> Companies like Pixar and ILM should be contributing to projects like Blender instead of developing proprietary internal tools and marrying themselves to packages like Maya that aren't terribly better than Blender, if they even are better at all anymore.
For anyone who might think the same thing:
1. This is not going to happen anytime soon.
2. The tools they use, proprietary or not, are better than blender. I know everyone loves to rally around open source software and Blender has benefited lots of people for a variety of reasons, but high end visual effects is not its place right now.
3. The large 3D programs are actually used by an enormous amount of people these days, not just the big VFX companies.
- Sony Pictures Imageworks open sourced Open Shading Language, Field3D, Alembic and OpenColorIO.
- Pixar opensourced OpenSubDiv
- Disney opensourced Ptex, BRDF Explorer, SeExpr and Partio
- Dreamworks open sourced OpenVDB
I wouldn't be too suprised if we would see an open source renderer within the next 10 years, especially if SPI is going to replace their in-house version of the Arnold renderer, as open source software has been extremely successful for SPI.
The open sourcing of C and C++ libraries in CG is awesome. But that is skewing the original point. Studios aren't going to replace their interfaces with blender and they aren't going to open source their own creation software. Most studios use a combination of maya, katana, 3ds, houdini and vray.
What you listed are mostly formats that are beneficial to everyone to share (and don't forget OpenExr). OpenSubdiv lets others match renderman's subdivision. Also Imageworks' open source push can largely be traced back to Rob Bredow I believe.
For anyone who might think the same thing:
1. This is not going to happen anytime soon. 2. The tools they use, proprietary or not, are better than blender. I know everyone loves to rally around open source software and Blender has benefited lots of people for a variety of reasons, but high end visual effects is not its place right now. 3. The large 3D programs are actually used by an enormous amount of people these days, not just the big VFX companies.