Why isn't 3D more popular?

Not just among game devs, but even just artists/hobbyists in general? Watch this part from the interview for the guy who made Blender (the video starts at the relevant part and ends at 1:03:07):

He says that the entire 3D industry is making only 100 million a year and that in total it sells only 12k licenses (and that's not 12 thousand NEW licenses each year, mind you)! This stunned me. I would have thought that with the rise of indie gaming and new more user friendly ways to learning 3D such as youtube/tutorials that there would be more people into 3D, be it for game dev or just plain art/recreational purposes.

What gives?

 

it takes a lot of time to learn 3d, and until recently the tools to make 3d art were really expensive.

 

I understand the later but not the former. It also takes a lot of time to just learn art in general, and tons of people learn photoshop.

 

yeah, so lots of time to learn art multiplied by time to learn 3d art. Double whammy. you can be a great artist and suck at 3d because you didn't learn the tools properly. Or you don't keep up to date with them. Or you can fully understand the 3d tools but just not have much of a knack for art.

 

There are many factors at work here. I do believe @BIGTIMEMASTER has hit upon two of the biggest though. Engines and other programming tools have continuously come down in price over the years to the point that you can get started for no cost at all. By comparison artwork programs have gone up in price.

Just as an example when I was in high school a copy of 3ds max cost $3,495, but that cost was for a perpetual license that you could use for many years. Fast forward to now and 3ds max is costing $1,500 per year. If for some reason you can't afford to continue paying that's too bad. You won't be able to keep using it. The result is software that is massively more expensive.

Blender is available for free but then you run into the other problem he mentioned. Blender is a nightmare to learn for just about everyone who isn't very comfortable working with hotkeys and those who are comfortable with that approach are only at a slight advantage. Time spent learning the software is time spent not making games.

Let's step beyond the software though. Mobile game development is massive and there are more mobile titles coming out every year than PC. Mobile platforms have come a long way but the reality is that if you want to support the most platforms and have the least impact on system resources (ie battery life) you can't target high end graphics.

That leaves you with two basic paths. Either you can choose to go with 3D graphics and struggle to make them look as good as possible while accepting that they will still look very outdated, or you can just go 2D. Choosing 2D isn't just smart from the aspect of saving system resources. It's smart because it ages very gracefully.

Finally 2D artwork is in massive supply. Because the software (and physical art supplies) are much more affordable more people tend to learn it. I'm willing to bet you didn't know anyone in high school that was capable of 3D, but I'm willing to bet you knew several people that could draw 2D.

Go to Deviant Art and search for artwork pertaining to RPGs. There are insane quantities of it and most of the people who are creating them are willing to license them to you for very affordable rates often because it's simple enough that they picked it up as a hobby rather than their profession.

 

To put things into perspective, it has taken me 1.5 years just to get proficient with the standard 3d tools. And there is still plenty of modern techniques I have yet to practice. Much of this time has simply been learning the tools -- and not so much learning to make good art.

If I had just wanted to be a 2d concept artist or whatever, it would have been a few months to get good with photoshop and then just nothing but art.

 

3D apps aren't THAT hard to learn. They were in the past maybe, but not anymore with there being a bajillion different tutorials.

Which is also why it's not a profitable market for most devs. Too many other people trying to do the same.

 

Tutorials help. That said in the same amount of time I spent with blender just trying to get a basic feel for it, I was able to get to the point of modeling and animating basic objects in 3ds max. I just couldn't afford it.

 

There's other software in 3D that is quite affordable and is great for indie.
That is - ZBrush Core. Very affordable, and just recently it came with one of the most sought after things - Decimation Master to optimize your meshes to remove so many verts that it otherwise creates. Granted it's basic bare bones version of decimation master.

But yeah, ZBrush is quite an amazing piece of software. I can't think of anything it can't do, and it offers perpetual licenses (last I checked), so even if you didn't get 'Core' version for like 150 dollars (something like that), could be way off - but it's still cheap.. But the full version is like 850...

It can do Low Poly, High Poly, etc.

I really don't know where I'd be without the ZBrush toolset.

There's also Sculptris, which is free, but a dumbed down version of ZBrush...

There's also GMax, which is the free version of 3Ds Max (dumbed down as well, and don't support FBX, but has 3rd party plugins for it).

There's tons of options out there outside of 3Ds Max, Blender, Maya, etc.
It's just the matter of finding them.

 

For some people (that I know, online or offline) jumping from 2D to 3D is quite intimidating, I usually say to them it only a matter of additional 'D', but it seem like it is a big leap of faith to jump from 2D to 3D.

 

For a indie 3D can be easier. For example animations. With 2D you need to make each animation hand made. In 3D you animate the bones and the skinned mesh just reflects that, can even be done proc only (we do it alot). etc, etc.

 

I had something all prepared, I get so fired up about these topics. But at this point, who cares?

 

A 2D program like Photoshop can be absorbed to the necessary degree to make basic art in an afternoon, less time if you are using it with a stylus, or with a touch-screen tablet. (which allows for more intuitive controls) And a lot of the skills you need for drawing in a program like Photoshop can be picked up and perfected beforehand using more traditional media. (pen, paper, pencil, crayon, etc...) The rest is details, and can be learned as needed. With 2D you can go from zero to functional in a matter of hours, and in about a month you can be truly capable.

For any given 3D program, you won't be making game-ready models in hours. You probably won't have a game-ready model inside of your first week of using it. You'll be lucky to have a single game-ready model in your first month of learning it. And it will be several years before you feel that you are truly "ready" for full-time production. 3D software is far more technical, far less intuitive, and way, WAY more complex. And however complex making 3D art is, it is even more complicated to make game-ready art. That usually requires optimization, which is a discipline all on its own.

And all of this is on top of the fact that 3D graphics take way longer to produce than 2D graphics. Going for minimalist 2D, or even more complex 2D augmented by some rudimentary 3D is far cheaper than going for full 3D. 3D art takes a lot of time and effort to craft, even more so if you want it to be good.

All of this is coming from me. And I'm very enthusiastic about 3D art. I taught myself to make 3D models and animations back when I was in college. Things are way better for 3D hobbyists now than they used to be, but they still aren't easy. Learning 3D is time consuming, even under ideal conditions.

 

I don't know about procedural animation, but 3d animations are "hand-made" as well. And before animation there has to be rigging, which is a highly technical task...

Drawing the same sprites in multiple poses is just a matter of time (and probably being clever enough to reuse things, build a library, etc.)

 

I think there probably is, but it's just that they're (we're) all using Blender instead.

 

Bah, f*ck it. Here's my two cents.

Are you expecting/suggesting that the 3D industry's revenue should be driven by the rise of indie game developers?

I think there are two very different ideas here, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.

Like Andrew Price was suggesting in that video, there is a signficantly larger number of Blender downloads today than there are new subscribers to the major commercial 3D packages.

To me, I think the 3D industry gets what they deserve. Those sales numbers sound abysmal and I'm glad. If 5-10 years ago they kept/lowered their prices to a reasonable level that indies/hobbyists can afford, and not just other commercial studios, I would still be considering it, perhaps even have bought it by now. But once they moved to the subscription model, I gave Autodesk the finger, and went full-blown Blender.

There is absolutely no reason now for indies/hobbyists to go the Maya/Max route. The latest build (2.8) of Blender is so ridiculously mainstream now, that I can only expect better things moving forward.

I hope Autodesk finally gets to a point where they take losses year-over-year, that forces them to change their business model. They tried it with Maya LT, and I don't know, I think it's more reasonable, but it's still not as good a price as Blender, especially with as good as Blender is now. Modo's pricing is actually pretty fair, but still out of the reach of a lot of hobbyists. ZBrush is pretty good too, but I confess I don't know much about its competitiveness with the other packages, because I usually hear about ZBrush being more of a supplement to a primary 3D DCC.

Anyway, my point is, there are two major aspects to this discussion. First, the price of 3D packages being a barrier to entry, and secondly, the skill required to make stuff being a barrier to completion. You would think that as 3D packages make things easier/more powerful to make stuff, that the price would increase for those packages. Blender is breaking this paradigm in a good way for users, and Autodesk is breaking this paradigm in a bad way for users.

As far as 3D art/animation goes, you're right, it's not that difficult. It's pretty easy to understand basic 3D modeling, animation, texturing, and shading. Maybe some of the aspects that throw some artists off is their inability to spatialize, because not every painter can sculpt, and vice versa. On top of that, when dealing with complex 3D models, you tend to use show/hide/x-ray a lot, but that really isn't any different from show/hide layers in 2D DCCs.

However, if you're talking 3D game development, it's far more challenging. You get into collision volumes, optimizing meshes, LODs, inverse kinematics, especially with humanoid interactions like in a fighting game, dynamic skinning for custom character creation, which means building individual appendages and/or apparel, which also means testing all permutations of those appendages/apparel/animation/body type. Basically, the 3D assets an artist creates for a game have to conform to the "contracts" for the game engine to consume, not just loading, but fully functioning in the game. And it's this sort of foresight which leads a lot of indie developers to weigh out their options before embarking on production.

 

It doesn't matter what program or tutorial you are using. 2D art will be faster to pick up then 3D art. A four year old with MS Paint can make a go of 2D art. There is no equivalent pipeline simple pipeline for 3D art.

 

Well, have you ever tried Blender? The entire UI is an utter mess, mainly because the app itself is heavily focused on hotkey usage.

 

This. I have seen solid recommendations for how to improve the UI only for the core developers to completely reject it.

 

They DID completely redo the UI, some years ago. The "Blender is a nightmare" thing is an old idea that hasn't really been true in a long time. If you can use Unity, you can use Blender. Any difficulty mostly comes from the fact that there are a bazillion things you can do, but you manage that by ignoring it all and just focussing on learning one thing at a time. (Which is also true of Unity.)

--Eric

 

i haven't used blender, but I don't really understand the "it's hard because you have to use hotkeys" sentiment. It's not like if you are new to Maya you will be able to understand how to use it just because there is buttons with names...half the operations in maya require you to select things in a certain order -- and it's different depending on the tool -- and the only way to understand this is to have somebody show you or read the manual yourself.

In any application you end up doing all your work with hotkeys anyhow. Seems like blender is just trimming the fat. In any case, 3d isn't hard to learn because the appliciations are unecessarily complex, it is hard to learn because computers are idiots and you have to tell them everything.

 

I don't remember the old UI, but I do remember that the improvements that came with the new one didn't help me.

Unity has wildly different approaches to creating an interface and interacting with it. Unity is almost entirely driven by the mouse while Blender is almost entirely driven by the keyboard. What's ironic is that I thoroughly enjoy keyboard heavy roguelikes but apparently I've been unable to learn Blender. It just doesn't click for me.

Regardless of all of this though the improvements coming with Blender 2.8 look like a solid step in the right direction. For once it looks like a professional program to me and not the usual "everything needs to have a button" result that tends to come with open source.

https://www.blender.org/2-8/

 

It's inherently more complex because it tacks an extra dimension onto the work. Instead of just dealing with two axis, you instead have to constantly worry about three. It's just one extra dimension, but that extra dimension creates an exponential increase in complexity.

2D pixel graphics are basically just big mosaics. 2D vector graphics are line work defined with math. 3D graphics are both of those combined, and extrapolated out into 3 axis.

And of course, there is the fact that you have to already have a capable knowledge of 2D graphics before you can even begin learning 3D graphics. Those UV maps don't paint themselves.

 

I have never understood the "some people can paint but not do 3D" argument. Some people aren't technically savvy but there is just literally no reason a person that can paint well can't also make good 3D models. Panting/drawing conventionally is actually WAY more hard than 3D modeling because you don't have the benefit of being able to just rotate around models while adding details in 3D. Drawing means you have to do EVERYTHING and there are no fancy tools to make things easier. The best 3D modelers are almost always (if not always) also good at traditional drawing.

 

Some people are simply better at some tasks than others. It's just how it works. I was able to pick up coding at a young age with very little effort (granted my initial code was awful, but it did get the job done) whereas some people struggle to pick up the basics of coding and end up having to rely on visual scripting.

 

But in order to draw you need the ability to visualize it in your head. If you can do this, why would it not be possible to make 3D stuff? I just don't understand what skills might be involved in 3D that are too hard for somebody who can draw conventionally, when conventional drawing skills should logically carry straight over into 3D. The only thing I can think of is just not being very good at working with computers, but that doesn't really have anything to do with lack of artistic skill.

 

Just about everyone (short of people with oddities in the way their minds work) can visualize objects in their head. Being able to visualize the object is only part of the problem though. You need to be able to bring it into the program and that's where skills, talents, etc play their part.

Being able to use your tools to achieve results is just as important if not moreso than artistic skill. After all you're not much of an artist if you can only visualize the scene you want to create.

 

I don't understand this statement. "3D industry" are 3D software development companies? Revenue made by all 3D artists around the world can not possibly be included in those numbers, correct?

 

Correct, and the numbers felt off to me until I looked up Autodesk and discovered that they were nearly $600 million in the red last year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk

 

Not all painters are sculptors. And not all sculptors are painters. While it is not uncommon for there to be overlap between the two disciplines, one does not necessarily make you good at the other. Often times, being extremely good at one will mean that you are weaker at the other. I've known many talented painters who never want to touch clay. And I've known gifted sculptors who were mediocre at sketching and painting.

And while most artists are able to visualize, not all of them visualize in 3 dimensions. Someone with a higher degree of 3D spatial reasoning is going to find 3D modeling easier to get into. But a gifted painter does not necessarily have those skills.

 

To be honest, I haven't used Blender in a while. The last time I worked with it, the UI looked like this - as usual:



(Screen taken from here)

Even Unity looks cleaner... But rumour has it that Blender's UI gets an overhaul in version 2.80 (see Ryiah's post), which looks quite nice.

 

Which release? Because the positive experience I had was with the very old releases of 3.1 (1999) and 4.0 (2000). Back when it wasn't owned by Autodesk.

 

You are just speculating and making wild assumptions. This is useless. Why don't you take some time to learn about 3d, and also take some time to try digital painting in photoshop. Then you'll know. If you are a game developer, even if you never do anything but code, the knowledge you'll pick up will still be beneficial.

 

Already been practicing with 3D and drawing for almost 1.5 years now.

 

and you think drawing with correct proportions is more complicated than building an optimized game asset? and that all good 3d artist are also good at 2d?

One of those is subjective I guess but the other is absolutely untrue.

 

Yes, it looks complex if you deliberately have lots of stuff open. Just close the stuff you don't need and it looks much cleaner. Just like you can open tons of windows in Unity if you want, and it looks horribly complex. Because it is, and that's why I mentioned focussing on one thing at a time.

--Eric

 

You guys should seriously consider checking out the Blender 2.8 Beta. It's gone through yet another major overhaul that's more in line with other "unofficially standard" conventions of 3D software.

 

this ^^^

all the major 3d apps are similar enough it's just a matter of user preference or organization level considerations as to which one you will use.

here is maya. Top image is "default" workspace. Bottom image is how I usually work. 90% using hotkeys and quick menus.

 

ok.... these programs are created to do a certain job. They are not created for low-attention span gamers to have fun with... most of the applications have been around for enough years that they are pretty streamlined and good at doing what they are designed to do. What you are arguing about here? The way beginners ascertain what is useful is by learning from experienced people. i.e. doing tutorials, asking questions, and practicing diligently.

 

Wished that was the case for me. I can't even hardly hand-paint 8-bit sprites from NES days. Even then I barely can do it. But at 8 years old I opened up GMax (Free version of 3Ds Max) back when Discreet made it and was making simple but basic 3d objects. Toss me into a 2D application back then or even today and I wouldn't even know where to start to make anything (decent), literally - 8-bit sprites are hard for me lol.

If it wasn't for tools like Substance Designer/Painter, I'd be out of luck when it came to making textures (hand making at least), it's not hard to take a photo and crop it up and make it seamless lol.

 

Blender is hard to learn because the ambient occlusion factor slider influences the strength of the AO bake despite being greyed out.

I know that's only one very specific and small example, but the interface is riddled with similar needlessly unintuitive things like that. Like the Cycles baking system was just crudely bolted onto the side of the existing interface with little consideration as to how end users would interact with it.

It was only version 2.78 or so that shift-select worked in the outliner. Before that, you had to use box-select with the b key to multi-select things. Could you imagine not being able to shift-select in the Unity Hierarchy?

Still, It's good and powerful software for free, and 2.8 looks great.

 

all of the 3d DCC's have awful bakers. Use substance or the best is marmoset toolbag. Seriously, if you are doing any baking at all toolbag is worth ten times it's price.

 

If you're so much of a beginner with computers that you don't understand the concept of "closing windows", you're going to have a hard time with a word processor, never mind a 3D app, so I'm afraid I can't consider that to be a valid objection. bobisgod234 just posted a couple examples of valid objections.

Anyway, the real difficulty with all 3D apps is that you're trying to create something that by definition is three-dimensional on a two-dimensional display. Which is probably why you sometimes find people sculpting things in real life and then scanning them. Even with the necessary clean-up, it can be a simpler and faster way to do it. Perhaps VR will help with this.

--Eric

 

I know, but it just seems like that if the interface wonkyness and unintuitiveness was improved, it would be much more usable. After all, Cycles is quite capable of outputting good results.

 

I don't understand how this sort of thing happened to 3D. I really do hope that Blender takes the bottom out of what looks more and more like some kind of price-fixing scheme.

As far as 3D development being hard compared to 2D, I don't really believe this. Sure there are more steps involved, but steps being involved doesn't necessarily translate to something being demanding skill-wise. In fact, I think drawing something from a lot of different angles takes a lot more raw visualization and brain-to-hand skill than creating a 3D asset from a 3-view or something like that.

I've been drawing here and there my whole life, and I could never come up with something that looked more beautiful than the Embraer Tucano I made when I first opened Blender.

I also don't really go along with the idea of Blender being bad because of its UI. Quite frankly, clicking on menus is a horrible way of doing things unless you want to be there forever. I can't even imagine what it would be like to use menu buttons for any substantial part of modelling, the very thought of it is painful.

 

yeah. i'm not a blender user myself but i keep an eye on it and it seems to be slowly but surely getting better. it is entirely user made, so can't really complain about that.

but seriously -- get toolbag if you do much baking at all. it's like $150 for a perpetual license and it makes baaking not only stupid easy but fast and very high quality. There really isn't anything comparable.

 

Therein lies the difference between the two programs. Where Unity's complexity slowly increases as you take advantage of the features it has, Blender is complex from the very start. Would you throw someone into the deep end of a pool to teach them how to swim? Or would you start off simple and let them expand their toolset as they familize themselves with it?

 

well, you should write your detailed complaints to autodesk then. Or create a plugin for blender. Otherwise, the only choice is to suck it up and learn how to use the existing programs.

as for me, i used tutorials. And i'm pretty average intelligence so i'm sure that if i've been able to figure it out most other people could to. It's just a matter of dedication and patience.

 

Oh, come on, nobody's that helpless. If I'm starting out and I want to make a cube, and there are a bunch of texture and animation windows open for some reason, I close those windows and focus on the cube. I learned Blender with the original UI, or rather just the parts of it I needed, and even that still wasn't as hard as some people want to make it out to be. And I'm far from an expert.

--Eric

 

You need to spend more time in Getting Started.