Blender for Game Art
polycounter lvl 3
Hi all.
Im still new to game art and game development and i have been playing around with Maya and 3Ds Max and i love them, but i do not love there price.
i have been looking at blender for quite awhile now and iv been wanting to give it a go, i just want to get some feed back from other artists out there about Blender, how they feel about it, and if it can be used to create indie games and/or game assets (freelance).
and info would be nice
thanks
Im still new to game art and game development and i have been playing around with Maya and 3Ds Max and i love them, but i do not love there price.
i have been looking at blender for quite awhile now and iv been wanting to give it a go, i just want to get some feed back from other artists out there about Blender, how they feel about it, and if it can be used to create indie games and/or game assets (freelance).
and info would be nice
thanks
Replies
Fast (hotkey based), stable (never crashes), free, not used at studios,.
Sure can, although you should still get Zbrush as it can handle 2 to 3 times as many polygons when sculpting.
Studios do use Blender (one example where I've worked in, Ubisofts Redlynx), it's just not the most popular platform due to its reputation. Blender can sculpt just fine, but if you want do make movie-quality stuff with some nifty added tools then ZBrush is the sculpting tool you want.
There is absolutely no reason not to use Blender, the principles are the same, it outputs polygons and your assets will import just fine into any engine that has a smidgen of logic behind it without using proprietary formats (CryEngine)
Want to see what I do with Blender after this rant? Here http://skaiway.tumblr.com/
As far as I know Blender still has issues importing skeletal meshes via fbx and cannot export tangents or binormals. There is also the rotation issue when importing to Unity. This may be fixed with the new fbx scripts in 2.71.
I do believe though that with 2.7 they did add an FBX importer that can import custom normals.
With Blender I just keep one hand on the keyboard, and the other on the mouse, and box modelling seems to go very fast. Maybe it is just so that Blender suits my personality. However, I like it, and I can't see why it shoudn't be perfectly capable for producing models. Can't say anything about animation or texturing and such.
Blender still has trouble with workflows that involve other 3D software, usually if something needs to be imported into Blender, but Blender > Engine or Blender > Maya, Max or Modo is perfectly fine except those custom normals which you can't even create internally in Blender. It's a known flaw with Blender, but not its I/O. Yeah, importing through fbx does have problems. It's a fairly new addition to Blender.
Tangents and bi-normals are a blind spot for me, as Unity calculates them for me. Blenders current official release does not export these. Also this little piece of info https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Types/Textures/NormalMaps/Creation/index.html has me puzzled about the actual use of exporting tangents and bi-normals with current engines, I have thought of it as a Max/Maya specific need with Unreal Engine 3.
The Unity rotation bug could be fixed by Unity, but they apparently do not give a toss. This bug is inconsistent depending on if you import the whole Blender scene hierarchy or only selected objects. Autodesks FBX viewer imports Blender FBX files correctly, so that's why I point my blame towards Unity. The bug also does not break anything, but it is an annoyance.
There is a more or less official list called "Blender Gamedev Requests/Issues" here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuS_F0ZKX-zTdGxKOEMtRmI2Tno4UUlPZzVfNXB6RHc#gid=0, do check it out if you're interested.
For creating assets for a portfolio or such, especially if you also use other apps like zbrush, 3dcoat, topogun etc it's nice. Its fast and pretty intuitive for modeling, which is what I use it for 90% of the time. It's also a fairly natural transition to 3ds Max if/when you want to go that. It also seems to have a decent set of tools for things like animation and rendering, though I'm not an expert in either of those areas.
However, for game dev it can fall short. I've run into pipeline issues a number of times (exporting formats, preserving data, all that good stuff), which can be crippling. 3ds max and maya tend to have a lot more support for resolving pipleline issues between them but in blender you're often left figuring things out for yourself.
Blender also lacks support for vertex normals, so unlike in Max/Maya you cannot manually edit their orientation. Its kind of unbelievable that this feature isn't in there, and it can cause problems when you want to create meshes that appear seamless whilst having separate elements. It wont be a big deal for most people but it makes me wonder what other surprises could be lurking inside that only show once you're far along a pipeline.
Vertex Normal editing has been in blender now for quite some time. So not sure what feature you're talking about that is still missing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceNkQ6UNn1I
Even though there are plugins that allow the editing of custom normals, that's render totally useless because Blender lacks the ability to export those custom normals. That's the problem I ran into. Blender's exporters recalculate normals on export.
I do apologize for being quite gung-ho about this topic :poly142:
Full Maya have some advantages over blender but Maya LT has none except proper FBX export and ShaderFX. Imho Maya LT is not worth money they ask for if you compare features to Blender.
Custom vertex normal edit/export/import will be in blender in couple of months. Bastien Montagne is working on it now.
Import/Export issues apply almost only to FBX whitch is closed, undocumented proprietary file format owned by Autodesk. Although blender guys are working on it and in few months we will be able to use it properly.
Check this site for updates and test builds: http://mont29.wordpress.com/tag/fbx/
I'm using Blender since 2.49 and I only can say that they improving it more than other 3d applications.
I'm working to a game project, waiting to go on with vfx career, and Blender does its job perfectly for our indie project, and just to let you know, I'm using for texturing Krita, another open source 2d application which I would suggest to everyone.
What I read from your post is the reason I'm writing you: if you are thinking a game career, forget Blender, do a search about the company you'd like to work in and try to know if they use Maya or Max.
I'm sure that if you want to be a freelancer, you should think more of Maya or Max, because they are standard and clients like the standard, well, they like the applications they use, of course, especially if they want the project files when job ends.
Instead, if you are thinking of a personal/indie project, go with Blender 100%! It's free, it has a big community, there are a lot of tutorials, both free and with fee.
Did I say it's free? Because as indie, you should take low every expense, right? And licenses are very expensive, especially if you're just starting your company/team.
We are lucky that we can use powerful game engines (Unity, UDK...) for free, so why don't go on with the same philosophy? :poly121:
Anyway, try every program you can and go on with the one fits best for you, you'll get better only with time, day after day, and remember you make the difference, not the tool, and no tool is 100% perfect (ok, zen mode off).
But, please, learn Blender, also the basics are good, because, despite the fact you're using Windows or Linux, you're at your computer or at friend's one (Blender comes in portable way too, so no installation required), you could grab a copy and save the day!
Even when I was using the powerful Houdini, Blender saved my A!
P.S. Blender has its own and original orientation system and when importing in Unity, things are rotate -90° on X axis and programmers hate that!
So I wrote this little script, it a huge WIP, but I tested and it works for me, so use it at your own risk.
Just create a new script and paste it, then select the objects you want to export, it will delete the unnecessary objects, fix the selected ones, save the file directly in the Unity project folder (indicate where, please), then it will reload the original file. Unity will update its content: if you drag asset in viewport, they will be rotated, of course, it sees they are from a blend file, then just put x = 0 and they should be ok. If you repeat the process, most probably you'll have a backup blender file in the project folder next to the blender file: just delete it!
Two issues: folder has to exist, so create it in advance; it works only with no hierarchy object, I mean, it'll fix rotation for every object despite they are parents/children, while I noticed only topmost parents have to be fixed, I'm sorry for that, I'm working on it.
import bpy import os # path and filename of the actual file actualBlendFile = os.path.dirname(__file__) # save the actual file bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile(filepath=actualBlendFile,check_existing=True) # project path where to export the blend file unityBlendFile = "D:\\projects\\blahblah\\Unity\\Assets\\name.blend" # delete all the unnecessary objects for obj in bpy.data.objects: if not(obj.select): bpy.data.scenes[0].objects.unlink(obj) bpy.data.objects.remove(obj) else: obj.select = False # for every object to export to unity for obj in bpy.data.objects: # select obj.select = True # sit on 0 0 0 bpy.ops.object.location_clear() # rotate x -90 bpy.ops.transform.rotate(value=-1.5708, axis=(1, 0, 0), constraint_axis=(True, False, False), constraint_orientation='GLOBAL', mirror=False, proportional='DISABLED', proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1) # freeze rotation bpy.ops.object.transform_apply(location=False, rotation=True, scale=False) # deselect obj.select = False # save the file inside Unity project folder bpy.ops.wm.save_mainfile(filepath=unityBlendFile,check_existing=True) # open the original blend file bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=actualBlendFile)So like everyone said... For indies it's a great choice since it's free and a great tool but for working in the industrie (or freelancing) it might be hard to use. So I have to learn either max or maya myself soon. Argh.
In the end you need to understand the basics of your companies main 3D app which can be what ever but you can work in what ever suits you. You should definitely be able to work all three softwares in my opinion.
hands down, blender is a gazillion times faster than maya if it comes to modelling
i only wish they could include vertexnormal editing... and a better viewport performance... and...
well, its not perfect, but i like it and i can wait for this !