What are your thoughts on Blender?

[Katie. A]

Hi,
Is Blender good enough for professional 3d animation work?

 

[Richard Harrison]

Picking up a license of C4D is pretty cheap these days and quite a bit more user friendly.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I love blender, and think that it definitely can deliver professional results. It is deep and complex, like Maya. But instead of using a made-up scripting language, it uses Python. If you have the time to dig into it, I highly recommend it. Here's something I did many years ago (and therefore, with a far more primitive version of Blender). This is an animation created in Blender that embeds another animation created in Blender.

 

[Dr. Sassi]

Picking up a license of C4D is pretty cheap these days and quite a bit more user friendly.

) Enjoy!

 

[Tyson Benard]

Yes, Blender is good enough. It does a great many things and is very versatile. However, it does have a learning curve.

What specifically are you looking for in 3d animation? A more specific request would allow us to give you links to learning resources that would help you determine if it's the right software for you.

 

[Gary Paul Walker]

Blenders learning curve (if you're new to 3d) is insane, and although there's a lot of community support you'll be scratching your head for quite some time.

But YES it's an incredibly versatile and professional tool, but if you're planning to use it in a film and you don't have 5+ years experience with it, I'd suggest reaching out to someone in the Blender community for help.

 

[Zack Birlew]

Blender is free and capable. Pretty much it. It's come a long way and can do a whole lot more than it used to. But just like anything you have to learn it and I can imagine that it will be like me trying to learn Houdini from scratch. Better to start with a standard toolset like 3ds Max or Maya and go from there. As mentioned, if it's getting a do-it-all 3D application that doesn't break the bank, Cinema 4D is the best option and it's certainly best to get familiar with that for title work.

 

[John Bellari]

Hi,
Is Blender good enough for professional 3d animation work?

Good enough for "free" 3D work or a demo reel, ABSOLUTELY...

BUT If you intend to spend your time investment once,
and make a career being employed (PAID),
you'll probably find your time investment in
Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max much more worthwhile long-term.

Career-wise, simply look at the number of paid jobs for people using the packages listed and
your path will be clearer.

Best wishes!

 

[Michael Tiemann]

BTW, this is what Blender looks like when VFX are motion-matched with live action shot on RED EPIC cameras and rendered to 4K:

 

[Stacey Spears]

I thought Tears of Steel was Shot on Sony F65.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I thought Tears of Steel was Shot on Sony F65.

You might be right. I read this back in the day, but perhaps they switched camera platforms before they started shooting. My bad!

 

[Björn Benckert]

Blender is really cool and it's actually very capable. The only thing is that there is not so many users so I think for that reason it's better to learn maya or max as normally 3D is usually done as a group effort.

 

[Tyson Benard]

You might be right. I read this back in the day, but perhaps they switched camera platforms before they started shooting. My bad!

They did end up switching to the F65. They tested it and then chose to use it. It can be seen in some of the production photos as well.

Blender has popped up for a few small tasks here and there in major studios, but it hasn't been adopted as the core 3d application of choice yet AFAIK. It will be interesting to see where it shows up in the future.

 

[Mark Allen]

Blender is used all the time for professional work. The inclusion of the cycles rendering engine was the final step to making it on par with any other professional application. The support community is very active. I've found that the render farm cost has been comparatively less expensive (we use render.st). It can do water, fracturing, physics, fire, smoke, etc.

Check out this reel: http://vimeo.com/7809605

Here are my only caveats:

If you're doing pure motion graphics and want to do the kinds of things that mograph does - blender does have a strong driver system but it doesn't have the specialty of mograph.
If you're wanting to do game element creation - the pipelines for those are more established with Max and Maya.
The built in compositor isn't going to be as strong as after effects or nuke - but it's in development. Most 3D apps don't have any compositing.
Fire isn't going to be as "good" as fume FX.

But as a general program, highly recommended.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Blender is only free if you don't value your time. It doesn't take very many hours of backwards painful workflow to cost you more than one of the established players.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Out of curiosity, unrelated to 3D production work, does blender still have the easy author ware function they announced years ago?

Thanks.