Maya and 3dsmax are great and arguably better than Blender but it seems like if they pooled their resources they could change that and everyone would be better off for it.
Another part of the trouble is that Blender suffers from some common ailments in the FOSS world, notably a lack of UI refinement, stability, and documentation. While there are people trying to improve these things, and over time they are making some decent progress, and it's not as if the Autodesk products themselves are perfect on any of these counts, on balance there is still a much stronger ecosystem around the incumbents. A challenger like Blender needs to be not just playing catch-up but dramatically in the lead to shift this sort of market.
I know it's not that simple. Each of those companies will want different features. But, with the right leadership (hardest part) it seems like it would be good thing for them to do.
I don't think the FBX format is the deal breaker.
Open source already happens with specific focused packages (OpenSubdiv, OpenVDB, PTEX etc) which can be very good at one thing. Developing a complete 3d application that meets everyone's needs is unlikely to be appealing given the diverse studio pipelines and requirements.
That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.
blender is slow
blender is too hard
blender is hard to use
I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today.
Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these:
blender is hard
blender is damaged
blender is confusing
blender is free
blender is slow
In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to work with the Blender community to point out why so many people have difficulty with Blender's UI. Check out the video & transcript here: http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/fixing-blender-part-1-wh...
Despite being a thoughtful and very patient man who made a great case, Andrew was met with a lot of pushback from the community that already thought Blender's UI was easy and usable. Unfortunately in the years since not a whole lot has changed (some improvements like tabs, context menus, and not assuming users have a numpad and 3 button mouse).
Blender tries to be everything to everyone - a game engine, a sculpting modeler, a mechanical CAD modeler, a video editor, and a dozen other things. What you actually get is a mess wrapped in a UI that is alien to everyone except for the initiated. There's a reason why Autodesk and others have so many individual products catered to industries and use cases - it's because there's simplicity in specialization.
But, pretty much all 3D software is hard to use and takes several weeks to understand. I spent at least 3 weeks on both Maya and 3DSMax just going through the manual a chapter at a time and working through the tutorials back in the day. There's just too much to do in current 3D software and there's no escaping that all of them are huge huge apps.
Maybe VR or AR will finally fix this?
Note: I'm not apologising for Blender's strange UI. It put me off Blender for years and I'm sure it still puts people off. That said, a few months ago I tried it again and found the "Maya" option which at least meant I could click on objects to select them and have the camera controls match. The rest is still overwhelming but that's true with all top end 3d packages.
Since then there has been a UI team, which has tackled the low hanging fruit... the bigger design changes probably will come over the next year or so during their 2.8 revamp... where they tackle the bigger issues with blender.
BlenderCore -> BlenderCAD -> BlenderEnginer -> Blender3D -> BlenderVideo etc.
... but if Andrew met resistance before, that's probably a non-starter. :(
Sorry, that's not what I'm getting, I'm getting
Blender is free
Blender is slow
Blender is better than maya
Blender's UI may be many things, but like any tool in this field, simple is hardly one of them. In any case, a significant problem in practice is that Blender's natural ways of working don't always match what is used by just about everyone else. Sometimes it's got just the right feature to model something in a certain way, but you then incur a disproportionate cost to adjust that asset so it's useful as part of your overall pipeline, and while the UI for the handy feature might be decent, the overall process is glitchy and error-prone.
[1] http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyRefer...
https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/files/17331/AutoCAD_Sh...
This is software with a learning curve. It's set up so that you can learn it and then be very productive. From the number of Linux CLI people on here, you'll find a lot of people who are sympathetic to that.
If you want a friendly UI there's always SketchUp.
If you added similar descriptions in the AutoCAD commands list it could probably hit 100 pages.
Besides, if your finger memory hasn't picked up all of blender yet, tap spacebar for command search. As long as you remember vaguely what something's called you'll find it in there.
The complexity involved is not a mistake, it is inherent to the artform. Blender does a fine job of layering the tools and UI so that as you need more complicated features they are there for you.
One needed all that to learn to use the old Blender. Since the 2.5x version, it got much better. UI got reorganized, keys are remapeable, and most important of all, you can search for any operator by pressing the space bar.
I write faster with vim. I doubt anyone builds faster with blender.
Blender is weird but predictable too. For example the keys GRS (grab, rotate, scale) works in different areas (3D, UV, animation, NLA, video editor) where it makes sense (in some there's no rotation). The UI overhaul of 2.5x moved stuff in a more logical order. If you understand the concept of "data blocks" and "users", you'll understand most of Blender.
I've spend a healthy amount of time in 3ds Max, AutoCAD, and blender. In my opinion:
• 3ds is most discoverable / easiest to learn
• AutoCAD is most precise (owing to its object snaps and UCS controls)
• blender is the fastest to build in
If you 're not working with it every single day , it's quite impossible to grasp the interface, because you simply forget where everything is hidden. It's really really bad.
Learning Maya or 3D Studio Max is just as much of an undertaking as learning Blender. There is nothing about them that make them inherently easier. But they do cost a lot of money, whereas Blender is free (and Free). So why not just start with Blender? You (the proverbial you) are probably not going to get a job in the games or movie industry anyway.
I know at one time even the menus were non standard as in users expect a menu bar with options they can browse but Blender didn't used to have that (it does now)
It reminds me of Gimp, which had a similar weird UI where every window had its own unique menus and what not. To give them credit, they fixed the UI for the better.
Also, you haven't used ZBrush, do you? At least in Blender the names of things always made sense (object, mesh, scene...). The equivalents in ZBrush are the weirdest things.
That's an urban myth. The other 3D packages (most of them more featurefull) adhere to common UI conventions and guidelines. Like what happens with a left mouse click, what with a right mouse button - all mimics Win95 UI guideline. The other 3D package mentioned are therefore easy to use without reading a manual or tutorial. Everyone who used one of those programs can easily switch to another one.
Blender UI with it's non standard might be productive for certain professionals who invested considerable amount of time. But other packages have customisable shortcuts too, but offer a lot better default settings.
Blender definitely needs a UI refresh to gain more widespread adoption. Too much clutter in the tool bars and menus, navigation works like pre 1995 3D applications.
I tried to use both 3DS max and Blender (the old one which had mouse gestures and a few menus) without reading a manual when I was young. Guess what? I found out how to transform things, select vertices/edges/faces, move them around...
Yes, I had to read the manual to do more serious things, but that's no different than 3DS Max.
Also, part of the reason other apps seem easier is that they add unnecessary features in menus and buttons. For example I saw a release of 3DS max where one of the new things were extending the selection in some way. You could always do that with Blender by combining two more basic features (hide what you don't want to select, then select and extend). I think 3DS is the cluttered one.
Blender has many problems, but the UI itself is not one. Default controls are bad, I admit.
edit: I also admit it's not intuitive to open/save files of other types (having to select the appropriate option in import/export).