Top Blender developers of 2016
blender.org
blender.org
There were some worrying times but the community "buying" of blender marked a huge change, and it's great to see that the community is still thriving.
I had originally intended to go into 3d modelling, but the python scripting side of blender was what got me into programming. I still think having something visual is a great way of learning to program. Errors are either often very obvious or at least amusing.
So blender stopped me from pursuing 3D art as a career, but in a good way :)
I'm really excited about micro-displacement which was added recently [1].
Before you had to subdivide/displace whole objects, which increased rendertime a lot or fall back to normal mapping which does not look as real.
[1] https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-microdisp...
EDIT: Your downvotes are ridiculous. I'm not being snarky or karma-whoring. I really am happy to learn about Blender. All of the free versions of proprietary 3D software packages have awful licencing models and operating system support. A cross platform 3D modeling and animation suite that runs on linux, for free is kind of awesome!
You know the name "Blender" and that it's used for 3D modeling. So search for "Blender 3D"
And this is the second:
https://www.blender.org/download
On google.com/ncr the results are:
First result, blender.org (with search box and six links from the site below it); second result, "Blender on Steam"; third result, Blender Wikipedia page; fourth result, Blender subreddit.
I'd be more annoyed/confused if I wanted the kitchen item.
(What I tend to do when I need a 3D thing is to model it in Wings3D, which is also free, and then import the OBJ to Blender to do anything else.)
My favorite is the space bar menu. Hit space bar almost anywhere and a menu pops up. Type in a search, e.g. "cube" and it will fuzzy find "add a cube". Almost all actions are available this way.
When I have been using SketchUp, an app widely considered easy to use and approachable, I always get lost in the menus. You never know if something is behind the right click menu or the top menu bar. I'd much rather press the space bar and type in a search.
Blender's biggest issue is that it is very different from the more established 3d modelling apps. It makes migration more difficult.
I use SketchUp for woodworking plans, because it handles real world measurements and has smart snapping features. For more artistic modelling, I go with Blender.
It's true that some programs have a slightly better import path into e.g.: games engines, but "slightly better" not "perfect" or amazing better than others.
This is often true, but do you seriously think "Wow, man. How have I not heard of this software sooner?!" is worth registering an account for and posting? You don't even say thanks to the submitter.
It's a useless post for anyone who doesn't come to HN to read about what software you are personally un/aware of.
Posts like "+1" or "Thanks" or "this" or "woah" (without any other content) are probably better expressed by just upvoting the post you're grateful for/agree with.
Since you complained about downvotes, your post is now one the most upvoted in the thread with 10+ karma. That's ridiculous.
Ohhh, don't do that. I thanked a submitter once because I enjoyed their post and nobody had commented, and that earned me downvotes and a patronizing response about why such things aren't welcome here.
2) complaining about downvotes is incredibly lame
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
People have been making cool movies with it for years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
There's no need to exclaim about finding out that you didn't know about a popular piece of software:
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=blender&sort=byPopularity&pref...
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/12/01/dolphin-progress-rep...
Just added Mike and some others of the list to our Open Source Design collective at https://github.com/opensourcedesign – if you want to be part of it as well let me know. :)