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Today, Blender is 25 Years Old!

10

25 years ago, the very first version of Blender started working, and Ton looks back on that time. What are your earliest memories of Blender?

Ton writes:

Today is the 25th birthday of Blender!

During the xmas holidays of 1993, Ton Roosendaal started working on the Blender software, based on original designs he made in the course of 1993. On January 2nd, 1994, the first Blender version was running, with the subdivision-based windowing system working. That memorable date was restored from an old backup of Ton’s SGI Indigo2 workstation – now marked as Blender’s official birthday.

It then took 15 months before the software was ready as in-house tool for production in the animation studio NeoGeo in the Netherlands. Blender then was released publicly online as SGI freeware on January 1st 1998. The Linux and Windows versions were released shortly after. After the internet bubble bursted early 2000s, the sources became available as GNU GPL on October 13th 2002, thanks to a spectacular fundraising campaign – marking the start of Blender as the popular free and open source software 3D creation suite it is today.

My own involvement in Blender started a few years later - I estimate that around 1997 I started writing some of the first Blender tutorials on my old site, vrotvrot.com (which later transformed into BlenderNation). Have a look here :)

I dug up some old pictures of that time. Enjoy!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
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.

10 Comments

  1. Sergio Andrade on

    ¡¡¡HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLENDER!!!. I started with in 2006, for me it was the best I could find on my way. I am very grateful to Ton, for this wonderful great gift.

  2. William Roberts on

    AWESOME!!!!
    I love seeing all of the beginning pictures. I am proud to use something that is the result of so much passion and effort. Thank you.

  3. Hmmm... shouldn't the community present Big Ton with a commemorative medal for his display case ? ..and maybe sell or auction 24 replicas for fundraising too ;)

  4. Waw, another milestone! Congratulations! 25 years young and already so mature!
    But hopefully Blender can always keep some of his youth and playfulness ... Keep it fun!

  5. Started using Blender 1.8(?) in 1999. I think my first tutorial was Bart's cave tute. What an incredible journey watching this software and community grow over the years.

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