Blender is awesome. It really is one of the best open source projects out there. While it had a reputation for being inaccessible this hasn’t been the case for a long time and 2.8 makes it even easier.
I credit Blender for starting my career as a software engineer. I had programmed a little before starting to use Blender, but never really got into it past making some silly text-based adventure games and the likes. In the latter half of the 90s I developed a huge interest in 3d graphics, not least because of Pixar. My father took note and while I played around with some pretty crappy modelling software I'd found on a shareware cd at some point, he managed to find an SGI O2 for cheap in the late 90s. Amazing machine, loved it, but the OS was IRIX (which I knew nothing about) and all the 3d software that would run on IRIX was extremely expensive. Fortunately, this little studio in the Netherlands gave away this piece of software for free – Blender – and my older brother who was quite into Linux at the time helped me set it up. I didn't understand any of it, but thanks to IRC and this amazing little Blender community that popped up I learned how to work this thing and started making whatever I could imagine.
My renders were mostly crap, but it was great fun and I kept spending my time with it. Meanwhile, Blender grew more popular and gained a Python API with which you could actually add little scripts, programs that would run inside blender and make wheels on a car turn or what have you – it was absolutely mind blowing to me. It meant that now, as I felt I was hitting the limitations of Blender and grew increasingly frustrated by it, I wouldn't have to wait for Ton & gang to implement features, I could start doing it myself! Of course I had no idea what I was doing, so it was back to square one, but this time learning to program rather than modelling or animation. It was amazing though, that instant gratification of writing a script and seeing something other than text render on screen!
I was terrible at math, and never really understood why we had to study it in school. But all of a sudden I started realizing that trigonometry and algebra actually had some usefulness beyond academic exercises. Blender in a way forced me to start taking math seriously. It also improved my language skills since I had to communicate in English with all these strangers over the internet. Strangers who would take the time to teach a kid (though they probably had no idea) how to model a person's face (it was the holy grail of modelling for me at the time) or how to animate a car, or how to write a script that would make those wheels on the car turn as it moved forward...
I stopped using Blender around the mid 00s, partly because I then had gotten access to more powerful tools such as XSI, but also because I think the programming interest took over and indeed I stopped making 3d graphics around that time altogether as well. In -04 (or perhaps -05) I got my first paid job as a programmer. I didn't go to college, I never got a degree in comp.sci. or anything like that, it all really started with Blender. I'm now well into my second decade as a professional programmer, which is pretty amazing come to think of it.
Nowadays I tend to check in on Blender every once in a while and am always blown away by just how for it's come. All the amazing artwork used with it, and all the amazing people involved. A stunning success story, that I hope continues for a long, long time.
Thanks a ton, Ton – can't think of a better person to receive this award!
Blender 2.8 is a huge leap forward in usability (and features too)! If you haven't tried Blender recently, it's worth downloading the 2.8 beta and giving it another try.
While I fully agree, moving from 2.7* to 2.8 default bindings is killing my muscle memory! I’ll get there eventually.
For me eevee is probably going to make a huge difference, I throw together various renders and animations and bits of code to help my students understand what I’m teaching and the reduced render times really help.
