> Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs

And it doesn't need to be, it just needs to be a viable alternative. Everyone always looks at these projects like it's a winner takes all scenario, but it's not. There can be multiple programs that accomplish the same thing, some open-source, some not, so long as they're sustainable and have something unique to offer that's not a problem.

Sure, if we were living in my ideal fantasy all software would be fully open and free, but in this reality I'm just happy we have alternatives that are actually sustainable and don't feel like you're actively gimping yourself.

Depends on the market, for making the next pixar movie probably not (yet). However blender usage is way, way up and my game studio (Prehensile Tales) has no difficulty finding extremely talented blender users.

An open source project doesn't have to be the very most used thing from the beginning in order to eventually eat everyone's lunch :)

That's an interesting name for a game studio. What's the story behind it?

I love monkeys, and I like making video games with stories in them. So "prehensile tales" is a somewhat oblique way of saying "gripping tales"

Also, it let me have a cute monkey as a logo : https://prehensile-tales.com :) (I'm not selling anything there, but you can see the logo)

I have lived from my VFX freelance work for 4 years and worked soley with Blender for the 3D and much of the 2D part.

Blender has some parts where it is the best (the tracker for example easily beats all commercial trackers I have ever used) and other parts where it doesn't shine as much (e.g. fluid simulation — which is a non-issue because it integrates well with other tools).

I have been coming from 3dsMax and Maya and never have been looking back. Blender also has been getting so much in the past 5 years it feels ridiculous and makes you wonder what the likes of Adobe and Xo are doing with all their money.

Please abandon this idea (that so many have) that the only thing worth aspiring to is "being the first choice"/dominating an entire industry.

We need standards, sure, but we desperately need better competition between high-quality products.

Amazon "just" bought the rights to the Crytech engine and forked it. Not even they were crazy enough to build their own tech from the ground up.

> Exactly. Blender still isn't the first choice for most animation and VFX jobs.

It doesn't really need to be; being self-sustaining while being open-source beats Unity's model of being funded to cover operations while being closed-source.

TBH, it's only a matter of time before Blender is a choice for most animation and VFX, and then only a little more time before it's the first choice.

Amazon's game engine is also open source under the name O3DE.