/3/ - 3DCG

blender duh
(wip robot made in blender)

>>475690
Why?

>>475691
Its free
does all the things the others do
And since you are just starting you wont be bothered by its curve.
the only thing is specialized programs like revit, blender cant do.

>>475693
but really its all dependent on the modelers skill
its like say whats better hand drawing or digital, its all on the artist what is better for them.

>>475694
Is that really the end all be all?

It's just hard to grasp, considering some programs run upwards of $300 - $700.

>>475693
>does all the things the others do

Lmao, if that were true, studios would be using it, but they don't. It's buggy and excels at nothing.

>>475687
OP, Maya is the most full fleshed out all-around package now. Autodesk has been focusing on it heavily and it is the most used 3D software in the film and games industry now, for good reason.

You can get a 3 year free educational license on Autodesk's website, and Maya LT is quite cheap.

>>475697
>You can get a 3 year free educational license on Autodesk's website, and Maya LT is quite cheap.

>PAYING for software

>>475697
Not to refute previous anon's post about Blender, but that's what I figured.

I like to elaborate what I know about something before I actually start using it. Makes the process of learning it a bit more interesting. That the reason for the question.

So, I appreciate you pointing out Maya as top tier, it helps me invest in the future prospect of solely using Maya. But I still have the simple question of.. Why?

>>475700
It's more stable software, backed by a large, full-time development team that works along with the biggest studios in the industry to implement the latest tech.
The documentation is in-depth and explains everything about the software.
It has immensely more tutorials and online courses for it.
It can handle higher polycounts and the viewport is capable of much better real-time rendering effects, with full support for the recent PBR workflow in games and direct interoperability with Unreal and Unity (built-in send to button for both engines that sends materials, textures, models and animations).
The built in Bifrost particle simulation system far exceeds Blenders in terms of ease of use, performance and capabilities.
Same case with the built in X-Gen node-base hair and general object instancing system.
You have a larger selection of production ready renderers to addon.
The MEL/Python scripting system exposes Maya's core functions and allows for an "open-source-like" ecosystem of plugins/addons without allowing that ecosystem to fuck up the actual core of the software, so we have tonnes of amazing scripts and plugins that aid in workflow.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/
Maya is well regarded as the best animation tool in the industry as well and recent updates to the modeling tools have finally gotten rid of the "Maya is great at everything but modeling" view.
It also uses a logical interaction method, where left clicking actually selects things by default.

It's just an all around a very quality product that I could continue to talk about, but a lot of it is hard explain especially if you're new to this and don't understand all the terminology. But going with Maya really is the best choice these days. And if you have hopes of working in the industry at some point, it's an important skillset for your resume alongside ZBrush.

>>475702
Thank you greatly, based anon.

>>475697
It maybe not be used by studios but that doesn't mean its useless.
Take Andrew price for example.
as for bugs, there have been very few in my experience of 3 years

>>475708
>but that doesn't mean its useless.
Nobody said it's "useless", just that it's not the best... There's a big difference.

>Take Andrew price for example.
As an example of what? He's a very mediocre 3D generalist who is only well known because he's one of the few people producing any somewhat decent quality tutorials for Blender.

>as for bugs, there have been very few in my experience of 3 years
Great, but that's your single person experience and based on what you've chosen to remember about your experiences with it. I interact with Blender users from all over on a weekly basis and watch many of them work in video hangouts, I witness them running into crashes and bugs quite frequently.

>>475709
I didn't say it was the best, I said it can do what all the other programs can do.

Andrew Price is not a mediocre 3d generalist, have you even seen half the stuff he does and does more than just blender tutorials

My memory is not faulty nor selective thanks. What are they doing? trying to simulate 9/11?
Ive done some crazy stupid shit with blender and it only crashed because I was trying to see how far it would go and how much my computer could handle.

Ive have hands on experience with a bunch of programs and found that blender made the most sense only few other products are worth buying over blender and thats because they're specialized programs.

>>475721
>I didn't say it was the best, I said it can do what all the other programs can do.
I didn't say you said it was the best, please read more carefully, you're loosing context of the replies. Go re-read the series of replies.

>Andrew Price is not a mediocre 3d generalist, have you even seen half the stuff he does
Yes I have, I've seen his best works, and they do not hold up to industry professional work. They might impress an amateur, but that's easy to do with a brute-force path tracer and high resolution textures.

>My memory is not faulty nor selective thanks
Didn't say it was faulty, your memory is just like everyone else's, flawed more than a person is willing to admit. We don't remember forgetting something, or else it wouldn't be forgetting.

>Ive have hands on experience with a bunch of programs and found that blender made the most sense
It made the most sense because it's what you had chosen to stick with. It makes "sense" because it has become natural for you and thus anything different from that will feel unnatural, and that's a major problem with learning Blender is that it tries so hard to be different that it alienates you to every other 3D software, which all share similar interaction methods and terminology.

I've been a 3D Generalist for 6 years now, I started out in XSI for over a year (amazing software), learned Maya and switched to that while still using XSI for its ICE particle system; learned and constantly use ZBrush, learned 3DS Max for certain plugins and the nicer modeling workflow it had over Maya back then (not so much now), and learned Blender for some niche file format converting and just to give it a shot, in fact I've given it multiple tries over the years to check out improvements made. Blender is not foreign to me, it is installed on my computer, but Maya is superior once you've taken the time to TRULY learn both.

>>475727
>Nobody said it's "useless", just that it's not the best... There's a big difference.
>implying I said it was the best.

So His Architecture Academy and other projects are sub par work then

That maybe be true but I do use other programs and have no difficulty using or understanding them. Also on a some what side note, they all have the same interaction methods and terminology because Autodesk literally owns all of them except for zbrush.

We could literally argue about this for years and years and years to come. You think one way, I think another. Its all preference.

>>475745
I'm pretty familiar with blender and Andrew price. His stuff looks great, but he has a tendency to cut corners.

His tutorials produce a great looking piece but a lot of the time he has the "out of sight out of mind" mentality. He often has a tendency to make models/ scenes that only look good from one angle, materials that only look decent from far away etc etc. it's great for still rendering, and I recommend this kind of stuff if you're advanced enough to know when cutting corners is ok, but I wouldn't recommend learning based off this mentality.

>>475687
>best bang for its buck
If this really is your criteria, then there really is no possible argument against Blender. To calculate "bang for buck," you divide by the price, and dividing by zero is pretty unbeatable.

But, as others said, that's a silly criteria because they're all (practically) free in one way or another. Educational license, whatever.

>>475697
> if that were true, studios would be using it

No they wouldn't. The next Batman Transformers Avengers crossover spinoff prequel sequel is going to have a budget of half a billion dollars. If software A does everything software B does, but B does it 0.001% faster and costs $500000 where A is free, they're going to buy B.

>>475687
Somebody make a fucking speedmodelling thread and let's settle this software efficiency war shit once and for all.

>>475745
price work is laughable.

>>475745
>Nobody said it's "useless", just that it's not the best... There's a big difference.
>implying I said it was the best.
Dear god, man, learn how to read!

>>475899
This thread was about what is best, and I was the one talking about things being best, never implied you did. So again, Lrn2Read.

>>475849
but that depends on the modelers skill