Blender's future
node
Hello everyone, I searched over the forum to find Blender Vs Maya/max/4D but I wanted to ask your opinions on the current state of play.
I teach at a college and I'd say half of my teaching revolves around modelling in Maya. I've learnt it over the past 5-6 years and I'm thankful to have had a lot of good advice along the way.
One of my earlier students has done really well for himself and now works in one of London's biggest VFX studios. This is great for me as he can advise me on current workflows and processes to teach to my students. He is a Maya modeller and uses Houdini, substance and Nuke amongst many other programs. His work is featured in films, advertising and online streaming, so I value his opinion greatly.
I was talking to him the other day and he has said that he is seriously thinking of upskilling on Blender. As we know it isn't perfect, but with each new update it becomes more versatile and he thinks that Maya is just not moving with the times in terms of rendering and performance.
I know that Maya is the industry standard still, but I hear more and more about Blender. Hell, 'Everything Everywhere all at Once' used it for their VFX. My question is, should I continue to teach Maya, or could I be doing future modellers a disservice by not teaching them Blender?
Thanks
I teach at a college and I'd say half of my teaching revolves around modelling in Maya. I've learnt it over the past 5-6 years and I'm thankful to have had a lot of good advice along the way.
One of my earlier students has done really well for himself and now works in one of London's biggest VFX studios. This is great for me as he can advise me on current workflows and processes to teach to my students. He is a Maya modeller and uses Houdini, substance and Nuke amongst many other programs. His work is featured in films, advertising and online streaming, so I value his opinion greatly.
I was talking to him the other day and he has said that he is seriously thinking of upskilling on Blender. As we know it isn't perfect, but with each new update it becomes more versatile and he thinks that Maya is just not moving with the times in terms of rendering and performance.
I know that Maya is the industry standard still, but I hear more and more about Blender. Hell, 'Everything Everywhere all at Once' used it for their VFX. My question is, should I continue to teach Maya, or could I be doing future modellers a disservice by not teaching them Blender?
Thanks
Replies
The particular DCC in use by a specific employer can be learned fairly quickly, once someone has those earlier skills in hand.
Also of note in regards to Maya, it’s a huge effort to switch a studio’s established pipeline from one DCC to another. There are so many tools and solutions written specifically for the main DCC. It’s a lot of work to switch.
Regardless of one person opinion about Maya’s development speed, as another informed opinion holder (in Autodesk beta programs) I can attest that Autodesk is pumping out a ton of new features in their apps. They’re quite aware of Blender’s rise, but they’re also very connected with their user base and reacting quickly to our needs.
Andrew Hodgson
@AndrewHodgson3D
Today a student told me they will negotiate in the interview to use Blender, even if the company's pipe goes through Maya. I'm sorry as a student going for a jr role, you really don't have that bargaining power. They will simply pick another jr
11:32 PM · May 6, 2023
796.3K Views
It's worth teaching some blender, but your students can easily get all that info elsewhere. As Eric says, pipeline is king, and foundational 3D knowledge matters more than software.
Regarding Blenders future, I think due to it being open source, it won't disappear anytime soon. At the same time the official developers expressed no interest (wouldn't have the resources too I imagine) to cater to companies needs. Maybe companies starting today and future will build different pipelines, less focused on a specific 3d app. Personally, I was happy to have learned some Blender on the side, when I was no longer eligible for student licenses.
Blender has an additional advantage in that you can fork it and build your own in-house version if that makes sense to you - that simply isn't possible with Maya
My guess is that studios will move towards DCC independent pipelines over the next 5 years - it's certainly my intent to do that.
There's very little to stop anyone doing it now that we have decent interchange formats (not the case 10 years ago) and since everyone's going to have to rewrite their toolchains in python3 pretty soon I expect a lot of people will take that as an opportunity to decouple from their authoring software.
For example, Blender finally adopted blend shapes, but calls them shape keys, not too long ago in an effort to follow industry standards.
Unreal and unity do that in terms of compiling content into game resources so it's not like it's a revolutionary concept - it's just common in studios with proprietary tech that you export game content from your DCC s rather than go through an intermediate step.
So if you are primarly a blender user the question you have to ask yourself is, "if the job application specifically states Maya proficiency and I only know Blender, will I make it past HR, will I even get the interview or are they going to cull my application right there and look at another person who has Maya proficiency?".
I use it most of the time, but try and keep up to date with maya also, since both the Arnold and vray addons for blender do not really work last time I looked
I even used Renderman for blender, but again its a bit unstable
If it's inhouse then such inflexibility can cause the company to stagnate and potentially miss out on someone who's really talented. No wonder most games these days are bloated open worlds with tons of meaningless side content if developers and hiring managers are so rigid. They see the rigidity of juniors but not the rigidity in themselves.
The junior can then learn Maya on the side, taking some of the burden off for onboarding. Sure the junior has a lot to learn but maybe a more senior person who has 10+ years of experience in nothing but Maya could also learn a thing or two about how fast blender is for hard surface.
My current client uses nothing but blender so there are definitely career opportunities for nothing but blender. They are a small studio made of people who worked on big titles but as soon as they started their company they all switched to blender!
Should you learn Maya? Absolutely. I don't know it but it's in my plans to learn how to even if I kind of hate it. I have already learned Max so nothing is stopping me from learning another software.
It adds another layer of possible trouble. Blender reverse engineers the FBX format. And so it is not guaranteed that the FBX file arrives in a proper state. The material is not transferable. A rig is not transferable. So what's left is the pure mesh part. And to do polygon modeling in Maya is as fast as in Blender. It's just another set of muscle memory.
>My current client uses nothing but blender
This is another case then. But even here you might have some pipelines going to other software.
How would HR know what software you made it in though?
They'd not be able to tell. I mean they can tell a sculpt is a sculpt sure and that you likely did it using Zbrush, but they'd have no way of proving what software you used for the other stuff like UV's, retopology, rendering, etc. You might say, but wouldn't you list what software you used in your portfolio as it tends to be common practice? They would know then. My answer to that would be....yeah, but who says you have to list the software?
HR is probably trained to judge peoples portfolios based on general quality and listed software. Thats my guess. If you pass the quality bar, but you don't list what software you used....would that be a red flag? I think such a thing is platform dependent.
If you use Artstation for example, its expected of you to list what software you used to make something. Not listing the software I think is a red flag in this scenario. However what if you use a personal website instead? There'd be no such expectations then, meaning HR would be forced to judge your work on quality and however else you present it. Even if you did make something in a particular software like lets say Maya and showed screenshots of it as proof, in reality you could've just imported it from Blender and no one would think twice.
The better solution here is to only list the software on your resume which works a great approach if you have a personal website as mentioned above or any platform where there are no expectations for you to list what software you used to make what. That way if they want to find out the behind-the-scenes for your portfolio projects, HR is then forced to advance you up the food chain.
The optimist in my wants to believe that if you get to the interview part, if your art is good enough then you should have a decent shot at the position even if your choice of software differs from what the job ad says. At the same time the realist in me has to acknowledge the possible situation that your application may be rejected (let's say the art team doesn't want to wait for you to get trained up in Maya) because they can just interview someone who has Maya knowledge (assuming the job ad specifically ask for experience in Maya).
I am assuming that most applicants probably use Artstation as their default portfolio, where as you said you list whatever software you used to make X. But let's say the applicant uses their own website where they don't list what software they used. Now lets say that applicant makes it past HR (maybe HR doesn't ask you what software you used, maybe you lie to HR etc...). Once the applicant interviews with the actual Art team, I would assume someone on the team would ask "what software did you use to make X?" Assuming the applicant tells the truth (I used Blender) would that matter to the art team if the job ad said Maya (and not blender)? I mean if your art is good enough would they care if you used Blender or Maya or X- you made something good and that is all that matters.
The optimist in my wants to believe that if you get to the interview part, if your art is good enough then you should have a decent shot at the position even if your choice of software differs from what the job ad says. At the same time the realist in me has to acknowledge the possible situation that your application may be rejected (let's say the art team doesn't want to wait for you to get trained up in Maya) because they can just interview someone who has Maya knowledge (assuming the job ad specifically ask for experience in Maya).
Of course. The above arguments I laid out were just for getting past HR. When your dealing with the actual art team I'm sure they will inquire what tools you used to build what. Now if the job did say they wanted Maya experience and you only have Blender, would that stop you from going further? Maybe or maybe not because it would all depend on what the art team is after. The art team may just want someone who knows a general 3D package and simply said Maya because its a safe option for finding an artist who has done 3D professionally since generally Maya is only used by professionals whereas Blender is used by a few professionals, but mostly hobbyists. On the other hand maybe their pipeline requires Maya for whatever reason? Even in that scenario you have a strong shot I think at making it because you could always inquire what they need Maya for, then try to use that to your advantage.
Hiring in general is rarely cut and dry. I don't think 3D is any different and pretty much like you said, if you make it to the job interview step I would think you have a shot at getting the job. Even better though, if your a Blender artist who has made something with Maya and can show/explain it on a job interview even if it's just a learning project, that should go a long ways towards boosting your chances.