Comparing Blender to 3DS Max and other packages
Hi, first I'd like to apologize if this has been covered already - because I have a suspicion it could be a popular question, but I couldn't find any relevant threads that answer it in more detail. I actually did find one or two threads but they were all from before Blender's 2.5 release so I'm not sure how relevant they are.
Anyway, I'm looking to get into 3D modeling as a hobby, and I've been learning Blender for about a month now. I'm curious if I'm missing anything of significant value by not using 3DS Max, Maya or another popular package - in other words, is Blender functional/streamlined enough to be worth learning in-depth? I'm a student so I can get the long-term trials of Autodesk's products if I chose to use them.
I'm mostly interested in rendering static scenes, though I may use it for game assets in the future as well. From what I understand, 3DS Max has better renderers available and more documentation as well - is there anything else of value it can offer me compared to Blender, or does it boil down to personal preference once you're experienced enough with any of the toolsets?
Anyway, I'm looking to get into 3D modeling as a hobby, and I've been learning Blender for about a month now. I'm curious if I'm missing anything of significant value by not using 3DS Max, Maya or another popular package - in other words, is Blender functional/streamlined enough to be worth learning in-depth? I'm a student so I can get the long-term trials of Autodesk's products if I chose to use them.
I'm mostly interested in rendering static scenes, though I may use it for game assets in the future as well. From what I understand, 3DS Max has better renderers available and more documentation as well - is there anything else of value it can offer me compared to Blender, or does it boil down to personal preference once you're experienced enough with any of the toolsets?
Replies
but if your trying to go into the industry, get max or maya, since they are industry standard tools, and any studio will expect you to have experience with 1 or the other.
blenders defualt renderer is kinda shitty like you said, but you could add luxrender, or cycles to it to get some nice scene rendering, and for game engines, blender does support fbx and dae export so that will easily get your content into UDK, Cryengine, or Unity, and there is a 3rd party smd exporter for working with the source engine.
To be honest I have the option to use both Maya and Blender, but there are many things that are lacking about Maya and certain things that Blender simply does better (things about the interface and modeling). Blender is also working to encompass more of the cg pipeline than either Max or Maya.
One thing I've noticed is that Blender can be much more hotkey intensive, which can be a great thing if you're into that. With Maya you will be clicking around the interface a lot while with Blender you can do a lot of the work from the keyboard and clicking the mouse.
The general flow of usage is very different. With Blender you are both activating and confirming your actions while in Maya you are doing things like in most applications (there is no confirmation click to actions and you'll need to undo things rather than cancel them).
You can try all of the options for free to see what you like if you want. If you are looking for a position somewhere you'll probably have to know either Max or Maya, and luckily Autodesk allows you to get just about any of their software for free if it's for educational purposes (http://students.autodesk.com/). Sites like digtaltutors have very thorough training for Maya and Max that will get you up to speed quickly if you want to have one under your belt.
As far as rendering goes, with 2.61 I believe (coming next month) Blender is switching over to using Cycles for it's rendering, and its material setup will be changed to reflect that. When that happens Blender will natively be one of the best options for efficient, high-quality rendering. Until then there are still many options of renderer to use.
Pretty much across the board the native rendering isn't stellar as of now, so any spectacular results you see from the other packages is likely due to a separate, production-quality renderer (like Vray or mental ray).
Everything is up to you really, but one option is starting with blender and if you ever want or have to change to another app.
Everything you have learned about modeling, texturing and so on, will still carry with you to another app, you will just have to learn the interface and maybe some different tools and you will be up and running again.
I have changed app many times, and it's hard the first days until you learn how to navigate in the program, after that you don't notice it.
a lot of it is up to personal preference too.
i will give one warning though, i find it can be quite hard to work with blender when you need to work with other people who are using max or maya, it can be quite hard to get animations for other packages into blender, and blender handles smoothing different than other packages so smoothing usually gets broken when you bring things into blender from other packages.
A friend of mine who's been modeling for quite a while also told me that I should definitely look into ZBrush if I'm serious about becoming good at modeling, and I'm considering giving it a try some time soon... from what I can see it's very different from the standard modeling application and looks more like a sculpting tool on steroids, definitely looks interesting
Thanks again guys, hope to see you in another thread because I'll likely stick around, seeing how much information this forum has.
Well yeah, it is for sculpting not for modeling. :poly121:
If you want easy to use sculpting program that will give you fantastic results, give Sculptris a try. It's free.