What makes other modeling software better than Blender?

I’ve seen a lot of really nice work created with blender and have been using it on and off for a year or so just playing around with it. I am just wondering what other programs have, that people criticize blender for not having? Why is not taken seriously in the CGI world, or in commercial studios? The rendering engine? Advanced modeling features? I’ve gotten the reaction “Blender??” from people when discussing CGI, as if it’s like not a real software, which I know is not true.

This is not a thread to ask what is the best software, or which I should use, just a thread to spark discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of blender vs commercial software.

Summary:
What are the main features that other programs have, that blender is criticized for not having?

Well I do not know what you read but you can see it this way:

First if people use 3D Max or Maya chances are high that they re commercial people.
Blender on the other side has many hoppy users. That already can explain the difference
in work quality.

Secondly apps like Maya or Max also have access to different render engines and certain tools.
For example cloth physics particle in those apps are better. But that comes also with a price tag.

However having that said, you can also produce very good work with Blender and Cycles.
You can also produce pretty bad work with Maya.

Actually since Cycles was introduced the work generated with Blender constantly improved.
Also you might not see everything done with Cycles here in the forum.

Is Maya better than Blender? Maybe - it also costs more. Question is rather this: What tools do you need.

I find Blender to be a pretty powerful mid range 3D application very suitable for many tasks.

Do I need Modo? No to expensive. Do I need Maya, NURBS would be nice but I am very happy with Blender’s
modeling ability and the node materials with Cycles.

But I work in industrial design / interior design, and product rendering.

Animators might have a different input.

Main difference might be that a lot of studios use graphics software for their work 40 hours p/week.
Besides the revenue they have they also are fully commited 40 hours a week to using that software.
Where is most Blender users use Blender a few evenings, a hobby project, and only some make their job with Blender.
Those who do are usually smaller studios/ one person companies (not sure how to call that in english).
And so as a result you see less advanced Blender works.

There is also more development funding in propriety software (since they sell it), but blender is licensed as opensource
It has quite a different toolset, personally i think Blender is like a swissarmy knife;
where often other packages are more like a single specific knife.

Though apperantly still it has to becomme a beter swissarmy knife
Since “workflow” is on top of the agenda for a while now to better match to software that isnt blender.

I´ve been using it as my main 3D program for about a year now after switching from 3ds max (~15 years) and can´t say that Blender is particularly worse than Max.
It´s obviously got its weak points. But it´s also got plenty of strong points.

Yep and fact is that all other apps also have their weak points too.

These kind of posts - saying if this app is better than that app - doesn’t really have sense. generally speaking you could not judge apps ‘better’, just if you specify the subject you investigate and all other things should be considered as a ‘variable’.

Practically it means you could not state that Max is better than Blender (vica versa) if you do not specify what are we talking about exactly.

Honnesly, I think, people do not know blender at all.
When I started Blender, I was thinking, that it was a poor 3d modeling software, because I didn’t knew him.
There was a lot of bad images made with blender and I didn’t wanted to know the software.

And it’s the same for everyone who work with maya, max or modo I think.
Blender has a bad reputation and when peoples start to know what is is capable, they start to work with it and they makes some good pictures.

So, no blender is not bad, maya and max are not better and blender is not better neither, depend of the artist in fact.
Blender has a lot of great tools and addons, it’s fun to work with it.

Heh, and plenty there of. :wink:

‘depend of the artist in fact.’

Also on the project, but agree.

Those suspicions would actually be true at one point in the first few years of Blender as open source software, as a lot of features found in commercial apps. like GI and Ngons were non-existent.

However, the barriers that got in the way of being able to do true, professional work in Blender has steadily been broken down since the big 2.5 refactor with new systems such as Cycles and Bmesh (and sooner or later the work done now will lead to a vastly improved viewport and a professional-grade non-destructive modeling and deformation workflow with the combination of object nodes and the new depsgraph).

At the rate things are going, Blender 2.76 may actually look a bit weak a year or so from now :smiley:

Actually Blender mesh modeling is pretty solid - compared to Maya or Max it has poor NURBS tools.
Maya’s 3D view shading also kills Blenders 3D viewport.

There are actually plenty of things Maya can do Blender cannot.
An area where Blender kills Modo or Maya is the modifier stack approach.

Question is only what you as a designer/artist need.

The NURBS in Max are best avoided. It´s modifier stack is a lot better than Blenders, though.

Blender is awesome, that is why we are all here, right ;). This is a very valuable thread, I would love to know what Blender lacks in compared to the others. As far as I noticed, the workflow between Max/Maya and other tools are very seamless. They always add the latest features where as Blender is a bit slow. The UI on the paid programs are very nice and organized (usually). With that being said, I still prefer Blender over Max and Maya. I used both of those programs for 3 months each. It just doesn’t click for me.

cycles is not really advanced to the point where it can even be compared to other renderers to be honest

But it does have lux render and that can,

So there’s that

And well… Look

Blender has it’s strengths and weaknesses

The weakness of blender is that it feels like a bunch of modules stuck together into one package, i.e some parts of blender feel like they were designed by a different person

While that’s fine and all for me anyway, i’m sure some people have an issue with that

and oh, the outliner is just um… unusual to put it lightly

But really I have a whole list of issues with max and Cinema 4d as well so…
yeah

Depends on what you do.

Blender import/export capabilites are severly lacking. In Max you can easily import complex files such as whole catia assemblies and other special CAD files for example.
This is very important for some people because customers will often send you their CAD files and expect you to be able to handle them.

Blenders particle system is pretty bad compared to others.

Blenders organisational tools (layers/outliner) are bad.

On the other hand Blender has a smoke sim, a fluid sim, Cycles is a great renderer which renders identical images on CPU and GPU, a built in compositor, great unwraping, great UI(very subjective but I love it), and built in sclupting.

However, all of this pales compared to Blenders killer feature: It is free. That is not a great feature because of the price you have to pay for a single Max/Maya liscense but because of the price of render node liscense/and or commercial render farms. With Blender you can build your own, enormous Renderfarm on a cloud rendering service and save thousands of Euros on rendering which would simply not be possible with proprietary software.
So while I´d have to work a month or more per year just to earn the money for all the liscenses required to build my own renderfarm or render on a commercial 3ds Max farm I have to pay next to nothing for rendering huge projects with blender at all. The cost for renting raw computing power are nearly negligable these days.

I’m not asking what app is better. Read the OP. I’m Just asking why people criticize blender. Why it’s not widely accepted as a modeling tool for anything other than hobby work? I personally like blender and am sure you can create great work, but why, if it’s so great, is it commonly criticized?

Because it has a bad reputation from various reasons like the former GUI or its user base which is mostly from hobby users.
Also it has unreliable development in the manner that not necessarily the most important features are developed by the volunteer developers.

From pro point of view every major apps has a ‘targeted’ user base (it is not always based on true facts as apps evolve), like Max for archviz, C4D for motion Graphics, Maya for characters, etc. In this ‘list’ Blender is targeting nothing, so it stays as ‘targeting hobby users’.

People are not that fair on their judgements on Blender, I really like it as a tool, despite I have Max on my system.

Anyway, I try to spread the word, but it is not that easy:)

Not easy because people have their own point of view and for them, blender is not good.
Until someone show them what the soft can do and if they are not stupid, they think it’s not os bad.

You say, “I have read that the great work you see in blender pales in comparison to the great work from other 3D programs…”

If you have to rely on others to do the thinking for you and have no ability to distinguish between good and mediocre, then I don’t think any opinion in this thread would be worth anything. It would all depend on who you want to believe.

You should learn early in life that there’s no such thing as better or worse when it comes to tools. They all do the same thing. The only differences are the steps to take or process called “workflow” to get there. Some just have better robots than the others. Meaning, some have more automated tools than others. Meaning, if you know how to tweak a rendered image in Gimp, you don’t need another Cycles feature like another node to get what you want.

Of course, all of these things won’t matter unless you know how to recognize between good and mediocre. Or you haven’t established your own style or appreciation of your own work. Many times it’s subjective. Meaning, what might be good to one could be bad to another.

You fail to understand what I’m asking. No one is forming my opinion for me. I’m wondering what it is that blender supposedly lacks, or whatever, that makes it a criticized tool. People don’t criticize max, or maya, or zbrush, or photoshop or illustrator. People know they are good tools. What makes blender not as well accepted as them is all I’m asking. I’ve told people I use blender for modeling and some of the time people either think it’s funny, like using gimp or something compared to photoshop, or don’t know what blender is.