Blender 4.3

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Blender 4.3’s release highlights how the 3D creation suite has evolved into a flagship open-source success, powered by a dedicated development fund, strong leadership, and growing backing from both individuals and companies. Commenters explore why Blender has gained serious adoption in areas like game development and animation—while still facing barriers in entrenched professional pipelines—and contrast it with tools like FreeCAD, Revit, and proprietary Autodesk products. They also share practical advice on learning resources, hardware (like mice and tablets), and add-ons for uses ranging from 3D printing to architectural modeling, underscoring Blender’s versatility as a free, native desktop application.

Blender’s Funding, History, and Open‑Source Success

  • Major inflection point: the Blender Development Fund, growing from roughly $5k/month to over $200k/month, enabling many more paid developers.
  • Earlier “kickstart”: initial VC-funded commercial development (~€4.5M, large team) created a strong base before open‑sourcing. Later, the community collectively raised ~€100k to buy back and open the code.
  • Thread emphasizes that simply “starting a development fund” doesn’t replicate Blender’s early mindshare, momentum, and evangelism.
  • Corporate users now depend on Blender and contribute financially, which helps distinguish it from other open‑source projects.

Adoption, Industry Context, and Comparisons

  • Some see Blender as having “eaten the world” in games and as the obvious choice for new studios avoiding Autodesk’s high‑priced subscriptions.
  • Others argue it hasn’t had a full “Linux moment” in film/VFX due to entrenched pipelines and risk‑averse businesses.
  • Comparisons made to GIMP and FreeCAD: they lack Blender’s polish, funding, and early commercial boost, but FreeCAD’s 1.0 release is seen as a major step.
  • Mechanical/parametric CAD: consensus that Blender (a mesh modeler) is unsuitable for precision engineering compared with parametric CAD (FreeCAD, others).

Learning Blender and Use Cases

  • Popular beginner paths: the “donut” tutorial, beginner courses, CG Boost, Grant Abbitt, and various Udemy/Skillshare offerings.
  • For 3D printing: Blender is great for artistic/organic models; functional parts usually benefit from parametric CAD, though simple one‑offs can be faster in Blender.
  • Architectural/BIM workflows: Bonsai (formerly BlenderBIM) praised for home renovation and IFC-based collaboration; alternatives mentioned include Revit, SketchUp, and Sweet Home 3D.

UI, Performance, and Desktop vs Web

  • Blender’s UI is now widely praised (viewports, keybinding, command palette), despite an older reputation for poor UX.
  • Its responsive, GPU‑driven native UI and modest binary size are cited as arguments for native apps over Electron.
  • Others defend Electron/web tech, noting class of product, missing cross‑platform native frameworks, and evolving WebGL/WebGPU limitations and latency. Opinions are polarized.

Hardware, Community, and Outlook

  • Strong emphasis on good input devices: multi‑button gaming mice, vertical mice, trackballs, and especially pen tablets for sculpting and precision.
  • Several comments highlight a welcoming contributor culture and hands‑on mentoring in earlier days.
  • Some criticize shallow industry takes; others argue Blender is still young but uniquely extensible and poised to become first choice for many CG tasks as it integrates into more pipelines.
  • Question about using LLM-generated code to drive Blender animation appears but is not substantively answered (unclear in thread).