Add preferences option to change ( y up ) in blender 2.81

[PaulMelis]

That should be in blender 2.83 ToDo list because, indeed, the industry in CGI is 90 percent Y up axis.

And people please stop comparing to Unreal, Unreal is not a DCC, it’s a game engine, Blender is not a game engine software. Valve Source too is Z up axis but they are a different type of softwares.

That’s a fairly narrow assumption of the environments where Blender is actually used:

• Blender might not be a game engine, but it is used quite a lot for creating 3D content for game engines to produce games, VR/AR applications or even educational tools. Some of these game engines use Z up (e.g. Unreal Engine).
• Blender is used in architectural visualization, interacting with “industry standard” tools that use Z up (e.g. Rhino3D).
• Blender is used in science for creating and processing scientific models, some of which use Z up.
• Etc, etc.

Apart from the Z-up versus Y-up discussion there’s also the left-handed versus right-handed coordinate system discussion (e.g. Unity uses a left-handed coordinate system, while Blender uses a right-handed system). All in all, there’s 4 variants (nicely summarized in a picture already shown in this thread I believe) and those are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Yes, it’s a pain having to deal with conversion from one of the variants to another when you are forced to, but what would be much worse in my opinion is to make it configurable in Blender to specify what axis needs to be up. This would split all Blender models/files into two camps that are hard to use together (e.g. appending or linking a Y-up file to a Z-up scene would either imply converting the appended data or having the user change the orientation manually to match). You will end up with the same challenges that there are currently when interacting between different software packages, but then within the Blender community. It will also lead to other shared resources, such as tutorials, to get split into two variants, which doesn’t help those learning.

Blender is (thankfully) not only used for CGI. Yes, many of its concepts (materials, rigs, meshes, lights) are aimed at CGI-like workloads, but they are general enough to be usable for other tasks. Plus it’s extensibility through Python is a real strength, allowing it to be used for work different from producing CGI. I would go so far as venturing that Blender would not have become the big success it now is if it hadn’t been picked up outside of CGI and 3D animation. The adoption in all kinds of environments is precisely what made it’s foothold grow stronger over the years as it was the go-to open-source package if you needed a flexible 3D application regardless of the field you were working in.

It would help if the Blender imports and exporters would become more mature and more aligned. E.g. add control over axis mapping to all of them and not just a subset as is currently the case (STL, FBX, …). This would make a lot of the current challenges in dealing with files and external applications using a different coordinate convention easier. Heck, you could even let people add their own import/export preferences in how to treat certain types of files.

[JuanGea]

You find hard to adapt to all those things you mention because you probably just know Maya for animation, since it seems you started with Blender but you are mentioning them as a person that comes from Maya.
I already said that some apps may do some things better than others, but all what you mention don’t prevent you from be up and running animating in Blender in less than a pair of days, and going backwards to Maya is the same, or the same if you go to max, you will miss some things and be greatful for other things.
There will always be differences between softwares, and you can work with whatever you want, but the majority of problems you mentioned can be solved with a small python script, so no real deal, specially if you work in a small/medium studio.

because of those i went straight back to Maya

That’s the problem when a new user comes from another software, or goes to another software, the user wants the new software to behave like the old one instead of learning how things are done in the new software, the autokey or the set key thing you mention specially… i’ve been working wiht Maya many years, I really hate how Maya deals with that, I love how Blender deals with that, a matter of taste I imagine, for example the TimeLine in maya is total crap, it was kind of crippled in 2.79 and very good in 2.8x, a matter of taste as I say.

The workflow is the same, and the frustration is non-existent if you really commit to adapt yoursefl, something that people usually only do if that’s requested in the place where they work, is something that I barely observed in people that don’t need the change, except lately in a lot of animators precisely, that are enjoying animating with Blender while in their job they have to work with Maya.

“Industry Standard” is not either what you describe there, “industry standard” is a term created to convince people like you that it’s better if you pay more to learn animation with Maya instead of Blender or Max, or for the schools to sell better the Maya course over the max or the blender courses LOL

Again, it’s a fact, “Industry Standard” is a fallacy, no matter what tool you use, I gave you several examples of not just my opinion but other seasoned professionals, several facts and objective reasons, you give me your opinion based on your personal experience, which I respect, but it’s not enough to justify the “industry standard” term, and in the end you did it again:

the most important point is that the Industry

“the industry” again, I will always insist, please, specify the industry, is not the same feature film, than Tv animation, than advertising, than video games, etc… and no, Maya is not the most widely used app across ALL the industries or 3D businesses that do character animation.

And this is another incorrect thing, that I can understand with one exception:

you have to learn them and be efficient

Totally disagree with this exception:

if you’re going to do technical stuff

Which IMHO is basically if you are going to work with Houdini, but a technical artist that work with Thinking Particles can adapt to work with houdini in no time, specially if it’s in a project environment with other co-workers, it’s important that he knows what he wants to do, but how he need to do it it’s simple to figure out, it’s a tech artists, the same goes for a rigger in max/maya/blender, it’s important that he knows the different levels of relationships, but knowing how to generate those relationships or that rig it’s a matter of no time.

“Industry standard” is a fallacy no matter how you want to picture it, and no, Maya is not “The Ring” “to rule them all” neither is the BEST application, it’s a good one, but as max or Blender or C4D, with it’s pros and cons.

[John1]

You find hard to adapt to all those things you mention because you probably just know Maya for animation, since it seems you started with Blender but you are mentioning them as a person that comes from Maya.
I already said that some apps may do some things better than others, but all what you mention don’t prevent you from be up and running animating in Blender in less than a pair of days, and going backwards to Maya is the same, or the same if you go to max, you will miss some things and be greatful for other things.
There will always be differences between softwares, and you can work with whatever you want, but the majority of problems you mentioned can be solved with a small python script, so no real deal, specially if you work in a small/medium studio.

Core problems are not solved by simple scripts, Blender had and still have many issues to be considered a good 3d Software, not long ago didn’t have proper stuff like they’re now in 2.8x and still missing many things.

That’s the problem when a new user comes from another software, or goes to another software, the user wants the new software to behave like the old one instead of learning how things are done in the new software, the autokey or the set key thing you mention specially

there are certain behaviours that are expected to work in a general sense, this is like the Right Click select, where people left click to move stuff and end up using the 3D Cursor or hitting “P” & getting stuck in the game engine.

The workflow is the same, and the frustration is non-existent if you really commit to adapt yoursefl, something that people usually only do if that’s requested in the place where they work, is something that I barely observed in people that don’t need the change, except lately in a lot of animators precisely, that are enjoying animating with Blender while in their job they have to work with Maya.

the workflow is not the same if the tools doesn’t work in the same way and as far as i can tell very few Animators prefer Blender especially that it doesn’t have anim layers,powerful rigs or something like the Animbot which 99% of them use & live by.

Industry Standard” is not either what you describe there, “industry standard” is a term created to convince people like you that it’s better if you pay more to learn animation with Maya instead of Blender or Max, or for the schools to sell better the Maya course over the max or the blender courses LOL

Again, it’s a fact, “Industry Standard” is a fallacy, no matter what tool you use, I gave you several examples of not just my opinion but other seasoned professionals, several facts and objective reasons, you give me your opinion based on your personal experience, which I respect, but it’s not enough to justify the “industry standard” term, and in the end you did it again:

You gave nothing, those examples have no merits if they are just an isolated group you know, but on a bigger and larger scale then it’s false as the majority agree on the term of “Industry Standard”, any professional Artists would recommand a young Artist to learn the tools of the craft along side the skills which has been also told to me by many working Artists in the Industry.

Which IMHO is basically if you are going to work with Houdini, but a technical artist that work with Thinking Particles can adapt to work with houdini in no time, specially if it’s in a project environment with other co-workers, it’s important that he knows what he wants to do, but how he need to do it it’s simple to figure out, it’s a tech artists, the same goes for a rigger in max/maya/blender, it’s important that he knows the different levels of relationships, but knowing how to generate those relationships or that rig it’s a matter of no time.

IF the jobs demands it then of course he/she has to learn and adapt but we’re not talking about that but about Maya being one of the most dominate 3D Animation Softwares, like it or not that’s how it is, even if we like Blender or any other Softwares to be in that position, it has that calibre that those software don’t have.

[JuanGea]

@John1

Core problems are not solved by simple scripts, Blender had and still have many issues to be considered a good 3d Software, not long ago didn’t have proper stuff like they’re now in 2.8x and still missing many things.

You have not mentioned any core problems, we can agree on the need for better complex rig performance, but that never stopped max from being widely used too

@John1

there are certain behaviours that are expected to work in a general sense, this is like the Right Click select, where people left click to move stuff and end up using the 3D Cursor or hitting “P” & getting stuck in the game engine

That’s your personal opinion, again, Max is a good example, it works differently, and Presto works differently and other apps work differently, and you are mentioning 2.7x things, not even 2.8 things.

@John1

the workflow is not the same if the tools doesn’t work in the same way and as far as i can tell very few Animators prefer Blender especially that it doesn’t have anim layers,powerful rigs or something like the Animbot which 99% of them use & live by.

First, animation layer in Maya are crap, that’s why studios uses customized solutions for animation layers, but that’s my personal opinion, now regarding animation layers, yo do have animation layers in blender, in fact they were since ages, but they were not working right, now they are fixed and you can use an additive layer whenever you want.

The “powerful rigs”… that’s a non-sense, because it depends on the amount of riggers that knows how to use Blender, and the number is growing, and it depends on those riggers share their work, but if we talk about pre-set rigs, I imagine you don’t consider Blenrig like a complex rig, but who knows.
Anyways complex rigs are not used so much in fast paced productions, in fact there are some video game companies that are still using max and biped LOL

And in production you don’t use those rigs, that’s for home use or practicing, so you are not talking then about work in studio, but practicing at home.
It could be great to have more rigs like those, time to time

@John1

You gave nothing, those examples have no merits if they are just an isolated group you know, but on a bigger and larger scale then it’s false as the majority agree on the term of “Industry Standard”, any professional Artists would recommand a young Artist to learn the tools of the craft along side the skills which has been also told to me by many working Artists in the Industry.

It’s clear that you will not consider any opinion of any professional that does not thinks like you, so if you consider a lead artist from Epic Games an “isolated group”, being one of the persons that most probably decides when a person is hired or not… ok LOL

@John1

IF the jobs demands it then of course he/she has to learn and adapt but we’re not talking about that but about Maya being one of the most dominate 3D Animation Softwares, like it or not that’s how it is, even if we like Blender or any other Softwares to be in that position, it has that calibre that those software don’t have.

No, I’ll repeat to you, upper I did you a fast analysis about different industries and you look closely Maya is not the dominant software, it’s just one software more, widely used is not the same as the most used, in fact if we talk about the 3D industry in general, the most used software out there is 3dsmax, just check installation and user numbers, again, I clearly dislike Autodesk, but it is what it is, and no, it’s not Maya.

Again, if you are a good animator it does not matter if you animate in Max/Maya/Blender, the software is not important.

BTW I did you a lot of questions in all the thread and you keep ignoring them and not answering them, in case you forgot about them

And again, it’s a fact when you closely analyze the 3d industry, “industry standard” is a fallacy, a lie, there are only standard procedures, not standard softwares.

[John1]

@JuanGea

You have not mentioned any core problems, we can agree on the need for better complex rig performance, but that never stopped max from being widely used too

You are talking to me like someone who knows it all and have higher position, that i should explain to him everything, if you’re not smart enough to figure it out by yourself then i shouldn’t talk to you in the first place.

@JuanGea

That’s your personal opinion, again, Max is a good example, it works differently, and Presto works differently and other apps work differently, and you are mentioning 2.7x things, not even 2.8 things.

learn to read the text properly, I said not long ago, 2.8 is released just few months and 2.7 was the official stable release.

[quote=“JuanGea, post:24, topic:11312”]
It’s clear that you will not consider any opinion of any professional that does not thinks like you, so if you consider a lead artist from Epic Games an “isolated group”, being one of the persons that most probably decides when a person is hired or not… ok LOL

Opinions varies from Artist to another but if we are taking it as a majority then it’s clear what they would say and because he’s a lead or on the hiring team doesn’t mean his opinon applies on a general base.

@JuanGea

First, animation layer in Maya are crap, that’s why studios uses customized solutions for animation layers, but that’s my personal opinion, now regarding animation layers, yo do have animation layers in blender, in fact they were since ages, but they were not working right, now they are fixed and you can use an additive layer whenever you want.

That’s the difference in Maya they work since they were first added ,while in Blender they are broken, same as it was n other parts (UI organization,Outliner,Timeline, Graph editor)…etc

@JuanGea

The “powerful rigs”… that’s a non-sense, because it depends on the amount of riggers that knows how to use Blender, and the number is growing, and it depends on those riggers share their work, but if we talk about pre-set rigs, I imagine you don’t consider Blenrig like a complex rig, but who knows.
Anyways complex rigs are not used so much in fast paced productions, in fact there are some video game companies that are still using max and biped LOL

Blender lacks the underlying power to build powerful rigs since it hides most of the complexity from the users and offers very minimal tools to get the job done, no deformers, no matrices,no nodes so if you hit cyclic dependencies then you’re on your own.
Autorigging tools are only nice for quick testing but they can never be as intuitive as a custom rig , in Blender those autorigs can’t be expand upon since they’re not built in a component based way but rather u have to deal with them as one single object(Armature) which has pros & cons in a lot of ways.

@JuanGea

is not the dominant software, it’s just one software more, widely used is not the same as the most used, in fact if we talk about the 3D industry in general, the most used software out there is 3dsmax, just check installation and user numbers, again, I clearly dislike Autodesk, but it is what it is, and no, it’s not Maya.

Again, if you are a good animator it does not matter if you animate in Max/Maya/Blender, the software is not important.

BTW I did you a lot of questions in all the thread and you keep ignoring them and not answering them, in case you forgot about them

And again, it’s a fact when you closely analyze the 3d industry, “industry standard” is a fallacy, a lie, there are only standard procedures, not standard softwares.

I don’t want to keep dragging this pointless conversation, to me it seems you’re living in denial & not in reality.
you believe whatever you want to believe and the rest of the world will believe whatever they want, end of story.

[JuanGea]

@John1

You are talking to me like someone who knows it all and have higher position, that i should explain to him everything, if you’re not smart enough to figure it out by yourself then i shouldn’t talk to you in the first place.

No I’m not, I’m trying to give you reasons, objective points, and analysis, but you don’t like them

In fact at all times I tried to respect you, and I repeated several times that I don’t know your experience or how much time you’ve been working in the 3d Industry, or even if you are a professional, I just extracted by your words that you seem to be a student or a junior artist, but at the same time I think that’s not too much important, other than it would explain your way of thinking and the emotions you seem project towards the software, becuase I see that in many many young artists and students, but that’s something that is practically absent in seasoned artists with long experinece in a wide range of software, but in any case you deserve all my respect.

@John1

learn to read the text properly, I said not long ago, 2.8 is released just few months and 2.7 was the official stable release.

Then why do you bring that to the table if it’s not a problem anymore?
It does not make sense to say a problem was a problem when it’s not a problem now.

@John1

Opinions varies from Artist to another but if we are taking it as a majority then it’s clear what they would say and because he’s a lead or on the hiring team doesn’t mean his opinon applies on a general base.

Well, I tried to give you some examples, but you can look for a lot others by yourself, but as I said, if someone don’t think like you want, you will say “it’s a rogue”, it’s clear you think your opinion applies to what you call “a general base”

@John1

That’s the difference in Maya they work since they were first added ,while in Blender they are broken, same as it was n other parts (UI organization,Outliner,Timeline, Graph editor)…etc

Nope, they had (and have) tons of problems over the years, the same with UI, Outliner, Timenline (which is still crap), Graph Editor, which was madness to work with just a few years ago, no, not everything has been green and pretty in maya’s playfield.

Just a little example, the ouliner is incapable of dealing with proper scene organization since it lacks ability to deal with layers, and the layer editor in maya is one of the oldes systems that go back nearly to the first versions of it, and no, it’s not that way beucase it’s good as it is, it’s crap.

@John1

Blender lacks the underlying power to build powerful rigs since it hides most of the complexity from the users and offers very minimal tools to get the job done, no deformers, no matrices,no nodes so if you hit cyclic dependencies then you’re on your own

Why don’t you prepare a document or a thread about all that and we can see what devs think about it? really, I`m not joking, go ahead and prepare it, if you have such things so clear in your mind, please post them, it can only bring better results for the future.

@John1

Autorigging tools are only nice for quick testing but they can never be as intuitive as a custom rig , in Blender those autorigs can’t be expand upon since they’re not built in a component based way but rather u have to deal with them as one single object(Armature) which has pros & cons in a lot of ways.

Blenrig is very expandible, but you have to know how to do it of course, and it’s a very powerful rig production ready and proven, but I won´t argue with you that Blender rig tools can be improved, yes they can and they have to, hopefully we will see something along the lines during 2020, once more, rig tools in max are worse than the ones in Blender, and that never prevented max from being one of the most widely adopted software in advertising and videogames over the years.

BTW the Armature concept is one of a kind, and I think is one of the most smartest things that Blender has, way better than the old way of dealing with rigs, yes, pros and cons as everything, but in my opinion, and it’s just that, my opinion, one of the most smartest things present in Blender.

The same goes for the cursor, such a smart tool.

@John1

I don’t want to keep dragging this pointless conversation, to me it seems you’re living in denial & not in reality.
you believe whatever you want to believe and the rest of the world will believe whatever they want, end of story.

According to you the rest of the world is mainly you and the ones that think like you, I presented you different situations, analized industries and even talked about individuals with important positions in important companies of the 3D industry in general, but you keep saying that I’m alone in my world, ok, keep thinking that way

Again, and I’ll repeat this as much times as it is needed, it’s a fact that the term “Industry standard” is a fallacy, a lie, there is no such thing, there are just “standard procedures”, and if you are a good animator no matter if you use maya or max or Blender, you will be hired, you just have to focus in being good at what you do, not in what software do you do it.

[PeteDraper]

Our studio, Makuta, has always been primarily a Max house for tracking alignment, FX, lighting & rendering, with Maya for animation and modelling. It has had its foibles, but we worked out the bugs with transferring data from one format to another and, yes, the y-up / z-up issue has been present but not deal-breaking; 9/10 times its been “d’oh, who forgot to flip on that option in the export?!” or “which idiot didn’t set the right scene scale?!”.

I think the main issue with studios not adopting Blender are threefold:

1 - The manual is written by programmers and is incomplete. It’s not written with the artist in mind and comes across as cold and seems to be done as an afterthought. Having it online sounds like a good idea but a lot of studios cannot have net access on workstations due to security of footage, driven by TTPN / MPAA rules. Package it and allow them to update as required. The “getting started” stuff is ok, but not thorough or artist-friendly enough.

2 - The stigma of Blender producing bad quality work. Sorry, but its true; that’s what we all hear, and the assessment is because its used by hobbyists and not professionals. It wasn’t until I heard that one acclaimed and respected industry professional was singing its praises that I stopped to look at it. It’s something that only decent promotional work can get around and that is doing a big song and dance about what it is used in. We had the same issues with getting 3ds max in film back in the late '90s / early 2000’s - it was all Maya / Soft with Lightwave for TV and max was just arch-viz and multimedia. This wasn’t 100% true but their respective marketing machines went full on getting the software into studios and they became defacto standards.

3 - The fear factor - the assumption is that as the software is being developed by “hobbyists”, it’s not stable, even with official releases and therefore shouldn’t be used in a professional environment. Again, this is something that marketing really needs to address.

In fact I’ve found that this is completely the opposite; we’ve had less crashes with Blender than with everything else. Our RenderPal farm also rarely has dropped nodes while previously running Max 2017 we’d have nodes dropping like flies. 5 months ago I made the decision to migrate us across to Blender and, to be honest, the y/z up issue has never been one in any way. We’re still running around 20-30% Maya / Max but just for stuff we can’t yet do in Blender - decent particle systems (I know there’s one in the works, but its flakey and there’s no documentation / tutorials / examples which are stable as of yet), distribution systems which can do frame offsetting, stable smoke / fire system (manta flow is still in development and the existing smoke / fire is due to be retired so its risky), openvdb importing (someone did one for an old build and another was planned during a previous GSOC which was never finalised), rigging is slow on high poly characters (or so I’m told from the animators, but they may just be clutching at straws…!), but that’s about it. Any rendering I need to do in max, as I let our Maya and Max subscriptions lapse, I do on my remaining seats of legacy perpetual versions or my Max 2019 seats, but am rendering using the “Cycles for Max” plugin which, after working with the developer, has now been vastly improved.

So, in a nutshell, I don’t think the y/z up issue is an issue; we’ve had that for around 25 years and we’ve managed. You want to get Blender into more studios? Marketing. But that costs money. Getting existing artists to migrate is easier than getting studios to migrate - they’ve already spent the money. They’re going to risk down-time and reduced productivity. The Autodesk rep, when I told her that I was migrating to Blender told me aggressively that I wouldn’t be able to run my studio, to which I replied “you just ****-ing watch me click” (pardon the language). It’s the perception. It’s the perception that it’s more difficult. It’s the perception that it’s going to cost in quality and down time. It’s the fear of the risk. And mostly, it’s the “stick to my guns” fanboy attitude that a lot of artists have of their tool of choice; one of my guys here was fearful of migrating to Blender as he was scared that it would ruin his future career choices, that he would get left behind. He still is, and I have no ammunition to prove otherwise as he’s an FX guy and Blender’s FX tools are severely lacking when compared to TyFlow, Rayfire and Fume / PheonixFD.

Anyway, I think I’ve gone on long enough here…

Pete

[JuanGea]

I think you nailed it, and you described the process that a lot of studios are going through right now.

[John1]

the rest of the world thinks the same and has been for decades,you can say all the excuses and theories all you want but the truth is the truth and seeing you getting upset about it is really funny especially that “industry standard” term triggers you so much hahaha…
I don’t have to waste more of my time arguing about this topic especially if you are someone who acts delusional, you can trash talk about other Softwares like most of Blender users all you want, but these tools are the dominate ones and prefered over their alternative to be used in a large production environment & if a software is widely used in an industry for specific tasks then it can be called an Industry Standard tool & nbody can change that.

[PeteDraper]

As someone who runs a studio, who has been a CG artist since 1993 and have founded and run a studio for the last 10 years, I can safely say that I don’t care what software you use, as long as your stuff looks awesome. Its the artist, not the tool. If you can show that using a crappy tool you’ve produced something amazing, you are showcasing that you are adaptable and resourceful. Any recruiter worth his / her merit will know this and if you showcase the ability to be flexible, it means you’re more suitable to slot into a custom pipeline. I’ve hired Maya guys for Max roles as they’re good lighters. My Maya animators migrated to Max for some sequences as Maya couldn’t handle it. We’ve now pretty much shifted to Blender; there’s been some teething issues and some resistance, but for the most-part it’s been fun. As a generalist / fx guy by trade, I’m finding it tougher but I’m having a whale of a time with the shading and lighting kit compared to what I can do in Max or Maya combined.

[PeteDraper]

And just as a footnote, @JuanGea - the stuff you’re doing in the Bone Studio builds are awesome.

[JuanGea]

Here you have another example, @PeteDraper is, I myself run a studio since 2007, and I know quite a lot of other studio owners, or people in responsability charges in different companies and we all agree on that, so as I said, it seems that for you “all the world” is just people that think like you, ok.

“Industry standard” it’s a lie and a fallacy, that’s the reason why I fight against it, I always fight against things that I find wrong or bad for the industry in general, like the crazy “rental only” licensing scheme from Autodesk, a scheme designed to drain the user and leave alon the developer no matter if the updates are good or bad, and the reason why Maya is more and more unstable version after version LOL

No, I don’t trash talk other softwares, I talk about other softwares with a will put in being as objective as possible, that’s why I don’t argue with your that we need better performance with complex rigs or other things, but I also know Max and Maya up to the bones, and I know it’s caveats and problems, Maya is not GOLD at all, it crashes nearly as much as max, but max crashes more, but I can speak good things from both of them, that does not make any of them “industry standard”.

The idea that the “industry standard” has been there for decades it’s also not true, that term was unknown in 2003 for example, it’s a term that started to rise around 2011/2012 or so, so not even a decade, it’s a marketing term and as I said many many times… a fallacy and a lie

And yes, we can change things if slowely, we as artists, not only Blender artists, but also Maya artists (many seasoned ones agree) Max artists and other packages artists start avoiding the term and telling other people that the term is wrong, thta will benefit all the 3d industry in general because it will open many many eyes to the real situation of the 3d industry in general.

@PeteDraper thanks! I wish we could have more patches and modifications, but no time or moeny to invest on it, I hope we get all what we have in our build in master sooner than later

[PeteDraper]

I don’t think the term “industry standard” is a lie per-se, but more of a misnomer attributed to manufacturers marketing their wares. I tend to use the term “defacto standard” which means that it’s become standardised because a lot of people are using it; it doesn’t however mean it’s the best in any way.

As soon as Adob$ (don’t get me started on those money grabbing #$^#$$@#%!@!@!!!) started the subscription model for Photoshop et al, it was only a matter of time that other manufacturers would jump on the bandwagon. The moment they killed mental ray in Max was the death knell for me as it no longer became financially viable to maintain - 30 workstation seats plus 120 render farm licenses?! What the hell??!

As for Adobe, they are the worst. Every 2 years I get threatened with auditing or legal action, normally around Christmas time as they are trying to drive sales revenue before the end of the financial year. They’re downright nasty, to a point where my Photoshop licenses were due to expire in October and I let them, then spent the money I had budgeted on Affinity Photo for a tonne less and bought hardware with the difference.

I had a one on one with the Max developers a few months back, discussing their five year roadmap. There’s nothing there that would change my mind that migrating to Blender is a bad thing. Don’t get me wrong - I loved Max… I fought for it tooth and nail. I wrote 4 books on it and wrote reviews, tutorials and Q&As in a trade magazine for over a decade. But since they entered the subscription model to milk us dry, they can seriously do one as it feels like I’ve been cheated on by a long-term partner and now I’m in the middle of a divorce.

[JuanGea]

Yes, we have the same mindset.

The “defacto standard” is not bad, at least it’s better, but it’s important to specify for what, I mean, if you tell me that maya is the “defacto standard” software for feature film animation, I could bring one or two comments about that, but it’s true that it’s widely used in many many companies.
The thing is that there is a difference between “defacto standard” and “industry standard”, the second one assumes many things and it implies that it’s the 3d industry, not a specific industry, while with the other term you have to specify where is the “defacto standard”.

In the end “industry standard” is a misleading term, that’s why I say it’s a lie, it’s a marketing term made to convince everyone that Maya is the “ring to rule them all”, and if you don’t know maya you will starve in the 3d animation industry… and it’s not the case, even if the company is going to hire you uses Maya

That’s why I did a broad analysis of different industries inside the 3d industry in general, because there are many widely used tools, and in the end I still thing there are “standard procedures”, no standard software, the idea of standard software is a bad one, it implies that you MUST use that software, and it’s what I try to fight against, and I would not care if Blender was the software called “industry standard”, when I was Max user I would also fight against that term, it’s super misleading

And BTW regarding the books… that’s were your name was familiar to me!!! hehehe Great to have you here

[John1]

We are not talking about Artist skills but Softwares and why they are an indsutry standard, you wouldn’t take Blender and use it for FX when it’s performance is the most worse of any, and can’t handle large scenes or millions of particles, ,high dense meshes,complex rigs…etc, undo is unusable, no proper support for standard stuff like Udims, Alembic,OpenVDB…etc sure you can do cool stuff and show off but in a production environment then it will collapse ,the cost of a software is a not a concern to Studios as they look for quality and output instead of a free software.

[sybren]

Introducing a switch between Z=up and Y=up would require a massive development effort. This means that development time will not go to bug fixing or implementing new features. It will likely also invalidate older patches, as they don’t take this into account yet, meaning that already performed work has to be done again. It is also likely to produce lots of extra bugs, as there will be places in the code where this preference is not taken into account. All in all this would be a huge time sink for no particularly good reason (exporters can already change coordinate systems; for example the Alembic exporter already exports to Y=up because that’s what Alembic uses).

Of course Blender is Open Source, so if you want to make a Y=up fork, go ahead.

I’m going to go ahead and close this thread, as it’s far from constructive. If you disagree with my decision, PM me.