They often run into the necessary hurdle of Blender not working quite as they would expect. This is the same pain felt by Blender artists switching over to another app. Every 3D software has slightly different paradigms and unique approaches to each task. A lot of artists think of the first way they learned and got used to as the ‘right’ way, which makes switching to any other software difficult, but the reality is that only once those biases are set aside is it possible to learn a new software for what it is.

The video of Sir Wade Neistadt trying Blender for the first time four years ago illustrates this perfectly. Some of the issues he ran into were legitimate issues, the biggest of which have since been or are currently being addressed, but others were just from not yet being familiar with how Blender works differently from Maya. He talked about this transition candidly in his recent presentation at BCON LA, but unfortunately that video is not yet available, though you can hear him talk about it in this episode of the Denoise podcast.

Blender has had powerful animation tools.

Like the Pose Breakdowner, since forever. The problem was just that the tools were either not easily discoverable, not on by default, or took an extra click or two compared to the other apps. It wasn’t a lack of tools for the most part, but rather many small paper cuts that all added up while using them in a professional workflow. Over the last couple years, tons of small changes have been made to make the animation experience in Blender better, and it continues to improve with every release.

“Good design is not decoration alone. It creates meaningful, functional, and intuitive experiences that help people interact effortlessly, confidently, and purposefully every day.”

Ethan Carter

Blender for short film productions for almost 15 years at this point.

The unique situation in which artists share an office with developers and are using the daily builds in production has certainly had an impact on the software for the better.

Slow performance while editing complex animation data was also an issue in Blender, but that has been improved to a significant degree recently - to the point where Blender may even take the lead over the competition. Now, if you have a decent machine, you can open a file in Blender that has a hundred motion capture rigs and hundreds of thousands of keyframes and start playing it and moving around the viewport in real time before Maya has even finished loading. That is seriously impressive!