Poll Results - FOLLOW-UP & Thoughts (Patreon)

A big thanks to everyone for voting and leaving very clear comments about their reasonings for their votes in the last poll - I'd like to follow up with a second more specific poll - In my experience, it doesn't really matter what program you use to model, sculpt, UV, and Texture. Blender is more than powerful enough to warrant not leaving another software for most of those things. The REAL question is just HOW MUCH better or worse Blender's Rigging, Animation, MoCap, & FBX Export tools compared with Houdini's and (Potentially if it get's cheaper) Maya.

There's a large number of Blender users that don't plan to do 3D professionally, or create their own projects, they just want to have fun in 3D and render cool pictures. I believe these individuals make up the majority of the "Hobbyist" Blender demographic, and Houdini Apprentice is targeting this demographic specifically. It's available to everyone for free like Blender, but unlike Blender, it's a AAA software, completely procedural, and optimized to be perfectly compatible with the traditional FBX animation format for Unity and Unreal.

The biggest argument against Houdini is if you plan to create work professionally, or sell your work commercially, you do have to pay a fee or upgrade to the indie version. However, for the demographic that never plans to venture outside the "hobbyist" category with their work, I feel like this is a moot point. There's also the potential that Maya will follow suit with Houdini and target this audience as well, and create a free version to try and hit this same demographic. At which point, we will have 3 different software to choose from when it comes to Rigging/Animation.

So, I think the more accurate question to ask is, (Assuming you could still use Blender to create the Character Model/Sculpt) :
IF Houdini & Maya were both Free, AND did Rigging/Animation 3x Faster than Blender, How many of you would be willing to RIG your characters outside of Blender?

(P.S. I understand not all of you are in 3D for character Animation, but you are more than welcome to have a vote and share your theoretical opinion :)