I have used, linux, gimp, blender, firefox, Oo, Octave etc. My major convern today is the digital content creation tools - Gimp & Blender. Why are they still not used in high budget movie making studios. why still maya, 3d max, photoshop, lightroom, vegas etc.
Why won't they use software which provides the same features(more or less) even when they are free?
Well first reason is training the employees, and established work flow, and tested & proven methods. Another answer is, no one will use the free software, if it just does what its commercial alternative do. It shud give more, so that the users are compelled to make a switch from a software which is proven to be versatile and they are already comfortable with.
Second reason is the ease of usability. well we all know, when a new programming language shows up, and if it does not follow the syntax of C/C++ or Java family - we curse them without giving any consideration to it design philosophies. It applies to softwares too. Free softwares, design stunning user-interface methods, tailored to the work it does. Blender3D is a great example. But users cannot be more repelled for any other reason.
Another reason, is support. Autodesk supports the user of their software and Adobe too. And Nvidia supports both Autodesk and Adobe with its hardware engineers to run their apps in nvidia hardware faster and stable. Well almost no free softwares can afford this. I know how hard it is to edit 4000x4000 image in Gimp without losing quality. also Gimp tools still not mature enough to be usable for serious work.
Another major reason and very important one, whenever a free open source projects starts to form, it tries to fulfil everything, its alternative does. Thats bad. This is why , it moves and improves very slowly, in overall measure. What they shud do, is that, they first try to one thing and be best in it in all the ways. Learning something new to do small things in new ways is easier than learning blender for serious work. Follow the unix philosophy - "do one thing and do it well"
Software does their job well...
Graphic tools
Game Engines
Take a look at mobile apps nowdays. Successful apps do one job and does it good.
With all that said, I use Gimp and Blender and this post is through firefox 22.0 in Fedora 17. Call me a crack - I don't bother. I use free software for all my work. and I was once cannot make my presentation, because I had the presentation in ".odp" format and no one had Oo in my class. after that I use pictures for all my presentations.
My entire point is, if you are going to invent a software
This started as a facebook update and turned out to be too long to be it. So, I made it into a blog post. Hope you don't mind. Please comment, the softwares I am missing to list and you want to add. I am more than happy to do.
Why won't they use software which provides the same features(more or less) even when they are free?
Well first reason is training the employees, and established work flow, and tested & proven methods. Another answer is, no one will use the free software, if it just does what its commercial alternative do. It shud give more, so that the users are compelled to make a switch from a software which is proven to be versatile and they are already comfortable with.
Second reason is the ease of usability. well we all know, when a new programming language shows up, and if it does not follow the syntax of C/C++ or Java family - we curse them without giving any consideration to it design philosophies. It applies to softwares too. Free softwares, design stunning user-interface methods, tailored to the work it does. Blender3D is a great example. But users cannot be more repelled for any other reason.
Another reason, is support. Autodesk supports the user of their software and Adobe too. And Nvidia supports both Autodesk and Adobe with its hardware engineers to run their apps in nvidia hardware faster and stable. Well almost no free softwares can afford this. I know how hard it is to edit 4000x4000 image in Gimp without losing quality. also Gimp tools still not mature enough to be usable for serious work.
Another major reason and very important one, whenever a free open source projects starts to form, it tries to fulfil everything, its alternative does. Thats bad. This is why , it moves and improves very slowly, in overall measure. What they shud do, is that, they first try to one thing and be best in it in all the ways. Learning something new to do small things in new ways is easier than learning blender for serious work. Follow the unix philosophy - "do one thing and do it well"
Software does their job well...
Graphic tools
- Animation - Maya, Motion builder
- C4D - Hair and fur
- Compositing - After Effects, Nuke, Fusion
- FX - FumeFX, Houdini, Realflow
- Image editing - LightRoom, Photoshop
- Modelling - Modo
- Rendering - Vray, Arnold, Octane, Renderman
- Sculpting - ZBrush,
- Tracking - Syntheyes, Boujou, PF Track
- UV - Ptex
- Video editing - Composer, Premiere, Vegas
Game Engines
- FPS - Unreal, RAGE, Quake
- RPS - BANG,
- Text editing - Gedit, Wordpad
- for programmers - Vim, Emacs, Geany, Sublime.
- Email client - Outlook
- Commenting system - Disqus
- Bookmarks - Digg, Reddit, Saved
Take a look at mobile apps nowdays. Successful apps do one job and does it good.
With all that said, I use Gimp and Blender and this post is through firefox 22.0 in Fedora 17. Call me a crack - I don't bother. I use free software for all my work. and I was once cannot make my presentation, because I had the presentation in ".odp" format and no one had Oo in my class. after that I use pictures for all my presentations.
My entire point is, if you are going to invent a software
- keep it simple
- make it good at doing it job
- get the people to use ur software, by not frightening them will hell a lot of features
- once you software have reached enough people, add features
- but think of what you software is going to be in the design phase itself.
This started as a facebook update and turned out to be too long to be it. So, I made it into a blog post. Hope you don't mind. Please comment, the softwares I am missing to list and you want to add. I am more than happy to do.
