I am not exactly against paid software, in terms that I believe developers should be able to make a living writing software and I support that. However, when you have big companies like Adobe and Autodesk controlling things, they aren't actually looking out for users. While Photoshop is good, and does get new features, the basics of the program have not changed in like 20 years. But they want you to pay $10 (or more) per month when they are not even really updating things.
And Autodesk is even worse. They just buy up promising software and raise the prices. Maya cost $215/month. I mean, it is decent software, but that is crazy. I understand it is used in film and animated movies, so it is a higher end market, but that is still a ridiculous price.
Blender is better. The real-time preview and EEVEE and Cycles looks almost pre-rendered and update fast. And Blender was confusing at first, but once you learn the hotkeys it is actually very good and faster than Maya and better quality. Just look at this video I made in Blender 3.0, it is updating a ray traced render in only a few seconds.
It's worth spending a few months and learning it, it will be better in the long run.
