Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

General discussion about 3D DCC and other topics
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Mathaeus
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by Mathaeus » 04 Jul 2016, 21:46

danyargici wrote: I respect your opinion but as far as I'm concerned they put a tremendous amount of energy into developing this tool and frankly I can't paint any kind of scenario in my mind where this can be anything other than positive.
Well it could be more positive... ;)
If they really want to compete against commercial apps, first of all, a bit more of modular approach wouldn't hurt. Developer of Max plugin should be able to develop the same thing for Blender too, with similar effort. I don't think this is the case, for now, or at least, don't know for any 'port', except that V-Ray patch. Compatibility with commercial apps should be priority, instead of 'integration' of another open sources. I don't see Alembic support, yet. Also, I think you'll know does anything changed about Collada since some Softimage users complained around 2010 :) . Ok Collada is a bit off these days.
Now if it's not possible for them to compete in 1:1 ratio, maybe exactly POV-Ray is (still) a nice example of smaller ambition and better result. While it also relied on 'patching technology', it was only a renderer, only ray tracer and conceptually very clean, which created a room for number of auxiliary apps, some of them were commercial. Also this (imho) created a mythical, exclusive status, somehow comparable to Houdini today.
Blender today, it's looking like blurred picture of commercial 3d, collection of programmer's show reels having some nice features here and there, but free of charge is still a main argument, that's it.

In any case, I think they should stop with 3 or 4 version yearly. One day while ago I simply lost the energy to customize every new version again (because never ever been able to transfer the all preferences in one go), and 2.71 is my last Blender, for now.

danyargici
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by danyargici » 04 Jul 2016, 23:32

You may have a point on accessibility for third party developers, I always assumed that their lack of presence was borne more by economics and I believe we'll start to see that change. The Blender community has become huge and continues to grow, so it's only logical that third party developers will start to either support it or make enough noise to get the necessary access that they need to support it.

You are right about the Collada debacle, if you look, you'll see that I was one of the Softimage users you mention that was trying and failing to get them to fix it up. But at the end of the day, it was being implemented by someone in their own free time with nothing but emoticons for payment. Would I have liked it to work? Yes, greatly, but I don't feel any entitlement to it. As a side note, FBX support is now quite good.

I think you're being unfair in saying that "it's [a] blurred picture of a commercial 3d [app]" It's far more coherent than you suggest.

In response to you last point about user preferences for example, they have just implemented a nice feature that I've yet to see any other package support. This is a free feature that just requires that you register.
https://cloud.blender.org/blog/introducing-blender-sync

Look, I don't have any personal motive to support Blender on internet forums or anything to gain for that matter, I just see so must baseless bashing of it and it bothers and confuses me. Why bash this free piece of software. It's not some corporation that has taken from you and not delivered, it's just there, doing its own thing. We should be encouraging this, no?

forton
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by forton » 04 Jul 2016, 23:56

Bullit wrote:Do you have any examples Forton?
Since it's a long time ago I used blender my example will be outdated, it had to do with exporting or importing fbx, couldn't find a way in one direction or the other, I think it was export...

So I looked for another example because now i'm more interested in alembic import-export.
I googled "alembic export blender", it seems like there are some options to do this but it just doesn't encourage me to try.

The first link I clicked contains a quote that -imho- says it all:
Hi,

Thanks for the feedback, we unfortunately don't have time and resources to make a "clean" patch for a release version. This is based on patch made by ....... some years ago.
We provide it "as-is", we can provide support to help understanding the code, hoping that somebody can finish/polish it. Actually the current implementation fits our Studio needs and we're able to export full scenes to/from Maya (with almost the same behavior).
Geometry cache (stream) is supported by the "alembic" modifier. We can merge it with the mesh cache, I guess.

Don't hesitate to ask me if you need further information.
Best regards
Another thing I noticed:
You need to compile a custom build to use a new feature?
What about plugins?

danyargici
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by danyargici » 05 Jul 2016, 00:03

Follow the link to at the bottom of the page you found that quote on and you'll see that Alembic support is being actively developed:

https://developer.blender.org/D2060

forton
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by forton » 05 Jul 2016, 00:41

Not saying it is not developed, i'm just pointing out how much it is a developers playground, but not always in the best way.

Great things are made with blender, no doubt about that.

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Maximus
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by Maximus » 05 Jul 2016, 08:13

To be honest i always hated blender. I see no reason to start a 3d product like this in a very counter intuitive way, and for whatever (unbelievable) reason you have to make it a mess just because you want it to be "different".
The whole world is used to "alt - maya" navigation style. blender has to do this completely different for what reason? To mess with people brain. That right click pivot change is simply shitty to put it nicely. The whole software interface/menù/clicking, properties, panels, preferencies is simply horrifying.

I dont accept the "but you can customize it". You can customize even your fridge, but im not suppose to open a software and spend hours to try to customize it at my taste, that comes after days of usage. I couldnt keep this crap software open for more than 20 minutes that i had an headache. ANd this is solely developer's fault, no one else. Same applies to Modo.

I dont get why you wanna be "original" into designing basic operations, navigations, and basic properties. People dont want this, and guess what? It shows on usage.
Now im not saying that its a bad product, or it cant be used to do great stuff, im just saying that me and many other people like me, hated it since the first approach, which is what counts.

They should take a step back and remake the whole UI/Navigation, its total garbage.

danyargici
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by danyargici » 05 Jul 2016, 10:22

Wow, I guess there really is no beating this mindset.

NNois
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by NNois » 05 Jul 2016, 10:35

Maximus wrote:... Same applies to Modo...
So True ! but...
You have to understand modo takes it's roots from the very beginning on lightwave and share the same UX in a certain manner (as the creators are the same)
Now i've worked with lightwave nearly 8-10 years, making very cool stuff and all fall right under the place. So why ALL Lightwave / Modo users should on day change to a UX matching the Maya one ???

No take a breath and open it more than 20minutes Modo/Blender/Houdini untill you feel it in you veins, otherwise surely you will stick to Softimage untill you die.

About the Alembic Import/Export even the Softimage one fail in many case, The blender one never fail on me (ok i've never used it more than a dozen of times)

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by Hirazi Blue » 05 Jul 2016, 11:22

danyargici wrote: Look, I don't have any personal motive to support Blender on internet forums or anything to gain for that matter, I just see so must baseless bashing of it and it bothers and confuses me. Why bash this free piece of software. It's not some corporation that has taken from you and not delivered, it's just there, doing its own thing. We should be encouraging this, no?
While I agree the interwebs are rife with "baseless bashing" of poor old Blender, I do not see that in this thread. We all have different priorities and ideas about what constitutes "good" software and that means some of us dislike Blender. But my take on this isn't even that I dislike Blender. I started out "baselessly" disliking it, but having used it for a while, it somehow managed to "grow on" me. My problem with Blender ATM is the way it seems to monopolize all interesting 3d activities of the open source community. In that respect the Blender Foundation has truly become the Autodesk of the "free world".
:-?
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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bb3d
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by bb3d » 03 Nov 2016, 01:59

Tangent Studios kicks Maya in the bin and spends money for Blender development instead of Maya licenses... :-bd

Image

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xsi_fanatic
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by xsi_fanatic » 03 Nov 2016, 03:45

[quote="bb3d"]Tangent Studios kicks Maya in the bin and spends money for Blender development instead of Maya licenses... :-bd

Music to my ears ! :)) =)) \:D/

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ActionArt
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by ActionArt » 04 Nov 2016, 15:49

I agree with the non-standard navigation to some degree, it throws people off in the first 20 minutes as you say. However, they do have just a quick "Maya" preferences set that switches it to Maya navigation standards.

I've spent a few hours with it now and I have to say I quite like it so far. I am wondering about it's overall stability but that's something only time will tell. It is quite logical in a lot of things and makes SI look very outdated in many areas. I think the pace of development is really accelerating. Also, I like that one company doesn't own it, that way it can't be killed easily like SI was. Blender will likely always be around. The others...who knows.

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bb3d
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by bb3d » 08 Nov 2016, 19:56

ActionArt wrote: I've spent a few hours with it now and I have to say I quite like it so far. I am wondering about it's overall stability but that's something only time will tell.
From my experience, concerning stability, Blender is at a comparable level to Softimage and in any case MUCH better than Maya.

Here is the video from Blender Conference about Tangent Studios making a complete feature film with Blender:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSEtTF8hPE

I hope, that this becomes a trend and that more and more studios will use Blender in the future, contributing to it's development at the same time.

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ActionArt
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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by ActionArt » 09 Nov 2016, 16:13

That's very good to hear. I think this will be a trend. With so many studios under financial strain they may start to wonder if they really do need to pay all that money to Autodesk, and then decide no. I hope so. Blender development will benefit.

I'm just a hobbiest now so I just want to learn something that will be around for a while. I started with Lightwave, it went off the rails and then Softimage died a painful death. Blender may be the best bet against that happening again, I'm tired of re-learning. I can't see a scenario where it would die.

Once there is a critical mass of talented users it could really take off and I think we're close to that.

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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by Bellsey » 10 Nov 2016, 15:09

Interesting video, I admire them for taking the step. I'm sure they'll make it work but I'm not sure the maths work for me.

I'm not convinced that the money alone you'll save from not buying Maya (or any other 3D software for that matter) will essentially pay for all of that development effort. They did allude to tax breaks and R&D credits, which I suspect might be the real motivation. Which I totally get and understand studios going for it, it there's money on the table.

They mentioned about creating their own asset/production tracking system, which to me seems crazy. Unless Blender is so different and won't work with current solutions, just get Shotgun or Ftrack. The sheer cost of creating your own system seems detrimental to me, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.
There are bigger studio with more resource and money that aren't doing that and instead going with an off the shelf solution like Ftrack or Shotgun. Think about why they're doing that.

I wish them every success though.

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Re: Why an Indonesian studio choose Blender over 3ds

Post by Bullit » 10 Nov 2016, 18:42

The main probable reason is that can get all the control of their "environment".

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