“Why Motion Designers Should Be Considering Blender 2.8”
Mograph Mentor shares an opinion piece on the advantages of Blender. While there’s not much news for regular readers of BlenderNation, I do feel that this kind of industry validation is published (much) more frequently since 2.8, and it definitely points to a great future for Blender!
I’m coming to believe that Blender could be a big part of the future for motion designers. We’re building our first courses with a focus on Blender in partnership with motion designer Remington Markham. We really do believe Blender has a place in the future of motion design.
Let’s examine 5 reasons why motion designers should be considering Blender as a 3d tool in their workflow.
I totally agree that Blender has huge potential for motion graphics. The biggest drawback is the lack of motion blur with EEVEE.
There is a free addon for motion blur in eevee
What is the name of the addon?
https://blenderartists.org/t/updated-july-19-2019-eevee-real-object-based-motion-blur-v0-4-3/1167129
I love Blender and I”m now using it on a daily basis. Motion Graphics, though, it is not there. Even with Everything Nodes, Animation Nodes, Sverchok, Sorcar et similia, it is still not suitable for that task. For one simple reason: simplicity. The reason why C4D has become the king in that field is because of how incredibly simple it is to mess around with MoGraph and always come up with something interesting in a matter of seconds/minutes. The aforementioned Blender tools instead require TD work. That’s the BIG difference between a motion graphic designer and a technical person.
I guess the confusion began with Houdini which is capable of incredible things and it’s being used in the motion graphics industry as well. That said, the production is day and night between Houdini and C4D: the latter can be used by experienced animators as well as designers. That’s the power of it. A designer can work on a pitch and then hand off the files to the animator who, at that point, can take the setup to the finalized product. Houdini doesn’t work that way. It needs R&D and advanced technical people (and usually quite expensive).
I’m afraid that’s where I see Blender going with the tools mentioned here. They require a deep understanding of how the nodes work. Not only that means a technical, advanced person needs to be assigned to that task, but also speed and time of execution are on two different levels.
I think this is a really valid point and good thought. C4Ds Mograph effectors are super approachable and easy to use for less technically oriented users. Hence their popularity. I’m curious to see where blender goes in that department. Regardless, it is bolstering blenders toolset and making it more viable in a variety of ways which is always exciting. I do think for the technically oriented all the new additions will open up some crazy experiments and techniques. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it’s a really great comment :)
i agree. Blender has made great redefining strides, in recent years. It’s very promising.
Though, as you’ve pointed it, it’s next major move should be simplification (more specifically, a smoother user experience with tighter integration and reinforcement of existing/available features).
Blender’s certainly headed in the right direction and reaching new heights at great rate, but for any specific 3D discipline/field’s purposes (such as motion graphics), it still feels a bit disjointed.
(But, hey, Blender’s getting there. Thanks to better development support than ever before.)
True. After seeing what crazy stuff some people made for the Nodevember challenge, I couldn’t help wondering if there was anything one could not do via nodes. I took a closer look at the node setups and it literally made me feel like a noob again after years of working in Blender. On the one hand, it’s a proof of node power, but on the other hand – should things necessarily be so complicated? Because at some point it gets absolutely unreadable.
I think this is true to some extent, but people often overestimates the using of nodes. Very often we build complex setups for “easy” things for shaders and rendering… so for a VFX the approach can be seen as something similar in my opinion. Hence it requires a more logical thinking, that’s for sure, but as someone who came from C4D I can say that is not that hard. What Animation Nodes lacks is someone to teach globally on a meanigfull and easy way.
“it’s next major move should be simplification (more specifically, a smoother user experience with tighter integration and reinforcement of existing/available features).”
Yes, yes, yes.
I totally agree, I work with people who use C4D and when it comes to animating arrays of objects and text C4D wins. Especially when it comes to animating text or giving text special attributes (without changing it to a mesh).
The biggest problem is there is no Motion Blur in Eeevee .Perhaps they need to get on this otherwise it won’t compete in animation .I believe it’s not a priority ..IT SHOULD BE
https://blenderartists.org/t/updated-july-19-2019-eevee-real-object-based-motion-blur-v0-4-3/1167129
Thank you for the links for this add on .I tried this back in July ,and i found it a very limited work around in Eevee not really what i needed. So i feel it simply is not good enough for where Blenders heading right now.Blender devs perhaps need to re approach Object Motion Blur in Eevee and write some official code for it.
I’m sure back in March 2019 it was working but they took it out of the build as it became 2.80 for reasons the Blender devs know best .
They seem to be all over the grease pencil.That has a lot of attention week in week out .
Object motion blur has had no love whatsoever,which makes it hard for us animators to unlock the power of Eevee as the alternative is collosal render times in Cycles.
I would say a lot of us animators feel it is vital they get to work on Object Motion Blur ..but as i have said in the thread earlier it weirdly is not a priority for Blender Devs .