Back then when we were on Blender 2.79, i had to make a decision which one i have to use, Maya or Blender.
I chose Maya at first. Although very quickly it started to become very buggy (many crashes so it was unusable) so I switched to Blender 
and i made one of the best decisions ever 
whats your story? did happen the same to all of you?
I started with Maya as well, I loved it, used it for work for a bit, but it’s like really expensive, so I wanted some… you know… free alternative.
So I started using Blender. I expected it to be way worse but free. And then something unexpected happened. I started noticing little things that were just… easier, more convenient for me and what I did… and then when I actually learned to use Blender well it turned out Blender wasn’t only free, but it was a better tool for me and how I work and… many many years later it turns out it was an awesome decision.
I did switch from Maya to Blender while working. And it must have been a traumatic experience and my mind probably blocks that trauma from me 
, because for the life of me I don’t remember exactly how it went. I started using Blender for modelling more and more and then there must have been a point where I decided I would do the next project entirely in Blender. I don’t remember that now. Switching software must be traumatic, it makes sense. Especially when you have to work and produce results, but somehow it just happened for me. I guess the biggest deal was modelling, because it’s really painful to switch from something you know well to something you are new to and I remember it wasn’t a very abrupt switch I played around with Blender for a few years on and off and then one day I was ready I guess.
So I have never experienced being new to 3d and Blender together. I did that with Maya. I imagine it’s a whole lot easier to switch than to start from scratch. I think being in a situation where you have to make it work no matter what, because you are expected to do a job is also a very good motivation for learning. Cruel and brutal, but good.
in which version of blender did you start?
I don’t remember. It was well before 2.79. 2.64 maybe… I am not sure. And also not sure what to call a start. Like I said, I played with it for a while. I think first one I tried was way before that even, but I tried it and forgot about it for a few years and I would not call it a start maybe.
I started Blender back many years ago at the age of 8. I think the current version at the time was 2.65?
My older brother was quite the tech nerd and he was the one who first introduced me to the software. The main reason we both started using Blender was because there was really no selection of free images at the time and our family needed images for various projects (I don’t remember what all they were). So Blender was basically the only good way to make images for free if you didn’t have the skills or supplies to paint images.
Before Blender, I had experimented a bit with SketchUp which was fun to mess around with but absolutely useless for pretty much any other purpose. I wouldn’t say I “switched” to Blender though. Blender was basically where I started.
I also remember trying to make 3D animations in PowerPoint. Yeah it was almost impossible. 
I actually started 3D modeling and stuff by programming it myself. Insane, I know, but I got some decent results (for the time) on my PC. Nothing as cool as professional studios could produce, of course. I remember being really confused by one guy’s code to do hidden line removal. If you ever hear horror stories about “spaghetti code”, they’re real. And that particular piece of code (written in BASIC, no less) was a spaghetti masterpiece. I eventually had to give up trying to figure it out and learned it another way, lol.
EDIT: Oh, I can’t believe I forget. My first dedicated 3D raytracer was Pov-Ray. That thing was like rolling a fancy stone. It could make pretty pictures, but man, you had to work at defining the input just right. (I think these days there’s a Blender plug-in for it.) END EDIT
As for Blender, I am pretty sure I started with something like 1.6 or 1.73, but 1.80a is the one I remember most clearly. It kind of hurts opening that thing back up these days — it’s so primitive now.
At some point I took a university class (’cause I could) and everyone was using Softimage XSI, and the other kids there were all snooty about how to pronounce it. They said it horribly wrong, sadly, but to be fair I didn’t know beforehand that it was a French-Canadian product and was just calling it “soft image” in English (which, to my mind, is perfectly fine). But for all the grief those guys gave me actual French speakers would have torn them to pieces for their bad half-English, half-bad French pronunciation, lol.
Anyway, was forced to use that thing for a bit and, frankly, compared to Blender I found its modeling tools to be clunky and difficult to use. So I modeled everything using Blender and imported the object into Softimage for lighting and rendering.
Did a dramatically lit green glass cat looking over its shoulder at its belly, where a very pretty orange and white goldfish was swimming around. (If you are thinking of a mildly confused, cat-shaped fish bowl you are kind of on the right track.) Back then I had no idea what I was doing so the lighting wasn’t that great. Someday I’ll revisit the idea again. Anyway…
After that I stuck mostly to Blender, though I tried out a few other random 3D softwares here and there for their novelty.
Took a break for a while, mostly because my hard drive and my backup hard drive both decided life was too hard for them within a week of each other. Lost everything. Then I was just working (substituting and then teaching at elementary schools, then a few other random jobs before a stint at in-home appliance repair, then my health took a dive and I had to “retire”. Picked Blender back up then at version 2.49b, I think it was.
It was at 2.79-something, though, that I began to have more time to play with it. And it wasn’t until somewhere around 3.0, I think, that I bit the bullet and treated it like having to learn the software anew because it had changed so much.
Heh, never had the joy of messing with Maya. Looked at it a few times, but never thought it would make me happier than Blender given its price. And I knew I wasn’t going to get into the industry at my age and health.
I think that is a common thing for many Blender users. Back then I remember all the hate Blender got from people because of its unconventional UI.
Good thing Ton knew what he wanted and stuck to his guns.
Ah, a precocious wee laddie. I’m not sure how jealous to be. Glad you’re one of us, tho.
It’s pretty cool that you and your brother were making images that you and your family were actually using. A lot of people never get that far (or that cool).
Don’t be. Like I know “everyone starts somewhere” or whatever, but my art was genuinely horrific for the first 4 years or so. I’d expect to learn faster at that age.
I saw Big Buck Bunny and thought “if a free program can do that, I better learn it.” So probably version 2.46 or 2.47 was my first. It was by far the most quirky piece of software I’ve ever used, but Jonathan Williamson (CGCookie) started dropping tons of free tutorial videos around that same time so made it manageable. How people learned it before video tutorials I can’t even imagine.
I started Blender when I found that a local college was offering some sessions on Blender for beginners, so I thought I would give it a go.
I started out on my old laptop, which could barely handle it, hence why I didn’t share much here in my first few years. However, when I realised that I was enjoying Blender and spending more and more time just waiting for my laptop, I decided to build a desktop PC. Luckily right before the RAM prices skyrocketed.
I think my first Blender version was 3.6.
Cool question, thanks for opening a space to share.
I was shocked when opening Blender in high school in early 2017 and closed it immediately.
I was scared when opening Blender in late 2021 in university and closed it immediately, again.
Then I bought a keyshot student license and ran so quickly into its limitations that I came back and binged Blender until today.
Blender changed how I interact with a computer. Hotkey lover since then. Opened the linux and programming world to me.
I always wondered how that works when it actually works. Could you share more about your experience learning this way? I had some Maya lessons in university, but I found them… not very useful to put it mildly. It was always not enough time for people to learn much of anything the way I saw it. I could already use Maya pretty decently at that time so it wasn’t something I worried about for myself, but I observed others and I remember thinking that “there is no way in hell that can be enough at all” and so I sort of think about formal education as not very effective in this area, but that might not be true, just my weird experience. How was it for you?
I was into photography and Youtube recommended me CG Geek’s Photoscan tutorial and I’ve no idea why I decided to watch it. Making virtual object from photos sounded intriguing. But, an unfortunate part, to be able to see this object from different sides you need a 3D software. Tutorial did not explained how to navigate in Blender, so I watched tutorial about it. Then I watched donut tutorial. And a month or two later I found myself binge watching Animation nodes tutorials.
It was in 2018, Blender 2.79.
Yeah sure, they weren’t formal lessons at all, the local college does weekend and evening courses for a few hours. They find local artists / experts / teachers, who want to share there knowledge and earn a bit more money, the college then deals with payment, insurance, etc. The teachers like it, as they don’t need to sort out equipment, public liability insurance. The students get a course backed by someone they trust, so the quality is usually great, and if there are any issues you can contact them. And the college gets a bit more revenue, for a space that otherwise would sit empty over the school holidays or weekends.
I didn’t get any formal qualification, it was just about 5 sessions down there with about 10-15 other people, learning the basics of Blender. Which helped to get me interested, and then I did the rest of my learning online.
I could probably dig out my old projects from somewhere, if you want.
I definitely didn’t get most of my Blender skills from there, but having someone there who you can just ask basic questions to, and who can help you understand the UI, I think is much better than trying to learn the basics online. If I got stuck on something, I could just ask someone in person, who could help me within a few minutes, whereas online it can be days before the instructor responds.
There probably was a longer course I could have gone on, but it really helped to get me interested and to help me get started.
From memory. 3.6 wasn’t actually the latest version available, it was just what the computers where running. I can’t remember what the latest one was, but I definitely spent a lot of time in 4.3.
I first started futzing with Blender circa mid-2021. I don’t quite remember where exactly I found it (I guess it was a random search query on Google or something). So I grabbed myself a copy of Blender, installed and then opened it, and when I saw that so-called Euclidean space (or 3D space in simple terms), I literally couldn’t understand anything as I had never worked with any 3D tools before. So I was kinda disappointed and lost at the same time. Based on that, I decided to delete the program from my PC thinking that it’s just not my cup of tea. All I remember is that I was kinda angry at that moment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However, later, in September the same year, I decided to give it a try once again. I was like, “Hey, I need to make something really simple, like a low-poly lamb or something”. So I went straight on YouTube, found a tutorial on how to make a low-poly lamb in Blender, and literally started repeating all the things the author was talking about, until I got myself almost identical result compared to his one. And when I got what I got, I was like, “Damn straight, I made it!”. After that, I felt that I definitely needed to keep forward and don’t stop. So in the next six months, I only watched tutorials, repeating step-by-step what big dudes told me to do, thus getting the hang of this. It was only around early '22 when I finally started making my own things in Blender. It’s been one hell of a ride after all for me.
A year later, in the early '23, I found this beautiful forum and decided to sign up for it. And, well, y’know how things have gone since then. 
Love y’all!
P. S. Blender 2.93 was my first version. I still use it from time to time since it’s not as demanding as newer releases.
This sounds really cool.
In 2023, my wife and I went to an arcade close to where we used to live. We spent some time at the pinball machines, and I got inspired to make a pinball game. I started in Godot and got the main mechanics of the game working, but then I needed graphics. I had read that Blender was easier to use after the 2.80 update and I didn’t want to buy an expensive software license for what was just a hobby project. So I had a look at Blender and got really side-tracked. I’ve since spent most of my spare time with Blender, learning everything I can about 3D graphics.
Being a web developer and former graphic designer, this intersection of tech and art really matched with my interests. I love it, but I have to admit that it’s a little bit of an obsession at times.
This month I delivered my first professional 3D project with Blender.
(The pinball game was never finished.)
Ditto. Especially when you have OCD.
It is really useful, and they really aren’t expensive, they generally work out to about £10 a session, with a discount if you book multiple at once. And they sometimes will do a few community outreach sessions free of charge for people who otherwise couldn’t afford them or get access to it.
I am quite similar, I think it’s why I like geo nodes so much, as it really intersects programming and logic, with art.
I’ve started with 2.4x (I don’t remember if it was 2.42 or 2.45) as I’ve seen Luxrender and I wanted to use it…so Blender it was needed.
At that time, for a long time 3dsmax user, it was very different from it in so may aspects that it was quite a nightmare…but I was quite openminded to accept the challenge and now I’m very happy to master quite a bit it.
If I’m lucky with some decisions out of my control, probably next year I’ll be able to say good bye to 3dsmax both at work.