Hey,
I was wondering how much money you have already spent on SOFTWARE such as programs, addons, courses, models etc.?
0 voters
And how much did you spend on Hardware such as computer components, monitor, tablets or other peripheral devies?
0 voters
I started learning Blender in 2016. A little over four years ago.
I learnt a lot of stuff just by experimenting and watching some free tutorials on YouTube. Any questions I had were asked here on this site. I never paid for any tutorial or guide.
The only things I have ever paid for are two things: Pro Lighting Skies, and a credit pack for Poliigon. That’s it. I managed to do everything else with free stuff available online. There are lots of great CC0 textures to use, and many places to get free things. Sometimes, I would grab a model from the free selection on sites like turbosquid, blendswap or sketchfab. NASA also has a free library of space related models.
In total, I have spent probably $100 (AUD).
Another thing to note: I am probably a bit different from everyone else here as I have a feeling many pay for tutorials and things like that. I am only currently doing it as a hobby.
I bought the grass essentials pack which was like £80? And I’ve also bought a sculpting brushes pack for like £40. I think that’s it. Most of the stuff I’ve used for blender has been free.
rough estimate 400$
for addons, blender fund, free addons, substance painter, substance smart materials/brushes, alphas
I was very lucky, I got in on the “ground floor” with the addons I use daily, back when they were demo concepts, so paid very little indeed for them. Overall, for Blender, I doubt I’ve spent £100 all told. However, for CG in general, over the years, I have spent a LOT of money, on the purchase and many upgrades to Lightwave3D, subscription to the Substance source site for nearly 2 years, various books, dvds etc.
I simply don’t have that sort of cash now, which is what makes working Blender such a joy, as I simply don’t need to spend much at all. The biggest costs now come from any possible hardware upgrades. There are so many free addons for Blender and a wealth of free training that if you are on a tight budget, you can still get the job done.
Though if you are going to spend money on addons, have to say, Hard Ops, BoxCutter, Kit Ops and Decal Machine are what I consider essential purchases. They are almost illegal they’re that much fun!
My biggest purchase was just recently and it’s the E-Cycles build with RTX support. If you haven’t heard of it: it’s basically a very optimized version of cycles and the render times are incredible with this. For about 300$ you get an upgrade that no gpu would come close to at that price point with regular cycles. I have a RTX 2070s and with E-Cycles I could cut down the render times of a scene I’m working on from about 12 minutes per frame to 3-5 minutes per frame. It’s especially great if you don’t have the money to use a renderfarm and Sheep It unfortunately does not support multilayer EXR files.
It might be useful if a poll is set up for the first post of this thread.
Well… I had an AdobeCC subscription for years. Now I use open source mostly. I hate it when I pay for software that doesn’t work well like Premiere Pro for example. So many bugs… I have that on Blender too but I can live with that. Mostly a workaround is around the corner and Bugs are fixed fast.
The main reason I went more open source is because my projects stay usable. Blender will always work. I can’t work with my old Premiere and After effects anymore 
Thank you! I added two polls for software and hardware 
None, I have had a few old computers access to, so I didn’t need to spend money. I did most of my blender projects on windows xp.
Things specifically or mostly for CG.
Software: auto rig pro Blender add on $40
Hardware: 1440p monitor $200, two used gtx 1070 ti gpu’s $300 each.
I started CG with trueSpace. Approximately $600 through three versions. Not including that here since I haven’t used it in a long time.