What Blender abilities should an employer be able to expect from a professionally skilled Blender user?
If youâre going for full time employment at a company with ONLY Blender knowledge, prepare to have a lot of doors slammed in your face.
Going for a career in CG/VFX, your set of skills should be about the same regardless of the main 3D package you use. If youâre really serious about getting a job, take some time and learn the basics of the âbigâ packages. It will honestly get you a lot further in the job market than knowing ALL of Blender, sadly. Once youâre in, most employers (in my experience) donât give a damn what app you use for modeling. In fact, Iâve had more than one case of people being blown away by the modeling speed of Blender compared to Maya and 3DS. But know that if youâre working in rendering, rigging, VFX, or animation, you will likely never touch Blender on a professional level outside of freelance work in the US. Itâs a sad reality, but itâs a reality nonetheless.
That would be my advice to anyone looking for employment in the field. Donât play âapp favoritesâ, especially for ideological reasons. No one cares, because time is money.
He needs to know how to use blender
There are many paths to greatness.
Make a game - ???
Make a video - ???
Sell models - ???
Become a puppet for another puppet show.
in the end we are all kings, or pawns.
I feel like this idea is turning, I am seeing more and more companies using blender only. Some use both, but that is just my experience and Iâve really only been in the industry for a year and half. Max and Maya are still the industry standard.
As far as skills that an employer would expect:
Make sure your English is top notch,
You NEED a portfolio,
If you visit the employer make sure you dress nice,
Most importantly, get good at what you love doing 
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Blender is a tool⌠maya is a tool⌠max is a tool⌠but they all use the same principles. vertices⌠faces⌠uv mapping⌠shading / texturing etc.etc.etc⌠learn the principles and you will be fine.
Unless the employer already has a pipeline built around Blender[1] (or is planning it), an employer shouldnât really care about specific Blender knowledge. The focus should be on the quality of the work, the personâs ability to communicate with other human beings, and the ability to take direction. Now⌠if you are the employer thatâs in search of a skilled Blender user, the answer varies a bit. To be in such a situation, chances are good that youâve started small with your own skillset in Blender (likely because of its availability) and you need someone to take that a step forward⌠but the specifics of what that step is, thatâs what makes the answer so varied. If you want to increase the overall aesthetic quality, thatâs one kind of person. If youâre interested in refining/optimizing your existing workflow, thatâs a different kind of person, with a different set of skills. If you have reasonably strong images and you want to add movement, thatâs yet another kind of person. Itâs rare (though not impossible) to find people with a wide breadth of skills who also have average-to-above-average mastery of them all.
[1] Donât scoff⌠these facilities/positions do exist. There are, of course, caveats. A lot of this kind of work is outside of the traditional entertainment fields (film, television, video games). But the usefulness of computer graphics has become apparent in a lot of places/industries you might not expect⌠and thatâs growing.
In fact, Iâve had more than one case of people being blown away by the modeling speed of Blender compared to Maya and 3DS.
100% true.
- I recommend you start/work as a SPECIALIST -> narrow down a specific subfield of 3D that you love/is in demand and put all your effort into mastering and DISPLAYING it in form of quality portfolio. You can always expand on you skillset but consider that you are dividing/diluting your time making it harder to impress with all aspects so may be wiser to concentrate on one.
- Aspects such as MODELING in Blender is a safe investment as not only Blender TRULY excels at it giving you tremendous advantage when it comes to it; but also end product(model / .obj ) is very easily transferable without data lost to any application that particular studio might be using.
- Scripting is another aspect that is safe and awesome to tap into especially in Blender. Python is universal language used in most CG applications that is also very highly valued especially at fulltime employment. It will help you solve problems, accelerate the workflow, understand data you are working with beyond interface and make it a lot easier to work with different applications.
- In contrast aspects as VFX are extremely risky as studios look for users with particular software (e.g Realflow or some crowd specialists ). Animating is also cool but for ideal animation you need to have well developed(modeled, textured) characters, superb rig, all the rendering and scene technicalities taken care off - it might be a big bite to begin with and usually studios want you to animate in specific software.
- Consider which market interests you most. Maybe there are local opportunities that you can target? For instance working with games of any sort is quite a good start because game data is ALWAYS EXPORTED from parent DCC app so the significance having to use A or B software really diminishes (especially when you work with static mesh based objects).
Games are also cool field because they have enormous spectrum of complexity/styles/optimization levels. Itâs good because you can evolve/grow into it starting with with simple 500-2500 triangle characters/objects in mobile and work your way up to 10 000tris+ character models/complex buildings/scenes for high end consoles as you advance. As games get more WAST, more complex and have increasingly enormous audience(smart device advancements, webgl/html5) there is always need for creation of virtual environment and props/objects.
Please also know that there are a lot of character artists trying to compete with one another for any particular project/game. Games just have a few characters VS all the other 3d work that needs to be done. Characters also tend to get done IN-HOUSE with specific tools/setup with pro studios with local artists. In contrast if youâd build a small UE4 demo showcasing Environments with all asset done with Blender - you are practically guaranteed to have immediate fulltime employment afterwards if executed well.
Also dont forget the indie market and ability to sell your Models. Indies love Blender as you cannot expect your client to have max/maya license.
- Trust me, regardless of any application a studio may require you to use, one of the best aspects about Blender is that you can always APPLY IT as COMPLIMENTARY tool to accelerate your workflow. I have many examples:
- Until recently mayaâs UV tools were total trash - you could use plugins(like Roadkill) or you could quickly export to Blender which I did all the time.
- By working Lightwave before it had Bullet i was frustrated at Physics solutions as It was extremely LIMITED. Studio had explicit budget for 3D software and they chose for it to be LW. What are you gonna do- keyframe it? Without knowing Blender at all, with just a few hours it saved the day!
- Just recently needed some relatively simple high viscosity physics simulations. Realflow with age old SPH took an absolute forever! Blender - 5 minutes and what i needed was artistically there.
⌠The examples go on and on but perhaps the most important one of them is MODELING - the aspect at core of every 3D operation. Regardless of any 3D application you may be required to use, Blender will always ADD to itâs existing capability - It can be your secret weapon and biggest strength in otherwise stagnated and monopolistic industry.
Lastly - focus on strong portfolio in a field that interest you and youâll do well.
PS. Sorry for long post
The employer can aspect that his employee who uses Blender has regular updates on his software,
Not once every few years and requiring to buy his employee the next version of product X
Instead he has no cost on blender, however it would be good behavior if you as employer fund blender development a bit.
As employer most things can be done with any kind of 3d software, however not all things can be done equally good.
Blender is very capable though, and is comparable to other major 3d packages for animation, however updates wont cost you.
Also if you employee does know how to program python, he can do a lot more with blender then any non scriptable 3D package.
As an employer you should know that a good artist, can create images or animations that are life like real, Blender has an outstanding realistic 3D engine called cycles.
As employer thinking about the coins⌠blender itself is opensource software, not throwing costly software upgrade to you
The only cost you have on an employee are fast computer + fast GPU + daily fruit + drinks + toilet paper, and a room chair and desk.
If your employees becomes to demanding give him a a regualar trip to a museum to upgrade his artistic skills.
If a museum is not available nearby, buy him some movie ticket to a SF movie, in general that contains a lot of CG too.
If your employee becomes to must an SF guy, buy film ticket to children animation movies, most likely he will love it despite you would think heâs much to old for that, the reason those disney creatures its all CG
( OMG i am such an employeeâŚ)
From what i see blender is for solo. Maybe goosberry may alter that slightly.
m9105826, I understand your point, but Iâm not playing âapp favoritesâ but humor me and letâs assume youâve found a shop with a Blender pipeline, I want to know what does a person need to know to use Blender at a professional level. Modeling sure, but do you need to know retopology, dyntopo, dynamic paint? Pushing around vertices, faces etc itâs obvious, but what skills/experience would put you beyond the basics,
Fweeb, if you could find that rare person who has mastered a wide breadth of skills, what skills would they have.
cgstrive, good answer, close to what I was hoping for.
I teach since years in college and honestly the application hardly matters.
Most important is your artistic skill which you can show through your work / portfolio.
And it is less important to know a software but more important to understand the technology.
At the end animation is nearly the same in each app. If you are good in Blender you can transfer that knowledge if needed
given some worm up time and for that we have app trials!
Does it has to be animation studio or VFX? can blender be use on product, architectural visualization or even making graphic for marketing? I mean with big name render like Vray and Octane, blender can produce pro level image with little to no problem (or even cycles as it get more and more complete).
I use blender at work for all kinds of stuff as an extension of Illustrator for product shots and for information diagrams with 3d rendered machinery. I got hired to just prepare art for flexographic printing, but they added all kinds of stuff once they saw what I could do with blender 
Hello everyone ,
If you want to more blender tutorials than visit- www.avcgi360.comI have done product visualization in Blender, client was very pleased with the result. So you definitely can do that if I could 
Some other things I use Blender for: Animated logos (rendered and converted to animated GIF images), my new short film, will be using it for my music videos, I use it to make album artwork, screensavers/backgrounds for my desktop, the list is really quite endless. Blender can most likely do anything you can imagine and accomplish. I find hardware my most limiting factor, not knowledge (I have been using 3D stuff for just over a year).
One thing you might want to consider is also the tremendous Blender community, from this site, to Blender.SE, to CG Cookie, BlenderGuru, to BlenderNation. You can always find someone who can help you out if you ever do get stuck.
Are you creating raster graphics like PNG files or can you transfer vector data?
You can do some things by exporting as svg from illustrator, but mainly I do that only for building to a floor plan. Mainly I use exported png as texture for 3d objects that stand in for photos that donât exist, and then some basic modeling for diagrams on safety and operational instructions.
It depends on the task, but like I said in my earlier post, my focus would be on the quality of the work (portfolio), the personâs ability to communicate with other human beings, and the ability to take direction⌠probably in that order.
This. The ability to comprehend direction and have excellent communication skills is a must.