Bernie's blog

The following is a few tips on how to change an entire studio to a Blender pipeline.
If you think things wont change... When I first arrived in Japan I was used to using TDI and Wavefront, then I had to change to Softimage, then Alias, then Maya. Things change and its best to be on the crest of the wave.
Toneplus is offering some paid Blender services if you need help in the changeover. The main thing is getting the rigs made similar to current packages so animators wont complain.
The other thing is it is good to have a partner like Toneplus. If you take on a project and need some rigs that you can modify to save money we can help. If you take on animation but your crew might be slow for the first few weeks we can help with the crew.
The main thing is to slowly get off the current software you are using. It's crap.

For the past few years Toneplus has moved its pipeline from standard 3d commercial packages to Blender.
It can take around 1 year to change the pipeline, so its probably best to start with a small project.
We can promise that once the conversion is done you won't want to go back to current 3d ware as they feel sluggish, the costs are not worth it, the updates are just more bugs to deal with. And modern subscription services seem like spyware that require staff names to be revealed to third parties.

As the full source is available Blender can be adjusted if needed
We have developed our own tools and our own internal version of Blender including our own headless eevee renderfarm.

Since adopting Blender we could also phase out some comp, and some vfx packages as well. The biggest surprise was the Greasepencil which is better than any commercial 2d animation package available today. All of these can interact, so if you render toon and need to retouch this can be done all in the same scene file.
Grooming hair and fur can all be done in Blender, need some tricks? Python is there.

Even today we are developing more toon and anime tools.
Development of new tools is fast and seamless using Python. Scripts and procedural tricks can be implemented just like the most popular commercial VFX package.

Of course we have old commercial packages available that we use for conversion.

We have noticed the uptake of blender is huge in some locations, firstly Brazil followed by North America. The slowest uptake seems to be in Japan and Asia.
Some larger overseas clients have started picking up Blender.

There can be some initial hurdles, here are some tips for the changeover:
1. Models can be imported from most packages so the modelling part of your pipeline is not urgent.
2. make it easier for your crew by giving them the option for adopting traditional hotkeys.
3. Its probably best to get rigs made externally from a studio that are familiar with traditional package rigs so the rigs have familiar controllers
4. lighting and rendering can be faster in blender, Blender is USD friendly so its possible to render in other packages. Like modelling this part of the pipeline can be postponed.

Oh and once you are up and running invest back in the community, we want open systems developed properly