Has anyone moved from a commercial modeling app to Blender?
At the risk of starting a "Blender is better than xxxxx" thread, I'm just curious if anyone here has made the jump from a commercial app (MAX, Modo, etc.) to Blender and how it's worked out for you.
Also, if you could share a little about your job, workflow, etc. that would be great.
Also, if you could share a little about your job, workflow, etc. that would be great.
Replies
Before that Max was so behind of Blender, crashy, slow and bugs infested so it was just a matter of getting accustomed.
Now Max developed all those features I moved to Blender for and to be honest they work a little bit better and easier. Still I already accustomed to Blender and too lazy to switch back.
My pipeline is Maya LT/Zbrush > 3D Coat/Substance/PS > Unreal/Marmorset/PS/etc. Blender usually fits in if I need motion graphics or a still renderer. Most scripts from modding communities are also designed for Blender.
My current occupation is Frontend Software Engineer and my 3D work doesn't intersect.
Were I to start a studio, I'd give serious thought to having modelers use Blender so I could buy animation tools for the animators and hopefully avoid import issues into the engine.
I've definitely seen the same things. It seems that workflow has become more specialized and you can't just get away with knowing one package anymore. This is true even for the independent artist who seems to more than likely also be using a variety of tools.
Most artists using Blender are using it as part of this larger workflow it would appear.
http://www.nullrefer.com/?http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/post.aspx?f=4&t=60807&p=954703
In a sense he's giving Modo away for free because the Foundry charges $100 for account transfer.
Oh, hey, that's me. Yeah. I gave away my Modo license, and will just use blender mostly. What can I say? Blender is awesome and free. A lot of great things are happening around blender, and I admire the blender foundation.
- More stable than Modo/Max/Maya
- A constantly evolving toolset
- Modeling and rendering features already equivalent/superior to other programs (no idea about animation yet, hoping to test it out in the near future)
- No official support ... yet very fast tech responses from the Blenderartists forum
- Addons don't even need a restart to be tested out !
- Completely open customisation options (the idea that one has to use the default shortcuts in order to make the most out of the program is a complete myth)
- Not a yearly dev cycle, meaning that updates happen when they need to instead of being forced by a calendar
- free and open.
and the list goes on ...
At that point I sincerely wish I had picked it up sooner. It's a really impressive package once past the (admittedly longer than usual) learning phase.
That's a surprise. Good to know. Thanks for sharing.
@nervouschimp good to see you here! I tried to contact you for Modo license too but couldn't find your e-mail
Thanks, and sorry, I got flooded with emails instantly, and so I removed my contact info from my profile.
I agree with all the points pior makes, and also wish I had switched sooner instead of continuing to invest in Modo.
Edit: oh, and yeah... stability. Blender is really way more stable than Modo and Maya. I even run the nightly builds, and they are more dependable than a Modo release after 3 service packs.
I've been using since 4 months.
My avatar is the first character I've made inside of it.
The animation workflow is tedious though.
Rigging is a bit quirky also...
Hey chimp!
I actually saw that post on the Modo forums but it was after you had already given it away. Very cool of you to be so generous.
I am/was considering Modo indie at the moment (don't have the funds for full) but Blender is my other real option. The only other thing I have right now is an older version of Lightwave which doesn't seem to get much love for game dev. (I've never upgraded because I don't see any real updates I need)
What kind of game modeling do you mainly do with Blender- characters? environments? and how is working out without Modo? I always thought Modo's modeler was its strong point, but animation- not so much.
nervouschimp: Wow, what you did says alot for blender. I assume there is a discussion on luxology's forums about why you sold off modo and switched to blender. I must find it!
Pior shared a lot of his progress in the Blender Mega Thread. You can search for his posts there:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/search.php?do=process&searchthreadid=72805&searchuser=pior&exactname=1&showposts=1 (newest first)
I don't really share my opinion on Modo publicly anymore. And really, my opinion doesn't matter. If Modo works for you, that's awesome. In a perfect world, we would all just use the tools that we are the most comfortable with.
Nothing weird about it.
...but I am weird.
Everything max has done since 2009 ver has been a poor showing for me. I can't see the investment value of buying a 1 year license for them to fix bugs a in the next release and charge the upgrade fee.
That said i do love my max despite it's faults, i mean, i hope it can change or i can change it someday, with the right scripts we could have a wonderful time. It's just occasionally it get's angry for something i did wrong, i mean it was my fault for using the cut tool, it had every right to crash 2 hours of work and destroy the autobackups. It's just a rough patch, i'm sure we'll find a way around this in the future.
That folks is the denial of an abusive relationship.
Blender is going to white knight me one day soon i hope
At first it was because it was free and there were lots of compromises because of it but now it's my preference.
nervouschimp: Well that is a shame, but I think everyone opinion is valid and worth listening to especially if they have some background in the subject.
-spline modeling is still a lot better in Max
-lack of good scripts for Blender, and when you find one it will be broken with next update and god knows how long till it's fixed.
So it really depends on your workflow. I use splines and scripts all the time so I prefer Max.
I love MODO ... you all know that ... but 901 hasn't been the best release and even a die hard fan like myself is sitting back and waiting until it gets stable before upgrading.
I can't remember the last time that Blender's fans took to the streets to protest a broken release.
So a larger budget, bigger team, etc. don't always translate to the best possible outcome.
I'd even take issue with this ...
"it has great community support"
It has a great community FEELING but in terms of actually getting answers, the forums aren't that useful. I've asked several questions over the years that just rotted without a single response. They weren't even complicated.
But someone says something like, "MODO rocks!" and there's 40 responses all high fiving each other.
I'd say it actually has the worst community among the major four. The least helpful, anyway.
well you are kinda infamous for your very one sided stance towards things you prefer...
anyways
I don't say Modo is a bad choice, it's not my cup of tea but i can understand people using it. But i can also understand people opting for blender, I for one would switch to blender rather than modo IF i decide to switch from Max/Maya to anything else.
I will have to have Maya and Max Licensen anyways for a long time to come, i don#t see why I should get a new tool to the pipelin that again adds a lot of costs to the production, while i could get another new tool, which also is becoming better and better for free.
if you were talking about Blender, ask it again here
yeah you, that doesn't apply to everyone and doesn't make you the most efficient modeller, or gamedesigner, or leveldesigner, or whatever you have very strong feelings about
How is the sp1 working out for you? Is it much more stable?
Modo IS getting expensive for sure. While Indie is more than enough for learning, no plug-ins means PRMAN is not gonna be available. In that aspect I really am leaning towards Blender
I really have been loving the developments in Blender. I complained about a lack of custom vertex normals and we are finally getting tools for that and complained about the viewport and they are working on an overhaul for that this year as well.
Combine that with Cycles for renders as well as baking in cycles using cages and it's getting really really great for games as well. I've been doing tests with baking lightmaps in Blender for game projects in Unity and it's getting really easy to work with, and waiting minutes for a finished lightmap bake compared to a day with Unity 5 is a big boon.
The prman RIS plugin for blender is being developed at a very rapid pace by Pixar. I think you'll be waiting a while if you want renderman for Modo. But if you plan on doing some serious renders with prman, you better have a dual-zeon workstation with a ton of cores, otherwise you'll be facing some long render times.
Blender and Modo do not have the same heart. A company that attaches DRM to your scene files, disables scripting, and imposes strict export limitations is pretty much the polar opposite of Blender Foundation.
When trying the other programs, I ran into many bugs, I had problems even a experienced Max and Maya user couldn't figure out. After a month of tinkering with the programs I went back to Blender and couldn't be happier.
Basically if you bought 901 you where duped into being a "beta" tester and of course the fan boys will disagree with this fact. All the hype over how stable the release would be was a farce because they new very well that the core of the program had many issues. The main "hype" promoters during the build up for the 901 release said nothing for 2 months after the release. A week before 901 SP1 came out they came back on the forum with "SP1 hype" and the majority of users just accept this, that's when I lost respect for the main players of the foundry.
Many of the issues have been ironed out in SP1 (thanks to all the beta testers including myself btw) and there will be more features added this year through service packs but I am done with the foundry and the new attitude.
3D software business done right, yeah right !
Pete
the thing is, you run into a lot of crap as a beginner, stuff you start to exclude from your behavior. as a tutor i often had people running into stuff i had no clue how to reproduce, with interns or juniors on site the same. I bet there is similar stuff in blender, and if it's just weird behavior, not bugs, you just start to remove those things from your workflow.
If indie got some of the more useful scripts (Seneca, etc.) along with Substance support that would go a long way to making it more appealing in my eyes. Also, I thought there already was a rounded edge shader in Modo?
On the topic of Blender, one of my frustrations is looking for a feature and being directed to a custom script only to find out the person making it gave up on it because Blender broke the code with each new release. There are so many "dead ends" with Blender when it comes to custom work- and with dependency on the community to take part and improve it this is not good.
same stuff in blender
often times people complain how bad it is because you cannot do this or something is not working etc.. when its just a user error or lack of knowhow
to stay on topic :
using blender at work for all my modelling and uv work
but still using maya to edit normals and export to special format
at home iam running only blender
Yeah, this is seriously bothersome. It's not as bad with Autodesk products because there's only a new release once a year after which you have to wait for everyone to come out with new scripts. Luckily the plugins are open-source due to Blender's GPL license, so if you know what you're doing and the plugin is important enough to you it's technically possible to fix it. But I agree that it would be a big step forward for Blender if it kept Python API compatibility between releases.
I'm also enjoying the ability to sculpt my geometry as I work on it.
I haven't touched its UV or animation tools yet, but I hope to in the next few days
4 years of using Blender at home
I don't think I could ever recommend Blender to replace Maya for animators.
Blender is amazing, getting better all the time. Interface is sometimes weird but I've gotten used to it. Blender would be my first choice for personal projects but last choice for projects with other artists.
There are indeed many ways to remap/modify this kind of default behavior, but it does require a little bit of advanced know-how with the input editor. This is probably best kept for a little later, ie for a time when you are even more familiar with the program.
That being said : the XYZ manipulator can be (and in my opinion should be !) completely disabled in Blender. It sure is a very nice tool to have, especially for users transitioning from other programs since it allows for a traditional component transformation workflow (move rotate scale) but there is a parallel (and in my opinion more efficient) paradigm available in Blender which comes with the added benefit of being easier on the wrists as there is no need to click down and drag. Here is a quick breakdown :
- hide the manipulator (ctrl-spacebar)
- in edit mode, select a component with a single mouse click - release
- tap the key assigned to move (default is "G" for some dumb reason ; I suppose you already remapped it to "W")
- move the mouse around (without having to maintain a clickdown)
- primary click to confirm, secondary click to cancel.
- axis constraints can be defined by tapping X-Y-Z while transforming, Shift-X-Y-Z for perpendicular axis constraints, and XX-YY-ZZ for local mode.
This has many benefits :
- There is no need to precisely move the mouse cursor, as the movement is relative to it, not absolute.
- No need to keep a pressed click while dragging, which is much easier on the wrist in the long run.
- Shift acts as a precision modifier, which is extremely useful for move as well as rotate and scale.
It's really worth trying !
As for the delete confirmation popup, indeed this is a stupid annoyance, and is fixable. More on all that in my customization thread here : http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?351344-Customization-questions-from-a-Blender-curious-2d-3d-artist
Good luck !
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?352666-Input-Custom-Blender-Setup-Silo-Maya-esque
G - grab
R - rotate
S - scale
H, shift+H, alt+H - hide, hide unselected, unhide
E - extrude
I - inset
etc.
+1 to disable the manipulator, it only gets in the way with all other options to manipulate stuff in Blender. It's so much nicer to have it off.
How do I show wireframe on shaded mesh?
bevel by default is CTRL+B
Direwolf, Jed wrote a script to put a global toggle show wireframe on a hotkey here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2296204&postcount=2382
edit: the panel in the screenshot is the box icon on the properties editor (the row with lots of icons to switch between modifiers, materials, render settings etc)
inside the 'properties' tab there is the 'object property' tab (the little cube) than you can find 'display'
Anyways.
To change this behaviour go into the Preferences and tick Release Confirms item in the Editing tab. It's one of many settings that should be on by default. I would also suggest to turn selection to LMB. Can be done in the Input tab.