Blender Feedback Survey 2024 Results

We asked for suggestions on how Blender Foundation could raise funding to pursue projects and remain independent.

Selling Merchandise (most frequently suggested)

• Many users expressed a strong desire for official Blender merchandise.
• Specific items mentioned:
• T-shirts (including varied or subtle designs)
• Hoodies
• Hats
• Socks (especially the UV Map ones)
• Stickers
• Pins
• Badges
• Mugs
• Keychains
• Plushies (Suzanne, default cube, open movie characters)
• 3D printed items (models, characters, gadgets)
• Suggestions included reopening the online store, making it more accessible globally (especially regarding shipping costs and availability in different countries), offering limited editions, and involving community artists in designing merchandise.

Digital Products & Assets

• Selling official or curated digital assets: 3D models, textures, materials, Geometry Nodes setups, add-ons, project files, animation libraries.
• Creating an official marketplace for community-created assets/add-ons (similar to Blender Market, but officially run by BF, possibly taking a percentage of sales).

Training & Education

• Creating and selling high-quality, in-depth, official courses or tutorials (especially for advanced topics like Geometry Nodes, rigging, animation, VFX, architecture, or specific industry pipelines).
• Offering workshops (online or in-person), masterclasses, or certification programs.
• Providing paid professional support or consulting services for studios and companies.

Targeted Funding & Projects

• Allowing users to donate towards specific features, bug fixes, or development areas ("vote with your money", feature bounties).
• Setting clear funding goals for specific projects or sprints (like the 2.8 Code Quest model) and showing progress transparently (e.g., progress bars).

Increased Visibility & Marketing

• More active presence and promotion on social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.).
• Advertising the importance of donations and explaining clearly where the money goes (transparency).
• Creating compelling showcase videos or films (like open movies, or highlighting user work) that also include calls to action for donations.
• Collaborating with influential content creators (YouTubers, streamers) for fundraising events or mentions.
• Putting donation reminders in more prominent places (e.g., on the splash screen, subtly in the UI, on the website) without being overly intrusive.

Alternative Payment Methods & Accessibility

• Adding support for more regional/local payment systems (UPI in India, Alipay/WeChat Pay in China).
• Accepting cryptocurrency.
• Offering lower donation tiers (e.g., $1 or €1/month).

Memberships & Perks

• Offering tiered memberships (beyond the current Dev Fund structure) with varying levels of benefits (exclusive content, early access to builds/features/tutorials, digital badges, recognition/listing on the website).
• Providing small perks or rewards in exchange for donations (digital or physical items, recognition in the community).

Corporate/Institutional Engagement

• Actively seeking sponsorships and donations from large companies, industries (VFX, gaming, architecture), and potentially government/public sector bodies.
• Partnering with educational institutions (schools, universities) to encourage usage and potentially receive support or grants.

Feedback & Prioritization (often mentioned as conditions for donating)

• Listening more closely to user feedback.
• Prioritizing bug fixes and improvements to existing, sometimes "neglected" features (sculpting, texture painting, UV editor, physics, VSE, performance, interoperability like FBX/USD). Many users stated they would donate if these were addressed.

Overarching Themes

• Transparency: Users want to know clearly how their donations are being used and what impact they have.
• Value Exchange: While appreciating the free software, many users are motivated to donate or spend if they receive something in return, whether it's merchandise, exclusive content, or contributing to a specific, desired feature.
• Community Building: Suggestions often tied donation efforts to community events, showcasing user work, or making users feel more connected to the development process.
• Accessibility: Making payment easier for users in different regions and providing more affordable options were highlighted.
• Industry Alignment: Attracting more professional users and studios by addressing pipeline needs and demonstrating industry-level capabilities is seen as a path to larger funding sources.

Here's a summary of what users say about Blender development. The most common themes and feelings from the feedback have been summarized and grouped into positive, neutral, and negative categories.

Positive

• General Appreciation: Many users express overall satisfaction, love, and appreciation for Blender. Many thank the developers for their work.
• Pace of Development: Some users appreciate the fast-paced development and frequent updates, finding it exciting and innovative.
• Specific Features: Users often praise specific features, especially Geometry Nodes, the node-based workflow, Cycles, EEVEE (prior to EEVEE Next), and the open-source nature of Blender.
• Community and Resources: Positive comments on the Blender community, the availability of tutorials, and resources like Blender Studio.
• Improvements over Time: Long-time users note significant improvements in Blender over the years, making it a viable alternative to commercial software.
• Some expressed happiness with the new direction.

Neutral

• Mixed Feelings on Development Pace: Some users find the rapid pace of development overwhelming, making it hard to keep up with changes and causing compatibility issues with older projects or workflows.
• Documentation: Some users request better or more accessible documentation, or more in-depth examples.
• Suggestions for Improvement: Users offer suggestions for improvement without necessarily expressing dissatisfaction, such as requests for more specific features or tools (e.g., CAD tools, better texture painting, improved physics simulations).
• Communication: Some users express a desire for more transparency and communication about development plans and roadmaps, missing the "Blender Today" show.
• Add-ons: Blender is too reliant on external add-ons.

Negative

• Performance Issues: Complaints about performance, especially with large scenes, complex models, simulations (cloth, fluids), and EEVEE Next. Users express frustration with slowdowns, crashes, and instability.
• Feature Completeness: Concern that new features are sometimes released without being fully polished or complete, leading to bugs and workflow disruptions.
• API Changes/Breaking Changes: Developers breaking the API in new versions and breaking workflow.
• "Blender Today" Absence: Users express missing the "Blender Today" show for news and communication.
• Lacking feature: Many users expressed needs for new features. For example, "endless drop downs" and missing features from other software.
• Usability and User Experience: Some users find the UI and UX confusing or unintuitive, particularly for beginners or users transitioning from other software. There are requests for a more streamlined and user-friendly interface.
• Missing/Abandoned Features: Users point out features that were promised or partially developed but then seemingly abandoned or delayed, causing frustration.
• Focus Areas: Some users feel that certain areas (e.g., sculpting, texture painting, physics, animation tools, NPR rendering, CAD tools) are neglected in favor of others (e.g., Geometry Nodes). There are also concerns that Blender is trying to do too much instead of focusing on core strengths.
• Compatibility and Workflow Issues: Users express frustration with backwards compatibility issues between Blender versions, breaking changes, and difficulty integrating Blender into professional pipelines with other software.
• Community Engagement: Some users feel that the developers don't always listen to or address community feedback, or that communication channels could be improved.
• EEVEE Next: Some users are very unhappy with EEVEE Next performance.
• Support for older/low-end hardware: Request for developers to consider users with older hardware.
• Too frequent updates: Some long time users felt that there were too many frequent updates, making it hard to keep projects compatible, and feeling like they are "punished" when they need to update.

Summary

• Positive: General appreciation, fast development, good community.
• Neutral: Mixed feelings about the pace of development, suggestions for minor improvements, desire for better documentation.
• Negative: Performance issues, incomplete features, breaking changes, lack of focus on certain areas (modeling, animation, texture painting), communication, and perceived lack of attention to user feedback. EEVEE Next was a pain point for several users.

It's important to note that this summary categorizes general sentiment, but individual feedback entries often contain a mix of positive, negative, and neutral points.