

For example, Blender is missing Max and Maya’s ability to make additive adjustments to meshes while preserving the UV’s. There are of course features present/missing within each program.

Once you get to know all its shortcuts you can model and iterate blazingly fast, and if you utilize the modifiers you can do it in a fairly non-destructive way too. I’ve been using a combination of Blender/Maya/Max for about 5 years now, and despite being free, I’ve actually found Blender to be the fastest and most intuitive one out of the three. I could however see Blender becoming the standard tool for indie studios, primarily because of the financial gain from using free, open-source software. What I do think we’ll see is more studios accepting Blender as an industry-standard tool alongside Maya/Max.

George Garton: A lot of AAA studios have custom tools and scripts that are built to work with Maya/Max etc, not to mention all the employees who would need retraining.
