It's a reasonably well known tool among most 3D artist communities. It does something of everything at this point. The downside typically stated is that the UX for modelling workflow in particular is alienating, and most folks have trouble coming to grips with it. Commercial and proprietary packages often edge it out on certain features, and there is tooling path-dependency in industry work that has given Autodesk a position similar to Adobe's position with Photoshop, only with an added layer of fragmentation across products due to buy-outs of competition. Regardless, Blender does get stronger every time I see it, and it's had more and more uptake.

(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.)

Blender's UX may be unconventional, but there are some really good ideas in there.

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.

If you like that text menu you might want to play around with RhinoCAD. You can do all of your work from a command line, so the workflow feels powerful and snappy. The drawback is that there is no fuzzy search like you mention so you need to know commands before executing them

See, I don't really agree with your comment re: workflow. At work, I see Maya artists using 3D Studio Max and artists from both those camps using Modo. They ALL struggle when switching between programs. NO program is automatically easy or comprehensible - artists have their muscle memory and changing that takes real work.

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.

1) you created an account simply to express surprise that you haven't heard of an extremely popular software project.

2) complaining about downvotes is incredibly lame

it's a 20-year-old piece of software.

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...

I am also intrigued by its Python interface. Haven't explored it much, but this syntax is much more intuitive than things like open scad.

> Your downvotes are ridiculous.

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.

> You don't even say thanks to the submitter.

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.

Yeah, but if he's going to the trouble of signing up here just to say how he didn't know about the software before, the least he could do is say thanks to the one who helped him find it.

because when you google it you just get results for the kitchen item. there are 1 billion possible unique word combinations in the world, were the creators that lazy in naming this? /s

No. You just need to learn how to Google stuff. It's one of the most important disciplines to know on the Internet.

You know the name "Blender" and that it's used for 3D modeling. So search for "Blender 3D"

It's not even necessary to do that; I don't know what he's talking about. I just typed "blender" into Google now. 93,000,000 results, of which this is the first:

https://www.blender.org/

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.

original poster. i take what i said back and misspoke. i am building my own search engine and am annoyed because blender 3d appears when i do searches for 'blender' and expected the kitchen item result.

I expect you need Google's Internet-wide tracking and profiling before you can tell if a particular user is a 3D geek or tech person and therefore wants Blender 3D rather than a place to buy blenders.

There are 1 billion interesting things about Blender and you're talking about something that 1 person in the world has problem with.