Blender.org - extreme 3D for free

High-quality open source 3D animation suite

Blender is a open source 3D animation suite, available for all major operating systems.

If you are an animator on a budget, or interested in 3D content creation, you should check out the feature packed Blender 3D animation suite. A quick browse through the Blender.org gallery will show you some of the high-quality results that can be achieved.

This isn't one of those idiot proof, simple-to-use 3D animation packages. Blender supports features previously only found in very expensive, high-end animation packages, such as 3D Studio Max, Soft Image and Maya.

3D animation newbie's will have a steep learning curve ahead of them. It's probably best if you learn a little at a time, starting with the basics and building on those. Fortunately there are plenty of guides and tutorials to be found on the Blender.org site, and elsewhere online. Experienced animators will attest to the fact that the world of 3D animation is one of endless innovation and learning.

Blender Features

When creating an animation, the process is generally broken down into several key areas. Listed below are brief descriptions along with some of the features offered by Blender. Don't worry if you don't understand what some of the jargon means, you will pick it up as you learn the product.

• Interface

  The Blender software interface is where you will do most of your development. It includes various menus and windows containing flexible views and perspectives of your actual 3D scene.

• Modelling

  You build-up and create your scenes objects by modelling them. 3D objects in Blender can be made up of polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs or vector fonts. There are also modifier stack deformers, smooth soft selection editing tools, and sculpting capabilities using 2D/3D procedural brushes.

• UV Unwrapping

  Once you have built a model you will want to give it a texture. You do this using UV mapping. Blender offers Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods, interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning, proportional falloff editing for smooth transformations, geometric view projections, multiple UV layers, and distortion reduction tools.

• Shading

  This ties in with textures, and specifies how the texture appears. For instance if you where creating a bar of gold, the UV map would give the model a golden colour and texture, while the shading would make the texture shiny and metallic looking, with reflections etc. Blender includes diffuse and specular shaders, material previews, reflections, bump maps and more.

• Animation

  You add movement to your 3D scene utilising a timeline. The Blender animation system supports Armature (skeleton) deformation, non-linear animation, automated walkcycles, constraint systems and audio playback.

• Physics and Particles

  Physics are used to create environmental 'rules' such as gravity, wind and collision detection. Particles are used to add effects such as smoke, hair and fluids.

• Rendering

  When working with your scene you use wire models and crudely displayed 3D objects. Once your animation is complete you then need to render it. The render engine steps through each frame of the animation, calculates things like lighting and shadows, and then produces the 'final' high-quality image. This process can take some time depending on the complexity of the scene and the speed of your computer. Rendering with Blender offers inbuilt raytracer, motion blur, post-production effects, realistic defocus, edge rendering for toon shading, etc.

• In addition to the above features, Blender also features tools for Imaging and Compositing, and Realtime 3D/Game Creation. Further details for these can be found on the Blender.org website.

System Requirements

When it comes to 3D animation, plenty of computing power is recommended (but not always necessary). The more powerful your processing power, graphic card and memory (RAM), the better your 3D content creation and development experience will be.

Blender utilizes OpenGL for drawing the entire interface. A graphics card and drivers that conform to the OpenGL specifications are recommended.

Blender supports all major operating systems: Windows 2000, XP, Vista - Mac OS X (PPC and Intel) | Linux (i386) | Linux (PPC) | FreeBSD 5.4 (i386) | SGI Irix 6.5 | Sun Solaris 2.8 (sparc)