
Top Blender developers of 2016 - BuuQu9hu
https://www.blender.org/development/the-top-30-blender-developers-2016/
======
IanCal
Nice. I often forget just how much is happening in the blender world, it's
come so far over the years. I know version numbers change but I remember when
there was a hope that _maybe_ by v3 there'd be a raytracer.

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 :)

~~~
singhrac
This was my experience as well! I intended to learn Python so I could build
games, and ended up forgetting about the game and just kept programming.

------
zubspace
Thanks alot for your hard work. It's amazing how this project evolved.

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...](https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-
microdisplacements/)

------
thankYouHN
Wow, man. How have I not heard of this software sooner?!

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!

~~~
buzzybee
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.)

~~~
exDM69
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.

~~~
legodt
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

------
vog
Too bad that the blender website has neither a "blog" section nor an RSS/Atom
feed. I would love to keep being informed in a low-traffic way (once a week,
or even once a month) about the latest cool features, development and movie
projects of the blender community.

~~~
astn
[https://www.blendernation.com](https://www.blendernation.com)

~~~
vog
This site looks great. Unfortunately, it is the exact opposite of low-traffic.

------
firefoxd
Don't forget Mike Pan who is doing some UI updates as we speak.

[1] [https://twitter.com/themikepan](https://twitter.com/themikepan)

~~~
jancborchardt
Thanks for pointing that out! :) While of course showcasing the community is
great, doing it just based on commits inherently skews towards developers and
ignores others like designers, translators, documentation writers, community
people etc.

Just added Mike and some others of the list to our Open Source Design
collective at
[https://github.com/opensourcedesign](https://github.com/opensourcedesign) –
if you want to be part of it as well let me know. :)

------
rafinha
This page is so cool, not only it gives tons of credit and visibility to
developers but also motivates new people to contribute. We needed this kind of
exposure in every open source project.

------
Fraterkes
I have been interested in learning a piece of 3d modeling software for a
while, but choosing a program is pretty difficult since there are a lot of
programs with non-obvious differences and there doesn't really seem to be one
standard. Blenders main feature seems to be that it is free. Maya has more
features and is more of a "full stack" 3d program but is apparently pretty
messy and difficult to learn. Modo is a more streamlined version of maya. C4D
and houdini are more for motion graphics than for anything else. Solidworks
and autocad are really only for product design. I have no idea where 3ds Max
fits in. 3dcoat and zbrush are for sculpting instead of modeling. And then you
also have to choose from a ton of renderers.

~~~
thedaemon
You are a bit mistaken on your information. Just dive in with Blender and go
for it. Blender is full features and open source allowing you to add-on. Maya
also allows to add-on. Modo doesn't support good animation yet, so it's just
modeling right now still. 3ds Max is like Blender and Maya.

------
tomcam
I love Blender, even though I don't use it. I have contributed to the project.
I like to follow its progress. But I have to say, that is the worst laid out
article I have ever tried to read. I don't know why there are numbers in
parentheses after each of the contributor's names, and I don't know how to
follow the two column format. If you had a heat map of my eye movement, it
would be totally random, showing saccades in every direction all over the
page.

------
caycep
the most amazing thing i've seen so far was at SfN a couple of months ago,
someone cobbled together a plugin that processes MRI and other neuroscience
data within Blender...think 3D projections and other slickness. I have to dig
up the paper/reference...

------
flamedoge
awesome

