Don't let my hour count on steam fool you - I've been using blender for 17 years. Compared to the competition of Autodesk 3DsMAX & Maya, Cinema4D, Nuke3D, etc - blender is a complete labour of love by empassioned software developers and it REALLY shows. It's a fraction of the install size, it's so fast it can run circles around the Autodesk suite (anyone want a 5 minute startup time for an app that crashes every 15 minutes if you look at it funny?) and it's good enough to get used in production environments. I know, I've worked with it on professional projects and seen whole art teams use it.

Is it complicated? Yes
Is it worth the pain? Absolutely

Pro tip, find a tutorial you like (not just the same donut that everyone goes to for some reason - do you want to do digital photography? Water simulations? Character art? 2D animation?) and then go through that tutorial once, twice, thrice until you can do it from memory and then move on. Each time you do the tutorial, be playful and mess around with things. That's honestly how I learned, being playful.

It will feel like work at the start but keep at it and eventually the skill will grow to the point where you can abandon the training wheels and just have fun like you do in any other game.

Good luck <3

At first I was just curious of what it is and wanted to learn a bit more about 3D but now I have a full-time job doing it and so far the gameplay was very interesting but the story is kinda stretched out and filled with a lot of repetitive tasks! It's a trap!

i ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate blender so much!
rigging is impossible.
Texturing has to be outsourced.
Anti-new user friendly. explains nothing, and the only help is a online user manual, im a neurodivergent creative, i dont have the patience or ability to read this ♥♥♥♥!
after 6 years, i still have no idea how lighting and cameras work.
Never done hair, EVER!
Anytime i use blender for anything except modeling, i have a full on crash out where i want to hit things till my hands bleed.
If you dont have 10 years of experience in modeling programs, this software is impossible to use.
all tutorials are always out of date, even the official online manual is outdated.
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate blender with a firey passion.
5/5 stars