Blender 3.5 released

Because it comes with some weird things like the inability to use a Non-US keyboard for example. It’s the only software in the world i know of that has that kind of limitations. Basically the solution people offer in forums is ” Just buy a Qwerty keyboard” or “Just buy a new laptop with an english keyboard“.
It’s the kind of things that just doesn’t give a “professional” feel, but “hobbyist” feel instead, even though it is becoming a very capable software in some areas.

Blender is being used in more and more small and mid studios, I can mention one that has made public their useage of Blender for full productions, B-Water Studios is actively using it for several productions (and has already used it with success).

Apart from that studio, I teached several studios and their artists personally, mainly to shift from Max or Maya towards Blender, and while they are actively using Blender already I cannot disclose their names since they have not made the change public themeselves.

BTW one of the main reasons the studios use to justify their shift to Blender is not that it’s better or worse than Max or Maya, in general they fell that is equal, with some things a bit better and with some things that are not there yet, but their main reason is the absurdity of rental licenses, at first they accepted it, after some time it has made clear that is a Win-Loose situation (Autodesk wins, studios loose), and they don’t want to be in Autodesk hands anymore and depend on rental licenses and constant expenses instead of investment.

Another studio that is using Blender, and up to my knowledge will use it for their next 2D movie, with grease pencil is SPA studios, what I know is that htey were going to use grease pencil for everything except their color pipeline because they have a very solid and stablished workflow for coloring with Toon Boom Harmony.

I also know another BIG studio that allowed their artists to use Blender, while it’s not their main tool in the pipeline, it’s already approved and used by several artists where it’s possible to use it.

In the end Blender is taking professional space at giant steps, more every year, and that is good news in general for all the artists that are flexible enough to learn blender and not stay steady in one softwar, and of course is good for Blender users, more usage, more users, more development, it’s a wheel in motion with so much inertia that while it remains under strict quality control and with a solid development plan, will be hard to stop.

BTW that solid development plan is what makes some features to be presetn a bit late to the party, like LIght Linking, that does not mean that the features won’t reach blender when they are important, but the focus is to provide solid features and the target is that the case of “Manifold Extrude” won’t happen again (the worst implementation that could be made of that kind of tool TBH).