So today, let’s address this question once and for all: Is Blender suitable for movie makers? I know animated movies are still movies, but generally, when people talk about movies, they aren’t referring to animated ones. Most of the time, they mean live-action films shot with a real camera, rather than those rendered with 3D software. It’s important to make this distinction, otherwise, you might end up disappointed—not because Blender isn’t capable, but because you may be using it in a way it wasn’t intended to be used. By this, I don’t mean that Blender can’t be used by filmmakers; rather, to use Blender for movie making, you need to set it up differently or create a unique workflow and pipeline compared to when you’re using it for animated films.

say you are creating a movie like godzilla minus one, an you are a small team with limited time and budget, you have all the shorts and footage and you have chosen blender as your main software because of how versatile it is and of course because its free, obviously the best choice for a movie with alot of vfx shorts like godzilla minus one would be houdini, and at a yearly subscription of 260$, that does not sound too but, but thats only for one computer, but you will most likely need another program for animation like maya or 3ds max so add about $1000 bucks for that for every artist on your team, then you will need a texturing software like substance, a render engine, what am saying it can get expensive quickly so lets just stick to blender with this one.

We want to make a godzillar movie, so we need a city, making an entire city wether using software like houdini or blender is going to be an incredibly difficult and time consuming task, so finding a great city generator addon like the city generator can save you alot of time, it already comes with building, streets, roads, and some traffic, no the problem with the city generator addon is that the buildings it generates are not destructable, lucky for us, even in movies with lots of building destruction like godzilla, or paciffic rim, not all buildings get destroyed, when you want a destroyed buildling you can use generators like the procedurall destroyed building generator, this is great for showing the aftermath of all the destruction, this tool also has its limitation in that, it only gives you the aftermath not the destruction process, it does not simulate destruction, you wont see debris falling or the building its self collapsing, for that you will need something more dedicated like rbdlab its a blender addon for simulating rigid body dynamics in a more directable and more accurate way, so you can control the timing, the destruction style and more.

As you can see already, that even when you want to use free open source software like blender to create a movie, you are going to need a small budget atleast for addons to make your like easier, of course everything we have looked at sofar can be done from scratch without buying any addons, for example you can create your own city generator from scratch, topchannel1on1 has a free tutorial on how to make a basic city generator using geometry nodes on his channel, its not as realistic or as good, but thats something you can create in about 2hours or less, and if you know nothing about geometry nodes he also has a course that can take you through it easily.

there also free building generators that you can use in your projects to keep the cost low like this, the only problem is that most of these have not been updated in a while, so they may not work in the blender version you are using.

Another aspect of your movie that you can’t over look is traffic, a city like tokyo would have a llot of cars and people moving around, and of course topchannel1on1 has a youtube tutorial showing you how to create basic traffic and crowd simulaltion using geometry nodes, its easy for basic crowds but if you want something more advanced where cars and people avoid going each other, and cars stop for pedestrians and traffic lights, the Procedural Traffic  addon creates more detailed and more convincing traffic and crowd behavior.

Again most of these addons create base functionality like a fully developed city with the city generator, traffic simulation with procedural traffic, but its organized cities, normal traffic, but Godzilla in a city would just create abrupt chaos, so most of the time you have to do that manually, we saw you can create destruction with the rbd lab, to create dis order in your traffic, you may have to get hands on, you will have to hand animate some of the cars directly and let the procedural traffic addon, look at them as obstacles for other cars to avoid, the car ride is a great course for showing you have to animate fast moving cars with great camera moves to emphasize speed, and the blender vfx course is also a great course to show you how to destroy buildings without any addons, fracture them, make them fall and add a layer of dust over everything.

going with the godzilla theme, he usually leaves in the ocean, and oceans are way easier to render than cities, so having a good ocean simulation tool like physical open waters is really going to save you render time and work, it can add waves, water form and wakes incase you want to have ships moving in the ocean following godzilla, while this addon is good at create large water bodies like oceans and lakes, it does not create splashes or waves breaking, for that you are going to need something like flip fluids which is a more accurate and more advance simulation system with the limitation that its too slow for creating large water bodies, so you can use it to create splashes, or godzilla walking through water or closeups and for wider shots use the physical open water bodies addon.

going back to the original question, which was is blender for movie makers, the answer is an obvious yes, it has a motion tracking system built in, a physics system, a cloth system and a lot more, the addons am listing here are just tools to make the process faster and easier that way you can produce the movie on a reasonable timeframe with a small team, this does not mean blender is not capable by its self, because even more established software like houdini, maya, cinema 4d, 3ds max have 3rd party plugins that make them faster and easier to use, like zoo tools for maya, xparticles for cinema 4d, fume fx for 3ds max and more.

with all these plugins and addons, sometimes it fills llike these applications are not capable of much, but most of the times they have all the functionalites these addon provide, the problem is that that functionality is either hard to get to, or is limited, take an example of the sky texture in blender, its actually easy to use and is just 2 to 3 clicks away, but you don’t get any clouds, no animated sun or atmosphere, so the Physical Starlight And Atmosphere addon is a superior alternative with all those features and more, even gives you a night time with stars, a moon and more customization.

another great example is the landscape tool that comes with blender by default, you can use it to create different terrains like mountains, valleys, rifts and more but you dont get any materials with it, or trees, or bushes, or erosion, so true terrain becomes a better option, because it gives you more detailed landscapes with erosion support, materials, grass, trees basically a finished scene in a few clicks.

Sometimes, the base application provides the building blocks and expects you to construct everything from there. Addons often take things a step further. For example, Geometry Nodes is one of the best features ever introduced in Blender, alongside Cycles and Eevee. However, it’s essentially a collection of building blocks—nothing more. Many artists realize that Geometry Nodes, while powerful, may not be practical for everyone in its raw form. As a result, they create tools and systems on top of it.

Take the City Generator and the Destroyed Building Generator, for instance—both were built using Geometry Nodes. These and many other tools showcase the versatility of Geometry Nodes, which can be used to create virtually anything. However, building everything from scratch can be time-consuming. To save time, you can explore options like the 50 Ultimate Blender Addon Bundle, which includes a range of Geometry Generators for creating just about anything, alongside addons designed to assist you—such as AI tools for generating characters, texturing objects, and more.

If you’re interested in developing your own tools from scratch, my colleague TopChannel1on1 offers one of the most up-to-date courses on Geometry Nodes. It’s a great resource to help you build your own tools and generators.