Why Blender is Seen as an Amateur Software

From someone who finished their degree in animation last year, You’re totally right about how they teach the industry standard, Mine was Maya. Switched over to blender immediately after finishing my degree.

We never saw Blender as an Amatuer Software, we love the software 🧡

Blender is a jack of all trades, but not every project needs to reach Hollywood film quality. For most of the cases blender is actually a great choice.

The funny part is I remember blender in the mid-late 2000s. It was a pretty awful experience. I only recently came back to Blender as of a few years ago and it is nothing like I remembered. Things work, they work well compared to contemporary alternatives, and I'm honestly blown away with how forward thinking some of their decisions have been. But especially a lot older people still harbor those old feelings of a snobby "not the standard way, our way" that Blender often would champion around. I think with how assessable and easy blender is to learn now, it's going to naturally become more and more prominent as people who grew up using blender will champion it further as they get into the workforce.

I was taught primarily 3dsmax and a little bit of maya when i was studying. My lecturer told me not to use blender its not industry standard. I'm currently teaching myself blender and i find it easier to learn and less complicated. Switched cause its free , is all in one and has loads of tutorials online.

A moment of silence for the billions of cubes that have been sacrificed for the creation of great art.

Opensource software is always going to be considered amateur, primarily because it doesn't have any economic barriers to use. Anybody can download it and learn how to use it. Commercial software isn't ever going to be affordable to the average person. Unless you want to pirate a copy of Maya, it is unlikely you will own a copy or be able to learn it on your own outside of the industry (unless you learn it at college). So, there is an elitist mindset at play in how the industry perceives Blender.

I think Blender is great these days and will definitely get there. Studios are often using a combination of software and will have no issues with adding Blender to their toolkit because it's free, but in the same way, if you're a studio employing 5 permanent Maya artists who can download Blender and start using it for bits and pieces at work alongside their Maya skills... where does that leave 'Blender artists' who were only trained up on Blender? They'll have to be REALLY good as the industry is already very competitive. There are also issues like, if you're a freelance Maya/Max artist you can justify charging more for your time because you need to factor in the cost of the software. People using free software don't have this immediate justification. Studios will absolutely pay different artists at different rates of pay depending on their skills and the software they bring to the table. Something else that worries me (FYI I worked in CGI/VFX for over 10 years at various studios) is the overwhelming trend of Blender YouTube videos shilling products at the same time. I'm not having a go at this channel at all, but OMG the number of Blender tutorials where the teacher is like "to make the forest I used Forest Pack and then did all my UVs using Super UV Whizz.." and it goes on and on. Like, are we hiring an artist who can actually create work or are they just learning how to buy their results?

I come from working in Maya VFX. When I left VFX and became director of a small animation studio, I decided to switch Blender because of all the beautiful work I was seeing done with it and also all of the amazing community plugins. It was a total pain to learn, but now that I know it, I don't see myself ever going back to Maya. There are still a lot of quirks and stability issues that need to be worked out for it to truly be taken seriously by the industry, but that day will come eventually.

It's not about the software is better. It's about finding something you feel comfortable and confident using..that works for you and your workflow

3 years I use Blender regularly and I always learn news things that this software can do. Blender is amazing.

One thing very few videos on this subject ever mention is that most big VFX studios use customized software to suit their specific needs with many in house plugins and add-ons that are often proprietary and can NOT be learnt outside of the company. A lot of companies now require experience in A 3D modelling package without further elaborating on which ones or with a few listed and Blender is there more and more often. The truth is that once you have learnt the fundamentals of 3D Modelling transferring from one tool to another is not that hard. It is like a Builder learning to build a house using specific tools at school and then getting a job and learning to use different tools to essentially do the same thing , Once you know the general process the tools are just a detail you learn to work with.

Another in a long series of interesting questions video that actually are surface level, non-sourced out of a hat "blender is better please love it" essays. You spend the whole time opposing people who use blender versus people who have anything to say about it, without any kind of source too instead of providing serious information. "They say it's a jack of all trades master of none, which is not true by the way : Its probably best..." as if it was console war back in the 90s. People don't care about softwares, artists from all studios hop from DCC to DCC all the time, from Maya to Houdini or Houdini to Katana, doesn't matter. Blender is used by some non-mainline artists at ILM and other top studios and guess what, absolutely no one cares, because it's just a software like any other and they can use whatever they want. If it was as good and perfect as you said, it'd just be used more, and despite what you say with misleading footage (sorry guys, previz animation isn't the same as ILM's final breakdown) it isn't yet. Lots of artists from all over the world use both Blender and other softwares, and the absurd fanatism plays a big role in the bad / amateur image Blender gets, so you're actually not helping.

For amateurs or not, who cares ? I like using Blender because it's relaxing and fun... I don't plan to be a professional nor to sell anything I create with it. Just. Pure. Fun.

I am so confused right now. I am a VFX student and I know Maya and Nuke decent level, now can I learn Blender or improve my Maya and Nuke skills? My friends are switching to blender, is this good?

It will take time. But I'm sure that Blender could be just as big as those industry standards softwares. Also, I love how your video is getting better. Keep up the good work 👍

I like the way blender is. Not everyone in the art community needs professional softs. In fact, only a very small group of people need it. To me, being able to start up in 10 seconds and start making art right away at any time matters so much more than to make film level accurate physics simulations. Even if I worked in the industry professionally, I'd still need a software like blender.

The industry itself defines industry standards and very often it doesnt have much to do with the power of the actual package. What is mory ironic though are all those people who look down on things like Blender, are skeptical if it can do the job and demand "high end industry standards" while the work they do is hardly cutting edge: its really not a question what SW package or renderer you use when you do beer cans, archviz or simple anime characters. 99 % of people really dont need to be picky and will never reach half the capacity Blender offers.

Blender got high-end features very quickly, but it was never finished "down there". Compared to MAX, many things are so cumbersome that I would never use it for professional jobs.

To everyone who says that blender is the jack of all trades master of none. it doesnt matter if the software is a master of one, if the artist is a master of none. I have worked in the industry for 20 years, and in my years I have used 3ds max, maya, softimage, cinema 4d. And while I agree zbrush is better for sculpting, as far as modeling goes, I really dont see a benefit of 3ds max or maya over blender. i honestly find drivers easier and more intuitive in blender than maya, and while 3ds max is easier for pinpoint accuracy in architectural modeling, once you get used to blender works very well. Not to mention if you ever need more functionality you can get an addon, something that is not easily achievable in max or maya. One major example, I used to use Railclone and Forest in 3ds max, geonodes in blender does everything, that those 2 softwares do for 460 euros, for free. I have seen horrible results from max, and have seen beautiful results from blender.