Right but if the client uses max/ maya and needs to modify/check/ export himself to his engine(which could really be the case) than your "just like game engines" state fails for him, for the reasons i mentioned up.Also neither maya does "smoothing groups" but the export is fine from max > maya, maya > max.
Ton also just announced that, in the future, he plans on making importing and exporting to external engines much easier. Quote: Full article here. Edit: Just realized this was already posted in the other Blender thread. I'm not copying guys I promise! :)
So is that it? The lack of editable vertex normals and exportable smoothing groups is what is holding Blender back from being an acceptable tool for freelance game artists? If you can use Blender through the whole pipeline and submit an engine-ready asset, it seems there's no problem. Is this accurate?
Then you don't use edge split when exporting to other 3D software. Blender doesn't support multiple vertex normals, so it can't do smoothing groups, but Max/Maya do. However, game engines don't support multiple vertex normals either. Why are smoothing groups so important? They just add unnecessary vertices. You get better…
Sorry, but you're not correct here. Please read the whole thread, blender has a problem exporting OBJS in that it will physically break the edges, whereas every other 3d app that supports things like hard edges will store this information as vertex normals. It makes it really difficult to do things like baking normal maps…
Many freelance jobs that I've had for bigger studios will require you to have either 3dsmax or Maya, and while you may not need to do all of the work in these apps, you generally will needed to do thing like normal map bakes, final scene setup, and of course anything technical/engine specific like material setup, rigging…
I agree with above. If your just doing basic work in modeling and texturing, it should be alright to use Blender since it's great for exporting .obj files and all. But for .fbx files with rigs and animation I don't think it works as well as 3ds max or maya, but a lot depends on the workflow of the studio as well. For indie…