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Blender 5.2 LTS

blender.org

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Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#71

Post by jack_pp »

virtualritz wrote: post #62
wccrawford wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or Thunderbird is much older and has a lot more users

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#72

Post by whywhywhywhy »

zuInnp wrote: post #67
p-e-w wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

Mozilla invests more time in being a foundation than software so makes sense their donations are higher.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#73

Post by Waterluvian »

zuInnp wrote: post #67
p-e-w wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

> but imagine what they could do with even more money.

Quite potentially some really great stuff, but I’m skeptical that this is actually a great way to kill a good thing. Ideally money isn’t an issue and everyone is paid well, and somehow the organization managers know how to feel out and draw a line on scale/ambitions.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#74

Post by tjoff »

pilgrim0 wrote: post #59
kdheiwns wrote: post #50

The 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…

Blender does open in a blink, it is scary how good it is. I share the exact same perception as yourself. In comparison, sometimes I need to use Fusion 360, and its performance is abysmal. I wish I could do parametric design in blender

CAD Sketcher add-on adds parametric design to blender. Haven't used it but probably not ready for real use.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92QmjS-xDaI https://hlorus.github.io/CAD_Sketcher/

Though people are so eager to be locked into Fusion 360 I will never understand. Especially when Freecad is so much better than it used to be.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#75

Post by simonw »

lobo_tuerto wrote: post #61

Look at that wow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfLYIJMv7I

Thanks for that link, I really enjoyed that. I had no idea quite how varied the work people were creating with Blender was these days.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#76

Post by Waterluvian »

ekianjo wrote: post #69
zuInnp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’ve got to imagine there’s examples of orgs stopping donation intake when they get into the “money is nice but we cannot in good faith utilize all this without scaling into something we don’t want to be.”

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#77

Post by simonw »

zuInnp wrote: post #67
p-e-w wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

> Blender is way more niche than Thunderbird

Is that true though? I mean sure, more people use email - but I would guess there are more Blender users than Thunderbird users in the world.

There's plenty of competition for an excellent free email experience. Very little for 3D modeling software.

Update: Looks like I guessed wrong. I found some approximate user numbers:

Thunderbird has analytics that show around 10 million active daily installations: https://stats.thunderbird.net/

Blender stats are harder to find. They reported 23 million total downloads in 2024, which suggests daily actives significantly lower than 10 million: https://download.blender.org/foundation/Blender-Foundation-A...

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#78

Post by Geee »

homarp wrote: post #66
Geee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I read tutorials, but the UI was also more intuitive / discoverable than Blender. It's been over 20 years since I last used it though, but I remember it being much easier to use than Blender today. I could model, texture and animate a full game character from scratch by just learning the basic UI.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#79

Post by [deleted] »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #72
zuInnp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mozilla invests more time in being a foundation than software so makes sense their donations are higher.

[deleted]

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#80

Post by pierrec »

azalemeth wrote: post #36
maqp wrote: post #28

What's the ideal route for someone familiar with 3ds Max to learn Blender? I feel a bit stuck with my proprietary skillset.

I "grew up" using Cinema 4D. Likewise I just find that the UI of blender is for whatever reason _incredibly_ not intuitive for me. I also don't really like the fact that everything is a youtube video nowadays; I guess it's easier to monetise for the kind people who make tutorials but when I learnt 3D modelling as a teenager (in ~2005 with a desire for 3D printing!) C4D just intuitively "clicked" and they had a lot of…

I also spent a while looking for non-video resources recently. This one is a couple of versions behind but I don't think it's outdated: https://studio.blender.org/training/blender-fundamentals-45-...

The official manual is more readable than you'd think. It actually switches back and forth between "tutorial" and "reference" style. The intro sections are often in tutorial style and the detailed sub-sections are more reference style. It worked well for me for intros to specific topics. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/index.html

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