I have been so frustrated with Blender, and I still sorta am. But the good thing about Blender is that there are so many third party plugins for it that make it that much more powerful. Now, I don't use the Blender Game Engine per-se, but I do use Blender for making game content for the Maratis3D game engine. Let me show you some reasons you might want to consider using Blender for your visual game art:

THE SITE:

http://www.blender.org/

PLUGINS:

BEPUIK Plugin (Full body inverse kinematics)

Real Time Animation:

Bsurfaces (draw your meshes)

THINGS MADE WITH IT:

Blender Guru (great tutorials for blender)

http://www.blenderguru.com/

Blendswap (share blender files)

http://www.blendswap.com/

More tutorials and resources:

http://cgcookie.com/blender/

The power of blender is there, but the area it struggles in is the design of the interface. I know most people who thought they might switch over to Blender from 3dsmax or Maya say that it is very un-intuitive and frustrating to use (and it sorta is), but they are not raking in the big bucks that way to support the payroll for that, and yet, it is a very capable and FREE professional 3d modeling software.

It is because I am pretty much poor that I was forced to use this software, but I have seen it's potential while doing so.

What are you experiences with Blender3D?

If you have any cool things about Blender to add, please comment.

I've used Blender exclusively for years now. Pre-rendered isometric art, 3D assets, visualization, CNC work, and so on. Almost everything in my game is touched by Blender in some way, including the UI elements.

All of my older stuff has used Blender as well:

Even all the way back to one of my earliest projects of the "modern" ere (ie, post DOS):

So, yeah, I find Blender to be highly useful. :D

Wow! That is inspirational! I really need to know how to do UI elements, although I have taken some cues from games like Bioshock on how I can keep it simple yet good looking.

I would love to see more posts on how people use Blender.

I too, use blender exclusivly as modelling tool for my game and I'm quite happy with it.

I'm not an artist, but I occasionally need to create simple models or edit something created by someone else -- I find any modelling package uncomfortable and unintuitive, most likely due to my lack of an art background.

With that background out of the way, I don't find Blender to be any worse (for me) than any other modelling package, and struggle with any new task. I've found it reasonably easy to find instructions or a tutorial for most tasks I've wanted to accomplish though, and always seem to get whatever I'm doing done. For my occasional uses the fact that Blender if free is a big win -- it simply isn't worth paying for software in my particular case.

Great artwork JTippets and Ashaman73!

I've been getting into Blender a lot lately, trying to learn a little bit about every part of the program. Once you start looking for how to actually use it, you find that Blender is like an iceburg - there's even more underneath. It's incredible how much you can do with that program. I've heard the built-in video editor rivals editors completely dedicated to video editing!

Also, I've used the Blender Game Engine successfully on five One Game a Month Games (the other games were either board games or written in C++): Stack, Vision, Hint: Shoot, Gravity, and The Curse. Although it's essential that you know Python to make most things, the logic bricks are nice for doing anything simple very quickly (if you don't have to write a script, then don't write a script). It is really nice to have a smooth workflow like the BGE because everything is integrated. I'm used to pure C++ & compiler, so this was a very refreshing feeling!

Although the engine might not seem like much, once you use it you'll find it's very powerful & intuitive. At the very least you can use it to make very rapid 3D prototypes.

I've also been entertained by the thought of using it for a high-school level course on computer science, game development, 3D modelling, and animation. Everything is integrated & you can get results fast enough that it seems more like play and less like work, which would help students stay motivated.