Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

3D Modeling and Animation Market study

• 3D Modeling and Animation
  • Introduction
    • Methodology
• Executive Summary
  • Trends
    • Positive
    • Negative
• The market
  • Geographic Distribution
  • Segments
    • Film and TV
    • Stereoscopic 3D movies and TV
    • The independents challenge Hollywood
    • Game Development
    • 3D Worlds
      • Worlds summary
    • Visualization and Commercial Art
      • Rendering goes mainstream – an overview
        • Anark
        • ARTVPS
        • BunkSpeed
        • Caustic Graphics
        • Luxology
        • Rendering from Nvidia
        • RayScale
        • Mental Images
        • studio|gpu
        • RTT
    • Rendering summary
    • Physics
  • Segments summary
• Future indicators
  • Free 3D
  • Blender grows
  • Daz 3D
  • Luxology’s unlimited demo model
  • Microsoft sets Caligari free … and dumps it
  • Vendors try to streamline 3D modeling process with easy tools
  • Animeeple
  • Evolver
  • Game Salad
  • Wild Pockets
  • 3DVIA Virtools
  • The consumer opportunity
  • Subscription pricing draws flak
  • The Mac grows in importance
  • Exchange formats
  • Adobe extends 3D capabilities
    • Strata 3D
    • Daz releases 3D bridge for Photoshop
    • Maxon takes advantage of Adobe’s support for 3D
    • Digital Anarchy Announces 3D Object Creation Software for Adobe Photoshop
  • Mobile computing/lightweight gaming
  • Summary to trends
• Users
  • Professional
  • Casual
• Forecast
  • Summary
• Appendix
  • The products
• What’s new
  • Autodesk acquires Softimage and RealViz
  • 3DS Max gets major overhaul
  • Virtools
• Direct 3D modeling -- sculpting

Table of Figures

• Figure 1: DCC market value over time. The market is going through a slow down as the economy takes its toll on advertising and credit for filmmaking.
• Figure 2: The 3D Modeling and Animation market reached $237, an increase of 8% over 2007 when the industry reached $219 million. The market is expected to decline in 2009 as companies pull in spending on advertising and marketing.
• Figure 3: Film/TV and Game Development are giving back the gains they made in 2008. TV has been the hardest hit due to a reduction in advertising spending. Although the game industry has been relatively resilient in terms of sales, the inability of game developers to produce games efficiently has negatively impacted the industry and layoffs ripped through the game development centers in 2009. Likewise, the CAD markets have been severely impacted causing interest in visualizations to go down as well.
• Figure 4: The Film/TV segments are expected to see growth in 2010 as emerging markets recover and the advertising industry responds to growth in the U.S. market. Game development will grow but 3D game development could see slower growth as the industry grapples with efficiency issues.
• Figure 5: The 3D Modeling and Animation market reached a high of $237million in 2008.
• Figure 6: A look at market shares for 2009 – the major companies dominate the market and with Autodesk taking over 50% of the market. Yet, even as Autodesk solidifies its lead there is opportunity for smaller companies.
• Figure 7: The Mac market for 3D Modeling and Animation reached $35.3 million in 2008. The Mac has become an important platform for 3D modeling and animation. The Mac is a preferred platform for advertising agencies and for some video applications including independent filmmaking and advertising. It is not used much in game development because the Mac has not yet become a major platform for game play.
• Figure 8: Western Europe and North America have dominated the 3D modeling and animation market. Outsourcing content creation has been slow to catch on in many segments. We see that changing with India and Eastern Europe mounting determined campaigns to win new business.
• Figure 9: The two largest segments for 3D modeling and animation are game development and film/TV. However, commercial art has grown considerably and represents an opportunity for less established companies.
• Figure 10: The U.S. studios have seen their growth rates slow and revenues for the first quarter of 2009 have been down compared to last year. It’s interesting to note that the companies have diversified considerably with Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom all having divisions in movies, TV, games, interactive and other segments. However, their diversification has not insulated them from the fluctuations of world economies.
• Figure 11: The pace of the conversion to digital screens is picking up worldwide. The conversion to digital will enable less expensive distribution, better quality screenings, and ease the addition of 3D capabilities. US studios are aggressively pursuing the transition.
• Figure 12: The world is gaining on Hollywood. The MPAA refers to any film made outside its membership as “independent”
• Figure 13: Theater owners are actually seeing an upturn in 2009 thanks to the release of several blockbusters including Monsters vs. Aliens, XMen Origins: Wolverine, Up, and Paul Blart; Mall Cop. In 2008, ticket sales were down to 2.6% 1.36 billion in the U.S.
• Figure 14: on the basis of revenues, the game business looks like it’s booming but the game business is unique for the high expenses in development and marketing. The accompanying table helps draw a real picture. In addition, the spectacular jump in Activision’s revenues comes as a result of mergers combining Vivendi’s game business and Blizzard.
• SFigure 15: Game developers are spread out all over the world. The above chart includes all form of game development including casual games as well as 3D games.
• Figure 16: There are millions of people who visit online worlds regularly. If you add up the reported numbers, the total comes to over 41 million. We developed the chart by using reported population totals (which are invariably high), subscriptions where applicable, monthly totals, and page hits to get a more reasonable mid-range number. There is undoubtedly overlap between worlds but fans of worlds tend to settle down to a particular place.
• Figure 17: The revenue picture for 3D worlds looks quite different from the population picture. There are plenty of visitors who are willing to hang out for free but stop short of subscribing or buying virtual goods. For this reason game sites tend to do better revenue wise than chat sites.
• Figure 18: In our last CAD study published in 2007/2008 we estimated that there were a total of 1.5 billion CAD users worldwide. Although most of them are using 2D CAD, 3D CAD is growing at a much faster rate. Obviously, 3D CAD users are an interesting target market for 3D modeling and animation software makers
• Figure 19: A block diagram of the REYES renderer developed by Loren Carpenter and Robert L. Cook at Lucasfilm’s Computer Graphics Group, which became Pixar. REYES was further developed to become Pixar’s Renderman. Renderman is a hybrid rendering architecture that includes techniques for global illumination and ray tracing effects. (Published on Wikipedia).
• Figure 20: The Shaderlight renderer is currently available as a plug-in for 3ds max
• Figure 21: Users opinions about the value of the features in rendering software (Source: CGenie)
• Figure 22: There are a growing number of 3D modeling and animation products available for Mac users. We put the total of yearly users at around 47,000 people – a very respectable number for the market.
• Figure 23: We estimate the yearly revenues for 3D Modeling and Animation on the Mac to be approximately $35.3 million. Autodesk holds a very strong position in this market and that position is expected to grow as more users adopt programs like Toxik and Mudbox.
• Figure 24: Total user base for 2008
• Figure 25: Autodesk has the largest market share, but there is a healthy gallery of companies offering products. We pro-rated companies that we acquired since this study was last published. We put the number of professional on a yearly basis.
• Figure 26: Estimated market share for the primary suppliers of 3D software in the professional market in 2008
• Figure 27: Unlike most other markets the number of casual users is much smaller than professionals. Many casual users opt for free or very low cost software. We estimate the number of casual 3D users to be 84,593 with Blender and Daz 3D having the largest market shares.
• Figure 28: Estimated market share for the primary suppliers of 3D software in the casual market in 2008
• Figure 29: Market forecast for 3D modeling and animation software (JPR)
• Figure 30: Phantom Omni Haptic Device

Table of Tables

• Table 1: 3D movies on the calendar for 2009. In addition, there are plans to re-release movies in 3D.
• Table 2: The game companies are increasing revenue but for most of them, profits are not increasing
• Table 3: The above data was published in game developer forums and created by compiling numbers from post mortem articles in game developer magazines. It provides a useful snap shot of game development costs and time of development.
• Table 4: A representative listing of rendering products
• Table 5: Commercial modeling products vary by price and capability.