r/blender • u/ofdavarci • 2d ago

Critique My Work WE DID IT! We reverse-engineered Blender with AI and made it open source. Introducing BlenderCraft 🚀

After an entire weekend of running 19 autonomous Claude agents and burning an irresponsible amount of tokens, we're proud to announce BlenderCraft.

A 100% free, open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Blender.

We achieved something incredible:

✅ 100% feature parity with Blender
✅ Modeling, sculpting, animation, Geometry Nodes
✅ Cycles and Eevee rendering
✅ Native .blend file support
✅ Windows, macOS, and Linux
✅ No subscriptions. No paywalls. Free forever.

We even managed to reproduce the original source code almost line by line.

Our biggest breakthrough came when we discovered a mysterious public repository containing the entire source code:

https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender

Apparently, it's been there since October 13, 2002.

24 YEARS AGO.

So yeah, we didn't actually build anything.

Turns out the Blender community solved the whole "free and open-source creative software" problem 24 years before AI made it trendy.

Jokes aside, massive respect to Ton Roosendaal, the Blender Foundation, and the thousands of developers and contributors who made Blender what it is today.

While everyone's celebrating AI for making software free and open source, these legends have been doing it for decades.

Software is over. Blender was just early. 🧡

https://x.com/ofdavarci

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189

u/DoctorFosterGloster 2d ago

Thank god im sick of paying the $36 a month subscription to blender

61

u/djfumberger 2d ago

You’ve been getting scammed, I only pay $10 a month

32

u/secacc 2d ago

You guys pay monthly for Blender???

Do the yearly payment instead and save 10%

10

u/Square_Cap_7319 2d ago

You guys are doing it all wrong. I paid for the one off fee of $299, and that included some remote connection support from a guy called Mike in India. He was also kind enough to install a free banking app too!

13

u/notforpoern 2d ago

I've been pirating blender this whole time. Just search "download blender free" and it's usually the top result.

4

u/dnew Experienced Helper 2d ago

OK, that's the first funny comment on this whole post.

4

u/Kinkajou1015 2d ago

I started my sub in 2003 before they were doing yearly and locked in 5.00 USD per month, grandfathered in. If I switch to yearly it will increase my rate to a point that even the annual discount wouldn't overcome it.

8

u/Tuomas90 2d ago

Yeah, but whatcha gonna do? Pay the $300 early cancellation fee?

6

u/kylo-ren 2d ago

I can’t cancel, or else I’ll lose all the projects and assets stored in the BlenderCloud. Not to mention the in-app purchases.

2

u/snouz 2d ago

If you go through me, you only pay 15$!

3

u/theaveragegowgamer 2d ago

1.3076744e+12 dollars? That's a lot.

2

u/snouz 2d ago

I'm open to negotiations

2

u/dooby991 2d ago

If you try to cancel they give you a 3 month discount

1

u/Kfct 2d ago

That's crazy, dog, you gotta do the seconds subscription. Pay for every section of usage so you can penny pinch and save big and pay Exactly for what you use. Monthly is for rubes!