Switching from Maya to Blender
Hi all,
Its been a long time since I visited these forums, but now Im back and Im in need of some advice.
Trying to make a long story short. I studied 3D graphics in the university for 3 years, and I enjoyed creating 3D content for games.
Afterwards I had a rough time with bad internship experiences, working on my portfolio, while simultaneously looking for a job. I ended up with a job that had nothing to do with Graphics, and since I had burned out completely in the process I took a break from 3D art, completly.
I am now itching to start doing something creative again. But since Im no student anymore, and I cant afford buying a Maya License; I have been thinking about trying out Blender instead.
However doing so requires me to learn an entire new program, and from what I have experienced so far, its VERY different from Maya.
Is there someone out there who have changed from Maya to Blender, and if so do you have any tips or advice for me to make the transition smoother?
Is there any limitations with blender I should be aware of before I decide what I should do?
I will be brushing up my general art skills in the meantime.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Its been a long time since I visited these forums, but now Im back and Im in need of some advice.
Trying to make a long story short. I studied 3D graphics in the university for 3 years, and I enjoyed creating 3D content for games.
Afterwards I had a rough time with bad internship experiences, working on my portfolio, while simultaneously looking for a job. I ended up with a job that had nothing to do with Graphics, and since I had burned out completely in the process I took a break from 3D art, completly.
I am now itching to start doing something creative again. But since Im no student anymore, and I cant afford buying a Maya License; I have been thinking about trying out Blender instead.
However doing so requires me to learn an entire new program, and from what I have experienced so far, its VERY different from Maya.
Is there someone out there who have changed from Maya to Blender, and if so do you have any tips or advice for me to make the transition smoother?
Is there any limitations with blender I should be aware of before I decide what I should do?
I will be brushing up my general art skills in the meantime.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Replies
1) The dev management side was horrible. They flip flop all over the place, say a lot of things about direction but ultimately never deliver. Priorities are borked, and theres a big ideological shift in what gets done and what doesnt. In short, while ultimately development does get done, I wouldnt put much faith in it or what gets done and why.
2) Its unconventional, meaning its trying to reinvent the wheel when it doesnt have the luxury to do so (imo)...talk about streamlining and conventionalizing the navigation, UI and other features tend to be met with some resistance...however some promises have been made to address that... but it goes back to point 1, "when" is anyone's guess and in the usual fashion they could just "coincidentally" forget about it if it becomes inconvenient.
3) GPL licensing. There are pros and cons to it, some of the cons include severe lack of 3rd party support for popular addons and workflows. Substance comes to mind.
Otherwise its a very capable program with some great features tacked on. Cycles, while it still needs to mature some more, is a great render engine...and more to the point its fun to work with.
Ultimately, I would recommend doing what I did and switch to Modo. Over all it will be better off for you as a user on a budget... not only is it considered "professional grade" (with some employment opportunities depending on location) but its tightly integrated in just about every aspect. Its one of best modelers on the market right now and it has a solid maya configuration to make it easy to pick up for Maya users...
You can get the Indie license of the software on Steam currently for $10 a month or around $299 for a perpetual license. The 901 version of it should hit within a month or two.
Check it out here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/321540
Again highly recommended, highly accessible.
[ame]
Full stage demo here: LINK
TorFrick (Polycount's Snefer) goodness:
[ame]
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?352666-Input-Custom-Blender-Setup-Silo-Maya-esque
I also went from Maya to Blender and I didn't have much a problem...except you can't rotate on an axis half the time. Switched to using that and it fixed the rotating problem, and there are nice pie menus. The hotkeys are more similar to Maya as well. If you're installing Blender 2.76, just rename the folder 2.76. And if there's no Blender Foundations folder in the appdata folder, just open blender and do something in the user preferences and hit save.
What is your goal?
Are you aiming for a job in the game or CG industry or do you want to make some stuff just for fun?
With Blender you will have a much harder time to find a job. I cannot remember ever seen a game studio putting Blender as a requirement in their job description. If that is your goal I would not recommend to go with Blender at the moment.
For everything else it's a great program. Hang in and give it some time, if you don't like it in the end you at least didn't waste any money.
As mentioned by Dataday Blender is unconventional, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad.
For sure there are some UI things that I would like to see changed as well, but a lot of features I love about and which other programs would have. But basically that applies to all programs.
I swhitched from Max to Blender last year after about a decade of using both Max and Maya at studio jobs. I did so after evaluating MayaLT and Modo, both of which left me unimpressed mostly for performance and stability reasons. (that said, I still want to explore the rendering side of Modo which seems to be very interesting). My main use for Blender is modeling, and I can confirm that it is very competent in that regard. Rendering and animation seem solid too, but I am not experienced enough in these fields to give any advice or recommendation.
Regarding learning it : it is indeed odd at first, but internally very consistent. I taught myself how to use over a month or so, using the following ressources :
[ame]
http://gumroad.com/masterxeon1001
Also I made sure to ask every question I had along the way and documented everything there :
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?351344-Customization-questions-from-a-Blender-curious-2d-3d-artist
Unfortunately I doubt that one can really decide on which app to use that way, since feature-wise they all have pretty much everything one needs. You will probably have to spend at least a month or so with both Blender and Modo to get a feel for them. That said it is also very important to not settle for something that doesn't quite fit your needs or just doesn't feel right. But between Blender and Modo you should be able to settle on something relatively quickly.
Good luck.
First of all i think i am not the best guy here to give you advice on this, mainly because i do work within a very narrow space of blender (almost all my work are lowpoly hand painted stuff)
I work fulltime as a freelance 3d artist and have used Maya and Max in the past. At the moment i work with Blender and i have just gotten to the point where i have most of the things i need. For me the tipping point was when Blender implemented better cut tools and especially pie menus. I think what program works for you depends a lot of what you do. I pretty much have what i need. Also with pie menus you can almost make whatever you want, right now i work in fullscreen with no side bars visible with only a two context sensetive pie menus and that more or less give me all the tools i need. There is also a really good plugin called "tune up" which makes it possible to turn off all the panels in Blender that you don't use which is awsome! I never do animations for example so i can turn off almost everything related to that. If you want to i would be happy to show you some basics on Skype to help you get started with Blender.
However they've started working on some very nice features. Open Sub Div is already in the daily builds. They've already implemented DoF and SSAO into the viewport with PBR in hot pursuit. There's been some big improvements to the game dev side of things, remember Blender wasn't originally designed for game devs. However they've pushed some nice updates in the past months. It also includes a video editor, UV editor, scripting interface, built-in game engine, physics system... The list goes on... It's quite astonishing when you consider how many areas the program covers.
The modeling tools have really taken a leap and the sculpting interface and tools are getting more advanced by the day, literally.
Here are the daily builds, they're updated almost everyday and offer you the ability to try the latest improvements over the trunk build. You can simply download, un-zip and launch the program. This is not a trunk/install build.
https://builder.blender.org/download/
Here is one of my favorite tool sets for modeling...
http://www.ewocprojects.be/EWOCprojects_tools.7Z
I can send you my add-on library which mostly prioritizes on poly-modeling if you're interested..?
Also, if you want some 1-to-1 help I can hop into the Polycount Hangout and give you some advice and show you around if you're interested?
https://plus.google.com/events/cptqbcoc3qclpk61nnp4p8tfe5g?authkey=CLXv_MeTzNbxcg
Actually i would like some workflow tips myself, open for a hangout?