I'm a Blender user simply because I'm teaching my self and can not
afford expensive software yet or training(i take donations such as
hardware to books), i find blender good but its no diamond.
I have been able to try Maya/Max in 30day trails which are both far
better then Blender in my opinion, The problem with Blender is that it
is too basic and plain as in there is no advance settings or very few.
To do a simple job in say Maya can take much longer in Blender, for
instance if you applied a bevel in maya you can choose how round to make
it, while in blenders recent 2.63 version you have to apply bevel and
then select the new bevel edges and bevel again and repeat once more if
needed(this is because you can not tell it how many segments/iterations/roundness
you want ). Also many tools such has Loft splines and chamfer are not in blender or even basic settings such as pinch/sliding when adding edge loops with more then one loop(crtl+r,scroll middle wheel for more loops), simple things can speed up modeling workflow much faster.
This gives blender a much slower work flow, and when it comes to the industry standard time is money!.
Blender has a huge problem which the developers seem to be blind to and
that is that developers keep adding new features instead of
upgrading/fixing existing features. The only improvements are to
modifiers never the tools with an exception off b-mesh which has took 3
years of development before release and it is still buggy at parts(2.63a
has fix's).
Just look at cycles the new render engine, it does not have
particles,hair,smoke,"light coming thought windows"and network rending
etc which are all blender features off the old render engine. Really if a feature is not complete then it should not be released in a stable build!.
Blender has got its good side aswell!, its free which is great for
people like me who have little or no money. Its very flexible being that
you can change almost everything you see on screen from colors to the
layout. Blender with any paint software is a almost complete studio. Blender has a 3d cursor which helps you move objects/parts around and adjust things in ways you can not in other software.
But really its developers are blind to what they need and do not work
in a professional career and nor do i, this is why they do not see it
from a industry standard point of view. Last year there was a vote which
features to improve and every one voted rendering , sure blenders
developers saw this and created a whole new render engine called
"cycles" when what people really asked for was improvements not a rewrite/creation of a new engine.
Blender is in google summer code again this year ,however last years
work is a good 70% not finished and dating back to 2009 summer code you
can still find many features not finished and never added(complete waste of time and effort).
Blender is great to start learning with, but very soon after trying
other software you will start to fill limited by its tools.
