EClark1894 posted at 12:07PM Sat, 28 December 2019 - #4374804

The problem with industry standards is that it has to be standard in the industry. A lot of people may know how to use Blender, but odds are their jobs use something else. Pixar, for example, made it's own to use, and they train their people to use it.

But blender is rapidly becoming standard in the industry. How can it not when so many people use it now, and the cost to a new and expanding studio basing their business around it, is zero? What is extremely important to remember is that unlike before, you no longer need to start with an industry standard product in order to start a successful CG studio. The days of Max and Maya being a requirement were shot in the head quite a few years back now.

There is a rapidly increasing number of CG production houses who are completely built around blender, so for anyone wanting a job in one of those blender-based studios, the skill requirement is blender, not Max or Maya. It's kinda like Divinos said, the forums of those old dinosaurs Max and Maya, are now filled with enraged users threatening to jump ship to blender.

The best thing those enraged people can do, is go ahead with what they've been threatening to do ASAP. The sooner the better, because the requirement for being skilled at Blender is future-proof, it has a guaranteed future due the business model Blender is built around, a model that cannot change.

So not only will Blender become industry standard, it will have paved its own way in becoming so, because it has literally taken-away Autodesk's ability to throw it's weight around by having people believe that you need to pay their "industry standard" prices in order to succeed with an "industry standard" product.

• Hey, can I have a job?
• Sure, you skilled in Blender?
• No, but I have skills in Max and Maya!
• Then go find a studio that still uses that stuff, we're a Blender-based studio.
• Damn, it's the same story wherever I go these days.
• You have my sympathy, but if you don't mind, we have some blending to be getting on with, and we're pretty damn busy.
• Damn, and to think I used to pay Autodesk all that money for something I'll never own, has no future, and all along I could have kept the cash I paid to Autodesk, and be completely skilled in blender by now!

The good news is that our Autodesk-subscribing friend learnt his lesson eventually, threw himself into Blender, became much better off financially, and now has a secure future running his very own Blender-based studio. He now donates to the Blender Foundation for making it all possible, therefore making Blender, his tool of choice, become even more powerful!