Blender

What hackers pick instead

• Autodesk MayaIndustry-standard 3D animation and modeling software, praised for rigging, scripting API and NURBS tools. Main caveats: high license cost and vendor lock-in.18recommend
• SketchUpRecommended as an intuitive 3D modeling tool with little learning curve. Common caveat: the free version is limited.16recommend
• Akse3DFree open-source 3D modelling tool that some people now recommend over Tinkercad. The most common caveat is that Hole mode does not subtract shapes the way people expect.6recommend
• Cartesian AI 3D ModelingRecommended for clean STL output, sharp renders and a step up from other AI CAD tools; critics say complex geometry looks poor and the moving background is distracting.6recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 470 comments. Each links to the original.

1. It's been really helpful for taking existing FBX files and handing them off to the agent + Python Blender API to analyze the geometry, convert to GLBs, etc.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

2. it's been vastly improved in recent years. If you lost interest in 3D art because of Blender's bad UX in the past, I recommend you give it another shot.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers”

3. What is has really accomplished in terms of "the industry standard" has, from my POV, been preventing a proprietary system from becoming the standard.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

4. this is a real pro-level piece of free and open software that's equivalent to thousands and thousands of dollars in closed-source commercial software

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

5. the Blender developers finally listened to reason, admitted they made a mistake, and switched the left and right mouse button behavior

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer”

6. Undo takes ages and freezes up everything, modifiers start lagging mouse movement as soon as you have more than a handful of polygons

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “There's no reason for software to be slow anymore”

7. Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small studios

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Blender Lab”

8. it's ultimately much better at actual 3d than AE is, and the recent improvements to the interface have made it a lot more usable

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor”

9. Blender was infuriatingly counterintuitive; for example, it used the right mouse button instead of the left to select objects.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

10. it doesn't try to force the whole program to be in the command line, only the part where the command line is actually useful

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Why TUIs Are Back”

11. Blender itself is a tool that made 3D accessible to thousands of people who previously had to pay for expensive licenses

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

12. Blender managed to completely overhaul their UI and it's now being used to create Oscar winning animated feature films.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “How to declutter, quiet down, and take the AI out of Windows 11 25H2”

13. I use blender constantly to make things for 3d printing and I haven't spent a cent on it or any plugins I use for it.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

14. With the recent improvements to the compositor and the editor, it has even replaced the last piece of Adobe software

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

15. Older Blender versions had terrible UX like Gimp does now, their epiphany was realizing that they should fix it.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “GIMP Development Update”

16. my partner and I have had great luck replacing AfterEffects and Premiere with Blender and DaVinci Resolve

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Adobe modifies hosts file to detect whether Creative Cloud is installed”

17. it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

18. I was effective in blender within seconds because it allowed me to directly translate my actions to code

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users”

19. highly complex, mostly unintuitive user interface that requires training and has a steep learning curve

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “GIMP Development Update”

20. Blender itself will grow into the After Effects space. It's doing so very slowly, but very definitely.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Tixl: Open-source realtime motion graphics”

21. Blender is an example of OSS software which is actually a joy to use and they have product designers.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Nothing works and everyone is euphoric”

22. Blender's limited support for the Universal Scene Description format is an immediate showstopper for most medium size to large studios.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

23. I remember opening Blender for the first time years ago and thinking it had the steepest learning curve of any software I'd ever used.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers”

24. Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It's a constantly changing API that doesn't allow for the extensibility needed

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

25. These are all apps with excellent fundamental underlying engines/tech which are handicapped hugely by their UI/UX.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “LibreOffice blasts OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in”

26. The issue is that at a certain scene scale Python becomes the performance bottleneck if that's all you can use.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

27. it was very jarring when I first opened it and discovered that it has its own menu bar within the window

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Deno Desktop”

28. Blender used to be incredibly unintuitive even to people who had never used any other 3D modeler before.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

29. people do make use of Blender 3D to create Gaming Assets and it's a crying shame that Vega and Polaris iGPUs and dGPUs can not get some SYCL based support

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Supporting ATI TeraScale GPUs from 2007-2009 in RPCS3”

30. The effort required to learn low-poly 3D asset creation in Blender is definitely significant but it isn't out of many people's reach

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “WorldGen – Text to Immersive 3D Worlds”

31. 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.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

32. I love the discoverability of blender in the sense that I can hit space and start typing the name of the thing I want to do

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “KOReader”

33. I highly recommend you to donate to the organization if you happen to donate to non-profit tech organizations/projects.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Blender 5.2 LTS”

34. You can move transforms around in Blender and Unity with floating point bit increment/decrement operations if you wish.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible”

35. What Blender achieved is that lots of university programmes have started teaching Blender or becoming 'tool agnostic'.

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

36. The studio that makes Evangelion moved from 3DS Max to Blender as their primary 3D software according to this article

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

37. Very very sad that the adaptive subdivision is touted as a Blender feature but unfortunately it's a Cycles feature.

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

38. The time and energy I put into learning Blender feels like an investment that has paid off amazing dividends.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron”

39. I didn't let that stop me using Blender to produce illustrations for my sci-if epic interactive fiction game

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Trying for 1 month but can't learn pixel art still”

40. I don't have to worry about the minutiae of Blender's interface and, most importantly, I can use its power.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Ask HN: What Are You Building with AI?”