Transitioning to Blender 2.8
Part 1: Why
The 3D Content Creation tool known as Blender has been a part of the 3D art world for a long time. Initially started in 1994 by the Dutch Studio NeoGeo, the program would be publicly released in 1998 as a piece of freeware. Following the closure of NeoGeo and the failure of the subsequent NaN Technology company, Blender went dormant until the formation of the Blender Foundation and it’s ahead of the time “Free Blender” crowdfunding campaign in 2002. Following the success of the campaign Blender would be released to the public as an open source software.
Blender’s first ever official free version was 2.26 in 2003. Today, we have the release of 2.8. Blender has always had a series of die-hard fans in the 3D community. With the relatively low cost of free, aspiring 3D artists would pick it up and learn the tool. Typically, aspiring professionals would shift to Maya or 3D Studio Max due to most industries using either software as a standard. Some users, generally considered hobbyists, continued to use Blender and thus wound up driving portions of it’s development.
I entered the 3D world when I went to Purdue in 2005, and Blender was never on my radar. I didn’t learn of it until I saw it in passing on the Polycount Forums in the late 2000’s. I never thought much of it and would continue my 3D career continuing to not think much of it. I used it briefly for a freelance project in 2016 (probably version 2.76b) and found the UI and navigation to be confusing and obstructive. I only needed to convert some files, so once I was done with that I continued to ignore Blender.
That wouldn’t last.
I chose to transition to Blender for a few reasons, but the main reason is pretty obvious when factoring in my freelance background; money. I have always planned to return to freelancing and self employment since starting at DreamLine (read more on that here) and I wanted the 2.0 version of my business to be more sustainable than before. One of the ways to improve sustainability is to cut costs. While I own perpetual licenses for most of my software (Zbrush/Substance/Old As Hell Adobe CS), Autodesk’s Maya LT always hit me with a $250+ charge every winter. It was an easy way to save some dollars.
It also helps that saving on software costs is a nice way to add a few extra bucks to retirement plans.
This move extends beyond 3D. I combed through my software stack and have found replacements for most software that I deemed replaceable, most notably the Adobe Suite (what I have works, but it’s superbly outdated at this point). I rarely use Photoshop for more than image manipulation and color correction so I have started learning Krita. On the off chance I make a video, Shotcut has filled in admirably.
Once I decided these software moves were going to happen, I started seriously looking at Blender for the first time. In what happened to be a happy accident, my former boss and I got to talking and he told me about 2.8. Between speaking with him and GameTexture’s own Keegan Keene, I decided to dive into Blender’s 2.8 Beta builds during the winter and see what it was about.
Blender has always been free, and I had even used it briefly before. Why didn’t I ever really consider it as a viable alternative to Maya LT?
The predictable mix of familiarity and perceived reputation.
I have been a Maya user since 2005, my first year in college. For good and bad, Maya hasn’t changed very much. I used Maya 2012 until 2015 when Maya LT was in it’s second year (it had vastly superior UV tools). I have a defined, marking menu based workflow in Maya and I am quite comfortable in it. On the job, Maya has continued to be the pipeline tool for many clients I’ve worked with, including VaynerMedia, Psyop, and Bluepoint Games.
Maya has been my main tool for years and shifting to a new tool (where you know speed will take a hit for a time) can be a daunting task, especially when you have bills to pay.
Blender’s reputation, as perceived by me at the time, was that of an unfriendly, feature bare, newbie piece of software. It was only a step above Bryce 3D. From 2014–2017 or so, I saw a lot of news about Modo and a few well known artists and freelancers advocated for it. I briefly considered Modo because of that fact, and I saw no news or mentions about Blender switches at all. My own set of artist friends and industry connections seemingly backed this up. My echo chamber screamed the same scream; “Blender Sucks man”.
My opportunity to learn Blender came slowly as 2018 rolled into 2019. Work at DreamLine temporarily slowed and, having instituted a fairly rudimentary Substance Pipeline not long ago, I took the opportunity to download the Blender 2.8 Beta and focus on my own work.
This was not what I was expecting!
The UI was slick and functional. Navigation felt a bit more intuitive. Left click select, which was NOT the default in prior versions, was the default now. The viewport had a multitude of rendering options for lookdev, final shots, and real time. “This might not be too bad” I thought.
I took the following few weeks and months to get to know how Blender functioned on a basic level. Blender functions best with hotkeys, something that I didn’t take time to learn in Maya. My instinct was to change my navigation over to match Maya’s, but according to both Keegan and various YouTube personalities, that would have locked off some of Blender’s functionality (apparently this was a misunderstanding as Blender does not lose functionality when this is done, it may just change the keymap for an operation).
Work at DreamLine would continue to be up and down for a bit, so it was now or never.
I guess I had to transition for real. I decided to learn how to model in Blender.
In Part 2, I will go over the plugins and suggestions that were made to me (as well as my own personal preferences) as I started to learn Blender. I’ll discuss my approach as well as the exact YouTube Videos and docs that helped me get a grip with navigation and basic modeling in the software.
If you’re interested in checking out any of the old versions of Blender, you can download them from the Blender Foundation here.
