Likelihood to Recommend Blender is an excellent tool for everything from simple to complex 3D animations, the creation of 3D images, etc. It performs excellently in all of these areas. In the realm of 3D modelling, animation and rendering, there is very little that Blender is not suited for.
Read full review I have been able to import an environment and create realistic lighting rather quickly by using the power of GPU rendering. Paired with its ability to create instances of geometry, it makes it easy to render a megacity environment in half the time. One issue with this is the clutter that can be made with connecting nodes.
Read full review Pros Creating complex polygonal geometries is very easy in Blender. Edit Mode and Sculpt Mode helps in creating non uniform surfaces for objects like rocks, surfaces, terrains etc. Blender can use various external plugins to make it work in more smoother way. For example to import any 3d object one can use sketchfab plugin and easily import the free assets from web after logging in. Blender has a better rendering engine known as Cycles, it is far more better than any other stock rendering engine which can generate realistic lightning, shadows and reflections. The animations can easily be generated with blender animation toolbar and also it incorporate any other animations made in any other software. The bone generation and its behavior of animations can be achieved easily in blender. Read full review Octane uses GPU rendering so it takes advantage of the video card. It gives you a good selection of options to tweak and refine your model rendering. It can use 3D instances so it doesn't overuse computer resources. There are plugins that can be incorporated into other 3D packages for rendering. Octane is particularly inexpensive compared to other 3D render packages. You are able to copy certain sections of nodes in order to create different iterations of the same environment or model. For example, changing the lighting or camera features. Read full review Cons It's really a hard question, but it could be: a game engine. Older versions used to have it; I would use it to simulate machines game-like. I'm struggling to find another one; maybe the fact that it is so powerful and has so many features that learning it can be daunting; better documentation WITH examples and/or a map of Blender capabilities would help to know where you are in terms of knowledge and the planning the roadmap to where you want to go. Precision modeling. Coming from CAD and using Blender as part of my design workflow, I'd love to be able to model inside Blender as I model with CAD tools. At this moment, it's simply impossible. Read full review Its user interface could use some improvement. It is node-based so there is a slight learning curve when using it as a beginner. It doesn't import FBX files. It requires a 3D model to have UVs in order to import it into Octane. At times it may not be as stable. Read full review Alternatives Considered We've only used the consumer (non-pro) version of
SketchUp , which we love, but is very limited in features and output capabilities compared to Blender. While Blender's learning curve is MUCH steeper than
SketchUp , it feels like truly complete, professional design software.
Read full review Although both have their pros and cons, Octane is far less expensive and it allows for more control over the geometry within a scene with better lighting and camera controls.
Read full review Return on Investment As it is a beginner-friendly software with increasing demand in the animation sector again, it positively impacts the business. Except in some specific cases, no one will use Blender on their own at a professional level. When I was a beginner, it took me a lot of time to learn, consequently designing the creation. But if we want to learn to master Blender, we can do it. As long as we have time and a lot of willpower, since, we repeat, it is not a simple program and hides thousands of tools and possibilities. Read full review Octane has had a huge advantage of GPU rendering. It's relatively inexpensive compared to other rendering packages. It allows for more control over the scene compared to packages like Keyshot. Read full review ScreenShots