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Aside from all the usual and well-deserved high praise I'm seeing, I feel like there's something more worth pointing out: Blender has made 3D work much more "m

Aside from all the usual and well-deserved high praise I'm seeing, I feel like there's something more worth pointing out: Blender has made 3D work much more "mainstream". I see many videos/pictures/tutorials with views in the millions(!), and much more overall interest in using the software. Not just the pretty visuals and talented people, but the whole program itself seems to be gaining traction with the more "normie" crowd. That also made me realize something else: Blender is now the default for anything that's not extremely high-end/resource-intensive. If you ever hear about anyone doing any kind of 3D work, they're probably using Blender. And this has creeped into the mainstream in a way only very established brands like Coca-Cola have. Nowadays, "Blender" might as well mean 3D photoshop/illustrator for most people.

greenknight 2y ago
I have been working in the CG / 3D industry for quite some time... when i first started about 15 years ago... Maya was the default... everyone knew it, it was THE default. That being said we have been on blender since 2.5 days. I was talking to someone on the weekend, and found out they were studying animation... i was like oh so youre using Maya? they were like whats maya? There has been a massive shift. I think there was a new era brought about when 2.8 was released. With it, they really pushed their dev fund, which helped them to get better, which made them bigger, which got them more donations, which made them get better. Cyclical loop. Im excited to see where they go next.
- larusso 2y ago
  For me 20 years ago there was also the fight between Maya and Max. But yes Maya was the standard. Our company switched also to blender which would have been crazy 10 years ago. It’s an awesome story for Blender and it community and of course the people given their heart and some into this software.
- xmprt 2y ago
  I remember hearing about Maya when I was studying in college. It's was so expensive and essentially unobtainable unless you were in the industry. Blender has democratized 3D modeling and animation so much.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Everyone I heard about that did graphics or 3d modeling as a non-pro pirated the software. In hindsight, these companies priced themselves out of the market, because you can't compete with free. And they underestimated hobbyists.
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    I would argue it was Amiga and PC (windows NT) that did that due to affordability of the machines and rampant piracy. I worked with 9.5 versions of software (Poweranimator) that later became next iteration of it called Maya 1.0. Poweranimator, later Maya, and Softimage (retroactively called SI|3D since there was XSI later) were the golden standard. One for animation (Softimage) the other for everything else. Prices were similar. This is mid to late 90's - ~$15k for base software and then around the same for each of the modules like Kinemation and Dynamation. You'd run up, with discounts, to like 30-40k in 90's bucks without SGI machine itself. You were basically facing a $100k investment per workstation if it were Indigo2 or later Octane. To top it off, there were things like IFFS from Autodesk like Flame which were ~3-5 as much. On the other hand you had an Amiga with Lightwave or Cinema4D or later Windows NT box with 3dsmax which were, everything accounted for, ~2-8k all around. Blender started out on SGI btw. I've exited the space since, since it's a crap and nasty business, but kept it as a hobby. Personally, I've had a lot of problems getting into Blender over the years, especially since the great UI consolidation of all of major 3D apps in early 2000's. Blender was just different, but not Zbrush different. There was just something off with it that made my muscle memory angry. Somewhat like Gimp. However, recently that has changed. Revamp of few key areas in Blender made it actually quite easy to get into it and knowledge of all the other apps over the years made it a one-week transition. I still prefer animation in Maya though. It's an old friend, after all. We'll see until when.
- arlcode 2y ago
  Obviously Autodesk is massive beyond Maya and animation. Do you expect this to influence their profits significantly? If yes when? Did they already "react" to Blender (e.g. by speeding up development)?
  - mistercheph 2y ago
    No matter how large the lead may be today, autodesk (and next-in-line Adobe) are case studies in why OSS will always win given enough time because although OSS can suffer from many chronic and debilitating diseases, they rarely catch the fatal ones that plague commercial software development. Yes, the OSS development structure leads to projects that lag behind proprietary solutions for amounts of time that are measured in decades, but nobody will ever have to re-write GIMP from scratch because the market had a bad hair day and somebody got acquired by a sovereign wealth fund that gets bored and runs the project into the ground. That doesn't change anything about the fact that e.g. GIMP, or freeCAD suck today, but someone(s) will almost certainly still be carrying those torches in 50 years, or the torches of superior FOSS competitors. And in the next 50 years, Adobe and Autodesk will almost certainly suffer total death or become skeleton crews that only service legacy clients, and when that happens, all of the collective human talent that went into building those tools and human experience into mastering their use will burn up into the screaming void while GIMP chugs along, putting out a release candidate for their GTK4 port.
    - baq 2y ago
      On the contrary I wouldn’t write Autodesk off anytime soon. I’ve recently gotten into the 3d printing hobby and Fusion is not miles ahead of oss offerings, it’s in a different galaxy and it has a very generous free tier for folks like me. Most importantly I don’t see a cross section between oss developers and cad teams to drive the collaborative features. I don’t think the critical mass to get this going exists.
      - therein 2y ago
        > Most importantly I don’t see a cross section between oss developers and cad teams to drive the collaborative features. I don’t think the critical mass to get this going exists. Replace CAD with 3D modelling and animation and that was my genuine opinion 15 years ago about Blender. That being said, OSS projects can definitely go in the wrong direction but since history is preserved, at least someone else can come and fork before the codebase takes the wrong direction.
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  There's a great lesson here. People will want to use what they learned, and if they can't learn on your software, they won't be inclined to try it later. It doesn't really matter for the first five years or so of your company, and that's longer than most startups exist, but once you're #1, you need to start thinking about the pipeline of new people. There's not a lot of motivation for individual employees (even CEOs) to think this way because they probably won't be in the role by the time it matters, but it's important. Would Blender have taken off as fast if Maya had a free tier? I doubt it.
  - tobr 2y ago
    On topic, this excellent video essay (?) that’s been making the rounds recently[1]. Highly recommended. 1: ”For-Profit (Creative) Software” by EndVertex https://youtu.be/I4mdMMu-3fc https://youtu.be/I4mdMMu-3fc
    - rolandog 2y ago
      Ahh, sorry, didn't see you had also mentioned this excellent essay. D'oh.
    - Ray20 2y ago
      I think this is a very weak essay. The author has zero ability to analyze, self-reflect, and think through her actions even one step ahead. The video literally starts off by complaining about how expensive the software is while simultaneously talking about how heavily she invested in learning it in college (knowing how expensive it is). And then, for some reason, she says that her instrument was taken away from her (the conditions were transparent from the very beginning). Furthermore, after graduating from college, when it became obvious that studying expensive software had been a huge mistake, what does she do? SHE STARTS TEACHING IT! Thus moving from the category of victim (doubtful, but okay) to the category of part of the problem.
      - tobr 2y ago
        Classic victim blaming this. She’s trying to enter an industry where certain tools are considered the professional choice. Her skills become tangled up in those tools, and then she’s priced out of using them. Using another tool probably wasn’t an option as an attempt to start a professional career. This is exactly the problem the video is all about, in so many ways.
- n3storm 2y ago
  Looking at you Adobe (¬⤙¬ )
- noduerme 2y ago
  No love for Cinema4D? I don't do 3D professionally, but I've played with it since the 90s (Strata 3D, Infini-D, RenderMan, Playmation). I've subbed in as an artist on some motion graphics projects here and there. I've never found anything as comfortable as Cinema4D, to me. For software with such a vast number of options, Maxon makes the UI somehow fairly comfortable. And every time I've tried to play with Blender, it seems extremely daunting.
  - dagw 2y ago
    I used to work in the field and Cinema4D seemed to be the go to tool for just about every solo freelancer in the business. Yet I basically never saw it at any studio I ever ran across.
    - noduerme 2y ago
      That's very interesting. I have a friend who runs a small studio (4-5 motion designers) and turns out work for dozens of TV and streaming shows, (as well as major sports events and awards shows). They only use Cinema4D. But I think it's more comfortable for people who come from 2D motion graphics (AfterEffects). Also, I think once you're locked into Octane rendering servers you would not want to change.
  - brulard 2y ago
    25 years ago as a teenager, having no access to hi-end software, I downloaded manual for Cinema 4D and read it start to end. I used imagine 3D on my Amiga at that time. It took minutes just for the preview of the material to render. Few years later when finally got a pirated copy of Cinema 4D I found myself understanding the software quite well just from the manual and until today I find the interface very nice and user friendly. I'm glad current Blender is quite similar in this regard.
- yobbo 2y ago
  Maya was always pirated by amateurs. The reason it fell out of fashion is probably because torrenting/pirating stopped being seen as "appropriate" for amateurs or learners.
- 0xbs0d 2y ago
  I started doing 3D on the Amiga so I grew up using for the most part Lightwave and later moved to Softimage (until those cunts at Autodesk killed it). I also managed to get a copy of Maya 1.0 beta (it was 0.9x something) from a friend that had friends at a big studio. I remember how everyone was very into 3DSMax for the longest time. Then everyone was into Maya. Briefly some people even switched to Modo. Blender has come a long way from v2.x where some people started to use it. It's brilliant seeing how many people have adopted it. I also noticed a strange shift in knowledge. Like something has been lost in translation. Many 3D concepts are getting rediscovered today by a generation that never heard of 3DSMax, LW, SI, etc. It's a fascinating.
pram 2y ago
I've been learning Blender to make reference objects for my drawings, so this is definitely true. It's simultaneously pretty easy to learn the basics, and also extremely daunting because of the breadth of the features lol.
whatever1 2y ago
Question why photo never had OS software of commercial caliber? Only GIMP comes to mind which was never even close to the commercial folks
- lrem 2y ago
  There’s Darktable which is a pretty good alternative to Lightroom. When I looked into it a couple years back, a friend with Darktable was able to get the same results as I with Lightroom, with the same amount of effort. But when I tried, well… The effort to re-learn was too big, cheaper to just keep paying Apple. I imagine now they lag on AI features too.
  - imhoguy 2y ago
    Lightroom is made by Adobe, not Apple. Here I would like to also mention RawTherapee, also open-source, together with Darktable (with is more newb friendly) they are great software worth to spread.
  - omnimus 2y ago
    Darktable pretty messed up ux thanks to mismanagement, lack of direction and hobby programmers that often leave the project. (there is even someone trying to fix it with a fork https://https://ansel.photos/ https://https://ansel.photos/).
    - makeworld 2y ago
      What's wrong with it?
      - agos 2y ago
        I applaud both Darktable's and Ansel's efforts, but they both have a looooong way to go with their UI. Spacing, contrast, fonts, it looks like they never received contributions from people with design skills. Blender looks way more polished in comparison.
TimByte 2y ago
It's not just the software's power, it's the culture around it
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Blender has a setting for industry standard hotkeys. I hope we see a time when other software gives us a Blender setting.
mnky9800n 2y ago
The palaeontologists on the floor above mine have posters everywhere about using blender to study dinosaur locomotion. I think they do 3d scans of fossil bones and the. Try to recreate musculature. Blender is everywhere.
tmaly 2y ago
My 10 year old daughter went through the popular Blender Donut tutorial. She also loves to watch some of the short anime made with Blender based on some Roblox games. Open source is amazing on this aspect.
aldanor 2y ago
I was also surprised to discover there's basic Blender classes for 10 year old kids as an introduction to the field and they can pick it up quite well
hmmokidk 2y ago
There is a large measure of truth to this. Also saw a non techie casually mention using Gimp. These tools are reaching more people, slowly but surely.

greenknight 2y ago

I have been working in the CG / 3D industry for quite some time... when i first started about 15 years ago... Maya was the default... everyone knew it, it was THE default. That being said we have been on blender since 2.5 days. I was talking to someone on the weekend, and found out they were studying animation... i was like oh so youre using Maya? they were like whats maya? There has been a massive shift. I think there was a new era brought about when 2.8 was released. With it, they really pushed their dev fund, which helped them to get better, which made them bigger, which got them more donations, which made them get better. Cyclical loop. Im excited to see where they go next.

larusso 2y ago
For me 20 years ago there was also the fight between Maya and Max. But yes Maya was the standard. Our company switched also to blender which would have been crazy 10 years ago. It’s an awesome story for Blender and it community and of course the people given their heart and some into this software.
xmprt 2y ago
I remember hearing about Maya when I was studying in college. It's was so expensive and essentially unobtainable unless you were in the industry. Blender has democratized 3D modeling and animation so much.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Everyone I heard about that did graphics or 3d modeling as a non-pro pirated the software. In hindsight, these companies priced themselves out of the market, because you can't compete with free. And they underestimated hobbyists.
- Keyframe 2y ago
  I would argue it was Amiga and PC (windows NT) that did that due to affordability of the machines and rampant piracy. I worked with 9.5 versions of software (Poweranimator) that later became next iteration of it called Maya 1.0. Poweranimator, later Maya, and Softimage (retroactively called SI|3D since there was XSI later) were the golden standard. One for animation (Softimage) the other for everything else. Prices were similar. This is mid to late 90's - ~$15k for base software and then around the same for each of the modules like Kinemation and Dynamation. You'd run up, with discounts, to like 30-40k in 90's bucks without SGI machine itself. You were basically facing a $100k investment per workstation if it were Indigo2 or later Octane. To top it off, there were things like IFFS from Autodesk like Flame which were ~3-5 as much. On the other hand you had an Amiga with Lightwave or Cinema4D or later Windows NT box with 3dsmax which were, everything accounted for, ~2-8k all around. Blender started out on SGI btw. I've exited the space since, since it's a crap and nasty business, but kept it as a hobby. Personally, I've had a lot of problems getting into Blender over the years, especially since the great UI consolidation of all of major 3D apps in early 2000's. Blender was just different, but not Zbrush different. There was just something off with it that made my muscle memory angry. Somewhat like Gimp. However, recently that has changed. Revamp of few key areas in Blender made it actually quite easy to get into it and knowledge of all the other apps over the years made it a one-week transition. I still prefer animation in Maya though. It's an old friend, after all. We'll see until when.
arlcode 2y ago
Obviously Autodesk is massive beyond Maya and animation. Do you expect this to influence their profits significantly? If yes when? Did they already "react" to Blender (e.g. by speeding up development)?
- mistercheph 2y ago
  No matter how large the lead may be today, autodesk (and next-in-line Adobe) are case studies in why OSS will always win given enough time because although OSS can suffer from many chronic and debilitating diseases, they rarely catch the fatal ones that plague commercial software development. Yes, the OSS development structure leads to projects that lag behind proprietary solutions for amounts of time that are measured in decades, but nobody will ever have to re-write GIMP from scratch because the market had a bad hair day and somebody got acquired by a sovereign wealth fund that gets bored and runs the project into the ground. That doesn't change anything about the fact that e.g. GIMP, or freeCAD suck today, but someone(s) will almost certainly still be carrying those torches in 50 years, or the torches of superior FOSS competitors. And in the next 50 years, Adobe and Autodesk will almost certainly suffer total death or become skeleton crews that only service legacy clients, and when that happens, all of the collective human talent that went into building those tools and human experience into mastering their use will burn up into the screaming void while GIMP chugs along, putting out a release candidate for their GTK4 port.
  - baq 2y ago
    On the contrary I wouldn’t write Autodesk off anytime soon. I’ve recently gotten into the 3d printing hobby and Fusion is not miles ahead of oss offerings, it’s in a different galaxy and it has a very generous free tier for folks like me. Most importantly I don’t see a cross section between oss developers and cad teams to drive the collaborative features. I don’t think the critical mass to get this going exists.
    - therein 2y ago
      > Most importantly I don’t see a cross section between oss developers and cad teams to drive the collaborative features. I don’t think the critical mass to get this going exists. Replace CAD with 3D modelling and animation and that was my genuine opinion 15 years ago about Blender. That being said, OSS projects can definitely go in the wrong direction but since history is preserved, at least someone else can come and fork before the codebase takes the wrong direction.
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
There's a great lesson here. People will want to use what they learned, and if they can't learn on your software, they won't be inclined to try it later. It doesn't really matter for the first five years or so of your company, and that's longer than most startups exist, but once you're #1, you need to start thinking about the pipeline of new people. There's not a lot of motivation for individual employees (even CEOs) to think this way because they probably won't be in the role by the time it matters, but it's important. Would Blender have taken off as fast if Maya had a free tier? I doubt it.
- tobr 2y ago
  On topic, this excellent video essay (?) that’s been making the rounds recently[1]. Highly recommended. 1: ”For-Profit (Creative) Software” by EndVertex https://youtu.be/I4mdMMu-3fc https://youtu.be/I4mdMMu-3fc
  - rolandog 2y ago
    Ahh, sorry, didn't see you had also mentioned this excellent essay. D'oh.
  - Ray20 2y ago
    I think this is a very weak essay. The author has zero ability to analyze, self-reflect, and think through her actions even one step ahead. The video literally starts off by complaining about how expensive the software is while simultaneously talking about how heavily she invested in learning it in college (knowing how expensive it is). And then, for some reason, she says that her instrument was taken away from her (the conditions were transparent from the very beginning). Furthermore, after graduating from college, when it became obvious that studying expensive software had been a huge mistake, what does she do? SHE STARTS TEACHING IT! Thus moving from the category of victim (doubtful, but okay) to the category of part of the problem.
    - tobr 2y ago
      Classic victim blaming this. She’s trying to enter an industry where certain tools are considered the professional choice. Her skills become tangled up in those tools, and then she’s priced out of using them. Using another tool probably wasn’t an option as an attempt to start a professional career. This is exactly the problem the video is all about, in so many ways.
n3storm 2y ago
Looking at you Adobe (¬⤙¬ )
noduerme 2y ago
No love for Cinema4D? I don't do 3D professionally, but I've played with it since the 90s (Strata 3D, Infini-D, RenderMan, Playmation). I've subbed in as an artist on some motion graphics projects here and there. I've never found anything as comfortable as Cinema4D, to me. For software with such a vast number of options, Maxon makes the UI somehow fairly comfortable. And every time I've tried to play with Blender, it seems extremely daunting.
- dagw 2y ago
  I used to work in the field and Cinema4D seemed to be the go to tool for just about every solo freelancer in the business. Yet I basically never saw it at any studio I ever ran across.
  - noduerme 2y ago
    That's very interesting. I have a friend who runs a small studio (4-5 motion designers) and turns out work for dozens of TV and streaming shows, (as well as major sports events and awards shows). They only use Cinema4D. But I think it's more comfortable for people who come from 2D motion graphics (AfterEffects). Also, I think once you're locked into Octane rendering servers you would not want to change.
- brulard 2y ago
  25 years ago as a teenager, having no access to hi-end software, I downloaded manual for Cinema 4D and read it start to end. I used imagine 3D on my Amiga at that time. It took minutes just for the preview of the material to render. Few years later when finally got a pirated copy of Cinema 4D I found myself understanding the software quite well just from the manual and until today I find the interface very nice and user friendly. I'm glad current Blender is quite similar in this regard.
yobbo 2y ago
Maya was always pirated by amateurs. The reason it fell out of fashion is probably because torrenting/pirating stopped being seen as "appropriate" for amateurs or learners.
0xbs0d 2y ago
I started doing 3D on the Amiga so I grew up using for the most part Lightwave and later moved to Softimage (until those cunts at Autodesk killed it). I also managed to get a copy of Maya 1.0 beta (it was 0.9x something) from a friend that had friends at a big studio. I remember how everyone was very into 3DSMax for the longest time. Then everyone was into Maya. Briefly some people even switched to Modo. Blender has come a long way from v2.x where some people started to use it. It's brilliant seeing how many people have adopted it. I also noticed a strange shift in knowledge. Like something has been lost in translation. Many 3D concepts are getting rediscovered today by a generation that never heard of 3DSMax, LW, SI, etc. It's a fascinating.

pram 2y ago

I've been learning Blender to make reference objects for my drawings, so this is definitely true. It's simultaneously pretty easy to learn the basics, and also extremely daunting because of the breadth of the features lol.

whatever1 2y ago

Question why photo never had OS software of commercial caliber? Only GIMP comes to mind which was never even close to the commercial folks

lrem 2y ago
There’s Darktable which is a pretty good alternative to Lightroom. When I looked into it a couple years back, a friend with Darktable was able to get the same results as I with Lightroom, with the same amount of effort. But when I tried, well… The effort to re-learn was too big, cheaper to just keep paying Apple. I imagine now they lag on AI features too.
- imhoguy 2y ago
  Lightroom is made by Adobe, not Apple. Here I would like to also mention RawTherapee, also open-source, together with Darktable (with is more newb friendly) they are great software worth to spread.
- omnimus 2y ago
  Darktable pretty messed up ux thanks to mismanagement, lack of direction and hobby programmers that often leave the project. (there is even someone trying to fix it with a fork https://https://ansel.photos/ https://https://ansel.photos/).
  - makeworld 2y ago
    What's wrong with it?
    - agos 2y ago
      I applaud both Darktable's and Ansel's efforts, but they both have a looooong way to go with their UI. Spacing, contrast, fonts, it looks like they never received contributions from people with design skills. Blender looks way more polished in comparison.

TimByte 2y ago

It's not just the software's power, it's the culture around it

raxxorraxor 2y ago
Blender has a setting for industry standard hotkeys. I hope we see a time when other software gives us a Blender setting.

mnky9800n 2y ago

The palaeontologists on the floor above mine have posters everywhere about using blender to study dinosaur locomotion. I think they do 3d scans of fossil bones and the. Try to recreate musculature. Blender is everywhere.

tmaly 2y ago

My 10 year old daughter went through the popular Blender Donut tutorial. She also loves to watch some of the short anime made with Blender based on some Roblox games. Open source is amazing on this aspect.

aldanor 2y ago

I was also surprised to discover there's basic Blender classes for 10 year old kids as an introduction to the field and they can pick it up quite well

hmmokidk 2y ago

There is a large measure of truth to this. Also saw a non techie casually mention using Gimp. These tools are reaching more people, slowly but surely.