[Ralfp]

Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg (jump to 1h mark)

[gmueckl]

Ton is underestimating the market considerably, but he's still right in that it's a tiny market. But what he misses is the fact that Autodesk isn't developing its DCC tools for profit. They are for prestige, that is, supported by image marketing rather than sales. So the dev headcount is probably too low as well.

[bluedino]

At $1500/yearly subscription, 30,000 licenses is $45 million a year. Don't foreget about everyone who works at Autodesk that isn't a developer but stil involved with the product. And then there are plugin writers (are there commercial plugins for Blender?) and resellers etc

[vonmoltke]

Autodesk does $2.7B/year in revenue. The revenue from 3DsMax and Maya is a rounding error compared to the revenue from their CAD products.

[jay_kyburz]

There was some unrest in the community just recently when Ton reminded everybody that Blender is GPL and that commercial plug-ins need to be GPL as well.