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.
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.
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
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.
Same - I make most of my living from Blender and I occassionally use 1 or 2 paid add-ons. With the recent improvements to the compositor and the editor, it has even replaced the last piece of Adobe software I was using - After Effects - very nice feeling. I donate to Blender after every paid job too.
There is no such thing as "free" unless the original author released files under CC0 or Public domain. The rest of the ecosystem is a legal minefield even for kids kit-bashing a project for fun.
We spent around $3k conducting a survey of the Blender ecosystem for a game dev project about 2 years ago, and continue to monitor the situation every update. A rather sobering experience in some ways.
Would recommend Poly Haven as the plugin is not required to access their free assets, but it is usually a good idea to support people that make things easier for everyone. =3
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.
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.
If you’re getting a 404 from OP’s link, the URL was updated on their site:
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-2/
Hopefully a mod sees this.
For those of you who get value out of Blender please consider donating: https://fund.blender.org/ :)
It's a wonderful project. Even small amounts help. Thanks!
Done. I was feeling bad for saying how often I used blender without paying a cent not 20 seconds earlier in this very thread. Then I saw your message.
The fact that Apple Pay is an option made it take only another 20 seconds for me to throw some money at a great project.
Thanks for the Apple pay hint. That was just what I needed to get me over the mental threshold. It's been literally two clicks.
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.
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!
https://krita.org/en/
It is also free. =3
In general, for Blender to be useful it takes several free and hundreds of dollars worth of licensed community plug-ins.
Tiny Eye: Free Procedural eyes
Sanctus Library: Procedural Materials
Auto-Rig Pro: UE asset export
Blob Fusion: similar to zbrush
Flip Fluids: Better fluid sim
Scribble Gen: cobwebs, wires, fire, and cables
FaceIt: iPhone Pro Lidar camera used with UE5 face motion capture (works better than most industry products.)
Also, there are many great courses that save the pain of learning the goofy workflows on your own. =3
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.
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
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.
Same - I make most of my living from Blender and I occassionally use 1 or 2 paid add-ons. With the recent improvements to the compositor and the editor, it has even replaced the last piece of Adobe software I was using - After Effects - very nice feeling. I donate to Blender after every paid job too.
Or just use free props if you are a hobbist.
There is no such thing as "free" unless the original author released files under CC0 or Public domain. The rest of the ecosystem is a legal minefield even for kids kit-bashing a project for fun.
We spent around $3k conducting a survey of the Blender ecosystem for a game dev project about 2 years ago, and continue to monitor the situation every update. A rather sobering experience in some ways.
Would recommend Poly Haven as the plugin is not required to access their free assets, but it is usually a good idea to support people that make things easier for everyone. =3
https://polyhaven.com/plugins/blender
And these extensions are for what use cases?
Mostly Fun... sometimes replacing commercial software workflows that were already a disaster for the creatives. =3
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.
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.
404 link ?
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-2/
The demo reel for this release is seriously impressive. The video editor is also starting to get good. Still pretty buggy though.
URL is now https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-2/