Artists on the prospects and disadvantages of Blender: "He has a bright future ahead of him"

The artists told the 80 LEVEL portal about their impressions of Blender 2.9. We selected the main points from the opinions of professionals and their forecasts about whether the new version of the program will become a standard for the gaming industry.Blender is still great for indie

Most artists note a close-knit community among the main advantages of Blender.

This also includes the free software, which helps to save the budget on licenses and at the same time provides a sufficient set of tools.

“I can imagine that Blender will become the standard for indie studios largely because of the financial benefits that can be obtained by using free software,” notes George Garton.

Some artists also believe that Blender is a much simpler and more intuitive tool to learn. That is why it is most suitable for beginners and independent developers.

“Blender is getting better, but now it seems to me that it is more suitable for beginners, freelancers, indie studios, rather than large corporations with established workflows and pipelines,” says Shaafi Ahmad, who also believes that “Blender has a bright future ahead.”

Why won’t major studios completely switch to Blender?Companies involved in the development of AAA projects already have a staff of professionals who are well versed in other tools like Maya and 3DS Max.

A full transition to a new program may not be feasible.

The artist Jordan Jenkin agrees with this, who believes that the transition to Blender may take 5-10 years: “Why [large companies] switch to Blender? To save money? It will take a lot of money to train artists, even if it may pay off in the end. In my opinion, many studios are concerned about the time spent, and Blender training may take longer than they can afford to spend on it.”

Blender’s versatility may be a disadvantageDespite its versatility, Blender may be inferior to competitors in some aspects.

According to some artists, professionals will still prefer more narrowly focused software for specific tasks.

“Blender benefits from a huge number of applications. Even though it sounds attractive, in fact it is his weak side in comparison with ZBrush or Substance Painter,” says Christopher Ryrvall.

Also, some artists believe that Blender is not the best suited for the final stages of designing and working with a large number of polygons. “The toolkit is improving, and many shortcomings have already been fixed, but it still lacks “maturity”,” Dmitry Bely notes.

The prospectsDespite the attachment to other programs, large studios are increasingly paying attention to Blender.

Giants like Microsoft, Ubisoft and Epic Games are actively helping developers add more features and improve existing tools.

Blender also takes a step towards artists, allowing them to customize the interface and make it more similar to the software they are familiar with. “I don’t think that the introduction of Blender into the pipeline of large companies will take a lot of time,” says James Thirlwell.

Also on the topic:

• Ubisoft has released an open source tool for BlenderDevelopers of a tool for creating 3D characters have attracted $7 million in seed investments
• Unity has launched a platform for distributing games on third-party Android stores
• Is there any news?