Hey yall, long time no see. Thought I would give you guys an over-view of my Softimage transition to Blender, 1 year in. (Been with Softimage for almost 9 years trained at VFS, > Before that I was all Maya 6+ dedicated years, then off and on use, before that I was 3DSMax/just starting out).
If there is any interest, I can suggest some options/settings/tips/tricks for Blender to help anyone trying to get into it from a Softimage background, just ask, I'm happy to oblige. -------------------- I also I have some questions about Maya LT 2016 owners at the very end. -------------------- TLDR: I'm seriously pursuing an independent project in UE4 in my free-time > Blender has been pretty awesome, it has shortcomings, has promise, has some stuff that is better than anything out there, it's a mixed bag overall. -Probably going to have to get a Maya LT 2016 subscription very soon (because of the sad state of Blender FBX and reading a litany of eerily similar FBX issues in Houdini which would have been my first choice before Maya), > literally going to use Maya as a glorified exporter, otherwise mostly quite happy in Blender!. --------------------- Blender FBX/Normals (grade D-) : Current biggest problems with Blender for game dev, is it's pretty horrible custom FBX solution and it's lackluster support (and only recently) for direct control over normals, tangents, bi-normals, etc.. It does have solid SMD export for Valve workshop stuff, but if your focus is on Unity/UE4, expect difficulties frustrations that I suspect will last until late into the year if not much longer. Poly-modeling (B+): A few settings you need to know about, and whalakazam, you get something that is nearly as good as Softimage poly modeling. It even does a few things far better than Softimage ever did, I find it to be far superior to Maya in this category. It has become, and will remain my full-time go to modeling application. (I have fully abandoned Softimage for better or worse) UI/Customizability (A-): It's fully open to customize or extend, and the Blender hot-key system once you learn it, is quite good > the default hotkeys aren't even half-bad but they aren't perfect either. There are a plethora of very well done free and paid add-ons. UI seems quirky at first, but once you learn it, you realize it's hiding a lot of power under the hood. UI and Customize-ability is one of Blender's best features *but it's not immediately apparent, and takes reasonable dedication to fully appreciate. It's better than Softimage and Maya on this front (for indie/small studio), however nothing to this day matches Softimages perfected defaults and standard hot-key set and it's near perfect consistency through-out different sections of the system, out of the box, -but surprisingly, Blender is by far, the closest of all to Softimage's elegance even though that is a tall order to fill. Documentation/Tutorials (A+): Mostly Free and a few good paid tutorials, out the wazzzooo. The only software out there that I have used with equal tutorial/community support is Unreal Engine 4. UV's: (C-): Do-able, and the automatic stuff just works a lot better than Maya 2015's when I last tried it. Some fine tune editing works quite well, while a few things related to fine tuning after automatic results, are frustratingly/maddening and time consuming, and that's what drops the entire grade (it would be very difficult to explain in text). I found Softimage to have B+/A- UV features once you mastered it. Sculpting (B+/A-): For raw poly power, it's no ZBrush/Mudbox (Mudbox being my favorite of the two, aka. I hate the ZBrush UI) However, if you follow some specific workflow guidelines, Blender has quite an amazing sculpting tool-set and so far it is my favorite sculpting package overall because of the ability to go back and forth between low-res base mesh poly-modeling and right back to sculpting detail and or proto-typing. Two types of sculpting, traditional for normal map/displacement/finished work and another type for rapid proto-typing, that allows you to create/collapse geometry on the fly, so you can proto-sculpt infinitely without caring 1 bit about the underlying mesh as it will create or delete geo as needed. Has all your standard base brush needs, can make most any brush, some limitations but minor and I only have 1 single sculpting add-on for Boolean cuts which works nicely, I've seen many, quite nice looking sculpting add-ons that I haven't yet explored, it's deep and it's being actively developed. Texture Painting (B+/A- to use > but quirky to learn): First time setup is a bit to learn, but once you figure it out, you get VERY nice easy to work with multi-layered texture painting, full pressure sensitive painting support / basic but reasonable default brush library and good brush settings available for each, can paint into any map slot you like with multiple layers. Animation/Rigging/Blend Shapes(D-/A- great in it's own right but needs FBX/etc. to play nice with others that is why large grade gap): I haven't gone too deep here, but the basics all work nicely without issue for me. If FBX was fixed, it's an easy passable to high grade. Materials/Render (D-/B+): Has 2 systems. Old stack based and new node based. Neither are perfect but both can and do work well, they are also barely compatible with each other. I don't render much, my focus is Games/Realtime. That said, I do a lot of material/texture work. I'd say Blender is quirky in this department at best (I suspect no one here will appreciate it), but when you get it all worked out at it's best, it's at least passable. -No where near as good as Softimage (Soft material nodes were the best, EVER, anywhere.), also not as powerful as Maya overall but the node interface is as good/slightly better than Maya last time I checked - (I thought Maya's new node system was very clunky/awkward to use in practice (too many exposed pins, etc, >Blender's node system is way, way more friendly/workable. I think most Softimage users will find Blenders older stack system completely foreign, although I've grown to like it for some odd reason). The new cycles rendering, for the very little I played with it, is quite powerful and more up to date than age-ing mental ray but one will probably need to delve into the paid tutorial realm and some months of study for professional results. Baking (D-/C-): It's a quirky system. Can work well enough at times. When it does work well it's never 100% perfect, usually needs slight touch-ups in paint. When it starts giving you cyclical dependency errors, you'll be pulling your hair out, there's no good reason for it but it's a persistent bug that is sometimes fixed and sometimes re-appears, the work arounds are awful. Softimage in it's prime makes Blender's baking interface look and feel like utter crap. I use it for transferring maps after I re-do UV's or for baking Normals/etc. but at first sign of it going into bug mode, I switch to XNormal, which is of coarse, a hassle and time waster. Extra Features: Blender has pretty decent and quite use-able nodal based composting system and a dedicated video editing system built in. I've also been pretty happy with the regular updates of new features and improvements and the software's recent focus on making itself more accessible/UI friendly. The large crowd of independent and young 3D artists out there using Blender today, are quite rapidly producing impressive results, it's quite promising. There are a wealth of add-ons, both paid and free for Blender, I haven't gone too deep into them yet, but I have found a few great ones. -------------------------------------------------------- Maya LT 2016 questions: I'm about ready to pull the trigger on this purchase. Going to start a demo soon, to test a few things but I'm confident it will suit my needs where Blender fails hard. General question: how have Maya LT > UE4 users been finding the 2016 LT experience, any complaints, or is it all good? Has anyone used Maya LT with NVidia's Apex physics add-ons? I currently use Apex stand-alone and it's a pain in the ass, I figured the Maya add-on would be a lot better, is it working? If anyone has any Maya modeling tutorials / system settings / plug-ins / free downloads that bring it into line with what Softimage was capable of, I'm at the very least curious. You know what I mean, hotkeys, speed/ease of use/comfort/power at the ready. I am happy in blender, but curious what you guys might have discovered over the last year. My main question/concerns regards custom normals, bi-normals, tangents. I will be able to see what LT has to offer when I demo it soon, but from the comparison list, there is a chart between LT and full Maya that lists missing features in these categories (namely: normal constraints / tangent constraints). Any info related to normals, tangents and bi-normal / editing in Maya LT appreciated. (not as important, there were a few other features between full Maya and LT, that I found weird that they left them out, like transfer maps?, any idea why? that would have been nice since Softimage's transfer maps always worked quite well) Viewport 2.0 missing, seems odd? The list I have is here >, is this accurate/up to date? http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/compare/compare-products Thanks.
