

Blender: far from a toy, it can produce beautiful 3D images and movies (and it's free) - henning
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery/

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anateus
While blender is superb for modeling, its video capabilities are somewhat
inferior. It is rather more cumbersome in animation than its commercial
alternatives, though still decent.

It's game engine, though often touted, is hell to work with. I had to wrestle
with it endlessly for even a simple lightcycle game that takes less than an
hour in pygame.

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jdoliner
Blender has really gotten impressive over the past few years. Back when I did
computer art it was far inferior to the professional packages. Lacking alot of
creature comforts I looked for and downright missing a number of important
features. Suddenly it seems to have all of them. and what's more it seems to
have one of the slicker interfaces. I remember being very confused by its
interface when I used it a few years ago.

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far33d
Someday, one of the big studios will adopt blender internally instead of
paying through the nose for Maya, and Blender will get really solid.

Frankly, I'm surprised that medium sized studios haven't realized that working
together on Blender is a great alternative to the closed proprietary packages
or building up a huge in-house dev team.

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jcl
The problem is that the cost of Maya seems expensive to the student or casual
3D artist, but it's actually peanuts for a full-time visual effects company;
it probably works out to less than the cost of the hardware -- certainly less
than a month of employee costs. If you add in the network effects of reduced
training costs, "standard" formats, and consultant availability, Maya may
actually be cheaper than Blender... at least in the current market.

I wouldn't look to a big studio to change the situation, either. They are not
"paying through the nose"... In fact, they are in a good position to negotiate
even cheaper prices and better service than smaller studios.

Any initial adoption will come from small, independent groups that teach
themselves Blender in school, end up preferring it to the big packages, and
don't mind that this keeps them from working at larger studios.

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far33d
I guess what I meant is that the alternative to blender isn't Maya - Maya is a
closed system (yes, it has plugins and scripting, but you can't change the
internals, which are pretty messy). Right now the biggest studios are choosing
to build their own proprietary platforms (ILM, Pixar, DD, Disney, DWA, etc)
and replicate work instead of collaborating on an open-source platform.

It's an opportunity for a medium sized studio to start taking a competitive
advantage in technology, imho.

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rit
It also uses Python for it's scripting if I recall correctly, which is pretty
cool.

Especially as the guys who end up learning this don't end up learning a set of
skills only useful for Blender.

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sunkencity
Blender has also got fantastic video tutorials that makes it very easy to
learn the incredibly powerful interface. To the beginner it's like sitting
down with VI the first time, but watch a few screen tutorials and you're up
and running in no time.

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ilamont
The interface is not loved by everyone, including experienced artists:

<http://tinyurl.com/6m9wwd>

However, you are right in that there are some useful tutorials out there. It's
a neat tool, and the price is right.

