Do any good artists use Blender?
polycounter lvl 11
At work I got bored and don't have Max installed so I was fooling around with Blender and it looks like it's come a long way from where it was just a few years ago. It used to be that only people thinking about getting into 3d tried out blender before moving onto max/maya/modo (or at least it seemed that way).
Any good artists, aka more than 100 followers or work in the industry, using blender that have an Artstation or would like share what they find useful about blender?
Of course we all know that each modeling package is simply a tool, a means to an end. I'm just interested to see what people have created with it that are in the gaming industry.
Any good artists, aka more than 100 followers or work in the industry, using blender that have an Artstation or would like share what they find useful about blender?
Of course we all know that each modeling package is simply a tool, a means to an end. I'm just interested to see what people have created with it that are in the gaming industry.
Replies
http://www.pioroberson.com
Some tools make certain tasks easier than others but that doesn't mean that is the only way to pull off a particular task. I think it's important for artists not to be snobbish about their tools and get to know a lot of different workflows. It really helps them tackle all kinds of new and weird problems that pop up.
You might not run off to a particular app that has mastered a certain aspect of a workflow but you might port it over to your app of choice which is hard to do if you aren't one of those people who tests out other programs and only sticks to the narrow band that is within your tiny scope of snobbish approved apps. =P
I think Blender gets a bad rap because it is so accessible and it draws in a lot of people who are just starting out. That just means the market if flooded with "look ma, I made artz" but if you spend some time looking things over you'll see some really good stuff.
With that said, I learned with other tools that work differently and have been developed in specific ways to maximize how I work so I prefer them, but I'm pretty sure I could get Blender to do what I needed if other packages evaporated overnight.
It's a poor craftsman that blames the tools.
(Head of Character Animation @ Dreamworks)
He has this side project called the Nimble Collective, which he shares with a few other industry leaders.
On Vimeo, he's been adding a video series documenting his progress as he navigates his way through blender. It's worth a look at the collection of videos in there, because other artists in the Nible Collective post there as well. Modelers too.
His Artstation has some samples of hard surface work done in Blender.
https://www.artstation.com/artist/mmaaxx
You seem to mistake this thread as attempting to disparage what is a good piece of a software. There is merit in seeing how blender is used by artists and if it used as a main modeling app in someone's workflow.
As a matter of the one thing I can say for sure is that as far as modeling and vertex weighting is concerned, switching over to Blender after a decade of using both Max and Maya definitely allowed me to work faster and more efficiently - and I am very picky about workflow efficiency and task optimisation.
I am not going to go into details or attempt to list every feature, but the mere fact that solid sculpting tools are fully available while working on polygon modeling tasks is a very convincing point - and this is precisely the one that made me curious about the app in the first place. The same logic (flexibility and inter-connectivity of various editing modes) applies to all aspects of the program and has massive workflow benefits. Unfortunately this is a little known fact, overshadowed by the poor default interaction settings which do require some time and effort to tweak into something useful for people coming from other apps.
It's my time to shine
Honestly I think post 2.5 Blender > Maya in modelling.
I can't wrap my mind around Maya.. at all..
Max is awesome though.
As for your question
Gleb Alexandrov
Jonathan Lampel
I could go on but..
yeah
I'll just send you a link to some good blender art sites
http://www.blenderguru.com/competitions/
http://blenderartists.org/forum/index.php
http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?27-Forum-Gallery
Damn right it is
"I'm just interested to see what people have created with it that are in the gaming industry."
Shit... erm..
Unfortunately I don't know anyone who fits that bill,
I know some that work in the movie industry
I know great freelance generalists
But I don't know any good blender artists in the game industry(that don't make mobile games)
Maybe I'll fit that bill one day...
Finding game industry jobs for freelancers is kinda hard in my experience.
Also it may or may not have to do with blender continuously going against the grain for the sake of going against the grain
Example: it uses openGL normal maps instead of DX, rather than using "glossiness/specularity" or "Roughness/Metalness" it uses "Roughness/Specularity", makes it a pain in the arse if you are working with Substance designer.
Sometimes it's good, like how everything is keyboard operable instead of using the mouse.
Sometimes it's annoying...
Also I see Pior and Max were already mentioned, but thomasp is great as well. Just throwin that out there.
but its hard to remember the names
http://www.blendernation.com/2014/04/23/monument-valley-a-stunning-ios-game-designed-with-blender/
http://www.blendernation.com/2013/05/24/the-incredible-adventures-of-van-helsing/
http://reset-game.net/?p=169#more-169
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/supercity-game-graphics-done-with-blender-krita-gimp
https://www.blender.org/press/angry-birds-maker-rovio-plunder-pirates-featured-on-app-store/
http://www.manujarvinen.com/ <- Manu Järvinen who works for Rovio is also highly recommended.
i'd say for me blender is faster, overall smoother in operation, has a better, faster viewport for actual modelling work (including the GLSL shader stuff that just works (tm) with my mikkt-normal maps), is more stable and most importantly more customizable than my former app 3ds max. it does not lock me into windows anymore (not a fan of that one's recent direction at all and eager to keep my options open), it appears to be well rounded, has decent community support and starts up in only about two seconds here with a good few addons installed.
in order to make it work for me i had to invest a lot of time however and basically throw out all the hotkeys and change the interaction model completely. massive, massive turn off right there. if you like me prefer context/pie menus and a select few hotkeys over digging around in the interface or pressing obscure key combos then i recommend looking at the pie menu editor addon. like, recommend in capital, bold, fontsize +5 letters.
i also think that in terms of toolset 3ds max still has the upper hand when it comes to pure mesh modeling and control over triangulation and normals (and some other things) but i find that for my type of work all the good stuff i actually need on a day to day basis is in blender and on top of that the workflow is just superior and easily customizable with a bit of simple python. so there's that.
and yes, blender has it's dirty corners as well, like the rest of them.
As a result Blender is used by some people in the industry, even though the studio are working primarily in Max or Maya. It doesn't happen very often for sure, but I've seen environment artists and VFX artists use Blender in triple A production from time to time. I myself have switched to Blender fully. I have Max and Maya at work, but I spend most of my time on Blender. As someone said above, once you learn the hotkeys it's an amazing tool.
I do agree that it lacks some visibility from massive artists like Modo would have with Tor Frick for instance. Maybe that will come in the future as more people start using it.
http://mmaaxx.artstation.com/
He has some great youtube videos of himself working in blender:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Fu3r82/videos
Blender in a triple A Game Studio- Aidy Burrows
Yeah um... he doesn't use blender professionally(When he's in FromSoftware's office, he uses 3ds max)
I asked him.
This is the video that convinced me to give it a try:
Edit: now I remember why...
@Steppenwolf, cool video. It's especially interesting to see examples from pro artists not focusing on character art, it seems more common. Would love to see more enviro stuff.
and as for knowing good blender 3d artists for games, that's a toughie for me because most Blender communities host people that want to make a big cgi movie without any tips/help for game modeling.
One of the reasons I chose it over other packages was because they weren't afraid to throw away code and start over, as they did on the 2.5 UI, and as they will do on the 2.8 viewport project.
While using Max every version after 2009-ish was dissapointing, and I saw the writing on the wall in terms of future development. I considered XSI, but then (in hindsight) gladly decided against it when Autodesk bought it right as I was demoing it. Modo was an option, and I still follow their development closely and would recommend it to anyone, but: I just got along with Blender better.
It was a rant, that's all.
The guy wanted to point out the Autodesk policy about this format.
Actually FBX support in Blender is pretty good and the support for this format is still there.
The FBX plugin is probably not going to have serious issues remain unfixed.
that is how I understood it too and Bastien had written this;
I’m still maintaining current FBX add-on, and will keep doing this.
Further more, I’m obviously available to help anyone who would like to
work on this format, to get started with current code (which is
everything but nice and simple), etc.
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2016-February/046710.html
He only uses Blender sometimes from what I recall but he is beast never the less.
here is his portfolio:
http://www.patricksutton3d.com/
In that case I guess the artist will just switch to use whatever the studio requires even though they might personally prefer Blender.
I don't have 100 followers and only limited experience with other 3D software, but with Blender you are able to deal with nearly everything necessary for 3d game art and more.
Blender is "big". Once I was looking for a cheap or free tool for video editing without any luck and finally figured out I could do all the stuff directly in Blender. Other parts, like the game engine, i will most likely never use in Blender, but they might be useful to others.
Unlike most people I actually love the UI and shortcuts and would like to see some of that in other programs too. There are for sure lots of areas that need improvement, but that's the case with all complex software.
Blender has a lot of free addons available as well, though some are not maintained and it can happen they wont run after an update.