I have personally reviewed more portfolios than I would like to remember, but I can't recall seeing a single really good artist's portfolio, and then reading that he used blender exclusively on his resume. Most blender artist's have below average work from my experience, so while it may be a bit unfair to assume all blender users are amateurs, it isn't a stereotype that is unfounded.
Yeah, and that is a fair assessment. It may also be that artists with the discipline to build commercially viable skills also possess the practical sense to do this using the industry standard tools. It takes some serious eccentricity to embrace Blender in its current state, I will admit. It's not impossible to be a highly skilled artist that uses Blender, but it's true that if you're going for a job at an established studio (as is the topic of the thread), they're far more likely to expect Max or Maya experience.
Yeah, and that is a fair assessment. It may also be that artists with the discipline to build commercially viable skills also possess the practical sense to do this using the industry standard tools. It takes some serious eccentricity to embrace Blender in its current state, I will admit.
I believe the big reason is that blender is the only free full featured program for 3d and animation, it pulls everyone who is new, it also has a very secluded, shut in and for some part(not all) a very anti-max/maya community.
Take a tiny slice from that and you get a tiny blender game art community, take an even tinier slice of that and you get the amount of artists that actually went to polycount to become proper artists.
It results in quite a low ratio.
Those who did pass polycount university eventually had to dabble with multiple programs and thus were not pure-blender anymore.
hmm after scaning through comments here people went all out war on which software is best and what Industry uses and forgot to help our man here who wants to learn lol.
In my 11 years exposure to 3D arts I started with Kinetix 3Ds Max 3.5 and have since kept learning new softwares from Adobe packages to Maya and now Learning Zbrush and Solidworks. Just like anyother profession you keep on learning new tech and improviing ur skills. Even if Blender was a standard you wont last long until u also learn other supporting packages like Photoshop/ Aftereffects etc.
I can imgine your frustration learning Max, I faced same thing when learning Maya, but remain at Max but I can spark my fuse again to work in Maya. Once you learn Max im sure you can mix & match stuff from Blender/ Max and have unique skill set.
For all I know the way I learned Max was by modelling cars. HArd surfaces
Just focus entirely on making cars and thats it you will cover vast array of subjects during the process.
@eld ya think your right about blender being open-source is causing sections of it's community to be quite hostile to everything else which Doesn't exactly help things along too well.
i would defiantly being using more of it, if it was easier to move stuff in and out of it between maya and it with everything intact, but don't think that will be a reality anytime soon.
Knowing Blender won't hurt, but you need to know at least one of the standard 3d packages used.
In a production environment, artists end up working on each other's work all the time. What happens if you are sick or on vacation and someone needs to open up your source file to work on it?
@eld ya think your right about blender being open-source is causing sections of it's community to be quite hostile to everything else which Doesn't exactly help things along too well.
i would defiantly being using more of it, if it was easier to move stuff in and out of it between maya and it with everything intact, but don't think that will be a reality anytime soon.
In reality it's not a complex issue, all it takes is someone fixing the export scripts and it'll be all fine, and I'd bet my ass there's a studio out there somewhere that has fixed this for their own internal use.
wow... haven't been online lately (due to too much partying ) and now I had a lot to read.
Thanks a lot guys for the tips, hints and the discussion about blender's value in the game industry and of course the tutorials!!
I will learn Max, that doesn't hurt and can only be an advantage.
Hehe, and good idea with the car modelling tutorials (I love cars, so this is twice the pleasure)
Exactly, do learn max/maya, but don't feel the pressure of having to model everything in max/maya, as long as you know how to just alter a mesh them you should be fine.
You can still do all your modelling and uv work in blender and then move it over to max/maya, as long as you learn how to get around the hurdles until they fix it.
If you're the only Blender guy on the team (like I am) the key is to play nice with the rest of the team, don't force them to move out of their established pipeline, and make sure your models are to scale. Never force anyone to do any file conversions, and learn to weight, adjust topology, and tweak UV's in Max. Personally I find weighting in Max much more intuitive than Blender's weird system that requires the vertex groups and bone names to match up, so that alone is worth learning.
Also, just going through the mini-debate here, why is it so important to have good viewport shaders in Blender or Max? We do all our previewing in-engine, it's the only "truth" as far as asset inspection is concerned, so this point kind of confuses me.
If it's about having decent material previews while working, Blender's GL material is alright for the standard stuff- diffuse, spec color/intensity/gloss, normals, alpha, environment maps, emissive, fresnel. Though I haven't seen any custom shaders written.
Also, just going through the mini-debate here, why is it so important to have good viewport shaders in Blender or Max? We do all our previewing in-engine, it's the only "truth" as far as asset inspection is concerned, so this point kind of confuses me.
If it's about having decent material previews while working, Blender's GL material is alright for the standard stuff- diffuse, spec color/intensity/gloss, normals, alpha, environment maps, emissive, fresnel. Though I haven't seen any custom shaders written.
PS. Wankers.
I think the final result of that discussion was that both have flexible enough shader systems that you can either make your own via material node, regular material editor, or pure shaders, It was just that people had written a bunch of pretty shaders already for max.
Yeah I got that, you definitely want the option to write a shader for your dcc app that mimics your engine. But then a bunch of presentation shaders were mentioned for max, does that mean there are people optimizing their textures for 3point/xoliul before getting them in-engine? i haven't really played around with either so i don't how versatile they are.
As for Blender, material node support for the viewport is not all there yet and has been getting the shaft the past few updates. Does Blender support .fx shaders already? That's news to me...I'd love to take a look at some resources if you know of any.
As for Blender, material node support for the viewport is not all there yet and has been getting the shaft the past few updates. Does Blender support .fx shaders already? That's news to me...I'd love to take a look at some resources if you know of any.
True, I haven't been keeping myself up to date on recent blender stuff, I'm very much cemented in 2.49 currently, as far as I know it's still GLSL only.
I do agree that assets are best finalized within the engine itself to ensure it looks as it should, or if possible, shaders written specifically by the company for the program to ensure consistency.
HLSL (ie .fx) shaders only work under direct3D, which i kind of doubt blender supports. but GLSL and HLSL shaders are practically the same, so that's not exactly a drawback.
With the mobile market in full bloom, you can find a lot of teams and projects (usually unity based) using a blender-centric pipeline nowadays. You could argue whether this actually counts as being in the industry or not, but I just want to highlight that there is in fact work for blender-users.
Yup, I wasn't sure if non-AAA development was what the OP had in mind, but the game industry in other parts of the world is not as max/maya-entrenched as EQ's experience would have you believe. We're a little less legacy bound in smaller shops
In reality it's not a complex issue, all it takes is someone fixing the export scripts and it'll be all fine, and I'd bet my ass there's a studio out there somewhere that has fixed this for their own internal use.
There's a studio here working on a local animated television show that uses Blender, and from what I heard they've customized it to the point where it's totally different from the builds available online. I'm sure there's plenty of companies using Blender, we just haven't heard of them yet.
I think Blenders main problem is lack of focus as a whole program, because it tries to do everything, rather than do a few things really well.
The devs are making headway though...There were 4 solid releases last year (mostly bug fixing and stabilisation) but with some major additions like the GPU powered Cycles renderer already implemented and things like the new UV goodies, ReMesh (Similar to Dynamesh) and Bmesh (ngons and a knife tool that is similar to Max) being added in 2.62/2.63, 2012 should be a great year.
I don't have any issues exporting/importing into UDK/Marmoset as Blender supports obj and fbx but I agree that projection cages would be a nice addition. Generally I bake most of my stuff in xNormal, but it would be nice if could use Blender for some stuff (other than simple objects).
I started to learn 3d art with blender. Unfortunately I read, that the industry standart programm is 3ds max. So I switched for that, made many tutorials on that, used it for a while and got so frustrated with 3ds max that I swithced back to blender, which was a relief!
After being using blender for the last half year I am questioning myself, is this taking me anywhere?!
Sure, I love working with blender and 3ds max is a pain in the ass for me. But to be able to get into the industry I have to bite the bullet. Is this so?
Or is there any hope to be successful using blender? I mean in the end what counts is to bring the models as obj, fbx, 3ds to the game engine.
Are there any positive success stories to motivate me going on with blender, or do I have to face reality that it is taking me nowhere?!
ROAR, hey has anyone even watched Battle For Terra!!! All blender stuff. and I AM a Max guy.
Point is we are 3D artists and what ever works to deliver the results you do that by heart and never let go. But acquire new knowledge.
Its true that a company wont change their whole pipeline for you just cause u good at one software. So its best to improvise.
Lol stop fighting on this poor guys simple question.
ROAR, hey has anyone even watched Battle For Terra!!! All blender stuff. and I AM a Max guy.
Point is we are 3D artists and what ever works to deliver the results you do that by heart and never let go. But acquire new knowledge.
Its true that a company wont change their whole pipeline for you just cause u good at one software. So its best to improvise.
Lol stop fighting on this poor guys simple question.
This is a discussion board, people are discussing the topic. Nobody is fighting, so relax a bit. Open and frank discussion is nothing but healthy and positive to all involved.
I'm interested to know how many companies provide training for the software they use? I know that Codemasters Malaysia has an intensive 1-2 weeks of Max training for new artists who aren't familiar with it, and Rhythm & Hues does it as well (although that's more because they have their own in-house software)
bit off topic but since your following blender dev, do you know if there planing a Move and Stich tool for UV's similar to maya or max.
for lots of simpler non-organic objects i tend to do a lot of planner mapping and moves + stiches to make my layout, which is quite slow to do in blender atm,
there is already a stich tool, but it kinda isnt really nice to work with it since it only moves the vertices that are part of the edge together and not the whole island which makes working with it kinda pointless since you need to manually move the islands together or you will get a really strange effed up mess
i wish they would adapt at least some of the uv tools from max
i often read that many people find the uv tools within blender great, but i kinda dont get why
there is already a stich tool, but it kinda isnt really nice to work with it since it only moves the vertices that are part of the edge together and not the whole island which makes working with it kinda pointless since you need to manually move the islands together or you will get a really strange effed up mess
i wish they would adapt at least some of the uv tools from max
i often read that many people find the uv tools within blender great, but i kinda dont get why
and while iam at it, fix inset & bevel
and that would be why im asking about that since the tool is just nasty to use right now.
i really dont get why so many love it's uv tools and rage on maya, maya with uvdelux and bonus tools is freaking sweet for doing uv's
think hte inset and bevel thing is just not that great atm, since there waiting for ever and a day for bmesh, and expecting it to fix all the core modeling tools.
i often read that many people find the uv tools within blender great, but i kinda dont get why
It's mostly due to being very non-seperated from the rest of the tools, you use the uv editor much like you would use the regular mesh tools and nearly all the stuff like snap and grid tools work the same, I don't know much about any of the proper addons of plugins to fix the uv editor in max, but the basic one suffers at the core even though it has the features, wile the Blender uv editor is the other way around.
That and LCSM, what's the closest equalent in max? I've always tried to find some fast ways of getting an area cleanly automagically unwrapped.
I'm not sure why people would hate on the maya though, as from what I remember it shares that kind of thinking, similar tools in both the mesh and uv editor.
Blender's UV tools got a lot of love from when it was the only app with integrated LCSM. Max has that now along with its own conventional UV tools, so that edge is gone now. I still appreciate that I don't have to throw on a modifier to edit UV's though, and that incremental translation/rotation/scale is performed the same way as it is with the modeling tools, as eld mentioned.
Planar + Stitch doesn't work so well in Blender. You're better off cutting seams and using LCSM all the way and not getting too hands-on with the unwrap. There aren't a lot of tools but the workflow's quick if you can adapt to its mindset. I can do a mini-tutorial if anyone's interested.
Yea its kind of weird you planar + stitch when one of the biggest advantages of blender has been the LCSM way of unwrapping. They've finally hacked in similar solution for max (point to point seams + Peel) and a lot of people love it, I know I do.
bit off topic but since your following blender dev, do you know if there planing a Move and Stich tool for UV's similar to maya or max.
for lots of simpler non-organic objects i tend to do a lot of planner mapping and moves + stiches to make my layout, which is quite slow to do in blender atm,
A new bevel too is already in the BMesh trunk and seems reasonable so far. Its got recursive functionality too!
There is a Blender addon for bevel, which is HERE and Inset is HERE (both work in the most recent release)
Yea its kind of weird you planar + stitch when one of the biggest advantages of blender has been the LCSM way of unwrapping. They've finally hacked in similar solution for max (point to point seams + Peel) and a lot of people love it, I know I do.
Autodesk could potentially just implement LCSM straight away into max, but the infectious licensing might not be compatible with their business strategy :P
Replies
I believe the big reason is that blender is the only free full featured program for 3d and animation, it pulls everyone who is new, it also has a very secluded, shut in and for some part(not all) a very anti-max/maya community.
Take a tiny slice from that and you get a tiny blender game art community, take an even tinier slice of that and you get the amount of artists that actually went to polycount to become proper artists.
It results in quite a low ratio.
Those who did pass polycount university eventually had to dabble with multiple programs and thus were not pure-blender anymore.
In my 11 years exposure to 3D arts I started with Kinetix 3Ds Max 3.5 and have since kept learning new softwares from Adobe packages to Maya and now Learning Zbrush and Solidworks. Just like anyother profession you keep on learning new tech and improviing ur skills. Even if Blender was a standard you wont last long until u also learn other supporting packages like Photoshop/ Aftereffects etc.
I can imgine your frustration learning Max, I faced same thing when learning Maya, but remain at Max but I can spark my fuse again to work in Maya. Once you learn Max im sure you can mix & match stuff from Blender/ Max and have unique skill set.
For all I know the way I learned Max was by modelling cars. HArd surfaces
Just focus entirely on making cars and thats it you will cover vast array of subjects during the process.
http://www.onnovanbraam.com/index.php?tutorials/
http://www.carbodydesign.com/tutorials/3d/car-3d-modeling-tutorials/
http://cg.tutsplus.com/series/mini-semi-truck/
This one is way old school tutorial but teaches you super cool way of doin things.
http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?catDisplay=1&id=1019#.TwECLvkrmKI
http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?catDisplay=1&id=740#.TwEC4fkrmKI
You finish all those easy to follow tutorials you are ready than. Alternatively PM me if you get stuck.
i would defiantly being using more of it, if it was easier to move stuff in and out of it between maya and it with everything intact, but don't think that will be a reality anytime soon.
Thanks a lot guys for the tips, hints and the discussion about blender's value in the game industry and of course the tutorials!!
I will learn Max, that doesn't hurt and can only be an advantage.
Hehe, and good idea with the car modelling tutorials
In reality it's not a complex issue, all it takes is someone fixing the export scripts and it'll be all fine, and I'd bet my ass there's a studio out there somewhere that has fixed this for their own internal use.
Exactly, do learn max/maya, but don't feel the pressure of having to model everything in max/maya, as long as you know how to just alter a mesh them you should be fine.
You can still do all your modelling and uv work in blender and then move it over to max/maya, as long as you learn how to get around the hurdles until they fix it.
Also, just going through the mini-debate here, why is it so important to have good viewport shaders in Blender or Max? We do all our previewing in-engine, it's the only "truth" as far as asset inspection is concerned, so this point kind of confuses me.
If it's about having decent material previews while working, Blender's GL material is alright for the standard stuff- diffuse, spec color/intensity/gloss, normals, alpha, environment maps, emissive, fresnel. Though I haven't seen any custom shaders written.
PS. Wankers.
I think the final result of that discussion was that both have flexible enough shader systems that you can either make your own via material node, regular material editor, or pure shaders, It was just that people had written a bunch of pretty shaders already for max.
As for Blender, material node support for the viewport is not all there yet and has been getting the shaft the past few updates. Does Blender support .fx shaders already? That's news to me...I'd love to take a look at some resources if you know of any.
True, I haven't been keeping myself up to date on recent blender stuff, I'm very much cemented in 2.49 currently, as far as I know it's still GLSL only.
I do agree that assets are best finalized within the engine itself to ensure it looks as it should, or if possible, shaders written specifically by the company for the program to ensure consistency.
With the mobile market in full bloom, you can find a lot of teams and projects (usually unity based) using a blender-centric pipeline nowadays. You could argue whether this actually counts as being in the industry or not, but I just want to highlight that there is in fact work for blender-users.
Currently the only beef I have with Blender is the lack of cages, but Xnormal fills that gap just fine, and with MikkTspace unofficially roadmapped for a post 3.5 Unity release, we should be getting a pretty seamless baking workflow within the year.
There's a studio here working on a local animated television show that uses Blender, and from what I heard they've customized it to the point where it's totally different from the builds available online. I'm sure there's plenty of companies using Blender, we just haven't heard of them yet.
The devs are making headway though...There were 4 solid releases last year (mostly bug fixing and stabilisation) but with some major additions like the GPU powered Cycles renderer already implemented and things like the new UV goodies, ReMesh (Similar to Dynamesh) and Bmesh (ngons and a knife tool that is similar to Max) being added in 2.62/2.63, 2012 should be a great year.
I don't have any issues exporting/importing into UDK/Marmoset as Blender supports obj and fbx but I agree that projection cages would be a nice addition. Generally I bake most of my stuff in xNormal, but it would be nice if could use Blender for some stuff (other than simple objects).
@Andr
Point is we are 3D artists and what ever works to deliver the results you do that by heart and never let go. But acquire new knowledge.
Its true that a company wont change their whole pipeline for you just cause u good at one software. So its best to improvise.
Lol stop fighting on this poor guys simple question.
This is a discussion board, people are discussing the topic. Nobody is fighting, so relax a bit. Open and frank discussion is nothing but healthy and positive to all involved.
bit off topic but since your following blender dev, do you know if there planing a Move and Stich tool for UV's similar to maya or max.
for lots of simpler non-organic objects i tend to do a lot of planner mapping and moves + stiches to make my layout, which is quite slow to do in blender atm,
i wish they would adapt at least some of the uv tools from max
i often read that many people find the uv tools within blender great, but i kinda dont get why
and while iam at it, fix inset & bevel
and that would be why im asking about that since the tool is just nasty to use right now.
i really dont get why so many love it's uv tools and rage on maya, maya with uvdelux and bonus tools is freaking sweet for doing uv's
think hte inset and bevel thing is just not that great atm, since there waiting for ever and a day for bmesh, and expecting it to fix all the core modeling tools.
It's mostly due to being very non-seperated from the rest of the tools, you use the uv editor much like you would use the regular mesh tools and nearly all the stuff like snap and grid tools work the same, I don't know much about any of the proper addons of plugins to fix the uv editor in max, but the basic one suffers at the core even though it has the features, wile the Blender uv editor is the other way around.
That and LCSM, what's the closest equalent in max? I've always tried to find some fast ways of getting an area cleanly automagically unwrapped.
I'm not sure why people would hate on the maya though, as from what I remember it shares that kind of thinking, similar tools in both the mesh and uv editor.
Planar + Stitch doesn't work so well in Blender. You're better off cutting seams and using LCSM all the way and not getting too hands-on with the unwrap. There aren't a lot of tools but the workflow's quick if you can adapt to its mindset. I can do a mini-tutorial if anyone's interested.
The stitch tool will have some new improvements when the UV branches get added to trunk
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Psy-Fi/UV_Tools
The other UV branch is based on BMesh, so we wont see that until 2.63/4, but the other will be added within a few months, iirc.
A new bevel too is already in the BMesh trunk and seems reasonable so far. Its got recursive functionality too!
There is a Blender addon for bevel, which is HERE and Inset is HERE (both work in the most recent release)
Roadkill is free:
http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm
Standalone, Maxscript, or Melscript. Pretty much lifted from Blender verbatim.
It's all in Roadkill Mr.Eld.
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