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when you google what is the industry standard software for 3d modelling, what you will get is best overall is Autodesk Maya, and more posts of people asking the same question, its like there is no definitive answer.

but if you google what is the industry standard software for photo editing you get a solid answer and that is ” adobe photoshop”.

you could also ask people on the streets what program they use for photo editing, 99% will say photoshop, unless if they can’t get a license for it, and even then some will straight out pirate the program rather than using something free and opensource like gimp or Inkscape.

when a program is the industry standard it enjoys a monopoly no one can dispute, to many photoshop is not just a program its a verb, its the act of editing a photo, its so commonly used in conversations that Adobe has started warning the public against using there trademark as a verb, they have a full page about how you should not use photoshop in a sentence.

no 3d application or any other application has ever reached the popularity of photoshop, so it would not be fair or logical to consider photoshops popularity to be the standard at which we determine whether an application is industry standard or not.

but we can still answer this question by looking at what is the most used 3d application among film makers, studios or independent artists.

if you asked 10 random 3d artist their favorite 3d program and you will get 10 different answers and most of them will list more than one application as there favorite depending on the task they are working on.

will blender become the industry standard ?

questions like will blender become the industry standard popup everyday and the short answer is no, it will never, but neither will Maya, Max, or Cinema 4d.

unlike photo editing, the 3d industry is a collection of small niche industries like archviz, motion graphics, procedural generation, visual effects, simulation, animation and more, and these can also be broken down further into even smaller niches like, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation and the list can go on and on.

while a program like photoshop just has to be better than all the other applications at one thing like photo editing to be the industry standard, a 3d application would have to be better than all the rest at all the categorizes and subcategories listed.

it has to be great at archviz, motion graphics, procedural generation, vfx, simulation, texturing, rendering, animation and more, and that is the achilles heel for these great 3d application.

no single 3d application has been able to best all the others at everything and it seems no one is trying either and moreover being best is not enough anymore.

why being the best is not even enough

Alot of production houses have well established pipelines built to work with specific programs especially 3d programs that where popular around the creation of that studio. this is why maya has been the industry standard for animation for so long, though other applications provide similar features and somethings even better ones.

the open standard and exchange formats

to make the issue even more complicated, As a production house, unless if you have decided to only employ the old generation, its unlikely that all new artists you employ use the same application you use in your studio, and if you make it a strict requirement to only hire artists using a specific application, you are reducing the pool talent you can hire from and since studios are always competing for the same pool of artists, they have to be more flexible than the artists, and are always willing to compromise on what software they allow at there studio.

Thats why we are starting to see more industry standard exchange formats like materials X, USD and soon a standard for sharing procedurally generated content and nodes within different DCCs. so that a studio can have different artists using different applications with an easy way to share projects and assets seamlessly.

to top it all off, there is a thing call proprietary software, this is inhouse software built by studios to be used only by those studios, these programs are never available to the public, yet these companies employ from the public, this mean that it does not matter what application you learn, to these studios you will have to be retrained to use there own software in order for you to work with them.

in conclusion, dont stress on what application to learn, just learn making great 3d renders and every studio, every employee will do everything to accommodate you as the expert you are. most things you learn in blender are applicable in maya, cinema 4d and 3ds max, just render dont stress.

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