The workshop that kept expanding

Blender spans modelling, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking and editing. The remarkable part is not that those capabilities exist, but that they can inhabit one extensible project environment.

“A connected pipeline gives independent teams room to attempt larger ideas.”

For small teams, the connected pipeline reduces the number of irreversible hand-offs. Technical artists can script it, filmmakers can iterate inside it, and the project can be inspected without access to a proprietary production stack.

Complexity is the unavoidable counterweight. The lesson for newer tools is not to imitate every panel; it is to preserve continuity between stages of the work.