For me it was the announcement in the Blender’s official Discord server about its acquisition by Affinity, renaming it to Affinity 3D.

(Edited to include the announcement text)

Canva Announces Acquisition of Blender to Launch ‘Affinity 3D’

@everyone Canva announced the acquisition of the Blender Foundation’s development assets and core engineering team. This landmark move expands the “Affinity” creative ecosystem following Canva’s purchase of Serif last year. Rebranded as “Affinity 3D,” the software will serve as the foundational 3D powerhouse within Canva’s subscription model. CEO Melanie Perkins stated the move is designed to bridge the gap between professional 3D rendering and the intuitive, drag-and-drop accessibility that defines the Canva brand.

The integration into the Affinity ecosystem promises a seamless, unified workflow. Users will gain non-destructive, real-time links between Affinity Photo, Designer, and their 3D projects. The engineering team plans to overhaul the interface to mirror the streamlined Affinity aesthetic while retaining the high-performance cycles and geometry nodes power-users rely on. Canva has emphasized that the open-source spirit of Blender will be preserved through an “Affinity Community Edition,” keeping the core architecture free for students and individual creators.

The acquisition acts as a catalyst for the “Canva Magic 3D” generative suite. By training AI models on Affinity 3D data, Canva will introduce text-to-3D generation directly into its browser-based editor. Users can generate custom models, textures, and lighting via prompts, which can then be imported into Affinity 3D for refined manual sculpting. Analysts believe this positions Canva as a direct competitor to Adobe’s Substance suite, creating an end-to-end powerhouse that simplifies 3D for everyone from social media marketers to professional VFX artists.

Read the article here!