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I don't use Blender, so my admiration is from a distance but: Wow - what an impressive project. At least if I understand it correctly, this is a real pro-level

I don't use Blender, so my admiration is from a distance but: Wow - what an impressive project. At least if I understand it correctly, this is a real pro-level piece of free and open software that's equivalent to thousands and thousands of dollars in closed-source commercial software.

keyle 3mo ago
Yes, it's had a lot of money put through it since its early days, with quirky shortcuts and quirky features. Imagine if they made Gimp good, this would be what blender became in 3D. They've done it right, with a foundation and it appears to run like clockwork. Feature wise it now rivals with some pretty expensive alternatives. Open source; can win!
- Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
  https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ It is also free. =3
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 3mo ago
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- KPGv2 3mo ago
  > Imagine if they made Gimp good, I have a vague recollection that twenty years ago GIMP paid some designers to come up with a great UI, but once the design was ready, GIMP was like "nah we don't like that" and kept their bad UI. I do image stuff so rarely that GIMP is fine because it's free. But its UI is so bad. I don't know about now, but I remember a few years ago someone pointed out that GIMP had over a million dollars in a Bitcoin wallet and hadn't touched any of it in like a decade.
  - bigyabai 3mo ago
    For minimal edits, Pinta does the job IMO: https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/ Gimp still has a lot of good features that I find myself crawling back for, on bigger projects. But Pinta has that good ol' fashioned Paint.NET feel to it that a lot of people still strive for.
    - mghackerlady 2mo ago
      For even more minimal edits, I still use xpaint
Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
[flagged]
- cheschire 3mo ago
  I use blender constantly to make things for 3d printing and I haven’t spent a cent on it or any plugins I use for it. So for anyone on the fence about picking up blender and reading this comment above, no it doesn’t require hundreds of dollars of plugins to be useful. Not for every use case.
  - Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
    Every use-case differs. I like Blender even when they break my hobby projects every update. OpenScad and FreeCad also works for 3D cad files. However, many people that own 3D printers will never sculpt, re-mesh, or cad up their own objects. =3
    - cheschire 3mo ago
      FreeCAD is great if someone mainly wants to print functional, usable parts. That’s totally valid and honestly even more powerful than Blender for that use case. Autodesk Fusion (prev. Fusion 360) is also a popular option. I use blender because I also like to do a lot of 3d printed art, and as you mentioned, that sculpt tooling is one of many fantastic tools for that purpose. Also LLMs know a lot about Blender, making it very easy to describe what I want to do, and then get a walk through of how to do it with Blender.
      - Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
        We found most of this devs work was popular with artists. May be worth a look. https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/ https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/ LLM are sometimes good at organizing the awful documentation for Blenders ever permuting API, but will not help you get better creatively. If you are interested in geometry nodes, than this channel offers a lot =3 https://www.youtube.com/@TheDucky3D/videos https://www.youtube.com/@TheDucky3D/videos
sakjur 3mo ago
Its history is also one of perseverance. Blender was never a runaway success story, but rather a matter of becoming a little better every day and eventually getting a recognition for that.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  > Blender was never a runaway success story, but rather a matter of becoming a little better every day Also some extreme ups and downs along the way, almost succumbing at some point(s) and more along the way. It's a miracle it survived, a miracle performed by Ton Roosendaal most likely.
jijijijij 3mo ago
It's not just incredibly powerful software, it's also incredibly fun and intuitive to use (once the UI has clicked with you). There are still some areas where commercial competitors got edge, but Blender covers a wider base, is the more complete/universal software already. Lot's of people prefer Blender's UI. It's also rapidly developing, the competition is not. I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. Maybe not for the big studios, who invested millions into custom pipelines, but anything up and coming. Role model FOSS project for sure.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
  > I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. I remember people saying this in 2004. Blender is widely used in "the industry" (whatever that industry is). What is has really accomplished in terms of "the industry standard" has, from my POV, been preventing a proprietary system from becoming the standard. That's what happened in the DAW space, where ProTools was the industry standard, and it has taken 20 years to get to the point where that hegemony is no longer as solid as it once was (thanks, Ableton!) There are several different choices for all the things Blender does, but the existence of a FLOSS tool that does them (and does them well) prevents any of the proprietary ones from being "the one".
  - jijijijij 3mo ago
    You are right, Blender doesn't just serve one industry. I had the movie industry in mind, because it demands the largest set of Blender's features. I believe Maya still has/had the edge in animation and particle stuff. Though, AFAIK the main reason is integration and custom tooling built on it, which makes switching to Blender less tempting than sticking up with license fees... which are rather negligible compared to overall operating costs. I believe, Blender is creeping in with smaller studios, especially anime/cartoon kinda stuff. I think one of Blender's biggest assets is its wide creative tool set. There is even a useful video editor included. Honestly, it's not far off from being the swiss army knife of digital creative work, a creative operating system. Maybe we get a DAW too at some point :D Anyway, I think that's why Blender will dominate. Anyone starting out got everything they need for "free" (with a consistent UI you only have to learn once), but they still won't outgrow the software professionally either, now. That's totally unique.
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ColdStream 3mo ago
Yes, but open source will never work!!! That is 1000 proof pure distilled sarcasm.
janc_ 3mo ago
The Oscar-winning animated feature movie “Flow” was made with Blender.
mghackerlady 2mo ago
I really hope a similar revolution comes to photo and video editing. While there are plenty of really good FOSS video editors (including the one blender has), none of them are truly professional level. For photo editing, the GIMP is pretty much there, but it's old and crusty and maintained by a handful of people

keyle 3mo ago

Yes, it's had a lot of money put through it since its early days, with quirky shortcuts and quirky features. Imagine if they made Gimp good, this would be what blender became in 3D. They've done it right, with a foundation and it appears to run like clockwork. Feature wise it now rivals with some pretty expensive alternatives. Open source; can win!

Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ It is also free. =3
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
KPGv2 3mo ago
> Imagine if they made Gimp good, I have a vague recollection that twenty years ago GIMP paid some designers to come up with a great UI, but once the design was ready, GIMP was like "nah we don't like that" and kept their bad UI. I do image stuff so rarely that GIMP is fine because it's free. But its UI is so bad. I don't know about now, but I remember a few years ago someone pointed out that GIMP had over a million dollars in a Bitcoin wallet and hadn't touched any of it in like a decade.
- bigyabai 3mo ago
  For minimal edits, Pinta does the job IMO: https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/ Gimp still has a lot of good features that I find myself crawling back for, on bigger projects. But Pinta has that good ol' fashioned Paint.NET feel to it that a lot of people still strive for.
  - mghackerlady 2mo ago
    For even more minimal edits, I still use xpaint

Joel_Mckay 3mo ago

[flagged]

cheschire 3mo ago
I use blender constantly to make things for 3d printing and I haven’t spent a cent on it or any plugins I use for it. So for anyone on the fence about picking up blender and reading this comment above, no it doesn’t require hundreds of dollars of plugins to be useful. Not for every use case.
- Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
  Every use-case differs. I like Blender even when they break my hobby projects every update. OpenScad and FreeCad also works for 3D cad files. However, many people that own 3D printers will never sculpt, re-mesh, or cad up their own objects. =3
  - cheschire 3mo ago
    FreeCAD is great if someone mainly wants to print functional, usable parts. That’s totally valid and honestly even more powerful than Blender for that use case. Autodesk Fusion (prev. Fusion 360) is also a popular option. I use blender because I also like to do a lot of 3d printed art, and as you mentioned, that sculpt tooling is one of many fantastic tools for that purpose. Also LLMs know a lot about Blender, making it very easy to describe what I want to do, and then get a walk through of how to do it with Blender.
    - Joel_Mckay 3mo ago
      We found most of this devs work was popular with artists. May be worth a look. https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/ https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/ LLM are sometimes good at organizing the awful documentation for Blenders ever permuting API, but will not help you get better creatively. If you are interested in geometry nodes, than this channel offers a lot =3 https://www.youtube.com/@TheDucky3D/videos https://www.youtube.com/@TheDucky3D/videos

sakjur 3mo ago

Its history is also one of perseverance. Blender was never a runaway success story, but rather a matter of becoming a little better every day and eventually getting a recognition for that.

embedding-shape 3mo ago
> Blender was never a runaway success story, but rather a matter of becoming a little better every day Also some extreme ups and downs along the way, almost succumbing at some point(s) and more along the way. It's a miracle it survived, a miracle performed by Ton Roosendaal most likely.

jijijijij 3mo ago

It's not just incredibly powerful software, it's also incredibly fun and intuitive to use (once the UI has clicked with you). There are still some areas where commercial competitors got edge, but Blender covers a wider base, is the more complete/universal software already. Lot's of people prefer Blender's UI. It's also rapidly developing, the competition is not. I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. Maybe not for the big studios, who invested millions into custom pipelines, but anything up and coming. Role model FOSS project for sure.

PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
> I am pretty sure it will become industry standard at some point. I remember people saying this in 2004. Blender is widely used in "the industry" (whatever that industry is). What is has really accomplished in terms of "the industry standard" has, from my POV, been preventing a proprietary system from becoming the standard. That's what happened in the DAW space, where ProTools was the industry standard, and it has taken 20 years to get to the point where that hegemony is no longer as solid as it once was (thanks, Ableton!) There are several different choices for all the things Blender does, but the existence of a FLOSS tool that does them (and does them well) prevents any of the proprietary ones from being "the one".
- jijijijij 3mo ago
  You are right, Blender doesn't just serve one industry. I had the movie industry in mind, because it demands the largest set of Blender's features. I believe Maya still has/had the edge in animation and particle stuff. Though, AFAIK the main reason is integration and custom tooling built on it, which makes switching to Blender less tempting than sticking up with license fees... which are rather negligible compared to overall operating costs. I believe, Blender is creeping in with smaller studios, especially anime/cartoon kinda stuff. I think one of Blender's biggest assets is its wide creative tool set. There is even a useful video editor included. Honestly, it's not far off from being the swiss army knife of digital creative work, a creative operating system. Maybe we get a DAW too at some point :D Anyway, I think that's why Blender will dominate. Anyone starting out got everything they need for "free" (with a consistent UI you only have to learn once), but they still won't outgrow the software professionally either, now. That's totally unique.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

ColdStream 3mo ago

Yes, but open source will never work!!! That is 1000 proof pure distilled sarcasm.

janc_ 3mo ago

The Oscar-winning animated feature movie “Flow” was made with Blender.

mghackerlady 2mo ago

I really hope a similar revolution comes to photo and video editing. While there are plenty of really good FOSS video editors (including the one blender has), none of them are truly professional level. For photo editing, the GIMP is pretty much there, but it's old and crusty and maintained by a handful of people