Bugzilla2001 shared a video listing his top 10 reasons for loving Blender (and I'm happy to see BlenderNation makes a quick appearance too!). What are yours?
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About the Author
Bart Veldhuizen
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.
17 Comments
I love Blender for two reasons: 1) the powerful tools that it has; 2)the powerful (and full of solidarity) community.
I came up with 7 so far:
1) Multiplatform.
2) Powerful and has plentiful features.
3) Free and open source makes it easier to introduce to new users.
4) User communities for online learning, support and inspiration.
5) Incredible development team and release scheduling.
6) Python scripting.
7) Fisheye camera for Cycles.
Yuup, I'm a hardcore Linux junkie who despised proprietary software ... up until now, I made it for myself a challenge to acomplish whatever i had to do with the resources and programs I've had working with the GNU/Linux system ... using Gimp, Kdenlive and Inkscape as a replacement for Ps, Pr and Ai ... UNTIL I FOUND BLENDER
OMFG, now i'm not only not limited anymore, but I can wield this tool of unimaginable power, which was something truly new to me ... no longer had I got a bunch of programs with a GUI from the 90s, that launched slow, were unintuitive and full of bugs with a very limited selection of features ... BUT I HAD THIS ONE PROGRAM THAT COULD REPLACE ALL OF THEM
Blender is a blessing to any Linux user. It's practical from a utilitarian perspective, but it also has this truly dynamic side to it and the community, with people like Andrew Price, but also the devs themselves ... you see them struggle and work hard to create something truly great, which idk, just makes me so warm and fuzzy inside
Pose Library addon? What is this?
https://vimeo.com/137118213
I'm looking at 0:52 in the video. It seems to me that he isn't using an addon, just Blenders built-in Pose tools, which is what confused me.
"Hidden tools" - this is the reason to hate blender.. Everything should be clear and intuitive in my opinion and Blender isn't intuitive. But i love Blender despite of this. It's free and powerful software, and there are dozens of great add-ons! :)
Yes, I also miss a good and friendly UI. But Blender UI is being improved year after year. If you look the 2.4 UI you will understand what I'm talking about. In one of my machines I installed All Tabs Interface addon, developed by Vilem Duha. Not perfect, but it turn the UI into something much more pleasant.
1. Free - Can't beat a price like that.
2. User driven - I prefer software that tries to be what I want it to be, instead of software that tries to change me. No change for the sake of change. All changes communicated easily, and obviously distinct improvements to the overall software.
3. Lightweight - Blender is tiny in comparison to other software packages which do the same thing.
4. Fast - It's quick and snappy!
5. Cycles - Such a fantastic renderer, the material system is so easy to work with, and the way everything is computed makes it so easy to think logically about what I'm trying to create, how I would achieve it in real life, then just do that in my render.
6. The custom UI - It's a confusing mess at first, but once you 'get it', the Blender UI is actually one of it's best features.
7. The 3D modelling tools - I do a lot of hard surface models, often that have to be exact shapes and dimensions because the objects are based off real world things. Blender's tools for modelling are wonderful for what I do.
8. So many extra features - Every time I feel like digging deeper into Blender I find something new.
9. Baking - Baking is in my opinion an essential workflow process, and Blender's baker is fantastic. It could be better, but it's pretty great.
Annnnd.
10. It's putting food on my table. I got a job about 3 years ago making models for a company based off their products and rendering images of them for marketing material. I've had steady work ever since. This is the longest I've ever held down one job! I owe Blender so much for that, if it wasn't for Blender, I'm not sure where I'd be right now.
Which reminds me, I need to go send the Blender foundation another $10..
I tried MAYA a few years back and it was a Nightmare to learn, very few good tutorials. I next tried Cinema 4D ver 6. Cost me $100.00 Very good much easier them MAYA but everything was extra and the next upgrade was in the thousands. A friend told me about Blender so I tried it Ver 2.48 , I just stared at it. A couple of months later I watched a few tutorials on Blender and have been using it ever since. the best thing I love about Blender besides being FREE is that its a all in one package does everything.
1) the best Community
2) fast and very good improvements by the developers
3) open source (software and movies)
4) cycles
5) NODES! (I love nodes)
6) it is a tool to manage 3D chaos
7) loads very fast
8) all in one tool (not like some proprietary tools)
9) it can be used for different purposes, not only 3D (also 2D like grease pencil ... what is the next revolution)
10) Suzanne
I see that I'm not the only one that loves Suzanne.
Yeah, every 3D tool has a teapot, but Blender has an ape. That's simply cool.
Blender has a depth similar to several Adobe products put together. So in direct comparison this is why I prefer using Blender:
1) Blender doesn't force me to pay a €40-€60 monthly ransom. It costs me €10/month because I choose to pay that. Even better, it doesn't cost the mad $x,000 sums of comparable 3D alternatives.
2) Blender doesn't take ages to install or entangle itself in my system.
3) Blender gets new and useful features added regularly.
4) Blender's tools, methods and UI are fast and flexible to use.
5) Blender's community is a positive and helpful eco-system of people making useful suggestions and tutorials, and where very capable people provide great add-ons usually for no cost. In contrast, Adobe's 'Community Forums'...... OK, let's not go there, it's too depressing.
6) Blender is an open and universal tool in one application. I used it yesterday to demonstrate to my daughter how the angles and edge lengths of a triangle change as you move its vertices, and to prove her calculated answers were correct.
I could spend all day adding to the list but I won't!
My TOP TEN reasons are:
1) Blender is the BEST
2) Blender is the BEST
3) Blender is the BEST
4) Blender is the BEST
5) Blender is the BEST
6) Blender is the BEST
7) Blender is the BEST
8) Blender is the BEST
9) Blender is the BEST
10) Blender is the BEST
:)
If I had to list my top reasons:
1) One-handed Viewport navigation: Most of Blender's viewport navigation can be done with just the mouse. I've never cared for holding down Alt key just to navigate the view. Just why more software doesn't opt for this, I'll never know. Ideally, I want to touch as little of the keyboard for basic view navigation as possible.
2) Your input matters: Want developers to consider a new feature? Talk to them. They're open. Sometimes, a good suggestion and a bit of respect towards them is all you need for your consideration put on their to-do list, and hopefully implemented. Even if your suggestion isn't picked up immediately, you never know if months later, someone sees your idea on BlenderArtists or BlenderNation somewhere, and takes a try at a solution.
3) Fast modeling: Once you get the hang of Blender's general modeling hotkeys and features like simply typing a value, you can do polygon modeling pretty swiftly. It's typically a menu-based chore in most other 3D packages, but rather fun in Blender, because you're not wasting energy panning through menus and inserting values in input boxes.
4) Handy addons: BoolTool, Manuel Bastioni Lab, ANT Landscape, Sapling, Archimesh, Rigify, etc. Even though some of these addons aren't as robust as some more dedicated solutions available elsewhere (Sapling's no SpeedTree, for instance), some are still plenty useful, and it's still nice having these handy options around. Also, it's no surprise when someone borrows an idea from Blender (for instance, all the Bool Tool clones popping up on other software).
5) Freestyles Render: Before even listing Cycles, I'd list Freestyles. Why? Simple. It's a full-featured nonphotorealistic rendering engine. For free. Even before Cycles, we still had other options for photorealistic rendering (albeit typically slower methods). But Freestyle's incorporation into Blender is one of the unsung heroes of Blender's usefulness.
6) Grease Pencil: Blender devs took the concept of a virtual grease pencil to ridiculous new heights. Far more advanced than any other software's use of such, we've seen Blender's Grease Pencil functionality grow from being a mere mark-up tool, into innovative usage such as a retopology tool, a guideline for animation motion paths, a visual precision cutting tool, and even 2D/2.5D animation. One of Blender's sharpest tools.
7) Tons of potential: Blender has a game engine. It has a cloth sewing functionality. It has Dynamic Paint. It has a pretty-darn decent Sculpt Mode with Dyntopo. You know what I see? A potential BGE-based Marmoset Toolbag-like real-time presentation mode. Potential for refining cloth-sewing into a "Marvelous Blender." Option of combining (real-time) particles with Dynamic Paint for some particle-based texture-painting (similar to Substance Painter). Powerful sculpting program that could complement a new remesher someday. Potential is raw with Blender, but the starts are good.
8) A safe space for learning code: If you want to learn some coding (particularly some scripting using Python), use Blender. Analyze code in the Info Editor as you perform actions. Look at other people's addon code. Take stuff apart and put it together. Post your code on BlenderArtists and ask for peers to feedback on how they'd improve it. Blender isn't just a virtual playground for modeling--it's a playground for getting messy with a bit of coding, if you're interested. The worst you can do is mess up--then you can just restart Blender.
9) Blender is transparent: Blender has its perks. Blender has its shortcomings. Blender has its potential. And all of it is open for anyone to see. Blender doesn't hide anything. All priorities of the core developers are generously shared. If you want to know what's on the to-do list, it's all there. If you are a programmer who sees redundant code, you can fix it. If you see a bug, you're encouraged to report it. More than free, more than open-source, the transparency of Blender development is something I find quite refreshing.
10) Bart Veldhuizen: It's no lip service, folks. If Blender was a sport, Bart would be its stadium manager, its hype man, its media man, and its friendly familiar face--all in one. Think about it. No other community really has a guy like Bart around. It's vital having a mainstay and turn-to about software. I wish other software had it. It's safe to say that without Bart, Blender's community (and participation) wouldn't be what it is today. Sometimes the best part of software is people.
1. The interface. It's so flexible! Pull a corner and you have a new 3D view. Where else can you customize the panels so quickly?
2. Physics based render engine with nodes. I miss this the most when having to work with other programs. Really enjoy doing material calibration in Cycles.