I started to write this post at the end of last summer and it sat unfinished in my Drafts folder, so I've just corrected a couple of things and I'm throwing it out there as is....
DAN I've recently (well, on and off over the last year or so and more frequently of late) started learning Blender and trying to integrate it into my workflow/toolset and far from being painful, I have found it to be quite a refreshing experience. I'm working on the premise that it's something I will always have at my disposal wherever I happen to be working due to it being free and on all platforms. As I don't work in large shops with rigid pipelines it's not really an issue in circumstances where the asset or shot can be worked on in isolation and it's in these situations that I've tried to incorporate it into my work. The obvious cost implications of working with a 'foreign' piece of software in a company, and the time required to get the myriad license systems out there working will not gain you fans in the IT/Tech/Engineering department. As Blender is free and easy to install (if you don't want to you can just extract and run it - I run it off my USB stick) you can also soften the blow with regard to company politics. Things as a Softimage user I like - here are some examples: * Sculpting - it works well for simple to moderately detailed sculpts. There are a wide range of sculpting tools available (all the usual suspects - inflate, crease, smooth etc...) and you can use all the tools for 'regular' modelling also. With the recent introduction of dynamic topology, it also became much more powerful. * Texture paint - not exactly rocket speed in all circumstances but I've been happily painting 4k textures on moderately detailed meshes using procedurals, stencils and regular brushes for a couple of weeks and hit very few snags. They are planning to merge in some improvements in 2.71. * Procedural Textures - can be used by everything, you can use them to texture, paint, mask, sculpt, filter particle emissions. Whatever you like. * Rendering - Blender comes with two renderers - 'Blender Internal' and 'Cycles'. Blender Internal is the older legacy renderer and Cycles is the GPU accelerated (CPU also supported) renderer being actively developed going forward. I won't write a ton about it, you can read a little more here http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.61/Cycles There are also a ton of alternative 3rd Party renderers. Even Vray recently announced official Blender support. Blender has a node-based Render-Tree like interface. * Smoke simulation - fairly well rounded and featured, with minimal issues and constantly being improved. Support for wavelet/FFT high resolution detailing, adaptive domains, the ability to advect the simulation with particles (and vice versa), and much more. VERY fast to render if you use Blender's internal renderer (however with the rather huge caveat of the lack of motion blur). Cycles integration expected soon-ish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYNr0ZtyD1c * Dynamic paint - same concept as Helge's pixel particles, but without the particles, and fast. Really well implemented IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWXFtnh2bk * Modelling tools - While I'll always prefer modelling in Softimage, some of the modelling tools in Blender are great and there are some that are really well-suited for re-topology. Soft's Alt-pivot is great, while Blender has the same idea (well, it's pretty much the basis of operation in Blender), it's pretty clunkily implemented in comparison. * Interface/GUI - It feels quick, slick, modern and adaptable next to Softimage's tacky, rounded, cheap-looking abomination of a 'look' (I've never liked it, in case you didn't guess :)) * Camera Tracking - Blender has a pretty solid, basic and fast camera tracker. Not a serious replacement for the competitors but usable even in it's current state. A lot of developments expected soon. * Compositor - Blender has a fairly feature-rich compositor. Probably as useful as the FXTree, not a replacement for Nuke obviously... * Development - there is so much buzz around development for Blender, and you get to have a chance to see and influence it all. Here you see a post from a developer at Pixar who wants to integrate OpenSubdiv support in his spare time! http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?319079-Advice-for-test-OpenSubdiv-integration Another thing I personally appreciate is that they're not against throwing out the old to bring in the new. This is something I feel Softimage has been too rigid on. I understand and appreciate the reasons and what the guarantee of feature retention means to some, but in the case of Softimage, I'd argue that it's not always been a benefit for the user base as a whole. Especially with regard to the way I use the software personally. Just my opinion. Anyway, there's plenty more but I'll leave it there. The point I'm trying to make is that I think everyone, whatever they intend to use as their 'main' workhorse package, should support Blender, and by that I also mean financially. I've committed to donating 5 dollars a month and I'm sure I'll up that in the future as I exploit more and more of it's features. If they can make this much happen with what they receive now, imagine what they'd manage with some decent support. You can visit these sites to see more of it's capabilities. http://www.blenderartists.org/ http://cgcookie.com/blender/
