Aside from all the usual and well-deserved high praise I'm seeing, I feel like there's something more worth pointing out:
Blender has made 3D work much more "mainstream". I see many videos/pictures/tutorials with views in the millions(!), and much more overall interest in using the software. Not just the pretty visuals and talented people, but the whole program itself seems to be gaining traction with the more "normie" crowd.
That also made me realize something else: Blender is now the default for anything that's not extremely high-end/resource-intensive. If you ever hear about anyone doing any kind of 3D work, they're probably using Blender.
And this has creeped into the mainstream in a way only very established brands like Coca-Cola have. Nowadays, "Blender" might as well mean 3D photoshop/illustrator for most people.
> Blender 4.4 is all about stability. During the 2024–2025 northern hemisphere winter, Blender developers doubled down on quality and stability in a group effort called “Winter of Quality.”
Given the name choice “Winter of Quality”, I’m impressed at the rare cultural and geographical awareness that led to specifying “the 2024–2025 northern hemisphere winter” here.
Can someone explain the title to me? What does it mean to release a "version tool"? Or do they have a special version for Oscar winners which is now publicly released? Or is this just some extra tool you can put on top of regular Blender? I simply don't follow.
Rather than a tool, the real people should be highlighted here. Blender’s success in the open source space is atypical. The difference is surely just a group of brilliant people who just happened to take interest and found about this project. Or maybe animation studios are incentivising blender development because of the high price of commercial alternatives. Or both. In any case the individual devs should be championed than just the group.
I've noticed a trend lately with open source projects, notably Godot and Blender, having visually impressive release notes. I hope this trend continues.
It's just a gut feeling instead of a proper evaluation of different apps, but I always feel Blender and Houdini are made by developers who care, while other 3D packages are, well, not.
The phrasing of the submission title ("Blender releases their Oscar winning version tool") here is baffling, unless I'm misunderstanding something. A typical boring HN title would be "Blender 4.4"
For feature length pieces, independent animation is an existential threat to the established film studios that will only grow. Meanwhile, a friend of mine works (very) high up in studio land CGI and recently estimated five years outlook before a total industry implosion due to AI tooling. Leaving the whole Youtube killed TV thing aside (small point!), there has never been a better time to be an aspiring video story teller.
I've been using Blender recently to build 3D models for my new 3D printing obsession. The learning curve is significant, but the product seems great. I've gotten decent help from the chatbots, but does anyone here have any suggestions for good non-animation-focused tutorials?
Blender has come a long way since 2013 when i had passed out my collage. Kudos to developer standing against few like Autodesk giving designers to try something for free.
If I’m not mistaken the story was: despite the movie being much less impressive technically, its narrative and emotional force pushed it ahead of much more polished movies.
Qualifying Blender as “Oscar-winning” is a bit of a stretch.
It’s awesome for Blender, and it’s awesome that Blender allows people to create small budget animated movies. But the Oscar credit should mostly go to the guys who made the movie.
Blender releases their Oscar winning version tool
(blender.org)810 points by babuloseo 27 March 2025 | 282 comments
Comments
Blender has made 3D work much more "mainstream". I see many videos/pictures/tutorials with views in the millions(!), and much more overall interest in using the software. Not just the pretty visuals and talented people, but the whole program itself seems to be gaining traction with the more "normie" crowd.
That also made me realize something else: Blender is now the default for anything that's not extremely high-end/resource-intensive. If you ever hear about anyone doing any kind of 3D work, they're probably using Blender.
And this has creeped into the mainstream in a way only very established brands like Coca-Cola have. Nowadays, "Blender" might as well mean 3D photoshop/illustrator for most people.
Blender is a jewel of the FLOSS movement and a history and behavior that must be mimicked by many other projects.
Looking forward to more successes like this.
Given the name choice “Winter of Quality”, I’m impressed at the rare cultural and geographical awareness that led to specifying “the 2024–2025 northern hemisphere winter” here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42113898
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38282166
Still has a ways to go, but shows promise.
Sadly, the writing is on the wall for my trusty Hackintosh since they recently decided to drop support for AMD GPU acceleration on macOS.
Qualifying Blender as “Oscar-winning” is a bit of a stretch.
It’s awesome for Blender, and it’s awesome that Blender allows people to create small budget animated movies. But the Oscar credit should mostly go to the guys who made the movie.