Open Source

Tools
#1

Does anyone think that free packages, like blender, gimp, and ubuntu, will eventually overtake the apps that are commonly used in the business?

I find it hard to believe that studios will want to keep spending more and more money on software that costs thousands of dollars if there is a free alternative. If that is the case too, I think that it would be smart for us as technical artists to begin to learn these programs.

I don’t see this happening in the next four or five years, but maybe after that we could begin to see a change. Does anyone agree?

#2

Free always has a place :slight_smile: – but for a lot of company the cost of software is relatively cheap. – and its important knowing that there is a team of people behind the software that could fix a problem if enough money was thrown at it. Having that security can be better than the immediate satisfaction of getting something for free.

I think it is a good idea to experiment and dabble with different programs – you may find something you like :). And you never know – maybe the free program today may be bought up by a software company tomorrow that you use in your studio.

BTW: the software examples you mention are already used by studios … I just don’t think the ones that cost money are going to go away …

#3

Programs that solve issues the best will be the ones used at studios- hence the replacement of Max with Maya at what seems like all game studios. When open source alternatives solve problems better, they will be used more.

This is why you see far more open source systems in use on the tech side than the content side- open source programs are written by programmers to solve problems they are running into. So it is far more difficult to create a successful content program than programming component, that solves content team needs and is superior to paying apps (like Jason said, software is relatively cheap).

You will continue to see the trends of the past few years accelerate- lots more will happen in proprietary or licensed tech, and less will happen in these super-generic 3D and painting programs. You’ll see adoption of open-source components because they accelerate the development of these proprietary softwares, but I don’t think you’ll see widespread adoption of open-source content programs.

Oh and the legal departments at some large companies (EA, MS) would make your head explode.

#4

As Jason and Rob both state, the time of the user is usually more expensive than the software cost so ‘free’ isn’t much of a selling point except to locations where the price of artist time is relatively inexpensive compared to software licensing costs (India, China, Mexico) or for corporations/individuals who happen to be cash strapped (students, startup studios that people are willing to work cheaper to get in on the ground level, etc).

Blender adoption I think is likely to take off in the reasonably near future (5 year time horizon).

There have been a number of things holding back its adoption

  1. UI -most of the major warts are now fixed

  2. Training and Learning materials - more and better training has appeared with the 2.5x series

  3. File exchange - more open formats are being adopted for asset exchange

  4. Tool quality - blender’s toolset is starting to round out and become more polished. By years end I expect it to be extremely competitive for most tasks - I’m aiming for best of breed for 3 or 4 of them.

  5. Pipeline flexibility - pipelines at studios are in many ways more flexible in the how things are done

  6. Commercial support options - both user training and development support are now available and those will steadily increase

  7. UI specialization - hopefully within the year we will have specialized UIs so you can treat Blender as ‘just a weighting/skinning tool’ or ‘just an UV unwrapping tool’ or ‘just a sculpting tool’ or ‘just a texturing tool’. I think that will allow corporations to have a clearer view of Blenders strengths instead of being distracted by its weaker areas.

Anywho time will tell :slight_smile: