15 years 3ds max veteran switching to Blender!

First i am not sure if it is the good forum section to post this but feel free to move it and my apology if i made a mistake.

Also as English is not my native tongue so forgive me for some blatant misspelling.

Hi Blender community,

My name is Pierre and i am a 15 years 3ds max veteran and i also teach 3ds max, photoshop and also webdesign and marketing for 5 years in college here in Montreal the second video game capital of the world.

Some of my former students work on triple AAA game title such as Prince of Persia, Assassin creed, Mortal combat and a few others that i am not aware.

I was probably one of the very first teacher 15 years ago who had a complete and structured course outline and 3ds max was only a small player at that time since Softimage now know as XSI was the big thing at that time.

I remember i was telling my Softimage colleague that he should start learning 3ds max and he start laughing at me!

And we all know the rest of the story so far but today again i have that same feeling that i had 15 years ago and i can say that if you are a 3ds max user at the moment it would be good to start familiarizing yourself with Blender now.

Maybe i am some kind of digital prophet after all :confused:!

I have switch to Blender 1 month ago and i cannot say i was very please the first 2 weeks but now as my workflow speed is slowly coming back i am finally starting to feel more at home with Blender.

Some tools i got so used to after all those years suddenly no where to be found at a point i was very close to abandon my switching venture to Blender but fortunately i persist at learning it and now it start to pay off pretty well.

My first panic attack case study :

1# Where the darn align tool? So i search the forum and check the extensions page and found a very basic align extension that don’t work pretty well!

2# Where the darn shift copy,instance, reference tools? The only option seem like the array tool.

3# Where the bevel along normal? Seem like the only option was a tricky inset tool weird manipulation!

After some frustration i figure out that i was going to work without most of my beloved tools in max but i discover so many fantastic tools like the Bshape extension and F2 magic that most of my grip went away seeing how fast i could do thing with those tools and re-topology is top notch working better than all other applications i tried before.

My advice to eventual 3ds max users willing to switch : be patient thing will get better and learn to rely more on shortcuts than the mouse!

Every time i tried to switch in the past i was always quitting because of the interface but now it is a totally new ball game and kudos to all the Blender development team you are doing a fantastic job so far.

I have 5 machines waiting in my room to build my first own little render farm with totalizing 10 cpu core with 1 quad core i7 2600 and and a core 2 duo 6700 the rest are dual core first generation but any cpu churning image are good for the job. I also plan to add 3 more quad system soon.

After all those years teaching video game design i finally decide to start my first complete title since i am a very experience gamer from the beginning of video game like pong on vic 20 and a big fan of rpg, i played almost every single good game there is out there and i thought that the time was right to start my own game.

I also mod almost all my game in the past adding new weapons and animations and when possible my own character.

My son is working with me and he is also currently learning Blender so we are 2 at it for the moment.

Approximately around fall time the game website will be online with all the bell&whistle you usually see on triple AAA game website, the title will be announce officially here when the website will be going live since i have to copyright the game document and title before releasing info.

The game will be a mix of RPG,FPS and survival horror elements with some cleaver puzzle and a very original storyline that was never attempt so far.

The game world will take place in the 18th century in the first person view and and our avatar name is Samuel.

The game engine use is Unity Pro and the target platform will be PC, MAC and Linux.

Our first goal is to get the attention of the gaming community with the game website portal with cinematic from the game and real time game play mechanic movies showing the exciting and original combat system.

After positive feedback from the game website forum we will launch a public funding campaign on kickstarter and if successful we will be hiring the best Blender artists available in fall time so stay tuned for upcoming news.

We have a completed level so far and the main character Samuel since he will appear full body in game cinematic and 2 enemy creatures and everything is triple AAA title quality but like i say first pictures and movies from game will be release only in fall this year.

I am currently working full time on the game from 13 to 16 hours every single day and this 7 days a week ( I know i have no life outside the game)!

Sorry for the wall of text but i thought that switching from 3ds max to Blender after 15 years deserved an epic wall of text indeed!:yes:

3ds max is a very good piece of software but the mentality of the company is not in line with my philosophy so i had good time and live from 3ds max teaching it but now it time to move to the Open source era and public funding since i believe the future is there.

Pierre

1 Like

For my ex fellows 3ds maxers the answer to number 3# is very easy select a row of faces on a cylinder and press e then alt+s and voila!

Congratulations on your new direction:) It will only get better from this point… ha ha.

One of the best features of Blender is it’s community and the blazing fast development cycle. I’m in agreement when you say the future will be an Open Source one.

By the way if you haven’t already seen it Blendercookie.com has a great set of startup tutorials http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/blender-basics-introduction-beginners/ .

Good Luck!

Hi comeinandburn,

Thank for the welcome, but at this point i had no other choice since i was not going to shell 4000$ bucks + the subscription + one additional license for each rendering node = 5 more licenses to a total close to 20,000 $!

Instead now the cost is only 2 or 3 month to re learning Blender at the level i was in 3ds max after 15 years and i now have the extra money to upgrade my current system to recent specs and i have my happy render farm that cost me only the time to set it up!

Thank to all the Blenders developers you just made another happy man that will hire artists and be able to pay them a higher wage since i have no licensing fee’s for the main software.

For CG cookie i watch all of them and they are pretty well done and give a good overview of the main features in Blender but they actually have almost nothing on skin weighting a rig but i guess it must be similar to 3ds max in some way.

There is also Blenderguru that have pretty advanced one and lengthy one hour video on site but i saw a technique shown where the guy cut the mesh in a lengthy mouse clicking festival just to get simple inset inward on a spaceship when the inset tool would have done this very easily but maybe the version of blender use by the guy in the tutorial didn’t had the inset tool when he did it.

By the way is there a way in edit mode to constrain let’s say the x and y axis simultaneously while extruding?

Because at the moment i can extrude and press any axis to constrain the transformation on one single axis but if i can lock both x and y it can speed up thing greatly for complex extruding task inward and outward.

By the way if we get a successful game release the Blender foundation will receive a very generous contribution from us.

I came from a 3DS Max and Maya background doing 3D work for indie films, television commercials and random kiddie things. If you have that much experience in 3D, then you know it’s not the tools that matter but the knowledge you have. Since you have 15 years experience in 3D, you’ll catch on in no time using Blender. It only took me about a week or two to get really comfortable in Blender after switching from Maya.

You’ll fit right in. :slight_smile:

To constrain the x and y axis, after pressing E or S (to extrude or scale), try pressing SHIFT-Z.

Thank Kris and yes after each passing day i am getting more comfortable with Blender and all i can say is that i thought max was a fast modeling tool but very honestly Blender is twice as fast when you get good with the shortcuts!

Even some of my colleagues are now considering switching and some of them were die hard max user.

Blender just need very few precision tools now before a lot of commercial package user make the switch.

Most of the indie developers are very happy with Blender and the future look bright.

I’m sure if more Max users start switching to Blender, Ton and co. would appreciate if you divert some of the money that is saved to a monthly subscription with the Blender development fund. (so as to allow the BF to fund more Blender development projects and ultimately more devs. for the core team).

In this case, even a Titanium subscription would take about 4 years to become equal to the cost of 1 seat of Max + one year of subscription. (and with the lower tiers a lot longer even).

In any case, welcome to the Blender community, we know very well that Blender has a ways to go yet in multiple areas, but we’re getting those shortfalls knocked off one by one. (Cycles, Bmesh, ect…)

Thank see360 but i already try this one and it doesn’t constrain the z axis it is more like a free form mode and it do weird jerking move when i press shift+z after pressing e or s.

Hi Ace,

Thank for the warm welcome and have no worry about my future contribution to the Blender foundation i always pay back what i use and if our game have a very good success then the contribution will be very generous.

Since i was teaching for 5 years i also have the experience to make a very extensive video series kind of a making off of our game using Blender and unity pro. Covering almost every step of the process.

PS A good align tool would seduce many max users on the fly :slight_smile:

Yeh i agree aligning does need a bit of work, but still possible using the ‘manipulate object centers only’ option for aligning multiple objects together… pretty much you enable this – http://imgur.com/vblLKfW and then you are able to select multiple objects, and use the scale tool to scale their position from each other, so s-x-0 will align them on the x axis, or s-y-0 on the y axis etc.etc.

The other thing you were asking about was instancing tools… in blender this is called ‘linked’ objects… to instance an object, press alt-d… that will duplicate the object and link it to the original… if you have multiple objects you want to link together, select them all and press ctrl - l, this will bring up a menu that has ‘make links’ and select objects. you can link other things such as modifiers / textures / constraints.

with your render farm… are you planning on using blender internal or cycles render engines? if you are using cycles, i would probably advise on getting a nvidia card (5xx series are the best performance at the moment) as it is CUDA accelerated.

if you need any more advice / stuck, feel free to PM me.

Welcome to the club Brother!! :slight_smile:

Hi doublebishop,

Yes indeed and for many artists a good align tool like in 3ds max is essential in their workflow and artists are a bit lazy by nature and complex maneuver with grid snap and multiple mouse click just to get 2 simple objects perfectly align is something that can turn off some of them.

But it doesn’t have to be as complex as the 3ds max one just an align center, maximum, minimum with orientation align xyz and you just select the object you wish to align and click the target to be aligned with.

Maybe the way blender coordinate system was built is not suitable and would necessitate to much work i don’t know!

OK thank for the cue on the instance counterpart in Blender , the term sometime in so many different software tend to mislead us a lot when switching since linked would sound to many as parent to child operation. In max when you shift drag an object you have a pop up dialog that promt you to either choose an instance, reference or copy and it have a spinner to put the amount of copy you want.

I plan to use both and i already order a GTX 680 4 GB but they are back order at the moment.

Very nice from you to offer help but don’t worry i am not the kind harassing folk with stupid questions that can be easily find here on forum or via google but if i get one that still bug me after i done extensive search and testing in software i will certainly drop you a pm.

Since i start in the video game industry i learn so many software’s and technique, it is a constant learning process it simply never stop!

Pierre

Thank mate very kind from you!

Good for you, mate! Have fun learning Blender. You remind me of myself when I switched from one of the bigger (and expensive!) packages to Blender some years ago. Never regretted it - one of the better decisions in my life. Cheers!

Thank Herbert,

I don’t think i will regret it either so far the modeling is simply amazing but as experience taught me in the past i know blender will make me swear from time to time just like max closing in my face for moving a single vertex in space!

But hey my father use to say no pain no gain!

Indeed shift+d+ the x y or z axis constrain the copy to the correct axis and if you add snap to the mixture you got something similar to max copy method but with a lot of finger dance on the keyboard.

Since i suffer RSI last year i certainly don’t want to get in this once more and some shortcuts have keys very far apart!

I bought a fantastic mouse who solve all my RSI problem but i don’t want to push my luck so i will have to reconfigure a lot of shortcuts to have a more comfortable workflow.

Yes, it sure will. But not nearly half as much as it made me swear when working inside Max. :slight_smile:

Would be nice to have a pop up warning that tell us a shortcut is already assign since i mess some standard internal commands!

Yep the first thing i learn when i first start using software is how to swear in different language!