Blender has been an amazing open source project - giving everyone a free alternative to create 3d content.<p>I also love how it’s relatively easy to script in python & you can even use a blender kernel to open in a Jupyter notebook for experimentation.
Many years ago, I used the python kernel / API to build a headless asset production pipeline for creating custom 1080p photo slideshows from user images set to produced music. The entire project took less than a month from keyframe generation with Pillow and then using Blender VSE to stitch the static assets together into what was a very polished product for such limited dev time start to finish. I had only briefly used it in college playing around while getting comfortable with linux and the fact it was OSS, and linux compatible was always a shining light for attention to cross-platform development best practices.<p>By virtue of exposing quality, "developer" first capabilities, Blender in my mind continues to set an extremely high bar for technical product quality and makes it a top candidate when I consider any digital asset project. I'm inspired by the continued dedication of the development community and sponsors and wish the team another 30 years of continued success. Things seem to be picking up every year and massive rewrites / expansions of performance capabilities come every new version.
Was just using it tonight for a project. Years ago I did a lot with Quake Model Editor because it was so much more approachable for a kid trying to make and animate models for that game. Dabbled with 3DS and Maya then later Blender. They were all too intimidating.<p>Nowadays Blender is better, though still not quite as easy to pick up as Maya or QME. Thankfully the tutorials and tools around it are much more numerous these days.
I use blender often and extensively and while it definitely has some frustrating rough edges, it's worth its (proverbial) weight in gold. It makes so much accessible for indie creators stemming way beyond games and cinema.<p>I don't really know what changed over the last 2-4 years or so, but it feels like the quality has improved faster than it used to, and in greater strides.<p>Really proud of the project.