libGDX vs Blender

Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from.

While it may not always have the best performance for a particular device or system, it's one of the few engines which consistently performs very well across different platforms.

scene2d is a 2D scene graph, scene2d.ui is a UI toolkit on top of that. It enables very complex mobile and desktop UIs.

Since it's built with Java and runs on the JVM, any language that compiles to Java bytecode can be used to develop games with libGDX.

A Java port of the Box2D physics engine is included in libGDX.

LibGDX supports both 2D and 3D game development. Allowing developers to migrate from 2D to 3D with ease without having to switch the engine they are using or having to learn a new API.

Unlike some engines, which only allow you to make your game in a few specific ways, libGDX allows you to design any type of game you wish as it is extremely customisable.

The libGDX community, in the official libGDX forum is extremely helpful and approachable for any kind of question regardless of the its quality or difficulty.

The forums themselves are a very helpful resource for any issue or guide simply by searching past posts in there.

In addition to the forums, there's also the official #libgdx IRC channel on Freenode.

Sometimes it is necessary to access platform specific APIs, e.g., adding advertisement services or leaderboard functionality provided by frameworks.

libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0.

Not only is libGDX free and open source but also it's license gives you a lot of power over the engine. As long as you provide a copy of the license, give credit, do not hold devs liable and do not use libGDX logo in any engine forks you can do pretty much anything you want.

It is written in Java so you can easily make games using Kotlin and Ktx project will help you get all advantages of this language.

LibGDX itself is pretty mature, and get updates not quite frequently, but various libraries for it are actively updated.

You can write once and run anywhere (Android, IOS, Desktop, Browser) also lately came with lib to deal with VR.

libGDX has built in support for many 3rd party tools, including (but not limited to) Bullet Physics, Box2DLights and the well-praised Tiled Map Editor.

Even though the official documentation might be lacking, there are many tutorials on YouTube for libGDX.

Very good tools for rendering fonts.

Old XNA users may like libGDX since it's API is actually very similar to XNA's.

Unlike Unity or other engine, it allows to optimize a language that uses garbage collector when using patterns of objects you can control the use of memory without needing a language like C / C ++, getting the same speed in a more productive language.

Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.

Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!

Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.

Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.

Releases are made every ~3 months.

Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.

Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.

Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.

It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.

There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.

The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.

You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.