Ton is a personal hero of mine. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a 3d animator because of Ton. I discovered Blender in the early 2000s as a kid. It was my first exposure to digital art tools because it was free. When Blender open sourced in 2002 it was a massive gift to kids around the world like me. (Ton was kind enough to reply to an email of mine at the time thanking him!)

Ton and Blender have brought so much value to the world by making world-class creation tools available to everyone. Blender is one of the most successful open source projects of all time -- going from an underdog project notorious for difficult to use UI to a polished, ubiquitous, industry shaping tool. And never losing sight of the art; it still brings a huge smile to my face when Blender ships another Open Movie. Nearly ~25 years later, thank you again Ton.

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DoctorOW 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Ton is a personal hero of mine. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a 3d animator because of Ton. I discovered Blender in the early 2000s as a kid.

I could've written this comment, I swear to god. I'll add that Blender is my favorite FOSS project.

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ghurtado 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I'll add that Blender is my favorite FOSS project.

It couldn't be any other way. Even when you ignore the fact that it is free, Blender is literally a better modeling platform than 90% of the commercial alternatives that charge in the hundreds to thousands of dollars for their products.

My favorite thing about the project is the amazing turn about that they did with the UI about 10 years ago (or whenever that was, probably longer). They turned a complete disaster of an interface into a shining example to follow, and that's about when they won everyone's hearts and minds and basically took off in popularity.

For a program that does basically everything, the entire thing is one consistent, intuitive, user experience from beginning to end. I can't think of any other FOSS projects with this level of polish, and very few commercial ones.

	▲	Ericson2314 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I've only followed from a distance, but yes I think this too. It's way more impressive to turn a project around, than have it good at the quality in question the whole time. Path dependency? Not today, daemon!

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mstade 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ditto! I was introduced to blender in the late (great!) 90's and had a lot of fun with it for years before I largely gave up on working in 3d graphics and started building a career as a programmer instead.

Sometimes I think of what could've been had I had the perseverance to stick with it, but mostly I'm just very grateful. Ton was a big part of that for sure, but a lot of others as well. WP (or waypay as I used to call him) who designed the Suzanne model (among a lot of other amazing artwork), Bart who was a pillar of the community and went on to found Blender Nation, and many more who really formed that community. Without it I doubt blender would be more than a footnote in the annals of history.

Massive congratulations to Ton for achieving what many (including me!) never thought possible. Huge, huge kudos!

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xipho 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've pitched Blender to NSF Review panels and the higher ups that come by those to visit as the way science should do software. Would love to know of others as successful as this, particularly as it crosses boundries to industry.

	▲	rgovostes 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Can you elaborate on how Blender exemplifies “the way science should do software”? Are you talking specifically about some aspect like community governance, user experience, code quality, etc.?

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ErikBjare 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think many could have written this, including me. Blender taught me much of what I know about 3D graphics, modeling, rendering, simulation, animation, and more, all from exploring it as a curious teen. Made the 3D graphics class I took at uni a decade later almost superfluous.

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peterashford 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Me too. I know me too comments suck, but I really agree so wholeheartedly I decided to subject you all to it anyway.

Ton for President of the World! =)

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bojo 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I have a similar sentiment. While attending university and learning Maya on SGIs, I recall finding Blender in 1997 and chatting with Ton a little in their IRC channel. Was never able to make a career out of it, but I sincerely miss how kind and helpful everyone was.