Can blender compete in the animation industry

#53

leigh,

again thanks for your response,

I don’t want to be overly argumentative or sound condescending here, but posts like this really disregard the actual full meaning of the word “pipeline”. It really has to be the most frequently misused and clearly misunderstood word on this site. A pipeline does not equal workflow. It’s far, far more complex than that. You can’t just bring an app into a studio and start using it and have everything working perfectly. Just because Blender can, for example, export OBJs doesn’t mean a modeller can just use it if they want to and export OBJs for everyone. Studios build their entire asset handling systems around the software they use. When I open Maya, it has loads of proprietary menus that pull up our internal asset handling system which allows me to gather in assets, publish assets, and everything else. These tools are expansive, deeply rooted in our 3D software and are continuing to be developed and improved in-house. Every other application we use needs to communicate with these tools and needs to be supported by R&D and our tech support. You can’t just bring in a new app and expect to start using it - there’s no support for it, and it doesn’t work with our tools.

Yes and it depends significantly on how the pipeline is set up. Ie pipelines that are using Collada with conditioners (which is becoming more common) are a lot more flexible in what apps can be used.

For studios using pipelines based on collada with conditioners then adding software to the pipeline is less traumatic - that is part of the reason for the push for all DCCs to support Collada.

Of course an in house DAM solution could be extremely unflexible, as are some of the commercial DAMs.

I’ve worked in small and medium sized studios too, and they’re also very hesitant to change software, that’s really no different to large studios.

Most studios I’m aware of use a planned cycle for adoption/integration of software into their pipeline. While it wouldn’t be allowed to download Blender and dump it into a pipeline (well it can be in some instances - some pipelines will let you model and UV in whatever tool you want as long as you can get it in the proper format for doing a check in to the DAM), when the scheduled evaluation time for integration comes around it can be considered just like any other application.

They may use less proprietary code, but they stick with their toolsets for other reasons, one of them being that when you’re using an industry standard application, it’s easier to find professional artists who use it. No-one wants to hire artists and then have to train them to use a new package before they can start doing any work. This is a major plus factor in sticking with industry standards.

Availability of professionals skilled with a particular program is definitely a major consideration, which is known barrier to entry for adoption of Blender. (Both the ‘we don’t want to have to invest money to train someone on the software’ but also ‘if we are behind schedule how easy will it be to find bodys to throw at the project’).

That barrier is dropping pretty quickly as more students are being trained on Blender and as more professionals add it as a tool. I’d even be willing to bet that within 2 years the majority of 3D artists will know blender well enough to do sculpting, painting, retopology, and a render in it.

Using lots of packages for different tasks is a huge pain in the arse that most studios attempt to avoid as much as possible. It causes disruptions, can cause inconsistencies, and generally complicates what is already a relatively complicated process.

Agreed.

In the professional world, it is a fringe app. I am sorry but I honestly don’t see how you can argue with that.

Do you consider Lightwave and Houdini ‘fringe’ applications? There are far more people who make their living with Blender than there are Lightwave and Houdini professionals. Most users of Blender who use it professionally are using it for Arch Viz, Illustration, Industrial Viz., music videos, game content, and related fields. The number of folks using it for FX work, tv advertising, television, and film are fairly small though growing. This is primarily due to Blender having historically having had relatively poor animation tools and a weak renderer until Big Buck Bunny.

I often read comments like this from Blender users, and yet when asked for examples, the best they can do is produce is one or two links, usually of obscure places that hardly anyone has ever even heard of. Even this very Blender discussion forum is not nearly as busy as some of the other software forums on this site - in fact, we’re considering archiving this forum altogether (which is actually why I happened to see this thread - because I’ve started having a look at this forum to monitor activity).

Yes I noticed that you archived Modo and then reversed it. CGTalk app specific forums aren’t related to the applications popularity (see the traffic for the Photoshop forum which dwarfs the user base of all the 3D applications combined, yet it is hardly used at all), but rather the availability of good application dedicated forums elsewhere. Maya and 3DS Max have historically had poor application specific forums elsewhere thus you have a good number of those users who visit this forum regularly. ZBrush, Modo, and Blender all have their own rather large forums - ZBrush has about double the traffic of CGTalk for instance. I think Modos traffic is about half that of CGTalk (they don’t list traffic like other forums so it is a guess based on thread activity). There are a large number (30+?) of forums that are dedicated to Blender with just one of them, blenderartists.org, having about half the traffic of cgtalk.

I think there are other variables that are important as well, but that is the most significant regarding app specific forum traffic.

That said, I think you will see traffic in this forum pick up once 2.5 is released, since the changed UI, and presets for Maya bindings will make it a lot more inviting for users of other packages to play and explore Blender.

#54

I’m gonna have a shot at answering this, but obviously can’t get too specific for what I hope are obvious reasons! No, we don’t have Maya’s source code, but then, we don’t need it - we can do everything with plugins and scripting. If you decided one day that Maya’s hair system simply wasn’t good enough for your needs, you could write your own using the Maya API without having to touch the Maya source code at all. The same goes for fluids, shading, lighting, animation/rigging tools… basically anything. If we see something in Maya that we don’t like or that doesn’t do exactly what we need, we can make our own (and indeed we often do!). Blender’s new scripting features are cool and all (and definitely a massive step in the right direction), but hopefully you can see it’s not really on that kind of level yet? :slight_smile:

Tool-wise, here are some simple asset management problems that a pipeline is there to solve:

  • If I’m an animator, I’ll need tools that can search for and link/import all the rigs, cameras and sets that my shot requires into my current scene.

  • I’ll need to be able to see what versions I’m using of each rig/camera/set asset, and have a way to check if any updates or fixes have been published for any of them since I built my scene.

  • If a new version of an asset has been published, I’ll need to be notified of this, and have a way to “update” my assets in my scene to the new versions, but without losing the hard work I’ve already done.

  • If my scene gets heavy, I’ll need a way to unload rigs that I’m not using right now, but still be able to bring them back later if I need them (and again, without losing any work I’ve done on them).

  • I’ll also need a way to be able to switch between fast-but-low-res rigs and slow-but-high-res rigs for fine detail work.

  • And of course, when my work is done, I’ll need a way to be able to auto-generate a high-quality movie of my work to show the director.

  • My work will also need to be published and versioned so that the next person working on my shot can start using my animation. If there’s a problem with version 5, the next person down the pipeline can tell me about it so I can make a fix and publish version 6, ready for them to pick up.

  • If the next job down the pipeline involves using Houdini instead of Maya, then I need tools to convert my work into a form that Houdini can understand and use.

This is barely scratching the surface (this is just the animation department!). As you said, it is “like a database or SVN or filemanager”, but at the same time it’s a lot more than that. It’s a suite of tools and programs that mean no matter how many people are working on a film or how big the film is, everyone can work together with minimum trouble and confusion. I don’t doubt that at the current rate of development we’ll be able to do this sort of stuff with Blender at some point, but we can’t yet, and even if we could it’s a lot of work/time/money to invest - we’d need to have a very good reason for doing so to make it worthwhile.

Does that clear things up?
Karl

#55

So your implying that we are somebody if we are part of CGTalk??
And I’m guessing that 99.99% of Blender users learned of its existence through other means other than CGTalk.
Besides: “our private world” is an oxymoron. Privacy is an individual thing. When you have a user base of ten thousands (if not hundred of thousands), one can hardly classify that as ‘private’.

#56

toontje,

Alekzsander is a non-native speaker of english so please take that into account when responding to him, unfortunately his statements are often quite difficult to understand (he has been trying to give feedback in the sculpt tools discussion and sometimes it is a bit perplexing what he is trying to convey).

I disagree with you on a number of points. I think it is valuable to have a Blender specific forum at CGTalk. CGTalk really isn’t a forum for 3D neophytes. It is a forum that in my opinion caters to professional cg artists especially those in film and effects.

I don’t think this forum is really a place where an inexperienced artist who has no experience with any 3D package is really appropriate to post. (Not that they are unwelcome per say, but they aren’t the core audience). Ie if you are doing ‘cube with interesting lighting’ then I’d wait to post art and request feedback at CGTalk until quite a few art projects are under ones belt.

#57

Karl,

thanks for your response. We are aware that the 2.5x API is incomplete for such usage. Unfortunately the migration to the new internal API structure and abstraction that has made 2.5x possible was more challenging than expected, and Durian has gobbled up more of the core developer time than expected . Thus completion of the new API has been somewhat delayed.

If you are of mind I’d be interested in your feedback on what you’d like the API to look line to best meet your needs.

LetterRip

#58

toontje,

no disrespect intended, but I feel that your responses, especially to Leigh, are being rather impolite.

Could you please give some consideration of whether your response might be considered rude or curt before responding?

thanks,

LetterRip

#59

It’s sad to see people fighting over a status of their favored package. 3d modeling softwares are just tools, like a hammer, or 2d drawing software.

I agree the last comments about the pipeline issue, if you or your team wants to use Blender, I would suggest building such pipeline your self. And I sure meant this in positive way.

Just like most other modeling softwares, Blender has a great status already and is being respected by a lot of people who don’t even use it. I recently (few months ago) changed to Blender completely after using other less known 3d package for years. I just found Blender best solution at this time since my “pipeline” consider me and myself only.

So in short. If you ask me, there are no real ranks between softwares. It’s just a matter of how and for what you need a 3d modeling package for, and who you work or wish to work with.

#60

If I understood correctly, you are saying that the topic “Can Blender compete in the animation Industry” is a debate, and as such, people will try to defend their preferences (at the expense of space needed to communicate solutions/tips to technical issues regarding the application & it usage). Hence, there is little or no CG content – mainly references. That makes sense.

From a similar perspective: The problem is with this thread and not the Forum.
However, I have also observed a commendable level of objectivity in 90-95% of the posts therein (viz. pipeline talks and all what not), which is illuminating (at least to me). So, valuable information is being passed … somewhat. They came through as unbiased, so "Skewed" is rather hard.

Oookaayy, SO, short and simple: Lets try to avoid a debate here … and discuss blender. Right?

#61

Oh, come on. Those threads are popping out from time to time, because people want to know if they can have future in the industry just working in Blender or if they should learn some other application as well.

I’ve seen lately that a lot of new people to 3D (mostly young people), start with Blender, have some troubles in doing stuff (because they don’t read manual) so they switch to pirated proprietary 3D software thinking the problem lays in Blender. So if I want to work in Blender, I should like to see more people working for serious on it, so I decided to help all those “new guys (or gals)” even if most of them eventually fail at 3D or move to other software. Hope many people feel this way so we can help answering even obviously easy questions in this forum.

#62

Karl, thank you for clarifying what asset management in the pipeline/ 3D package means. It is an whole other dimension on its own and judging on that alone, I see that it is a very important aspect for content management and collaboration in big studios.

Since Blender doesn’t have anything like that remotely (well…there is Verse and linking of objects over from different files, but nothing that sophisticated like you described), I don’t think it can compete in the animation industry even though the animation tool set is kickass now.

@ Letterrip
Yeah, maybe I cam off a little too strong, but I still mean what I wrote. I think Leigh is right on a lot of points, but he’s viewing this topic from a different angle and I sympathize more with your point of view. I just keep remembering why Ton gave us Blender: to bring 3D creation to the masses. Anything else like adaptation in the professional world is a spinoff effect. I would find it rather cool if it meant that the professional world contributes to the advancement of Blender, but it still hasn’t happened to my knowledge (except for the studio Matt Eb was working for).

#63

I feel somebody where I go and you?.

And what’s the matter in that ???

Not necesarily .

PD : Are you know what you are talking about??? .

@ LetterRip ;).
Thanks but i wanna explain you what i think it’s the best way

#64

Si mi amigo, quisas es una problema de lenguage. Pero lo que yo compredia que diceste es que en Blenderartist nadie nos cososcon. Pues es un emplicacion que solamente en CGTalk somos visible.

I tambien diciste que Blenderartist es un mundo privado como cual es un club exclusivo que no toloran extranjeros. Y la palabra “nuestro” y “privado” es un contradicion.

Pero en breve, mi conclusion es que en CGTalk no me siento bienvenido para los usarios de otro paquetes. Nunca es possible aqui para mantener un conversacion civilizado aqui sin que todos los Maya usarios estan criticando el interface de Blender sin un algun merito valido. Hay un actidud bastante antipatico de los otros, y en especialmente los forum leaders y el señor Robert Ortiz es un gran exsepcion de eso. I siguramente la mayoria de los forum leader, si no todos, nunca a usado Blender.

Disculpame para mi Español que es mi tercer lenguage.

#65

There’s no problem my friend but you can’t live if you are worry about the rest .
I live how i want :).
i don’t like robert :).

#66

toontje,

Karl, thank you for clarifying what asset management in the pipeline/ 3D package means. It is an whole other dimension on its own and judging on that alone, I see that it is a very important aspect for content management and collaboration in big studios.

   Since Blender doesn't have anything like that remotely (well....there  is Verse and linking of objects over from different files, but nothing  that sophisticated like you described),  I don't think it can compete in  the animation industry even though the animation tool set is kickass  now. 

 Actually pretty much everything in his list is done already for Durian, and was done for BBB, and Yo Frankie.  That is the whole point of how the library, linking, and appending system and proxying system is done in Blender.
 
 [http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Data_System/Linked_Libraries](http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Data_System/Linked_Libraries#Linked_Libraries_Overview)
 
 subversion is used for the version management and everything else in his list is handled via the library linking and proxy system.
 
 Ie this quote from Promotion Studios on their production of Lighthouse.

And finally Blender has a fantastic system of linked libraries, stronger than we’ve seen in any other package. It means you can have a character that is fully rigged and the character artist can be fixing and remodeling the character while the library animator can be animating generic moves like walk cycles etc, the scene animator can be setting up cameras and doing acting animation, the light/shade artist can be lighting the scene, and all the while each file is kept up to date with the most recent information using this system of linking. This alone saved us an incredible amount of work.

 [http://www.*********.com/features/promotionstudio/](http://www.*********.com/features/promotionstudio/)

(hmm the link is being filtered out by cgtalk - wierd, you can google the quote…)

Of course that is all using Blend files only - for his studios needs since they are unlikely to use Blends, it would have to be generalized for the types of files and metadata used in their pipeline.

 The one area Karl mentions where Blender falls down is,

If the next job down the pipeline involves using Houdini instead of Maya, then I need tools to convert my work into a form that Houdini can understand and use.

 Exporting (and importing) for certain types of content is still not adequately robust.
#67

Hmm… this does seem to be “the ultimate flame war” all of the sudden!

(And I ask you all, what possible good does it do?)

3D computer graphics actually existed as in the Special Interest Group on Graphics (SIGGRAPH) of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) long before there was computing hardware even remotely as powerful as anything that we have today. During all of those delightful, pre-pubescent years, no one would have dreamed of trying to build an impenetrable fence around any of the very-primitive software packages that researchers were then running on equally-primitive computer systems.

Perhaps it would behoove all of us to, first, take a good deep breath, then, take a long draught on a really good :beer:, then acknowledge to one another that there actually is room in this great big wonderful world of “computer graphics” for all of us … and for all of the programs that we use.

There is, and there always has been, a strong tendency, within our collective industry (and I mean “computers,” not merely “graphics”), to construct silos. We all tend to become totally focused … not merely on “what we are doing,” but upon “exactly how we are doing it.” What tool, sometimes even what version. We become so very good at finding solutions and workarounds to problems that we simply stop looking at the problems.

We stop looking for common ground.

We stop being civil. :slight_smile:

Let’s face it: the people in “the Maya silo,” and the people in “the Blender silo,” and the people in “the 3DS-Max silo,” are in fact much more the same than different! We’re all in silos. We’re all using tools that are growing closer together rather than growing farther apart. Some of us are working on monumentally-huge problems for the film industry; others are not. The 3D-graphics profession that we all, each in our own way, “intersect with,” is easily strong and wide enough to simultaneously accommodate all of us, at once. 3D, now, is more than movies; more than games; more than video; more than any one focus.

Maybe at one time 3D was “all about motion pictures.” Maybe to other folks it is and was “all about games.” Or, “video.” The truth is, though … it’s bigger than all of those things combined.

Maybe it’s time for a big reality check here. Maybe it’s time for us to say to one another: “Chill out, dudes and dudettes! The next :beer: is on me! It’s only ones and zeroes!”

#68

toontje, if CGTalk is so awful, please do yourself and everyone else a favour and go somewhere else. All your whining, your self-made victim complex, accusations of elitism and your posting in Spanish is really not adding anything useful to this site. You say that Maya users keep criticising Blender? Well Blender users are equally, if not even more so, guilty of spamming other software threads at every opportunity going on about how awesome Blender is. Pot calling the kettle black there. And what difference does it make if the majority of forum leaders don’t use Blender? Do you really expect them to? Why do you expect everyone to use the same software as you? Stop being such a fanboy. Treating software like a religion really is the biggest waste of energy. Blender doesn’t care about you, so maybe you should ask yourself why you care so much about it. Software is just a tool, nothing more.

LetterRip, I’ll reply properly to your post later when I have more time.

#69

Excuse me but if he have different point don’t mean to send somewhere else.
Don’t see correct .

mmm Why not ??.Spanish is beautiful ;).

#70

Well, on the contrary, I see your all out attack as religious zealotry.
I see Blender for what it is as far as I can see. I see the other packages mostly as the leaders of the pack. I was never judgmental, and I never made claims (if memory serves me well) about the shortcomings of other apps other than Blender. I’m only criticizing the netiquette of certain people. Obviously that is also prohibited o mighty animator of some obscure studio.
But hey, you’re more of a man than I am since you are a professional of the industry, o holy one, so do me a last favor: ban me from CGTalk why don’t you. I’m done with this chickensh*t outfit.
@ Aleksander
He doesn’t like Spanish?? Then I bet he’ll really hate the Spanish translation of Sintel :wink:

Bye!

#71

I’m not a man. And spare me the martyr act, it’s really pathetic.

#72

Alekzsander, we ask all users to please post in English only on this site. This is stated on every reply page - as much as I love languages (and I speak quite a few!), in a large forum like this, we need to choose a common language so that everyone can understand all the posts and that posts do not alienate those who do not speak the language that the post is in.