try it, it's generally too risky for big corporations to do because their size is like a huge regulation and lawsuit magnet. You can maybe squeeze out a few dozen grand in fines from a small indie studio, or you can squeeze out tens of millions of dollars from giants like Ubisoft - all for the same exact thing.

[@halfbakedproductions7887]

I remember when Blender's UI/UX was a total disaster. The interface looked like the cockpit from a 1950s jetliner and it was a total unholy mess, switches here, buttons there, none of it labelled properly or made any sense. But they redeemed themselves very well indeed and it's now really very usable.

[@KaneyoriHK]

Also cause of custom key layouts, which are designed for ease of use, do have presets to be like other programs

[@amigarulez]

When you have to get job done, in time and with qualty requirements, you then realize that you cannot use free app such is Blender.

[@AqilDaiyan]

6:32 You pirate Maya to learn it at home, then use the company's paid version to work. Autodesk's pricings aren't for individuals

[@TheCantinaChannel]

I would NEEEEVVVERRR recommend doing something SOOOO heinous especially from such a cheritable corporation such as Autodesk

[@done.6191]

It’s exactly what happened with Adobe. I have always thought that Adobe secretly made their product annoying to pirate, but not difficult, so that hobbyists could self tech, then demand that software once they entered a paying job.

[@skipperg4436]

You can get Maya for free as a student. Enrolling for some stupid cheap short course applies too, at least it used too. Thus you can get license for free without even pirating. Once upon a time Autodesk didn't even asked for any proof so you could claim that you are a student and just get a license for free. Ofc, you were not supposed to use it for any commercial project.

[@done.6191]

@@skipperg4436 they’ve gotten a lot more strict on licensing for students.

[@novellanightmares]

What? I learned Maya for free on a student license.

[@frederikbarbeau3530]

As an FX artist in the game and movie industry, here's my take on this subject. First of all, Autodesk does not pick up the phone. Even if they do because you had some networking going on, they will do nothing significant. Now, on to the main subject: Blender is already being used in many places. I can tell you that pretty much every studio has some people using Blender. At my studio, we mainly use Houdini and Blender. You use whatever gets the job done. If it's slower to use Blender than to use Max with all the tools the studio has for Max, then don't use it. One of the main reasons for why it "doesn't" fit into the pipeline. Finally if the company wants to pay for software for taxes, I still have no obligation to use it so that's not an argument that make sense really.

[@buda3d2007]

Be quiet your actually making sense against all the Blender jingosim thats rampant as soon as its mentioned on social media ;)

[@kingghidorah8106]

yeah the lies around autodesk tech support... as if those talking about it were being bribed to lie!

[@AdrianDrott]

As someone who works as a 3D artist for a smaller game studio that previously only used maya but now moved over to using mostly Blender. I believe a change is starting to happen as Blender is swiftly evolving and so many young talented people are learning it from their homes, becoming experts without proper education. A lot of companies have rather made their own tools for Maya, which can make a move quite difficult as you'd have to abandon those tools. But to say a company wouldn't make custom tools for Blender is not entirely true. No matter the software, a company often has to make certain tools for their pipeline. Maya is indeed a bit outdated and it's as if Autodesk are updating it on top of ancient and some times broken code, the software could probably use a proper rewrite from my understanding but that'd take ages. Maya is still elite in many areas but Blender seems to have a better foundation for improvement. I see why AAA companies stick to mostly Maya, 3dsmax or Houdini, but Blender is with no doubt climbing up the ladder. So if anyone is thinking learning Blender is a bad idea, I'd say absolutely not. May I also add: I hated the move originally. But now I am so happy our company is using Blender and I don't wanna touch Maya ever again.

[@peter_isthewolf]

I'm assuming you mean absolutely yes, or absolutely don't (doubt about it)? Right? 😅

[@AdrianDrott]

@@peter_isthewolf omg thanks for correcting me

[@skorne7682]

It's the same reason Adobe Photoshop, Pro Tools etc. became industry standard. In the early days they weren't even necessarily the best apps around but for some reason all companies insisted on using them until they became virtual monopolies. The result: all serious competition was mostly eliminated and they ended up charging whatever ridiculous prices they want even for the home user.

[@chillbro2275]

Yeah. I understand subscriptions from the company's perspective, but really don't like them at all. Maya is super flipping expensive - $1800 and I can't even use it after 1 year?? kiss my astoundingly narrow ass!

[@bbrainstormer2036]

In Photoshop's case, it wass in no small part due to their education discounts.

[@joonglegamer9898]

Wow, this video was like a flashback to when Blender was just the new awkward kid in class and no one took it seriously. I remember when NaN (Ton Roosendaal) fought together with the fans of the software he gave away for free to anyone who asked, to buy it out from the clasps of the shareholders. Since then it grew like insane, and got serious coders from Nvidia onboard and much more. The flashback part is that anyone who had learned Blender back then was kinda ridiculed by the people working in the industry, people using Maya or 3D studio Max. I used it too, I had the entire package Animation Studio and all that paid for by my hard worked for money. Thing is, Max crashed a lot - and files often got corrupted. And since I was a single man studio, the support was always my fault. In the end I had this super powerful computer, the right OS, right amount of ram, but Max still kept crashing, you're doing it wrong. I gave up in the end, but slowly came back to using 3D again. The way that started was that I started using Blender, I had sold off my Max license (yes, that can be done), and used Blender for fun. Once a 3D nerd, always a 3D nerd I guess. But I ran into trouble, Blender crashed too. But there was one MAJOR difference. I wrote to Ton's team in BlenderDevelopers, and I can tell you - I got an instant response, the bug was fixed 3 hours later. And that continueed every single time I reported a bug. I was in love. I've used it extensively for the last 20 years now, and Blender is Huge today. We've used worldwide in big studios now, and the video you see here, is kinda true - 20 years ago, thats why I call it a flashback.

[@okankyoto]

Certainly not in film/tv at least.

[@BubblegumKoi]

​@@okankyotocould be in the future though!

[@vast634]

Government offices for example often cant even use free open source solutions, as they require a service contract with someone. Someone that offers payed support and is liable. Noone is liable for an open source solution.

[@weirdblackcat]

1. This only applies to governments that privatize their services so some middle-man can profit - e.g. the Norwegian government does a lot in-house, I saw Linux being used on general-use computers meant for the public (like a library PC) in government facilities there in 2012. 2. Canonical provides professional/paid support for Blender, so your point is moot anyway.

[@5374seth]

I am pretty sure that is how almost all FOSS projects get the large majority of their funding, through selling unnecessary support packages

[@BusinessWolf1]

@@5374seth Nah, you're dead wrong. They get the funding from other FOSS projects that need or want the project to thrive, and also from companies that want to use that software in the future.

[@MangaGamified]

What government? and even then, the government needs to adapt, like there used to be no jurisdiction of AI art, cyber crime, etc. literally all those laws was born within 2 decades. They don't conform into something if it's not popular, getting government funding and future bail-out proof just makes those companies even more greedier since gov = tax money and everyone pays taxes, they'll just get greedier and complacent. Try government services that's not in USA nor EU, they're slow as f*ck cause they know they'll never get fired as long as they do the absolute bare minimum.

[@5374seth]

@@BusinessWolf1 data?

[@rano12321]

Blender does offer enterprise support for big studios, and there are 100s of game studios and VFX studios using blender now.

[@julianojosoa2145]

0:39 Last time I checked, Blender's community on Reddit is 10+ times bigger than Maya with millions of members. I don't think that you need to pry to get the correct answer from people in there. As an example r/Maya has 78k members while r/blender has 1.2m member :)

[@CrashOverride332]

Reddit is not comparable to salaried professionals who are paid to help you.

[@dmennenoh]

@@CrashOverride332 Exactly. It's WAY better.

[@MrNotteNera]

Plus: triple A developers have spent years with those software, learning (almost) everything again costs time and money. Tangent Animation (400 employees) made Blender Next Gen and Maya and the Three for Netflix using Blender. They used about six months to learn it and make a new pipeline around it...and got shut down in 2021. Good job Netflix.

[@TheCantinaChannel]

sounds about right

[@MangaGamified]

Maybe they got shutdown cause they can't estafa with a Free software on top of investor money, some in the comments already clued in they got some pocket money out of estafa from investors, like over-quoting the number of licenses and duration of the licenses. That's why they only use subs many subs and the most expensive ones at that + overquote = lots of extra pcket money. Hype something with a trailer, people get hyped, VC and investor money starts puring in, overquote licenses and duration = lots of extra pcket money before the movie starts selling. Read @fighter05 and @sm5574 comments.

[@federicolanzarotta9187]

@@TheCantinaChannel again i encourage you to do actual learning and research before telling bs to 130k people. Playing videogames doesn't make you a game dev.

[@nikolaievans2432]

@@federicolanzarotta9187 yeah therse those people who say there's a game dev because they play video games and tinker around with it. tinkering around does not make you a game dev unless your the one making it it just makes you a kiddie who depends on other people.

[@blackjakas3595]

@@nikolaievans2432 Lmao, ok nikolaievans, bro's just approaching his 19s not even outta college and thinks making some thingy on roblox makes you an authority on being a game dev. You too mr FredericoLanzo whatever, you look like someone that has never coded anything else than html once upon a time. Furthermore, trying to criticize without actually making an argument just makes you an asshole, weird behavior for someone approaching their 30s. Y'all shouldn't try to trash talk with such weak fondations lmao

[@xevinsjaegernaut1414]

So I actually learned autodesk maya in high school. the issue is that it was useless because i didn't learn base Maya. My teacher configured each of our workstations to his preferences so the actual "normal" autodesk maya looks alien to me. And I can't reconfigure it myself to get to a format I am familiar with.

[@TheCantinaChannel]

Thats awful

[@icedriver2207]

I used 3ds Max and Maya in college. I hated Maya's layout so much the first thing I learned how to do was change the interface.

[@DankMemes-xq2xm]

Kinda similar experience: I had an intro CS professor teach us Java by only allowing us to use packages he made instead of the regular Java stuff - we had to use his implementations or the auto grader would give us a 0 or not even run. It was a nightmare because there was obviously no way to google any problems you had with his stuff, you just had to pay extremely close attention in lectures / not miss a lecture and pray the TAs could help you. Withdrew from his class after two months and eventually retook the class from a different professor that did things the normal way.

[@MysteryMycology]

might try searching youtube or google on how to change the interface

[@raphaelprotti5536]

Most studios configure Maya the way they want, as do most artists. That's part of the learning curve and it sounds like you still are coming to grips with it. As a 20 year veteran of the VFX industry, and a former teacher at a well known 3D animation school, I can tell you that you probably want to invest your time learning another 3D package unless you are trying to become a character animator.

[@nothankyoutube]

They do use blender, you'd be surprised, it's just not really announced.

[@meshowzq1430]

kind of outdated and short-sighted point of view, I mean many films right now are actually using Blender, Into the Spider verse used it also the Lego part was done totally in Blender. Regarding games, many Arties are developing game assets in Blender, maybe not in AAA games (right now) but Mobile games and such which is such a huge industry right now. Netflix using Blender in many of its 3D films now. That is not to take away from other 3D Softwars, but with the super-fast updates of Blander, this will lead to it surpassing all traditional 3] programs in the near future that take years to update their current version.

[@Diamond-ji2gv]

Into the spider verse and across the spider verse were mainly done in Maya with AI to make those brushes. Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop and Blender were indeed use in those films. I still think Blender + Photoshop is a very powerful combo. Maya and Max are outdated and glitchy, though, Maya is better when it comes to animating.

[@AS-R-bx3zi]

Netflix 2018 movie, Next Gen was completely made in blender

[@threadsoftruth]

Say what you want but I Learned blender 3 years ago and I’ve made nearly over 100k on projects and I have built my own VFX Studio in the mean time, jumped on unreal recently and things are sky rocketing 👌🏼

[@amannin1]

Many professionals are trying and sticking with Blender, even if their companies haven't officially baked it into their pipeline yet. Many of the hurdles I've heard from other artists hesitating to use Blender, at least for modeling purposes, have been resolved and I'm always happy to help share those tips.

[@lorddaro7771]

Its said so often, that people don't like change. This is in my experience not entirely accurate. We can sometimes even be pretty damn quick to go all in with a change. I think its more that people don't like changes, which don't appear to offer a quantifiable improvement. Because if you have to go to the trouble of learning a new system or technique and it, as far as you can tell at least, doesn't significantly improves the process, you feel like you're just wasting time.

[@nairocamilo]

You are right!

[@Alloveck]

Very good, very overlooked point. It often isn't change itself that's the problem, but not expecting the change to ultimately yield benefits worth the upfront effort, inconvenience, and so on that the change requires. I'm not opposed to other ruts, but why go to to the trouble of getting out of my current rut, settling into the other one, and so on, if I don't first believe the other one will be any better? Not wanting to make an investment unless you think it'll pay off isn't aversion to change, it's prudence.

[@Bladieblah]

It's one of the most common and also one of the laziest arguments in any discussion. Frame your viewpoint as "change" and yell as hard as you can that the only REAL reason people disagree is because they can't handle change. The subject matter itself of course has nothing to do with it, it's not like you just have differing views and evaluate things differently for different reasons, it can't be that. That's insanity, it must be the fact they can't handle change, it always is!

[@Alloveck]

@@Bladieblah Preach on, brother! Life is complicated, navigating it is complicated, and there are a thousand factors behind every personal decision. Only one of which is opposition to change.

[@nonamepasserbya6658]

@@Bladieblah Because change and time is money...and you know what happens to our society when money is involved. Aversion becomes the norm

[@SoPeLpc]

I worked for two different studios as a 3d graphic, both times in blender. All you have to do is not lie on your resume and/or specify what programs you're using not just blindly apply for a job.

[@qoph1988]

But lying on my resume is so fun and profitable and educational

[@SoPeLpc]

@@qoph1988 i know its sarcasm but you'd be suprised how many People lie on resume

[@lpnp9477]

​@@SoPeLpcgenerally i agree you should not, but sometimes a job will post with a 10 years experience requirement on new software or new concepts from the last couple years, clearly written by people who don't know anything about the industry you're applying to who will then immediately reject any resume on which the numbers don't align with the requirements. Damn, that was a long sentence.

[@SoPeLpc]

@@lpnp9477 nah n this situations you have No change of getting that job. They want to hire a friend but are obligated to post something.

[@JoakimTornhill]

It feels like looking on a clip made 2-3 years ago. Today Blender is used in a most big studios from indie size to AAA games producers and in many cases not only for concept, but as the main tool for 3D modeling and is totally integrated in the main pipeline. Almost no studio says "no" to Blender so "Avoiding Blender" does simply not exist anymore with a very few exceptions. The addition of Geometry nodes also increased the possibilities in a way that might be hard to grasp and makes it much faster in many occasion to create a needed feature inside Blender compared to try to get it to work in any other tool.

[@bbelilovsky]

Just wanted to point out that one of the reasons companies prefer not to do drastic changes is that there is a time of adjustment for it. For the employees - they have to learn a new tool and become proficient at it. Many companies would also have a lot of custom scripts or automation designed for the software they're using, so switching to Blender might, for some companies, be more costly than keep paying for whatever they're using.

[@jeffg4686]

idk man. I think Blender has a big benefit in some ways, which is consistency of the UI / keys, etc throughout hte application, and additionally the integration of everything (being able to use grease pencil inside a geometry nodes setup all within the same project). There's a big benefit to having all these connections within one program. You missed a big one for game dev. The shaders in blender don't export to GLSL, WGSL, HLSL, etc. You have to bake them. That's memory!

[@nothankyoutube]

Consistency of UI/keys? It's one of the worst parts. Maya has been the same for almost 30 years.

[@jeffg4686]

@@nothankyoutube - Hmm, hard to compare. Blender is an "all in one" tool. So many parts, so having this consistency MEANS something.

[@unrighteous8745]

Don't get me wrong, I love Blender, but I think the hotkeys are one of the most unintuitive things I've ever seen in any program. If I want to change a sculpting brush to the B key, I right click on it, assign shortcut, hit B, and... it doesn't work. I have to go into the menus, find what the B key is being used for specifically in sculpt mode and unassign that thing. If I want to use the B key across every mode, I need to unassign like 15 different things for it to work. I'm also not really a fan of nearly everything having a hotkey by default. I often press random keys by mistake and I'm left wondering what the heck I just did and how to undo it (ctrl-z doesn't undo certain actions). Hotkeys are useful for things you do constantly, but I think accessing everything else through a menu would be cleaner. You can get everything working the way you want, but it's a massive pain. Despite that, I do still think Blender is god tier software for being free.

[@MrMargaretScratcher]

@@unrighteous8745 Yeah but in Maya etc, the shortcut keys only change the mode, so pressing R switches you into rotate mode, but then you have to click on the gizmo (Which might not even be on screen, depending on how zoomed in you are) and then manually rotate. In blender, wanna rotate something on the Z axis by 45 degrees? Just press 'R' then 'Z' then '45'. Sounds complicated initially but once you get the hang of it it's super quick.

[@tylisirn]

@@unrighteous8745 I remember Blender 10+ years ago when I first learned it... Hoo-boy... The interface was 10 times worse than what it is today! The software itself was still powerful, but it was like it was designed by left handed aliens from planet Mars based on a badly translated verbal description of what a computer interface is.

[@quenemue]

There's an indie license option for Maya that cost around 300 a year. It's full version, not stripped down version like the completely useless LT version was. It can be used commercially with revenue cap. Autodesk doesn't seem to advertise this much, since most doesn't seem to know about it. Still not free tho.

[@TheCantinaChannel]

I had no idea about this, didn't even seeing it on their licensing page. I suppose it's better than 300 a month but I'll probably stick to blender still anyway.

[@LOBOTOMYtv]

if you're a student Maya is also completely free for you and you can pay smaller fees for temp licenses if you want to learn on the edu version and also work on something commercially

[@quadconjurer]

@@LOBOTOMYtv you mean a student at one of their approved elite institutions. May as well forget self learning autodesk products.

[@mrdan2898]

@@quadconjurer Exactly

[@lpnp9477]

Yeah, I use this license. I'd prefer not to pay anything but Blender has been hard to learn for a Maya vet.I'll get there eventually but eventually is not now.

[@deathmonkey504cheese5]

Another factor I didn't hear you talk about in this video is plugins, alot of big game studios have in-house plugins for Maya they've created and tailored for there specific studio, this coupled with blenders incompatibility with alot of game engines just makes it pointless to use in that context.

[@MastermindAtWork]

I was just about to say this. Some studios specifically made plugins for Maya or 3ds Max to hotlink between both their game engine or renderer and they don't want to spends months trying to reprogram it to work with Blender. I saw the OnRush devs on video saying that they had to make a plugin in Maya for track editing to work for the game.

[@AdobadoFantastico]

This and parallel evaluation for animation playback are the only two reasons our team will stick with Maya indefinitely.

[@MastermindAtWork]

@davidlloyd1526 If you're thinking in terms of exporting from Blender to any game engine, you're right. But we're talking about custom editor tools and plug-ins devs need for their projects being incompatible to work with in Blender compared to other corporate software.

[@MangaGamified]

Nah, they can't estafa with a Free software on top of investor money, some in the comments already clued in they got some pocket money out of estafa from investors, like over-quoting the number of licenses and duration of the licenses. That's why they only use subs many subs and the most expensive ones at that + overquote = lots of extra pcket money. Hype something with a trailer, people get hyped, VC and investor money starts puring in, overquote licenses and duration = lots of extra pcket money before the movie starts selling. Alibis of other softwares is just an afterthought. Those big and bigger studios already have the prestiege and portfolio but they can never ever have enough money. Read @fighter05 and @sm5574 comments.

[@dmennenoh]

Blenders incompatibility with a lot of game engines? LOL... you just have no clue do you.

[@chromethug]

fun fact: bungie uses blender for destiny 2. idk about the entire game but when their final shape dlc was being leaked the models were in blender

[@skypiratecloud19]

I’m a 3D artist, I primarily use 3Ds max and also learned C4D, Maya, Zbrush, NukeX, Embergen, Unreal 5 and Blender. I can say with a lot on confidence that peoples first software is going to be their main software for a long time. If a studio uses Maya for Animating but you use blender, 80% of the time if you bump into an issue, they’ll blame the software but that’s because they started using Maya and they are comfortable with it. But it’s not particularly the studios’ fault if they started with it, Blender, despite being free, isn’t perfect and corporate companies prefer corporate software’s that they’ve been using for years and can just throw money at their issues and that’s the reality of the industry. The best thing to do nowadays if you started with blender but work for a company that uses maya or 3ds max or whatever is converting/importing/exporting. If you are comfortable with modeling with blender but they need to rig in Maya, you got to learn how to export it that it works and is rigable in Maya, and this takes time. But sadly, texturing between software’s is a pain, unwrapping models and preparing textures is possible and can help but you won’t be able to replicate textures using the same method from software to software, especially if their using a different render engine. thanks for coming to my TED talk

[@Yhorm]

college is not essential for learning maya, dont give tens of thousands of dollars to those crooks because you dont believe in yourself

[@TheCantinaChannel]

I only meant as in to get a copy to use it at all

[@Yhorm]

@@TheCantinaChannel ohhhh okay that makes more sense, i thought that was a weird take from you.

[@life4trinity]

You don't go to college to learn Maya, you go to college to learn techniques. How to model, how to animate, how to create VFX, etc.

[@Yhorm]

@@life4trinity ok but same thing lol

[@qoph1988]

Best advice I got from a prof in college was to drop out the instant my portfolio and skills were good enough to move on. Even that was more than strictly necessary, but I also did it for the nookie

[@legice]

As a 3D artist, you are not wrong about many points and in fact, very correct, but here is the thing... the industry is moving to blender and way faster than you can imagine. Fact is, the industry is still stuck with maya and max for 1 reason. It is a tool that is grandfathered in the workflow and thats it. Developing new tools in nothing new, but if the senior is using *a program*, so will you, or you will not get hired and thats it. Engines dont care what you use and a fbx export is an afternoon project if even that to get working, but the other tools, that is a different story. Studios used to heavily rely on inhouse engines and tools, but now with unity and unreal being the big boys, its not a thing anymore. Maya and max are completely replaceable, no doubt, zbrush is a specialised tool and people WANT to replace it, but nothing comers even close. Nuke, hudini and whatever specialised tool you have, it is to a degree impossible to replace, because they do a thing and very well. I moved from max (8 years) to blender (now 9 years) and max is ancient and only usable in architecture, because again, grandfathered. Maya, the animation tools are great, ho contest, but the rest, is basically worthless. Outdated UI, lacking features, bugs since 10 years ago (max included). This is your channel, you can do whatever you want, but much like people talking about unity, despite knowing jack shit about it, please dont,... The engine works, it has flaws, the company is dogshit, but the game engine is not what made the game bad, its the dev that made the game badly. If somebody finds this video, when researching about which 3D tool to use, not only is it as surface level as it gets, but its actually damaging the industry, that is actively trying to burn autodesk to the ground, as they are just a husk at this point, much like adobe.

[@TheCantinaChannel]

If you think I'm trying to praise autodesk your out of your mind. But it is still the main player and not training yourself in its programs will only hemmorage your job prospects.

[@SoPeLpc]

@@TheCantinaChannel Real question. Are you in the industry? Because i am and everyone i know uses blender.

[@GrimK77]

@@SoPeLpc Using - yes. Everyone does, including Marvel/Disney. But replacing Maya in established workflow? Not yet, but Epic targets many Maya features in UE upgrades, making Blender gradually good enough for UE workflow.

[@humbleraider6343]

You are right. I used to love maya. I didn't know much about autodesk before they bought maya. I thought autodesk buying maya was a good thing. But maya started to become very unstable. Very annoying. Many years after I left maya, I keep hearing the same thing. It makes me sad. Maya deserve better.

[@hound_of_justice]

Blatant lie. Blender is FAR away to replace Maya and 3ds Max in their domains. You claiming that Max is only for architecture is a testimonial to your lack of knowledge. Max is heavily used in the gaming industry aside of Maya. Blender has a long way to come even remotely close to Autodesk software and you Blender cultists wont win anyone over with your mantra about how Blender is all over the world and how it is supposedly replacing Maya and Max and co.

[@ChrisOfTheDead]

I've only ever known Maya because I learned at college and university. And because I already know Maya pretty darn well, everytime I try to learn Blender, it feels like I'm trying to real an owner's manual that was written in language I don't understand, fed into a paper shredder, and glued back together in a completely random order. It's worked out fine for me so far, but the only downside is that I pay $290 a year for Maya Indie, and I decided to buy a 3 year license for the V-Ray render engine for $1200. I've tried learning Blender 3 times, and every time I do, it confuses me to no end because nothing is laid out even remotely close to how Maya does it, and by the time I've spent 3 days in Blender, I could have probably finished the same project in Maya using the knowledge I already have. I'm just not in a good position to drop all my work and spend weeks learning a new program from the ground up to replace the one I already know extremely well. And trying to learn, on my own, in bite-sized chunks once every few weeks or months does not help with how my brain works with learning.

[@marsmotion]

i work at a major video game publisher. we use blender in many parts of our workflow on cutting egde projects. if i need an answer on blender i can easily find it on the web or youtube there are more resources for support than stars in the sky. its also better than max and maya. ive used both those for over 20 years. ive used max since before it was max. when it was 3dstudio. the only good reason people dont switch is they dont have time to learn a new thing. the only bad reason they dont switch is they dont have time to learn a new thing. your assumptions are very wrong.

[@noah.2B]

The AAA studio I work for uses Blender. It's not an either/or thing, it's just specific tools for specific purposes. Houdini primarily, but also Maya, and zbrush, and there's some specific processes in certain production pipelines that literally only exist in Blender, no other tool has them because they're community-made plugins, so we have Blender as well.

[@pixels_per_minute]

Pretty much any established company can't really switch to new software because retraining employees to use said software is expensive and there's no telling how much you'll have to rework your pipeline or create new tools to streamline it. If you're a new studio who can get away with using the newest kids on the block, then by all means, go ahead, but not everyone can. However, this also kinda leads to a handful of software companies holding a soft-monopoly on sections of the industry, and it usually leads to them screwing over their customers for their own benefits.

[@MangaGamified]

Nah, they can't estafa with a Free software on top of investor money, some in the comments already clued in they got some pocket money out of estafa from investors, like over-quoting the number of licenses and duration of the licenses. That's why they only use subs many subs and the most expensive ones at that + overquote = lots of extra pcket money. Hype something with a trailer, people get hyped, VC and investor money starts puring in, overquote licenses and duration = lots of extra pcket money before the movie starts selling. Alibis of other softwares is just an afterthought. Those big and bigger studios already have the prestiege and portfolio but they can never ever have enough money. They give absolutely no 💩what people can achieve with blender, but they can always overquote investors. Read @fighter05 and @sm5574 comments.

[@GreyManFaustus]

I use Blender because I'm stingy

[@jeffg4686]

nice

[@error-4518]

It does what you need it to do, I think it is smart to not spend money on what you don't need. Though it is always a good idea to donate to blender and other open source projects. And learning software is easy, you can always move to cinema4d etc. later.

[@captainblood9616]

smart would be a more accurate word

[@qoph1988]

Blender: It's like piracy, except legal

[@ADreamCalledEternity]

The only gripe I have with Maya is that tools you have to pay for, like AnimBot, aren't native to Maya. Whereas Blender has many of those tools that AnimBot has already built into it. Those are just enhanced workflow tools for animation (and there is a free version of Animbot, but it's not in development anymore), but having that ease of access in Blender really helps for learning animation imo! But as you've explained in your vid, that's nothing for a giant corp compared to a student learner lol

[@ExacoMvm]

From my experience Blender has a lot of plugins/tools, but they're often bad even the paid ones that go for $20-30+. E.g. Plugins like animating people/crowds, animating/rigging cars, city generators ( e.g. Cyberscape Pro ) and more... basically if the plugin is based on Geo Nodes then it's likely going to be bad full of limitation, issues and bugs and I wouldn't recommend to buy it without watching at least 20mins of workflow using it or if there's no refund option. But there are also great plugins such as "Botaniq", "Construction Lines" and more, but even those good ones are no match for similar plugins for Maya/Max. Maya/Max plugins are dozen levels above and those plugins such as "Goalem", "TyFlow" and "Craft Director Studio" could easily become standalone software.

[@MangaGamified]

The biggest studio only ever use subs and the most expensive ones at that, so they can estafa investors, by overquoting the number of licenses and duration, but is actually less if not far less, like how can you overquote estafa something that's free? it's a deeper rabbit hole than you can imagine just read around, atleast the above ones.

[@ADreamCalledEternity]

@@MangaGamified See, I know nothing about the inner workings of companies like that. While I figure companies aren't always gonna be honest about their practices, this is news to me. What companies do you have in mind who do this? I'm curious now

[@yasunakaikumi]

​@@MangaGamifiedthe thinh is you can invert it to "we need more artist" if the studio uses Blender lol

[@MangaGamified]

@@ADreamCalledEternity They didn't say either out of fear maybe and being expandable these days like offshore / AI. I'm also new'ish to exploiting investors like wolf of wallstreet, FOMO, investors fomo investing Tesla but look at it now, china scamming investors in china, there's just lots. These happen alot especially in 3rd words or atleast in my country, maybe an overexaggeration but look up "China Tofu projects".

[@davehansan]

Been working on 3D characters for large game studios for almost 15 years now exclusively using Maya for all of them. I do use blender for my personal projects and id love it companies adopted it but I feel they probably never will. The BIGGEST reason is not just the interruption to the pipeline that affects other disciples like tech art or animation but even bigger is the tools many large studios spent years of their existence building that primarily work off the backbone of Maya. Tools and scripts that sometimes are directly integrated with their engines. And some times the entire visual front end for those engines IS simply Maya. So it’s just too much of a key component to the process for AAA studios to just try and swap out and redo everything. Also finding engineers to rewrite that stuff for just blender might be even harder.

[@ARTFX3D]

We bought Maya in our company and version 2024 was so full of bugs that we had to go to version 2023 and after lots of technical issues it was easier to move to Blender and write our own addons. So my message to Autodesk is: “Even animation sucks in Maya if you are advanced user in Blender”

[@xcamel3dartwork315]

Yes, but no. Ubisoft uses Blender and they wrote their own Mixer addon for workers collaboration. CD Projekt RED artists were using Blender for gun models and even for Johnny Silverhand's arm.

[@hemzabomb]

It’s so funny that the author cites absolutely dead Modo as an alternative to modeling

[@henrikmikaelkristensen4784]

Modo died around version 601 or so. After The Foundry got to it, it was obvious that they had no intention or ability to improve it. It's basically a zombie today.

[@ZalvaTionZ]

Yeah, the whole video is basically a copy of arguments from 5 years ago. Pretty obvious the author doesn't do this professionally.

[@PanoptesDreams]

My immediate answer, without watching the video, would be vendor lock in. I've been in too many professional industries (Hospitality, Security, IT, Retail) not to acknowledge the overbearing existence of vendor lock-in.

[@scrung]

its not good to give an answer when u dont have it

[@PanoptesDreams]

@@scrung BS. It's called engagement. And that's a horrible way to live your life. The best way to learn is to make mistakes. Plus it helps start discussions.

[@scrung]

@@PanoptesDreams it’s a great outlook to have when you’re applying that philosophy to anything productive. not like you learned anything here from just… seeing the title then making a comment because you’re too lazy to watch the video (but still gotta have a loud opinion cause, gotta have the answer for everything, right)

[@PanoptesDreams]

@@scrung I actually did watch the video 😂😂 stop projecting your insecurities

[@scrung]

@@PanoptesDreams okay, weird to say that you didn't, then?

[@CooldownChronicles]

"Not being the industry standard" doesn't mean Blender isn't suitable for game development. Like Ubisoft, there are plenty of video game studios using it in their production pipelines. The main barrier is that there still plenty of universities and training centers whose instructors teach the software they know and what is still being used by a lot of companies to ensure higher chances of students becoming employed. If I remember correctly, before version 2.9, Blender's general UX wasn't very attractive, and that's when I personally started using it. This was the turning point for many studios to start including it in their pipelines. Before that, we couldn't even see a LinkedIn job post asking for Blender artists. Shifting the software in what is considered "industry standard" takes much more than a decade, but Blender will become widely used and considered "industry standard", and not just in game develpoment. I am sure of this. Regarding support, the Blender community is very helpful-much more so than the support of many known paid software companies.

[@1MinuteSoCTips]

been a 5 year Maya user before switching to Blender due to its massive potential to dethrone industry leading softwares in the near future. its always a privilege to hear something that is FREE be compared to something that is PAYED. Cheers to all blender users! Long live Blender!

[@GamingGyaniAnurag]

I started learning blender in 2022 from youtube and I've earned around $1300 till now without paying for the software or plugins, my age is 20 right now

[@sospirit27]

Can you elobrate on what you did I'm trying to learn blender

[@lpnp9477]

Great moves keep it up

[@rano12321]

Correction, Blender does have paid professional support (through Canonical). For big studios pipeline is a piece of cake, many game and VFX studios have had incorporated blender in their pipeline because they have devs to make custom pipeline. Not exactly sure what you meant by Nuke or Houdini having better node based editing?!! Nuke is a node based compositor, and Houdini is a nodebased fully procedural DCC, Blender is not fully procedural like Houdini, which is why it's not fully node based yet, it's a destructive program like Maya, Max. But it has proceduralism now because of geonodes and although it's very new and not close to Houdini as a whole, it's very much powerful and comparable to Houdini SOPs, and I'd say the shader editor in Blender is one of the most powerful part and if not the most powerful compared to other 3D DCC. The real reason why most big studios have stuck with Maya/Max is because they have something that works, and they've spent millions over the years for training, pipeline and developing custom proprietary tools for max/maya. Massive studios for example, Weta has replaced pretty much every core features of Maya and replaced with the tools they've developed and use Maya just as a framework, but that's not really the case for small/indie studio which is why most of them use Blender, if not fully but at least partially and even a lot of big studios have switched to Blender over the years because it has simply better tools and workflows (preferred by younger artists) for most of the stuff they'd need to develop tools for in Maya/Max. Here's a list of game development studios using Blender (this doesn't include all of them), most of them don't exclusively use Blender but use it as a part of their pipeline:::: 1. Embark 2. Bohemia Interactive 3. CD Project Red 4. Bungie 5. Valve 6. Ubisoft (France) 7. Egosoft 8. EA 9. Paper Bunker 10. Gameloft 11. Wolfire 12. Wube Software 13. Infinity Ward 14. Cloud Imperial Games 15. Strikerz Inc. 16. Remedy Entertainment 17. Fast Travel Games

[@V-95K]

Exactly, more companies start using Blender, because a lot of talented people can’t pay for maya or 3ds max while getting ready for real work… even I decided to go from maya to blender after working 7 years with maya, it’s difficult, but I just hate monthly/yearly subscriptions, and because of those subscriptions I’m done with autodesk… I’m ok to pay once even if it’s $800+ but paying $1000+ just to have maya at home? Nahh

[@rano12321]

@@V-95K Yes, I'm forced to use maya at work but even if you strip out the price from both software, I'd still pick Blender over maya because imo it's a better software for most of the things (maybe except rigging and anim even tho a new fully overhauled system for blender has been under development for some time now).

[@pizola3285]

Blender is not even close to Houdini with their geometry nodes. It is a good starting point. But not even close.

[@rano12321]

@@pizola3285 IG you didn't read my comment where I mentioned as well that Blender is not close to Houdini as a whole but Geonode is a lot closer to Houdini's SOPs than any other procedural tool like Bifrost or scene nodes in c4d but it's lacking in the dynamics part which is under development. Well when Houdini came out with Solaris, it wasn't anywhere close to Clarisse or Katana but over the years it caught up, i'm not that old but i do remember hearing just 1/2 decades ago studios weren't using Houdini for any FX stuff and they were doing it all with plugins in maya and max, so it's just matter of time.

[@user-gy4xp2tu6f]

1:00 and yet there's minimal resources for Autodesk on youtube.

[@SunDevilDave]

I'm 30 years into 3D animation. Started with Lightwave, moved to Maya, now I'm fully into Blender. Blender is the future.

[@rano12321]

So much misinformation here. Blender does offer enterprise support for big studios, and there are 100s if not 1000s of game studios using blender now.

[@Master1080k]

Exactly like Ubisoft and EA Games and Embark

[@salidrawnbuild1697]

@@Master1080k I think epic games did too, for Fortnite, but I’m not quite sure about that one..

[@alexas8787]

@@Master1080k Ubisoft Animation Studio, switched from Maya to Blender few years ago.

[@ped-away-g1396]

the phrase "people don't like changes" is grossly misused. it's not that people don't like changes, they don't like changes when the changes don't give them any benefit or don't outweigh the time and energy it takes to make.

[@youtubelisk]

That's not true. Changing your diet can have huge benefits, but 90% of people don't want or can't change their ways. Change is hard. Change is unbelievable hard it has velocity and requires course correction.

[@qoph1988]

People rarely like change.. but change happens. It would be pretty disturbing if people were still using Maya in like 2050, that would be a sign of immense stagnation. I'm frankly astounded that people are still using it in the 2020s, I did not think I would still have relevance from my high school 3d packages two decades later.

[@LemmonTea]

Started learning blender 3 days ago and I’ve already made a fully modeled and rigged character and I made an office building and I told my self to make something everyday just do it a little better and I’m sure I’ll be good soon… I’m already seeing good progress and I didn’t realize how easy it is to get started

[@BrianKouhi]

I had a Maya issue once, was in talks with the support team for weeks and they were no help... just ghosting me a week at a time. I ended up finally fixing the problem myself by researching forums. I find it way easier to solve Blender problems because of the huge community around it.

[@chillbro2275]

All that money and they aren't good at helping you? Pfff

[@Buklen]

Straight off the bat, the official support of companies like Adobe and Maxon know less than I do 90% of the time I reach out to them. I've had much more luck with forums.

[@arno_groenewald]

We used to joke in the academy that Autodesk was running a skeleton crew, and their labor shows that they seem to be trying their best to make things look that way. Most programs in these corporate hands go there to die. The license industry is running out of time due to how many new artists use software or flat-out pirate license software to get around the flawed license system. They will kick and screem to the grave, but to the grave, they will go. One could argue that the big companies pay them too much for that, but how many have an interest in making money these days with the type of quality checks the damaged goods slip through. Either the big license pedolers restructure or get outpaced, and it isn't like free software is waiting until the big boys remember that the ground is a bad place to be heading towards. Tick tock for license developers, especially since they don't even have licenses for their own products, which is how common pirating has become. It is a known fact that Adobe is guilty of such behavior, so why not suspect the same of the rest.

[@Joey-xc6nh]

As a 3D artist and a game developer, I agree ... I've learned Maya in university as the main 3D tool and I used it 4 years after graduation, now I use Blender and I love this software but after 4 years after Maya I still find lot's of frustrating features in it! UV, animation, Pivot and object handling, joints system, and the top frustrating thing is PLUGINS, ask any developer and they'll say the same, I can't rely on plugins cuz those god damn pipes! I hate using Autodesk products because of Autodesk! I trully wish the day when Blender become indusetry standard, but unil that day, I need to make do!

[@mitsuhh]

Maya's UV tools are good

[@TheVoiceOfChaos]

"Trying to learn maya without going to college would be challenging" My brother hit the nail in the coffin right there. That line is everything concerning this maya vs blender debate for me. One more thing i want to mention concerning the pipeline. from my limited experience in teams its generally a bad idea for your animators to be split between maya and blender, both working on the same animation. Im sure stuff like tools and software is set in stone by the project to avoid any incompatabilities. Typically by older people who are way better than you in, guess what, maya. Trust me it can happen the other way around too. (The entire team using blender but some insist to use maya rather than adapt)

[@THX-1138]

A big reason is everyone from the prior generation already knew and were taught Maya, now almost all the freelancers are using blender and experienced in it and it's slowly becoming more widely used and industry standard, as it's features now outpace many of the old giants. Thing move slowly, but blender will win in the end.

[@palynodie5]

freelancers are not the industry. Exactly as the video said, Blender is not on par with specialised counterparts, far from it. It's a really good diy tool for most basic or amateur tasks. It's a swiss tool. Nice to have on a tight budget, but not your workhorse knife.

[@THX-1138]

@@palynodie5 Young freelancers will be the base for the industry in 10 years time when they are working professionally. My friend was contracted by disney and uses blender for everything.

[@palynodie5]

@@THX-1138 in 10 years time I can garantee you that 3D packages will all be as relevant as analog phones are today.

[@THX-1138]

@@palynodie5 They said this about C every time a "New Paradigm" dropped

[@palynodie5]

@@THX-1138 There was no "new paradigm" before AI became an actual thing, mind you. VFX/animation/gaming industry has been rolling on the same one for a good three decades.

[@wolfcl0ck]

After years of Blender, learning that Maya frequently crashes when trying to... unwrap UVs was like learning that Autodesk users get smacked across their heads once every few bites into their shit sandwiches.

[@dmennenoh]

And they keep coming back for more.

[@xanzuls]

Good video, but there are too many misinformation like Blender does has enterprise support and there are a lot of gaming studios using blender, either primarily or part of their pipeline. But the autodesk lobbying and high cost of retraining the artists part is true unfortunately.

[@beatallmighty58]

Game studios DO USE BLENDER!!!!!!!!

[@KernelHaxxor]

Yeah, I also feel like another reason is that 3ds max supports C++ plugins, while Blender supports only Python ones and if you want to modify its core, then you should fork it, which may heavily slow down the progress of developing game-specific tools

[@BusinessWolf1]

I did not know that about python. The more I read about Blender's pitfalls the more I recognise how much room it has for growth. And that honestly excites me.

[@ronnetgrazer362]

I vaguely remember pipeline bridges and render engine implementations in B3D that used a python shell and the actual proprietary stuff as a binary, C++ most likely. Not an expert but that is a thing.

[@KernelHaxxor]

@@ronnetgrazer362 Yes, for example hydra storm has a python integration plugin, but the rest is still written inside of the native core of Blender in C++ Same goes for stuff like Octane, probably, since it still requires you to download a separate version of Blender

[@ProjectAtlasmodling]

You can use c++ in blender

[@KernelHaxxor]

@@ProjectAtlasmodling I'm talking about using libraries directly, instead of hacking around with natives through python. From handbook FAQ for new blender devs: > While work is ongoing to improve the Blender implementation in this regard, realistically, adding support for a C++ plugin API is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

[@SpicyMelonYT]

The ultimate advice is to enjoy all programs. There wont ever be a end all be all program that is perfect. So instead of Pidgeon holing your self, think of each of these programs as a tool you use to make a product

[@gabrielesilinic]

Fact check number 2, about pipeline: blender currently has extensive support for USD and some engines support importing blend files directly. On top of that blender can export to so many formats, incuding fbx. If you need anything more it's just a python script away.

[@vizionthing]

The only reason the proprietary software has a hold is because the artists that know it have not yet retired, one of the reasons Blender is still growing is because they have two generations of artists that have grown up with it.

[@lalamax3d]

you are far behind in thinking process.................in last 2 years, 3 agencies i worked with, were using blender as main tool for cg. except comp.

[@SanOcelotl]

New and small studios are using blender, but yeah the gigants of the industry are never changing

[@flowerbloom5782]

That’s awesome. I wanna work indie anyway.

[@Jaroartx]

now time to hit some tutorials always been interesed in Blender as a 2d artist it should be fun

[@MangaGamified]

Nah, they can't estafa with a Free software on top of investor money, some in the comments already clued in they got some pocket money out of estafa from investors, like over-quoting the number of licenses and duration of the licenses. That's why they only use subs many subs and the most expensive ones at that + overquote = lots of extra pcket money. Hype something with a trailer, people get hyped, VC and investor money starts puring in, overquote licenses and duration = lots of extra pcket money before the movie starts selling. Alibis of other softwares is just an afterthought. Those big and bigger studios already have the prestiege and portfolio but they can never ever have enough money. They give absolutely no 💩what people can achieve with blender, but they can always overquote investors. Read @fighter05 and @sm5574 comments.

[@w1-w2-w3]

The big names in industry are hard to change. It is because they are afraid to change because of project deadline and workflow. 6 years ago I used to work as the backend developer in some big company which use pure PHP as their backend and they don't want to change no matter how good other new programming languages are. So, I changed to the new job :D

[@TheCantinaChannel]

smart move

[@MangaGamified]

Nah, they can't estafa with a Free software on top of investor money, some in the comments already clued in they got some pocket money out of estafa from investors, like over-quoting the number of licenses and duration of the licenses. That's why they only use subs many subs and the most expensive ones at that + overquote = lots of extra pcket money. Hype something with a trailer, people get hyped, VC and investor money starts puring in, overquote licenses and duration = lots of extra pcket money before the movie starts selling. Alibis of other softwares is just an afterthought. Those big and bigger studios already have the prestiege and portfolio but they can never ever have enough money. Read @fighter05 and @sm5574 comments.

[@vlc-cosplayer]

Which version of PHP? I've heard the newer versions are getting better, but I wouldn't be surprised if the code was targeting an old and unsupported version of PHP even at the time 💀

[@ProjectAtlasmodling]

It's called the invators delema, change never happens from the top it's always the bottom

[@michaelangeloibasco0503]

Thank you forever to Ton Roosendaal and Blender Team i love you guys❤❤❤

[@projectbrian]

I work in rigging and tech-art and I can tell you that the amount of disruption that it can cause a studio whenever you switch from one DCC app like maya to another like blender can’t be overstated. Decades of tools and pipeline development can’t be easily replicated. You’d have to layoff most of the studio while the tech-art team converted its code base to a new system.

[@deepelements]

Every Studio I've worked at always had a few artist using Bender. People just slept on Blender refused to learn it and have no ideal how powerful it really is til now. At Microsoft we had guys using Softimage, Maya, Max, Houdini and yes Blender. We even had a guy using LightWave if anyone is old enough to remember that one :)

[@hydrocosmo]

3:36 Blender has an official exporter plugin to unreal so.....not really

[@anjuscuccos]

Does it actually 😲🎈

[@tyr3759]

5:09 Except Disney. They seem to focus on weird American ideologies for a 'modern audience' that doesnt exist

[@cocobos]

This is far from true, as an indie developer, most of us using blender+unity/unreal here.

[@theonefreeman7157]

Learned Blender during 2020 quarantine time and still learning to this day. Amazing software that allowed me to find another part of my creative side that I didn’t even know I had. The fact that it’s free still surprises me considering everything it has

[@kmr_tl4509]

5:40 They're interested in maximizing their profit, not minimizing their taxes. Wtf are you saying

[@guatagel2454]

I was thinking the same.

[@psy237]

Highly disagree with most you say... Most is also simply wrong.

[@Ramt33n]

As a character technical animator, I simply can not live without maya's interactiveness and limitless flexibility of Houdini KineFX to post process and polish the animation data from Maya! Maya's Matrix Nodes + Houdini VEX is something I could not even dream of 15 years ago. You can design any creature for any pipeline with any kind of CFX (Creature Effects such as muscle, hair and cloth simulations) to go with them with much much more ease nowadays. I would assume Blender's geometry nodes are a great system for complicated character animation setups as such, And it would be exciting to explorethe possibilites at some point. But not sure if there are as many Blender professional animators out there to bring these setups to life though. Great video!

[@Angel_V8]

Blender is amazing for being free. It still does what you want it to do, I dont have the money for Autodesk, so blender being my option is just fine with me

[@BlenderPretender]

You can always tell when somebody doesn't really use Blender.

[@dmennenoh]

Super easy. Like people saying it doesn't integrate into most game engines. LOL

[@eltreum1]

Lol Blender gets more use than you think.

[@salmonsushi47]

A bad artist would always point out flaws with his brush and not his ability

[@sasnad3]

It's not painting boy, its tech.

[@salmonsushi47]

@@sasnad3 blud I'm doing it for 5 years I know what it is

[@sola9219]

In the studio i interned as 3D artist, we only use blender there. In some studios, its mix, and software to be used will depend on the project or client

[@warrenscipio4168]

Wow I haven't seen that screensaver at 2:38 in probably more than a decade, what a throw back

[@Wildcat12]

Having to re-learn the UI every few updates is a major pain in the ass even if you know what you're doing. Blender has a really steep learning curve as-is and it doesn't help at all when the tutorials you watch don't even have the same buttons you do. Or features getting renamed despite no change in functionality ("Remove Doubles" -> "Merge by Distance") AND moved just to really fuck with you. Even if you know what you're doing the UI changes alone can make you stop and think for a second about whether you can even still do whatever thing you want to do.

[@Dushess]

Honestly that one change is correct, you can remove not just doubles, but anything being too close (vertices). Looks useful sometimes.

[@jstewartfilm]

I see canned tuna, I click

[@bad_devils666]

You sound like my cat! XD

[@BlindingSun_]

The guys who make BeamNg drive use blender

[@skaboodlydoodle]

Thank you! Every time I give advice to upcoming artists they're all like "Yeah I know blender" and I'm like "okay but do you know Zbrush, Maya, and Max?" and they're like "Uhh no. Blender does everything" and I have to explain why Blender isn't really reliable for industry work. Every studio I've worked at where we discuss Blender we end up passing on it because it doesn't inter-operate with other programs very well and it would take tons of money and work to setup custom scripts and plugins for Blender that we already have for Maya/Max/Zbrush etc. That said Blender is becoming insanely powerful and honestly as a Max user, Blender objectively runs far smoother overall. It's just a more polished, optimized, straightforward experience.

[@raphaelprotti5536]

There's a simple reason that's kind of addressed here but not really. Pipeline is mentioned but not really explained. Most studios have built a custom tool set of workflows to solve their problems. Generally speaking, a pipeline is a set of software and hardware to produce content. It comprises third party software like Maya, Nuke, UE, etc...and custom built code to tie it all together into a workflow. This represents an investment that produces profit until you decide to replace a third party tool with another. At this point this tooling is useless and has to be rebuilt around the new software. Also, for instance, what of all the 3D assets stored in one app's scene format, with custom shaders etc...? It's a huge amount of work to switch to another package for 3D, even if that package is fantastic. Blender hasn't been that great a tool until fairly recently, and I'm sure that the incentive to build it into a studio pipeline will increase as the app improves.

[@kebrus]

Spoiler, they are not ignoring blender, you are assuming things you don't know.