Looking into Blender as a replacement for Maya for create Films and Game Cutscenes.
polycounter lvl 3
I’m the CEO @ Makeshift Software Inc.
We’re currently working on an upcoming 3D Action RPG, Hexborn.
We want to rely on Blender instead of Maya for our prerendered cutscenes, I want to ensure it’s a viable long-term solution.
Greatly appreciate any solid content made with this pipeline – and any feedback from anyone experienced using these tools with Blender.
I’d appreciate any input anyone has!
Replies
That said:
Blender is FOSS. You can take the source code and build what you want and need on top of it, free and clear. Blender will never be discontinued and leave you hanging the way a proprietary software package could be.
There is a huge ecosystem of tools and infrastructure that add on to it or work seamlessly with it, from modeling tools, to the render pipeline, to everything else. And if exactly what you need isn't around, you can loop back to the part where it's FOSS and you can just build what you need and it's yours, free and clear.
As far as prerendered cutscenes specifically, it's absolutely capable of doing that. Award-winning feature films have been made with it (Flow in 2024, and The Backrooms that just came out also leveraged Blender a ton).
Short version: it can do what you're looking to do. You will probably spend money on tech artist / tool dev / pipeline support instead of license costs, but you will also probably come out ahead from having a better-fitted and robust art tool pipeline.
If you're looking for a tech artist, some world-class tech artists probably just got RIF'd at Bungie yesterday. I've worked with them. They're astounding art devs. Grab them before someone else does.
Appreciate the tips.
If you know anyone who'd be a strong fit, be sure to refer them to me.
I'm an immersive art artist who uses Blender. I've never applied for a job in the game industry, so I'm still an outsider to the sector. However, I use almost all of the tools that are common in game development workflows.
I think Blender has a manageable learning curve. It offers many advantages. First of all, it has an excellent community. Whenever you encounter a problem during production, it's usually very easy to find a solution thanks to the vast amount of community knowledge available.
With its recent developments, Blender is capable of producing very impressive results. It also has a large ecosystem of add-ons that significantly improve workflow efficiency. This is actually the point where Blender stops being completely free. Building a professional Blender pipeline inevitably requires purchasing add-ons and investing in your workflow.
On the positive side, Blender is highly customizable. Every user can shape the software according to their own workflow. However, the long-term support and maintenance of third-party add-ons can sometimes be uncertain, which I consider one of its weaknesses.
I think another important aspect is Blender's accessibility. Since anyone can download and install it for free, its user base has grown enormously. This has both positive and negative consequences. On one hand, the large community makes it easier to find solutions to technical problems. On the other hand, it also creates a lot of information noise. Many users don't have formal education in art or design, and simply recreating what they see online is often considered sufficient as a hobby. In other words, not everyone using Blender comes from an artistic or design background.
That being said, I think Blender is an outstanding modeling tool, and its Geometry Nodes system is truly exceptional. However, I see it as something of a Swiss Army knife: it offers many different tools in a single package, which is fantastic for medium-scale productions, but I find some of its other tools less capable in professional production pipelines.
Personally, I believe Blender should be integrated with Adobe's software ecosystem. At least, that's how I use it in my own workflow.
Before switching to Blender, I worked with Cinema 4D for many years. In my opinion, Blender is an incredibly powerful modeling application. Its rigging, texturing, and UV mapping tools have met all of my needs so far, and I haven't yet reached the limits of those systems.
Another strength is its ability to work well alongside other software. Its interoperability is more than sufficient for my workflow.
I've occasionally experienced some issues with lighting animation in very dark scenes and cinematic environments, but they have always been solvable. I also think Blender performs quite well when working with large-scale scenes.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't have any professional experience in the game industry, but I've always been curious about it.
I'd love to know: what are your expectations from artists who use Blender in a professional game production pipeline?