we are going to talk about 7 reasons why Blender is a big deal right now and its relationship to the other 3D software also its future in the industry in general.
1_Blender is Growing so Fast :
Blender has seen a lot of growth and development in recent years, but back in the 2000s when 3Ds Max, Maya and Cinema 4D were used to create blockBuster Movies and AAA video games, Blender was still considered a simple 3D software that is used for hobbyists.
and to be honest blender at that time did not really have impressive or competitive features that could be relied on in the industry because it was under development and it had a lot of growth to go through.
in recent years, however, Blender came up with new features and fixed a lot of problems that users where suffering from before which made it more attractive because it became more polished.
with the release of Blender 2.8 a lot of impressive features were added like :
- A totally redesigned UI for easier navigation; improved viewport, gizmos, and tools.
- The creation of Eevee which is a new physically-based real-time render engine that allows artists to
- see their scenes with textures and lighting rendered in real-time as they navigate in the viewport.
- The Grease Pencil became a full 2D drawing and animation system.
- Also, the old layers were Replaced by a new system called collections which is a powerful way to organize objects especially when working which big complicated scenes.
- and a lot of other improvements: in Cycles, Modeling, Sculpting, Animation, Import/Export, Dependency Graph and more.
2_Studios are starting to integrate Blender in their pipelines.
probably this statement i just said is going to be more true if i said it two or three years from now because studios are slow to change the software they use in production since it is hard to switch from software that works to a new thing that didn’t prove itself in a professional setup because generally speaking decision-makers are afraid of financial risks.
but what we can see with BarnStorm studios, for example, is a proof of concept that shows that Blender can be used for professional production.
there are a number of great features that caused them to switch over to it.
One of them was the Cycles render engine, that they’ve used for their rendering of most of the 3D elements
in High Castle and other shows.
They use Blender for modeling, animation, and rendering. also, they use Blender’s fluid system and particle system and render everything in Cycles.
3_Big Companies are investing in Blender
Since the summer of 2016, AMD supports a developer to work on modernizing Blender OpenGL and a developer to work on Cycles OpenCL (GPU) rendering.
NVIDIA also joined the Blender Foundation Development Fund . This will enable two more developers to work on core Blender development and to keep NVIDIA’s GPU technology well supported for Blender users.
also, Ubisoft which is a leading creator, publisher, and distributor of interactive entertainment and services, with a rich portfolio of video games like Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy’s video game series, Far Cry and Watch Dogs. announced that they will join the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a corporate Gold member.
Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers, Ubisoft Animation Studio will also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to Blender’s open-source projects.
Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, Unreal, Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and the Infinity Blade series of games. awarded the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash as part of the company’s $100 million Epic MegaGrants program to further the success of the development of Blender.
4_pro artists are starting to use Blender
Due to the progress that Blender made in recent years more and more professional artists are using Blender in addition to their main 3D software because let’s be honest here, having two amazing 3D software at your disposal is always better than having only one.
when it comes to using Blender professionally there are actually artists that started with Blender as their main 3D package and became very good at it and they are now using it for their professional work.
also, Other professional artists that use different 3D Packages like 3ds Max, Maya or Cinema 4D use Blender partially, meaning they use it for specific functions like UV unwrapping, animation or sculpting because every software has a different approach for creating things and Artists kind of prefer Blender for some aspects of their work more than their main 3D package but in the end, they are capable of achieving the same results its just a matter of speed, ease of use and personal preference.
Also, i noticed that a specific type of CG artists use Blender a lot and these are Concept artists and when you think about it, it makes sense.
a lot of Concept artists use 3D programs in concept art because they want to get the proportions and perspective right, and this can be of a huge help later in the next processes of creating their art.
these days learning 3D in concept art is a very good thing to do because, with the growth of the industry and the changes that are happening, 3D is required more and more.
since a concept artist’s job is not heavily dependent on 3D they need something powerful and low in cost and Blender is a perfect fit for these criteria.
5_Devs are Creating Advanced tools for blender
Blender is an and open-source 3D program that is available for everyone free of charge, but in order to use some of the high-end add-ons for some features that don’t come with Blender you need pay because it takes time and money for developers to work on these add-ons.
this creates an opportunity for technical artists and programmers to make a living creating tools for artists. The difference between creating tools for Blender and for the other 3D packages is attracting developers toward Blender because it is more difficult to develop tools for 3Ds Max, Maya or Cinema 4D due to licensing issues
and some other difficulties with the companies that own these 3D packages. But with Blender, since it is open-source it is easier to navigate through these complications also since Blender is free, Blender users kind of find it easier to pay for add-ons and this makes Blender attractive for developers because there are more possibilities to make sales and there more targeted buyers since Blender has a large user base.
6_Blender is pushing 3d software to become even better
When Blender becomes one of the main software for the industry of AAA Video game development, Film and VFX the Developers of the other 3D Packages like 3Ds Max, Maya or Cinema 4D are going to be in a difficult situation because studios will need a reason not to switch to Blender since it is free and can do Professional work.
of course, there are many reasons for them not to switch to Blender right now because it is still new to the industry in terms of usage in professional production, and Pipelines are tough to change also there are not enough professional Blender artists that have industry experience and other more reasons.
what i am trying to say here is that when the industry starts adopting Blender as the main tool and these reasons will no longer become viable, big developers of the other 3D packages will have to lower their prices or offer more to studios and artists .even more than what they are offering right now which means they have to step up their game.
this is good news for 3ds Max and Maya users because they will see regular updates and new features to stay competitive in the market.
This is my opinion on what is going to happen in the near future, i don’t know maybe this is not what is going to happen. Please let me know what you think in the comment section.
7_Blender has unlimited resources/ Encyclopedia VS Encarta Story.
Since Blender is open-source anyone has access to Blender’s source code, and technical artists and programmers can create new tools or new modifiers or enhancements to the existing code to help Blender grow as 3D software and to allow users to have a better experience.
while open-source seems like you are making your code vulnerable since everyone has access to it and can see it and copy it.this can not be further from the truth because giving people the opportunity to contribute to Blender is giving it unlimited resources since virtually anyone who wants to enhance Blender in any shape or form is permitted to do that.
Making Blender open-source is one of the reasons that kept it alive today because otherwise, it is dead now.
Being open-source gives Blender unlimited resources and unlimited thrust to become better and better every year as we have seen recently with individual contributors and corporations that aided Blender’s team to add more features that suit their needs and of course that are aligned with the direction of Blender.
i want to give you an example just so you can understand the power of the open-source.
Microsoft which is a huge tech company created in 1993 an encyclopedia called Encarta, which was a huge vault of articles written by professional writers and authors about virtually everything. it was a huge success at the time but then another encyclopedia came along called Wikipedia.
the main difference between the two is that Encarta was developed or managed by a corporation and Wikipedia was open-source so to speak.
this means that Wikipedia can be updated or modified by virtually everyone who has the right knowledge. Wikipedia was growing so fast even Encarta which was the best encyclopedia at that time could not keep up and failed.
this example does not really apply to the topic of the discussion but it clearly showing us the power open-source products.
