[Poll] Studios that use blender

Just a quick question to those that make games professionally (specifically studios)

Do you use Blender in production? We do, and I think RetroEpic does too, I would like to know if anyone else does either?

The reason I ask is I would like to suggest to some animation students to learn blender, it would be helpful if I had evidence that it is used by professional studios in SA.

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Comments

  • I do. We're not a "hire people" kind of studio, but to answer your question, in short, yes. :) Can't live without it.

    Even doing 2D-ish stuff in Blender:
    image

    I get the general impression that 3D artists in SA tend to lean towards 3D Studio Max though, but perhaps should wait for more replies.
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    Thanked by 1NickCuthbert
  • As a hobbyist I use it extensively! I still want to hold a Blender Unconference some time if there's interest
  • I think this question at its core is more about morality and money rather than which tool is better.
  • Yip. We use blender (and a little bit of ZBrush) at RetroEpic.
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    @critic - "better" is a matter of opinion. Usually someone will deem the tool they know best to be "better". Feature for feature, Blender can compete with Maya/Max/C4D/LW3D rather well. But in the end it comes down to the individual artist's mastery more than anything.

    I think @shanemarks ' original post was more a "will this help students get a local job" type question.
    Thanked by 1mattbenic
  • edited
    Sure, 'better' can mean a lot of things, pricing can also be included as part of something being 'better'. Maybe that's the wrong word, can't think of a better one atm, loosely used I think it's appropriate.
  • @rustybroomhandle yup exactly - wasn't asking which is better (because that is an inherently meaningless question) but specifically who is using it in South Africa in a professional capacity

  • Oh, so you are not even asking for which is 'better' for the students to learn (being able to find a job easier for instance), but rather just want justification for asking students to learn it, by showing them that local studios do use it?
  • @critic precisely - I believe its better to learn commercial tool in school like maya or max, as their are more resources available and the learning curve is smaller.

    However, I have had a request from a student who wants to get into a game studio as an intern. I would like to suggest that in order to better their odds, they also take the time to get familiar with Blender. I only want to make the suggestion if indeed a significant portion of game studios in SA use it.
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    I don't use Blender, and none of the studios I've worked have used it either (one exception was a student who used it during his internship, and I don't think it hampered him at all) but I've considered switching to it a number of times. While I can't speak from experience, from what I've seen it certainly seems mature enough to be used in production. It has rapid product updates (as opposed to, for example, Autodesk's updates that take months to come out), and its readily allowing for python scripting is quite a big plus.

    That said, something I always want to impress on students is to make beautiful work whatever the software. I feel that students (and schools) in general get pretty hung up on software, when what I tend to look for is art principles. I feel that for the most part when studios are hiring students, they don't really expect them to jump straight in and be productive without a little bit of mentoring. It's easy to teach software, but it's hard to teach art.

    Whether a student knows a certain piece of software is, to me, negligible compared to how good-looking their work is, so I wouldn't personally be recommending blender for game dev specifically over any of the others. (The one possible exception is Houdini. Its procedural modelling workflow is unconventional and seems like a potentially big time saver depending on the project. It could provide complementary skills that I/we could learn, and the people who know Houdini are scarce.)
    Thanked by 1shanemarks
  • Thanks for your feedback @Elyaradine I tend to agree with everything you have said.

    That all being said, assuming I had two candidates of equal ability and cultural fit - If one used Blender I would hire that person, simply because of they would be familiar with our workflow, so i'm just trying to ascertain if that would be the case or others.
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    In our (large, multi-focus) studio, to my knowledge, not a single artist uses Blender as their primary tool. They may pull it out on occasion for things that can't be done in other ways (most recently that I recall because it output lightmaps in a particular format). For most things Softimage, Maya or Max are used, in about that order.

    But I do think @Elyaradine is right about fundamentals being much more important than tool choice. Our artists can and do switch between tools at need.
    Thanked by 1shanemarks
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