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Add to SafariWhen comparing Blender vs Autodesk Maya, the Slant community recommends Blender for most people. In the question“What is the best 3D modeling software?” Blender is ranked 1st while Autodesk Maya is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Blender is:
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Pro Wide import and export format support
Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.
Pro Has a powerful rendering engine
Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!
Pro Python extensibility
Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.
Pro Powerful animation suite
Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.
Pro Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling
Pro Regular release schedule
Releases are made every ~3 months.
Pro Sculpting and 3D painting features
Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.
Pro Includes video editing & compositing tools
Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.
Pro Node based modeling support
Pro Keyboard shortcuts
Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.
Pro Very useful for a freelancer
It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.
Pro Has a large community
There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.
Pro Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic
The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.
Pro Very versatile
You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.
Pro Generative geometry using nodes
Pro Myriad of features
Has an extensive list of tools for modelling, look development, rigging, animation, rendering and exporting.
Pro Industry standard
Maya has been the industry standard for 3d modelling and animation for years.
Pro Combining powerful, realistic rendering with ease of use
Arnold is now the default interactive renderer, which can be found in the render settings. Solid Angle's global illumination ray tracer is used by many Hollywood studios.
Pro Expensive
Pro Extensible
The MEL language allows one to either write custom scripts or to download them.
Pro Support
Extensive support from Autodesk and users around the world.
Cons
Con Too many possibilities, no unified workflow
The operations are not optimized enough for specific tasks.
Con The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics
Con Difficult learning curve
Blender has a history of being unintuitive, but the 2.8 overhaul made the program far easier for beginners to pick up, and changes continue to be made to further improve the experience. However, there is still a learning curve.
Con Not good for Industrial Design because it uses average vertex normals
You can not create a hard surface with a radius continuity degree along a surface using a specific radius value.
Con Vertex normal issues on edges after boolean operations.
After creating a simple boolean operation the vertex normals are broken. A lot of work to fix the issue and you loos surface continuity.
Con Bad vertex normal after boolean operations
Does not handle well polygon intersections. And need tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers.
Con Does not handle NURBs
Is not capable of real hard surface for industrial design because is not able to reproduce surface continuity degree as a NURBs does and average vertex normal destroy surface radius.
Con Poor particle system
The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements.
Con Pricey
Don't expect to get Maya cheap. It is considerably more expensive than lesser 3D programs.
Con Difficult to learn
Expect to look at tons of tutorials.
Con Poorly organized interface
The menu organization doesn't make sense, and leaves you searching all over the place for functions that should fall under one category. For example, the option to bake your animation isn't under the Animation menu.
Con Unstable
The system can just crash unexpectedly.
Con Expensive
Real expensive in the long run.
Con Boolean bugs
A lot of polygon issues making boolean operations.
