I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.
That shows the importance of listening to users. I too tried to learn Blender before the UI overhaul, but with prior 3ds max experience, Blender was infuriatingly counterintuitive; for example, it used the right mouse button instead of the left to select objects. Felt like those deliberately annoying demo pages that make you select phone numbers from drop-downs and click on moving buttons to submit forms.
Brilliant. Some of the animations that are put as showcases on the Blender site are absolutely phenomenal. This one https://studio.blender.org/projects/spring/
particularly is my all time favorite.
I loved Coffee Run and the BCON24 Identity. Brilliant stuff. When it comes to Blender itself the only regret I have is that they ended support for Intel Macs but I understand it's a burden to support older platforms.
<3 Blender is a treasure and must be protected.
Very cool news.
Personally, I'd love to see some more focus on game-dev workflows. The game asset pipeline still feels janky: texture painting exists, but not great, and baking textures/previewing results or baking from high poly to low poly involves a lot of manual node fiddling and rewiring. Export/iterate/build/test cycles are also pretty painful still.
How does it compare to Maya these days?