[RyanHolliday]

Played with it a bit a few years ago. For what it is (free 3D software), I think it does fine. But at the same time, I think there's a reason it's not really being used professionally in the film industry (disclaimer: it wasn't the last time I looked, anyway).

[cryptoz]

Blender was used to storyboard in Spiderman 2, so it's...getting closer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Use_in_the_m...

[zaphar]

blender is used a lot more in the industry than you probably know. As one already mentioned it was used to do the animatics for spiderman 2 and it's used in a number of small admination shops for the smaller illustration and animation markets (adverts, short films, stills)

Studios usually don't advertise the tool used in a production to the general public. The trend is shifting in favour of tools like blender though. Blender is also doing a lot of heavy marketing to those segments through their open movie and game projects. I can see a day in the future where studios contribute significant developer time to a project like blender in lieu of expensive licenses for something like Maya or 3DS.