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Posted a few days too late but, Blender Stack Exchange just turned 10 years old seven days ago.

May 22 2013, the date of the earliest question ever posted on Blender stack exchange. A question about soft body baloons on the now aging Blender 2.66, the post that started it all.

Is there a way to prevent soft body balloons from crumpling when they hit walls?

two years later we graduated on September 10 2015. Who would have guessed that ten years and 107,377+ questions later we'd all be were we stand?

Time does fly, it has been a long road, full of ups and downs, but here we are after all these years. I wont pretend I remembered the date, if it wasn't for the community managers I'd probably have missed this mark.

enter image description here

Image shamelessly stolen from original(see image #6) by Wawawiwa Comics

Blender has evolved tremendously in the meantime, from the now distant 2.6# days, through the great jump of Blender 2.8, which brought a huge influx of new people, all the way through the latest novelties, and hopefully far beyond the upcoming Blender 4.0 series.

To mark the moment we're posting this question to celebrate the occasion, and request that all members of the community, recently arrived or that have accompanied us through these years to reply with their best moments spent here with the community.

Share any fun interactions, interesting chat conversations, link to great answers, shameless self promotion of your best posts, or any entertaining moments you spent here, or perhaps tell us your origin story. How did you first join Blender Stack Exchange? How did you start using Blender?

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Since I've only been here for 12 months, I'm afraid I don't have much interesting to report, and can only tell my own little story...

But first of all, this is the opportunity for me to express my heartfelt thanks to this wonderful community!

enter image description here

In March 2022 I started learning Geometry Nodes, and was looking for an answer to a problem. That's how I came across this platform. Since the answer was unfortunately not to be found here, but I found a solution in the meantime, I wanted to share it.

However, my question/answer was so clumsily worded that it was immediately closed by Duarte...

This motivated me to write a more serious post.

In the process, other solutions to open questions came to my mind, and I started answering those questions.

And from that point on, I couldn't stop doing it, and I've fallen into this "addiction" of engaging here to this day.

However, the most incredible event for me personally was after I became the first user to achieve the Gold Badge in , after only 172 days. ...That made me very happy, because it gave me confirmation from the community that my answers here can actually be helpful, and it motivated me to keep going.

For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator and I'm trying to fill the big shoes that others have left before me.

I have no idea why all this, but probably it has to do with the fact that I now consider this wonderful community as a kind of Blender family, from which I can permanently learn something interesting, and I'm happy to contribute a small part.

Even if I could answer one or the other question, in the end I could learn the most from all of you. Thanks to your constant fascinating and head-scratching questions (and answers!)!

And for that I am infinitely grateful.

I have already written it in the chat: The past 12 months have been the most exciting and beautiful time of my life so far regarding 3D and Blender!

Thank you!

...now its time to learn I think ;-)

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    $\begingroup$ "For some reason I don't know, you elected me as a moderator" From my part at least, quoting Ton Roosendaal himself, "I decided to go for the nicest people, not the best technology. (Choosing for people you never regret.)" ;) $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    May 30 at 16:32
  • $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos Haha, are you saying I'm one of the nicest people here, or one of the most unqualified!!!? :D $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    May 30 at 16:41
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    $\begingroup$ XD One of the nicest; your rep totally excludes the unqualified option ;) $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    May 30 at 16:44
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In a sadder note we also saw the departure of some of our oldest moderators, who were here from the very start and really shaped the foundations where we stand today.

Respect and nostalgia for our missed members David and iKlsR which despite currently no longer being active within our community, still remain some of the highest reputation users off all time, thanks to the long list of lasting high quality contributions whose content still remains relevant to this day.

David♦ Moderator resignation

A goodbye to the community - iKlsR Moderator Resignation

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    $\begingroup$ the golden days surely were with gandalf, david, and iklsr. the three of them probably answered more than 75% of the question asked for a 3 year period :/ $\endgroup$
    – ruckus
    Jun 7 at 20:49
  • $\begingroup$ @ruckus Still among the highest rep users to this day, despite recent years of inactivity. I see you are one of the "old guard". Care to share a story from back then? Maybe how you first joined BSE, or how you started using Blender $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 8 at 0:05
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the recognition. Although there were other even before I was a mod. I still venture into the realms of Stackexchangia every once in a while. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Jun 13 at 17:33
  • $\begingroup$ Always nice to see you pop in every once in a while ;) $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 13 at 18:37
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Congratulations BSE. 10 years its crazy to think back, and realize its been a decade. I remember first finding this site from the post on blendernation, then six months later I started here.

It was a great time when I was daily active here. I got to know many of you as internet friends.

I have to mention a few users, not active anymore but each in their own way really built this site into the resource it is today.

cegaton Super knolagable blender user who was dedicated to this site. When he left (deleted his account because of SE corporate) he had the second most reputation, and by far the most questions and answers.
batFINGER another powerhouse of knowledge, if you had a python problem batFINGER probably helped you.
moonboots An amazing answering machine. To this day has written over 4.5k answers! It is hard to comprehend that kind of number. This one user has written 6% of all the answers on BSE.
I have to mention that there have ben many power users over the years (if I miss one, or some I did not mean to, but I may not have been around.) Just scrolling through the user list I got nostalgic.
One such example is Shady Puck, only around for a year or so, but in that time broke near every record. He was one of the users that did it all.
troy_s a master of digital color. So much so he was the one that originally got color management into blender. Troy you taught me a lot, thanks.
GiantCowFilms Aside from everything done on BSE, this is the one user behind blend-exchange the site that to this day we all still use to host our files for questions and answers.
J Sargent (or better remembered by "NID" or "VRM"), JakeD, TARDIS Maker, Thom Blair III, CharlesL, p2or, someonewithpc, X-27, pink vertex, PGmath. All from the same era, and all played a part in this site.
Going back farther we have users like CodeManX, Ray Mairlot, sambler, or the former mods A Wild RolandiXor, Gwen, ideasman42 (yes the ideasman42 who was the main blender dev for so many years), Daniel Node.js (better remembered as "Dan the man"). Thank you all for making this site the huge resource it is in the blender community.

Milestones were crossed, swag was given out, Hats were collected, and possibly one blender broken (deleted question image link).

Blender has grown so, SO much. It has been amazing to see this shunned "open source" 3D creation software become mainstream, and used everywhere.

The time on this site, the knowledge I gained and shared, the people I worked along side, the interactions with others, will always remain with me. It was truly a life experience.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Long live blender, and long live BSE.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice post. Thanks for reminding me of all those users I still crossed paths with in my first times here. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 13 at 19:16
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I'll start to get the ball rolling:

This has got to be one of my favorite posts of all time here on meta:

Life On The Surface where our sorely missed member batFINGER posted one of the most entertaining posts of our site that sparked some of the most creative and best formatted answers meta has ever witness.

Likewise this remains my all time favorite answer on main

Paul Gonet answer to How do I make a 3 dimensional character out of flat picture?

Out of the ashes of a poor question that is too broad for its own good, was born an answer that started out with a joke and evolved in a very comprehensive "tutorial" few would have the passion and dedication to type and illustrate as well as Paul did.

Lastly an amusing, if a bit cryptic moment that happened over on The Renderfarm chat room a few years ago, where an unintentional chain of deleted replies sparked cascading "removed" posts for for comedic effect.

enter image description here

Here's what was really said

Removed

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I technically joined in July '18, but wrote my 1st post on 30th April '19, asked a question, answered it myself and left. I had an impression this is more like a stub SE site, very niche. Then B2.8 was released, I couldn't find "Remove doubles" so I searched, Google has led me again to BSE, the answers (t)here didn't work, but after I found an answer elsewhere, figured I can go back to the BSE thread and write about my findings¹. Every now and then, using other websites in SE network, I would see $+10p$ reputation notification, which would remind me about the existence of BSE.

Throughout next 1,5 years (!) I wrote nothing here, but that answer accumulated many upvotes: not only those are nice tokens of appreciations motivating to write more, but it also made me realize BSE is not that small. So on 27th January '21 I wrote my 3rd answer and continued from there.

It seems like subtle things have led me to spend years learning Blender; if there's a multiverse, I imagine in many universes I remained a Blender noob.

reply with their best moments spent here with the community […] Share any fun interactions

This is the best joke I've read on BSE, by already mentioned batFINGER - I don't know if I would be able to learn bpy without him:

Using force field to move clamped objects (difficult task)

There are more jokes to be found on BSE, though sometimes it's hard to tell if the pun was intended.

Also great questions by Jachym Michal [another person, who had a great impact on my activity here, rewarding me with a generous 💲500 bounty when I was just starting]:

Which inspired at least one user:

¹ - I remember a situation where I would wait together with a stranger at a tram stop at night and no tram would arrive for a long time, so I decided to walk to a parallel street to see if maybe the pathing changed - it did, but I never went back to inform the other person the tram won't arrive there, haunts me to this day…

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  • $\begingroup$ I miss Batfinger around here. Jachym as been another remarkable member of the community. Those "most fun" challenges always make the community liven up. I actually meant to mention those, thanks for reminding us. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 1 at 22:28
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    $\begingroup$ Personally, I'm still in favor of introducing a separate tag for challenges! There should at least be the possibility to give these questions a place, because, as you rightly say, these help to liven up the content a bit and attract people. $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    Jun 2 at 17:46
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    $\begingroup$ @quellenform that is an interesting idea, never though about that. Tags for challenges pose a few questions I'm worried about, like on-topic-ness and frequency, but maybe we could make it work. Perhaps this warrants a meta post of its own for more in-depth discussion $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 4 at 18:25
  • $\begingroup$ @DuarteFarrajotaRamos Well, I think the idea is not entirely new, but so far it has always come to nothing: blender.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=challenge $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    Jun 4 at 19:24
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    $\begingroup$ A mod once said that in the absence of a more definitive decision, the most voted answer for a meta post is to be considered a binding decision. The main opponent of these challenges idea was iKlsR which is no longer active here. I'd say new moderation new rules. I can understand his concerns, and I have a few of my own as well, but I think we can discuss them and establish some ground rules to make challenges happen within the scope of our site $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 4 at 20:32
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My has it been a long time. Look at how you've grown :D

I know I'm not around much these days, life has been taking me for a ride in a different direction for a while now. But I had a dream iKlsR told me off for not leaving a comment here.. anyway,

Happy birthday BSE <3

Thank you for being an amazing resource for so many people, as well as a foundational part of my life. I will always look back on the hours I spent and the friends I made here with fondness. Thank you all.

And thank you to all the people who have kept this site thriving, especially Duarte Farrajota Ramos (who must surely be our longest active mod!?) your dedication and kind leadership has done so much for this place; quellenform, whos immaculate answers and persistent enthusiasm really lights the place up; Moonboots, who will no doubt surpass my #1 reputation spot soon enough, and so many more who deserve just as much praise.

Here's to many years to come!

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Moonboots is indeed catching up, we'll have to celebrate the occasion, but your reputation still reigns supreme, even after all these years. Thanks for the kind words and the custom cake. Looks yummy $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jun 30 at 9:34
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    $\begingroup$ Thank you so much for your appreciation! I honestly tried for a long time to outdo moonboot's performance, but finally had to realize that he must indeed be a bot. I can't explain this number of wonderful answers any other way ;-) ...and thanks for the great cake! $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    Jul 2 at 23:12
  • $\begingroup$ Damn, now curiosity is killing me, now I have to ask. Is this cake real or a render? I thought it was a photo, but now I noticed what I though was a cherry is actually a Susanne. Are your render skills that good, or are you a prolific baker as well? $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jul 3 at 15:15
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    $\begingroup$ ahaha its a render, alas! I could really go for some cake to be honest $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 Mod
    Jul 4 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ Great job, the little imperfections on the icing and the handwriting really fooled me $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jul 5 at 20:33
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I didn't realize BSE was "only" 10 years old 👀
Happy Aluminum birthday!

BSE has a weird place in my life. I arrived here running away from other sites, trying to find a new old-school forum in French. It shouldn't have worked, and yet here we are.

I am not 100% sure when I started using Blender. I have faint visual memories of the old UI and the old website:

enter image description here

I think my first contact was seeing the first minute of the Durian Project. Judging by the date, I guess I had to open the page in the evening and come back the following morning to hade it all loaded.

For what it's worth... If I trust the splashscreens, I'd think I might have seen Blender for the first time with 2.54:

enter image description here

It seems to have landed somewhere in early 2011, so I guess I was not even 15 years old. I was learning Blender from an old french tutorial on the then-famous Site Du Zéro (SDZ), which back then was in the process of updating itself out of v2.4 to 2.5. This tut alone was probably responsible for most of the French-speaking community of the late 2000s early 2010s. We had lots of community help, projects, challenges, events and whatnot. The old days. Still a moderator there somehow.

BSE would emerge into existence only a few years after I started using Blender. But probably due to my poor English and having all my needs fulfilled by Frenchy sites at this time, I didn't leave the nest yet. Well, kind of.

But good things have an end. SDZ changed, a lot, replaced its "tutorials by the community for the community with a cool forum" formula by online state-recognized online courses, I tried many other communities without ever settling, and the people I knew got older, moved on, or went to the English world and never came back. And eventually, so did I...

I was on blenderartists first, but it never really engaged me much. I do not know when or how I discovered BSE.
It seems my first participation here was an answer back in March 2018. I remember at first I didn't really get the Q&A formula, and found it lacked the very social side of classic forums. A year later I asked my first question on Meta, TL;DR is "I'm frustrated someone edited my answer". Guess it took me a year to get the difference from a 2000s forum. I'm a slow learner sometimes 🤣
I would have never thought I'd stick around, it wasn't what I was looking for at that time. I also realize I have posted only 6 questions in all that time.

Yet, here we are five years later, still going and loving it.

My event memory isn't that great, but thanks to you all, I got reminded of a lot of things I've seen here. Between the funniest ways to make things topics (which sometimes did made some sparkles) to usernames whose avatars I used to see in my sleep (I mean, look at this!). Sadly, viewing all of these names and avatars only makes me realize I haven't seen them for... A while.

Sometimes at least I think about saving stuff to keep some memories. Unfortunately, most of it is somewhere on a laptop, itself lost somewhere in my room... 🤔

But to make it up for the lack of crispy old fun memories, here's a fresh arrival from today on the renderfarm:
hostage-taking Duarte's rep.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all you people's presence, past and hopefully future!

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the post, and reminding me of the old 2.49 website. Glad you moved on into the English side of the web and stuck around BSE, it grows on you after a while. So you were a moderator there, huh? I know who I'll fish for during he next election now 😁 $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Jul 14 at 9:49
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    $\begingroup$ Now I wouldn't necessarily say the situation you mentioned was one of my fun moments either, but it was definitely an interesting moment. Anyway, I'm happy that it was made clear that I'm not Duarte, and that there is a difference between those users who create answers and those who edit answers. ;-) $\endgroup$
    – quellenform Mod
    Jul 16 at 10:32

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