That it is a free piece of Software was the reason, I used it back then. Because as a student I do not really want to spend €3000 which was the price of C4D back then or Maya which had a similar price tag. And it is also the reason, many other people start using Blender instead of other 3D Software.

But even now as it became a job it is a big reason, I prefer Blender over the rest.

It makes it way easier to not Log in or Register every time you update it or install it on another PC and then something does not work or in a Company where I must wait for an Administrator who has to buy licenses and for that he must make a request which needs to get signed by the COO which takes 2 weeks.

And, on the other hand, I am not willing to give Maxon €60 per month If I can avoid it. But maybe that’s just because I am from Swabia ;p.

Even if we as Blender users have some options by now with LuxCore and Octane. And with Redshift and Renderman within the next months. (By the way, I have made a list with every Render Engine which is available for Blender here.) Cycles is still my favorite one.

The reason is, that it is so well integrated into Blender better than Arnold in Maya or Redshift in C4D. It just does not feel like a separate piece of Software. It is also seamlessly compatible with Eevee. And has more possibilities for procedural shading than any other Render Engine I have used so far.

It also runs on every device (AMD GPU, Nvidia GPU, and CPU) Octane for example only runs on Nvidia GPUs.

Compared to Redshift it is a bit slower but instead of investing €500 into A Redshift, you could buy an RTX 30X0  GPU which will probably enhance your Performance more.

Blender has an Add-on for everything. There are so many things you never thought you will need in 3D and in most cases later I found out that there was an Add-on that would help me, to get something done much faster.

The only problem, is, that the coolest Add-ons such as Massive for example aren’t compatible with Blender. But that’s not relevant for me since I never worked in a big Studio.

With Texture Painting very good sculpting tools and some possibilities for post-processing, it is a wonderful all in one solution. Sure, for each category there is a better tool also if that is very controversial when it comes to sculpting. But just having everything in one Software just makes it easier and less time-consuming.

For example, last year I had a project for which we motion tracked a dancing musician. And I had to modify his motion. So, I used the Simplify F-Curve feature in the Graph Editor, to make his movements editable.