Hi Unreal community. So a few years back I was taking a course in school where we used Unity, UDK and Autodesk 3DS Max. I’ve been pretty busy with work the last few years but wanted to try to free up some time to get back into game development.
I know the debate between Blender vs paid applications such as 3DS Max has been mentioned thousands of times on thousands of different forums and the answer has always been generally conclusive that the artist himself is more important than the tool used to do the job. Yet whenever look at artwork created in Blender (especially organic meshes such as people), they always look pretty low poly and not very good. I’m wondering why this is if people claim Blender can produce same quality models as other tools such as 3DS Max?
Maybe the fact that 3DS Max is primarily used by professional due to its high price point? As where any person can download Blender and submit subpar artwork? What do you guys think?
Disclaimer: I am a programmer looking to be a programmer and a 3d modeler.
It’s a fully capable modeling program, but a lot of artists don’t like the workflow, tools, hotkeys, UI, etc, compared to 3ds Max, Maya, or even Modo. Some of those opinions are dated first impressions, some of people feel like blender controls are too different with no benefits from being different. A lot of tools in features that are built into other programs are add ons and plug ins with Blender, which can be a good or bad thing.
Modo is worth checking out if you want a cheaper alternative to Max or Maya, and there is an indie version.
Blender does suffer a bit from most professionals use Max or Maya, so most jobs/tutorials/guides/etc are all for Max and Maya.
I personally never used Blender, but I can assure you that 99% of the times it doesn’t matter which software you use. The software as an artist should only be a tool for you.
3Ds max is not used by professionals because it is expensive, it is used because it is a professional “all in one” 3D content creating software providing great features to produce industry standard assets.
At the end of the day, it is up to the individal artist which software he prefers, as I said you will very rarely hit any limitations in any of them. Keep in mind tho, if you are planning to work as a 3D artist in the future, 3ds Max would be a better option because how widely it is used in the industry.
I have seen a lot of beautiful content created in Blender, so the claim that it is not capable of creating high quality assets is not true.
I admire blender, I’ve used it to really good effect, ‘when’ it works.
I thought we should stop glossing over issues blender has.
If you only work on low resolution meshes, you would be fine, but we don’t all limit ourselves to those kinds of things.
I have a mesh, all one piece that is growing while I try to keep the polycount low as possible ( ie: as I work ) , which is 1.3mil tris, and if I go into edit mode which is often needed, blender ‘crawls’, making it impossible to work in.
My rig isn’t ‘state of the art’, but I guarantee you its not slow either, so don’t go there , phenom II x4 3.2ghz, HD 7750 2gb , 8 gigs of ram windows 10 64bit.
Its not a powerhouse I realize, but its far far from slow .
Blender developers ‘know’ about the problem , trust me and you can look for yourselves if you wish to verify.
The edit mode is old GL code as I understand it, and honeslty even approaching 66k tri, blender in edit modes is very annoyingly sluggish.
That’s why I said, maya for the win, and I can’t ev en afford maya
Thanks for both your responses. I have spent dozens of hours in 3DS Max, and a few hours in Modo Indie. My personal favorite thus far is Max, just cannot financial afford $175/mo for a hobby. Afaik they have completely got rid of the perpetual license, which is very unfortunate. I’d be more than willing to save up and drop a few thousand for a perpetual license as opposed to $175/mo since that would hugely impact my monthly budget.
I’m interested in trying out Maya LT as well. I know there are some limitations in Modo Indie and Maya LT although I’m not sure how much of an impact it will have on workflow to UE4. I’m also considering a perpetual license for Modo in the future, since I’m not a huge fan of subscription licenses.
Nvidia hair works looks super impressive and is love to learn to use that tool as well. If anyone has any advice on that it would also be greatly appreciated. It’s my understanding that hair works isn’t compatible with Blender, not sure on Maya LT or Modo Indie though.
I don’t agree with you, although I have never used the software quite a few people do, probably for a reason.
Software is your tool, and if you are a great artist you can achieve quality results with any of the well known programs, it is question of taste/perosnal preferences/studio which one to use.
What exactly do you mean by high quality assets? The FBX data??
Performance is a different issue, nothing to do with content quality.
Obviously you can find certain differences between applications, especially if one of it costs a fortune and the other one is free, but bashing it saying that it is unable to produce high quality content is simply disproved by a lot of amazing artists.
I was originally replying to this statement. In my eyes, this is simply not true, becaue I have seen tons of fantastic Blender content.
The qualtiy of the product and the amount of work needed to finish it in a certain software is not really related. Of course, everybody likes to work quicly and efficiently, some people prefer this, some people that, and yes you might have performance issues with Blender, I am not denying that, but that wasn’t the point of my argument.
As I said I have never used Blender, I am a Max user, and I did not compare these softwares, I was simply arguing the point that Blender is unable to produce high quality content (which is an arguable expression in its own).
I’m not saying it cannot produce high quality meshes either, many people swear by it and I believe them. I was mostly wondering why it is is so difficult to find good art assets that were made in Blender, not saying they don’t exist. What I’m trying to figure out is why it’s so rare (IMHO, if you have examples to prove me wrong please do so) to come across realistic looking assets/characters made in Blender when they are so common to find in Max/Maya. Is Blender that difficult to use that not many people can make these photorealistic looking assets? Or is the market that saturated with poor looking models?
I reason I can think of is what you call high quality assets are mostly created by professionals, and they most likely don’t use Blender at work, so they might as well use a software for their personal work that they are already familiar with.
Ya I tend to agree. I’ve seen stunning things made, although I can’t speak to how many ‘photorealistic’ images blender has going for it; I’ve never looked per se really…
Ya so you weren’t disagreeing with anything I said, because what I said had nothing to do with that discussion, as I was responding to this:
" generally conclusive that the artist himself is more important than the tool used to do the job "
WHich is categorically false, and I"m proof of it.
I’ve made things in sculptris and Meshmixer I"m quite proud of becaues they are the only software packages I can afford ( think free at the moment anyway, though not free in labor from autodesk clearly, and VERy appreciated!) , and I made my comment about Blender because I literally can’t work in blender, in edit mode which is where I need to be often, because of the curent status of edit mode, something the devs are very aware of.
IF and when they fix that, I’d be exhilerated to try again, because I"m all for open source freely available software,- and because as much as I completely admire and respect autodesk for its software offerings and that I can’t afford maya notwithstanding and would continue to use their products ( and buy maya if I can ever afford to!) , I would always support blender , if edit mode ever allows me to
I am 'one of ’ the few/masses who can’t afford Maya, not even monthly ‘at the moment’ because I dont know the app well enough really for that, yet when I"m ready to take advantage of all it has to offer, then the $30/mo would prob. be just fine, as once our product is nearing completion , paying then would likely make a lot of sense. We’ll see what blender does in the meantime to fix issues stopping me from utilizing its software.
Ya I tend to agree. I’ve seen stunning things made, although I can’t speak to how many ‘photorealistic’ images blender has going for it; I’ve never looked per se really…
Ya so you weren’t disagreeing with anything I said, because what I said had nothing to do with that discussion, as I was responding to this:
" generally conclusive that the artist himself is more important than the tool used to do the job "
WHich is categorically false, and I"m proof of it.
I’ve made things in sculptris and Meshmixer I"m quite proud of becaues they are the only software packages I can afford ( think free at the moment anyway, though not free in labor from autodesk clearly, and VERy appreciated!) , and I made my comment about Blender because I literally can’t work in blender, in edit mode which is where I need to be often, because of the curent status of edit mode, something the devs are very aware of.
IF and when they fix that, I’d be exhillerated to try again, because I"m all for open source freely available software,- and because as much as I completely admire and respect autodesk for its software offerings and that I can’t afford maya notwithstanding and would continue to use their products ( and buy maya if I can ever afford to!) , I would always support blender , if edit mode ever allows me to
I am 'one of ’ the few/masses who can’t afford Maya, not even monthly ‘at the moment’ because I dont know the app well enough really for that, yet when I"m ready to take advantage of all it has to offer, then the $30/mo would prob. be just fine, as once our product is nearing completion , paying then would likely make a lot of sense. We’ll see what blender does in the meantime to fix issues stopping me from utilizing its software.
I"ve never doubted blender’s ability to create a complicated mesh, as in the hands of the right person, nearly any 3d app can do that, basically ( for them) chlids play.
I dont want to ‘gloss over’ the importance though of what I said about blender edit mode stopping me in my tracks from using blender at all on my current mesh
Thats important too , and it should be a clear signal to blender devs that until its fixed, they are losing alot of customers , and my abiity to make use of open source free software.
I’ve tried Blender on numerous occasions…It was the first 3D modelling software I used but the controls are so counter-intuitive I never managed to create anything. I then tried Wings 3D and got on really well with it. It is certainly missing features when compared with Blender but at least I could model in it. As I learned the concepts I thought I’d try Maya and wow, it was great to use. It could do everything I needed and more. It is a great tool…but, and this is a big but…It’s buggy as hell, constantly crashing on me and therefore unusable. For example last night I spent an hour making a terraced house and then it crashed and I lost everything. I started again being sure to save at every step and subdivided an entire wall in order to add some details and when it came to removing the unnecessary edges, it would only let me delete 90% of the unwanted one’s. I don’t know why, perhaps it was something I’d done but in any case it is enough to make me look for other options.
Good luck in your search for a decent modelling program, I’m starting to think they don’t exist!!
Well the level of quality in most editing application is not much an issue as compared to the problems of maintaining the continuity of quality out of one editing environment and into another. There is no question based on skill level alone that quality of result, what it takes to achieve the render, is possible with in the Blender environment but continuity of quality starts to decay once one attempts to move the content out of Blender and into a different editing environment like UE4.
For some this maybe a problem that can be worked around but our cornerstone application of choice is 3ds Max based on logical choices as part of our DCC pipeline we were putting together as part of our conversion to the Unreal 4 engine and via discovery excluded Blender due to issues relating to maintaining the continuity of asset quality with in Blender imported into 3ds Max.
Soooooo
The argument is not about quality as in the editing of one’s and zero’s but the ability of maintaining the continuity of quality through out the DCC pipeline towards the inclusion in Unreal 4 as the destination and why you pay big bucks for an app like 3ds Max is to avoided bit rot on the other end of the pipeline.
It’s not a mystery that blender fbx isn’t perfect, and i’m not sure yet ( not tested on my end, no time right now) but I read yesterday that for ue4 I guess there is a new ‘scene’ export for blender maya, max . Again , not tested by me, but that might serve you if in fact you ever decided to revisit blender.
I was terribly lost when I started with blender ages ago, but it does have some advantages as in workflow . I don’t need to choose a face/vertex/edge’ to rotate around just that areas, where in blender its automatic depending on your settings in prefs, rotate around scene or local, and I have no idea if maya has that as the little time I"ve spent with it due to finances atm, is slim really.
I had trouble in max too on my current , failry complex 1.3mil tri mesh, but then I don’t have a power rig with a brand new gtx 980 ( dual or not) &/or a i7 speedster, but what I have has been more than enough , easily, to do whatever I want in meshmixer.
Autodesk through meshmixer, admittedly a app that is providing them good testing feedback I"m sure for 3d printing etal, is a god send here for us, as while atm I’m not doing a ton of ‘edit’ work, what meshmixer provides ‘can’ do else work rather well, but currently I’m doing tons of sculpting.
Try out meshmixer , you might change your mind about 3d apps. Its not meant as a ‘editing’ app pe se as its primary focus is yes, 3d printing, but it has a lot of cool features that are handy not just for that purpose.
IF I had the funds, I"d lean to autodesk maya, but not rule out in the slighest, max.
From what I"ve heard, max strength is game dev, maya more movies but maya can do just about anything from what I"ve seen.
Max takes a lot longer to load which I didn’t enjoy.
AS noted, when and IF blender fixes sculpting brush ( atm it does not ‘conform’ to topology, whereas meshmixer does and I want that ) & edit mode which is unuseable for me, it might well be enough for daily use, but I"m not holding my breath .
Blender can use subdivision which would likely help edit performance, but I didn’t start my app there, so I can’t use it so I"m still stuck with unuseable features.
I think one further thing needs said: I have cinema4d installed too, and while its no longer able to export, it doesn’t stop you from using it, just places itself in demo mode. You can’t save, but at least you are still able to try the app out, which is a plus if you are even slightly interested but not committed.
I get the bit rot thing though, thats a easy decision, assuming of course one can afford such apps, I can’t ( many can’t).
My problem with Maya is the really cumbersome and slow modeling, compared to Blender. Yes it takes some time to get used to Blender’s workflow. But then it can be incredible fast and efficient. Especially if you customize the workflow to your own needs.
Nothing that Maya could beat at the moment.
But Blender indeed comes with some downsides too. Not the newest fbx pipeline for example. No Apex plug-in. And Maya definitely has the better animation and rigging tools.
At the end, it is more of a personal preference and what you’re used to.
Maya, Max, Blender… Each of those packages is capable enough to create good looking game models, if the artist in front of the computer is skilled enough.
I 'm sorry to keep coming back to this, but facts matter:
" Each of those packages is capable enough to create good looking game models, if the artist in front of the computer is skilled enough. "
yes in ‘general’, but not for many, who because blender edit mode at the very least needs a huge rewrite, can’t use blender.
Yes, free, open source, fbx problems notiwthstanding is a great plus for those who can’t afford the big 3d apps , and if you don’t intend on creating HIGH end mesh’s, with large #'s of t ri’s or don’t start that mesh the right way and its sometimes you come from ‘other 3d apps’, then blender right off, becomes a dead end.
It therefore was not fair just to say , ’ if the artist in front of the computer is skilled enough ', because I"ve just shown you, proved to you, that is categorically, untrue.
It’s not me being mean to blender, its me warning others to beware of pitfalls. I wish someone had warned me!
