CG Survey Initial Results In
The results from CGenie’s Big CG Survey 2010 are in. Blender did quite well in a lot of areas.
A few months ago a BlenderNation story told us all to vote in the Big CG Survey 2010. We must have listened well, because about 50% of the responses to the survey were from Blender users. Here I will try to summarize how Blender did in the categories in comparison to other 3D software. I recommend reading the actual article on CGenie here.
Blender ranked 4th in how much the users’ opinion has changed in the past year, just behind Terragen, Modo, and 3d coat. I guess this means that the developers are making us real happy or real mad. I think the opinion of most is that Blender is improving overall.
As expected, Blender wasn’t even ranked in the graph showing market share growth. Blender has always been considered a hobbyist 3d software program by most professionals, but that doesn’t mean it lags behind in technology, as shown in the results for usage.
Blender ranks 5th in overall usage ranking. Some areas it excels more than other, such as 2nd in texturing but only 8th in rendering.
Blender obviously comes in high for value, being an excellent quality 3d program for free.
In being a fan of the company, Blender ranks 3rd. I thought we would win that category because of all the anti-commercial software propoganda in the Blender Artists forums = ) On a more serious note however, Houdini and Terragen place above Blender in this category. Satisfaction of the Blender Foundation has improved over last year by a little bit, while other softwares such as Softimage and Cinema 4D have less satisfaction than last year.
Image on post is from stock.xchng and made by Dominik Gwarek. Used on a royalty free license.
Max and Maya has the highest market share growth but the lowest usage rating. Companys should be more open minded and listen to their artists when choosing software or take more time to evaluate. I believe Blender fits the need of professional studios very well and is very efficient to work with.
If 50% of the surveyees are Blender users, I don’t think we can really count the results of the survey conclusive. It’s like giving yourself a prize. o.o
Actually, the surveys were taken per application, and 50% of all survey takers did the survey on Blender ;)
It’s probably still a trustworthy amount in overall numbers to be sure that this survey is quite accurate :D
I love the info, but i am having trouble quantifying it.
what percentage does 3,500 participants represent in comparison to the total 3d industry?
What % of participants already use open source? How many are professionals? In what field? Average projects paid/unpiad? How many people? How many participants are company corporate freelance? Desired quality of life…city country factory farm party read? Average Age?
That would be a lovely follow-up survey.
hmm…
Gotta admit that’s a good point :D
But it’s still quite the amount of people and they can’t help that the aren’t more people who fill in the survey…
At the bottom it also states that they’re going to do more research, so they’ll probably eventually wind up with numbers that are more satisfactory :D
@Cardin: how would you expect it then? I don’t see how users can fill in their opinions about blender when they’re not Blender users…
He thought all different programs were also rated by blender users, I believe, so I pointed that out in my followup reply :D
Polls and Surveys always seem to lean higher ratings toward those buying the largest advertisements… :)
Blender would have done much better, IMO if we hadn’t been worried about being “fanboys”. Lets face it, most 3d apps by themselves have maybe a 3rd of Blender’s potential. There is no other app like Blender, so what can it be compared to?
Boring.
Very interesting survey. Some of the comments were right on; though, some were crap. I loved how one said that Autodesk was a bad company, and one said it was great.
But I do think that the stat about Blender’s expected growth is accurate, a testament to its community and greatly improved feature list.
Well, I’m taking 3d modeling classes at college and got an “A” for best 3d modeler student.
Light-wave is the program what is use in class,instead I use blender to model.At first some geek at class teas
that blender was a kid program,but I prove them wrong! and they are still working on their assignment,when I finish my mine in 45 min… thanks you’ll especially TON.R and developers.
@RNS I was in the exact same situation… everyone in class was using lightwave and worked on their projects for more than three weeks. I finished mine in less than one and it had more than 30,000 more poly’s than the most complicated project in lightwave, not to mention looked alot better ;)
On-Topic: Good to see blender getting some good responses, as always.
The part about Blender not even being ranked in the market share growth…
I recall some questions which I thought did not apply to Blender. I don’t believe that Blender is just a hobbyist toy despite its use by some hobbyists (including those that kindly and freely write and share tutorials). I believe that with enough talent, incentive, great ideas, etc., the use of Blender can enable artists to financially prosper in some fields. One such field is in full featured animated movies. I think, any field is possible provided there are no limitations placed by existing upper managers and clients that restrict payment based upon how expensive the resources are (like 3D modeling tools) that have been used to create the product. I do not believe that such restrictions can prevent animators and still artists from successfully marketing art made with Blender.
Had I not confused some of the questions as being restrictive to the marketing value of the actual software, as being how much the software cost as a proprietary product put out by a for-profit entity, than my answers concerning relative questions would have been in Blender’s favor. Perhaps the results concerning those questions are faulty if many other Blender users got the same, or similar impression of some market value related questions in the survey.
Survey´s interpretation have to be done very carefull.I thing that Survey´s not representing “the real world”.
Mayby a few things are really intresting for the companys like : listen to the users !
Hi folks,
Just to answer a few questions (eg paddy_anim’s) – we’ve got plenty of additional data (including 1000+ comments from Blender users!) so we’ll be running an interview with Ton to chat through further and provide much more detailed info (eg hobbyist vs student vs pro stats).
There was a lot extra gathered in the survey, so we’ve got the data, this is simply a high-level first look!
Glad you’ve found it interesting.
The fact that 50% of the users who have taken the survey are Blender users might be also because :
– Blender is free. So you have more users (than those who can pay 2K for a software)
– Blendernation is influent. If it had a “two minute hate” he would be a threat to CG democracy due to Blender users zeal
– Blender users have more time for surveys (others have phone call to make to Tech Support)
aws357: the most relevant point there was the mention on both BA and BN, I guess ;)
Other apps still do have more users…
Great first look :D
@BN Team: Will you also post the further discussions on those surveys? :)
@Katie: Already curious, how the outcome will be :)
This is good news.
Some companies do not seem to be getting the message though.
This morning my new Wacom intuos4 XL tablet arrived. I registered online and noticed as I filled out there survey about what programs I use, that 3DS, Photoshop, Gimp and Maya were mentioned but no reference to Blender.
Wacom is the main maker of high end graphics tablets that are used by graphics people. I was suprised not to see Blender’s name not there beside 3DS and Maya.
I think it’s important to note that, as they say, these are just people’s emotional responses to their own software package they already use. People don’t necessarily know the other software enough to compare objectively, so it’s basically all just about how much they like the software they already use. If you only look at the survey results, you might come under the assumption that Maya has poor animation features compared to the rest of the software surveyed, but conversely, Maya is well known to have better animation features than many other software packages, and as such is used for animation in many large scale motion pictures.
I’d be even more interested to see a survey comparison where they only surveyed people who were adept at more than one software package, and could adequately compare them, and then they gave their merits on both.
Really cool :) thanks for posting!
I was surprised on how Max was rated on value for money
If I think about it, I come to the conclusion that Max and Photoshop are equally hobbyist, judging by the huge amount of cracked software being used by hobbyists out there who deem Blender or Gimp too hobbyist for their greatness…
@ Corniger
On that you are 100% right.
The amount of people with illegal copies of those programs probably exceeds those with legal copies.
So leaving aside cost and comparing directly, Blender in some areas is well ahead of 3DS now. in some areas it is behind.
Blender appears to be able to handle bigger files than 3DS I have noticed on 3ds 2010 64bit.
Leaving aside the fact I am a fan of Blender as I admire the concept behind the program. I have been a user of 3DS since version 3.
Blender starting to become a direct competitor in some aspects at the level of 3DS, XSI and Maya in reality now, not just in the minds of its fanbase. I have noticed that Blender has spread well beyond its fanbase.
An example of where it is going is this.
I have used Blender with a student to set up her molecular biochemistry masters project in 3D as part of her presentation on her work, which got her a definate thumbs up from her lecturers, who have definately taken a look at Blender.
I do know that some physicists use Blender as well when doing presentations.
I have used it for archetectural design of houses for my family. The book Blender 3D, archestecture, buildings and scenary turns designing a building into archecture of all, alongside blender.
The true strength of Blender I believe to be its versatility. I have used Blender for projects that normally I would not consider throwing a 3D program at.
The only program that seems to be used by its users so diversely, is Lightwave. Then again I remember Lightwave on the Amiga and have noticed a lot of people I knew from bulletin boards back then seem now to be Blender users.
One of the things I would love to see someone from Blender development take a look at is cuba based computing by Nvidia. Rendering in an enviroment like that would put Blender onto a different level.
Nemesis: I don’t know about Cuba, but afaik, there are plans (for the farther future, though), to go OpenCL…
I might be wrong on that but the reason for not using Cuba probably is the limitation to Nvidia cards. you should be able to use any graphics card.
That will be allowed by OpenCL, at least when basically most people will have an OpenCL-enabled graphics card…
@kram2301
Open CL on all programs, operating systems and graphics cards, is something I would love to see. That would make life a lot easier.
The reason I mention Cuba is because it is very versatile and is starting to be used in a lot of laboratories. Also it is a good brute force option on a quadro FX and Tesla system. Not pretty but very effective.