Look at that wow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfLYIJMv7I
Blender 5.2 LTS
61–70 of 211 posts
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, Thunderbird is getting more donations than Blender? I was under the impression that Thunderbird is on life support, while Blender is everywhere.
A quick AI Google search and some fact-checking later, and yeah. At least as of 2 years ago, Thunderbird was getting 3x the contributions that Blender was. It just goes to show you how badly managed Thunderbird is, since Blender is doing so much more with the money. I'm more and more disappointed with Mozilla all the time.
It couldn't possibly be that Blender simply has much more volunteer contributions?
Since hacking on a 3D DCC in your spare time may be more than three times as enticing to people than doing the same on an email client?
I'd wager Occam's razor favors this explanation.
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Same here. I don’t use blender very often. But it’s in my regular toolbox. Hopefully my $25 will help.
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#64What's the ideal route for someone familiar with 3ds Max to learn Blender? I feel a bit stuck with my proprietary skillset.
I used to use 3ds Max and I find the Blender's UI really terrible after years of occasional use. It's very unintuitive and you'll have to learn everything from tutorials / reading Blender forums. It seems to have many annoying quirks, which make me angry every time I use it.
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#65The most impressive thing about Blender is how it feels like early 2000s-era creative software. And I mean that in a good way (blender was actually awful back then, but it's great now) It opens instantly on my computer. It's fast. It's lightweight to the point my fans don't even spin up no matter what I do. It's customizable. It does everything I want to do and it never gets in the way of me trying to do my job. Mean…
IMO, Adobe suite peaked somewhere around CS1/CS2 (which ran happily on my single core 2Ghz iMac G5) and it’s been downhill ever since. A variant of CS2 that’d been feature frozen (aside from smaller technical improvements like wide gamut support) and ruthlessly optimized and bug-fixed up until present day would be vastly preferable to the trainwreck that is CC.
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#66What's the ideal route for someone familiar with 3ds Max to learn Blender? I feel a bit stuck with my proprietary skillset.
I used to use 3ds Max and I find the Blender's UI really terrible after years of occasional use. It's very unintuitive and you'll have to learn everything from tutorials / reading Blender forums. It seems to have many annoying quirks, which make me angry every time I use it.
how did you learn 3ds Max?
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#67I am using Blender since my Master thesis in 2017. It is impressive how much has happened. Also giving some money to them because they don't get that much donations (if you compare it to Thunderbird for example).
Wait, Thunderbird is getting more donations than Blender? I was under the impression that Thunderbird is on life support, while Blender is everywhere.
At one of last Blender conferences, the founder (and at that time CEO) gave some insights about funding and compared it to Thunderbird. https://youtu.be/VZ5022VaMmA?si=m1hD9wEQ16s8Zu3b&t=1297 ;
Fore More recent numbers: In 2024[1] (last info I found), Blender had 3.1m € in donations (600k more than the year before) and Thunderbird had around 9m € [2].
I kind of get it, Blender is way more niche than Thunderbird, but imagine what they could do with even more money.
[1] https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-A... on page 76 [2] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-bird-2024-... I did the money conversion based on today's exchange rates
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
One of my adopted "kids" I taught years ago picked this up at 17. He is 26, now. He "borrowed" the software to start (fair enough; it was a friend's license and not used at the same time), and didn't pay for a copy of Blender until he had a career path in mind and used Blender regularly. A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They o…
>borrowed the software
>it was a friend's license
>didn't pay for a copy of Blender
just for the record, everyone can download, for free, Blender from https://www.blender.org/download/ for Win, MacOS or Linux
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, Thunderbird is getting more donations than Blender? I was under the impression that Thunderbird is on life support, while Blender is everywhere.
At one of last Blender conferences, the founder (and at that time CEO) gave some insights about funding and compared it to Thunderbird. https://youtu.be/VZ5022VaMmA?si=m1hD9wEQ16s8Zu3b&t=1297 ; Fore More recent numbers: In 2024[1] (last info I found), Blender had 3.1m € in donations (600k more than the year before) and Thunderbird had around 9m € [2]. I kind of get it, Blender is way more niche than Thunderbird, but…
wow thunderbird gets so much and achieves so little? amazing in a terrible way
Re: Blender 5.2 LTS
#70What's the ideal route for someone familiar with 3ds Max to learn Blender? I feel a bit stuck with my proprietary skillset.
I wish Autodesk had a Creative Cloud equivalent: imagine a 50€ / month subscription that gives access to all Autodesk apps, it would have sold like hotcakes. By remaining expensive proprietary tools, they lost the new generations of developers who learned 3D with Blender and Houdini Apprentice and who will naturally continue to use them once they become professionals, so the customer base will keep shrinking.
Do people use autodesks products like that?
I think people just pirate all this stuff anyway. I'm kind of surprised about the casualness (and often encouragement)of using cracked software in 3d communities.