It is a good point, if using Blender you have direct access to trunk source code which makes daily builds possible, although perhaps not always a good idea for production i.e. if a feature were to break, but this is quite rare I have to admit. So having daily fixes, with the ability to fix in-house if need be, can really offer a great alternative.
I think it requires quite a leap of faith from the people who decide on making the switch though as with open-source software there isn’t that sense of ‘I’ve paid, therefore I’ll be looked after’ mentality (Which we all know isn’t the case sometimes).
Anyway, I think once the Blender Network comes to fruition, along with it all of the consultants and processionals talking with studios, then I think we may see quite a few small, or even medium sized studios move part of the pipeline over. I’d have a guess and say start-ups would probably make up the biggest percentage making use of Blender as changing a whole pipeline over can be quite the hassle, especially when that entails training every artist who makes use of a 3D DCC package to the level they’re at with their current package(s).
But yes, it will be a win-win for the artists, and developers actually as they have a free platform to experiment, you just have to look at the many bio-medical uses of Blender to see that it’s a great platform for not only DCC.
Come 2.61 though, artists will definitely be in for some treats. An OpenCL based Renderman (in terms of flexibility, so I hear) style rendering engine (It’s target is small-to-medium sized production studios, with planned support for OSL and it already uses a node based material set-up; very powerful), and the first cross-platform full camera tracking, and reconstruction tool. All for free. Nice.
/Fanatical preaching mode.
