The vfx in Amazon's Man in the High Castle were done in Blender. There's a pretty big cultural shift that would need to happen for Blender to become common place in the film industry, but I'm starting to feel optimistic.
https://www.blendernation.com/2017/02/23/man-high-castle-sea...
I must have missed that news, that showreel is phenomenal! Linked in the comments was a Reddit AMA with the VFX creators, including this really interesting reply on their choice of Blender:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5rvwo2/comment/dddidn...
Re:Blender 2.79: OpenCL on par with CUDA
by danmaz74 on Thursday April 13, 2017 @07:06AM
(#14105798)
Thanks for the data point and link, incredibly interesting!
Re:Blender 2.79: OpenCL on par with CUDA
by santaclaus on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @01:59PM
(#14100082)
Disney and Weta are both big on Maya for animation. Pixar uses their own custom software (Presto?) for animation, but I think character modeling is mainly in Maya. Also a bit of Z-Brush and Modo thrown in across the board, plus all the random software from The Foundry.
For effects most shops use Houdini.
I'm not aware of any major studios or effects houses using Blender, but that would be cool!
Re:Blender 2.79: OpenCL on par with CUDA
by tedajax on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @02:46PM
(#14100594)
Everywhere I've ever worked has been strictly (and almost religiously) a Maya shop. It's more than likely inertia since your content creators are almost always completely slammed and making them change up their workflows just isn't viable but I've definitely never seen professional animators use Blender.
Is this true in professional environments? I thought Maya was still far ahead...