is a
Free 3D Modeler Program . It is used for
Modelling and
Rendering Three-dimensional Graphics And Animations . Blender is available for several
Operating System s, including
FreeBSD ,
IRIX ,
GNU/Linux ,
Microsoft Windows ,
Mac OS X ,
Solaris ,
SkyOS , and
MorphOS . In addition, Blender's recent burst of new features in the last few versions has actually brought it close in competition to high-end 3D software such as
3D Studio Max and
Maya . Among these features and user interface ideas are, for example, complex fluid and cloth effects, a comprehensive and well-thought out hotkey program, which rivals that of most higher end applications, and a wide range of easily accesable and creatable extensions using Python scripting.
Originally, the program was developed as an in-house application by the Dutch animation studio
NeoGeo (not to be confused with the
Neo-Geo game console) and
Not A Number Technologies (NaN); the main author,
Ton Roosendaal , founded NaN in June 1998 to further develop and distribute the program. The program was initially distributed as
Freeware until NaN went bankrupt in 2002.
The creditors agreed to release Blender as
Free Software , under the terms of the
GNU General Public License , for a one-time payment of €100,000. On
July 18 2002 , a Blender funding campaign was started by Roosendaal in order to collect donations and on
September 7 2002 it was announced that enough funds had been collected and that the Blender source code would be released. Blender is now an
Open Source program being actively developed by the
Blender Foundation .
Blender has a relatively small installation size and runs on several popular computing platforms. Though it is often distributed without documentation or extensive example scenes, the software is rich with features that are characteristic of high-end modelling software. Among its capabilities are:
- Support for a variety of geometric primitives, including Polygon meshes, fast Subdivision Surface modeling, Bezier Curve s and NURBS Surfaces , Metaballs , polygon sculpting, and vector Font s.
- Versatile internal rendering capabilities and integration with the YafRay Open Source Ray Tracer .
- Animation tools including Inverse Kinematics , armature (skeletal) and lattice deformation, shape keys, keyframes, timeline, non-linear animation, constraints, vertex weighting, soft body dynamics including mesh collision detection, fluid dynamics, hard body dynamics, particle based hair, and a particle system with collision detection.
- Python scripting for tool creation and prototyping, game scripting logic, or task automation.
- Basic non-linear video editing and compositing capabilities.
- Game Blender , a sub-project, offers interactivity features such as collision detection, dynamics engine, and programmable logic. It also allows the creation of stand-alone, Real-time applications ranging from architectural visualization to Video Game construction.
- In Blender, an Object (which represents an entity that interacts with the world) and its Data (the actual shape/function of the object) are distinguishable. Object-data relationships are ''m:n'' (a term from Database terminology meaning many objects can share the same data) and dynamically-linkable at all times, allowing for some rapid modelling processes that are unique to blender.
- An internal filesystem that allows one to pack multiple scenes into a single file (called a ".blend" file).
- All of blender's ".blend" files are forward, backward, and cross-platform compatible with other versions of blender, and can be used as a library to borrow premade content.
- Snapshot ".blend" files can be auto-saved periodically by the program, making it easier to survive a program crash.
- All scenes, objects, materials, textures, sounds, images, post-production effects for an entire animation can be stored in a single ".blend" file.
- Interface configurations are retained in the ".blend" files, such that what you save is what you get upon load. This file can be stored as "user defaults" so this screen configuration, as well as all the objects stored in it, is used every time you load blender.
Blender has had a reputation as a program that is difficult to learn. Nearly every function has a direct keyboard shortcut, with the amount of functions blender offers resulting in several different shortcuts per key. Since the open-sourcing, there has been effort to add comprehensive contextual menus as well as make the tool use more logical and streamlined, and also visually enhance the user interface further, with the introduction of color themes, transparent floating widgets, a new and improved object tree overview and other small improvements (color picker widget, etc.).
Blender user interface has the following distinguishing concepts:
- Editing modes. The two primary modes of work are ''Object mode'' and ''Edit mode '', which are toggled with the Tab key. Object mode is used to manipulate individual objects in general, while Edit mode is used to manipulate the actual object data. For example, for polygon meshes, Object mode can be used to move, scale, and rotate entire meshes, and Edit mode is used to manipulate the individual vertices of a single mesh. There are also several other modes, such as Vertex Paint and UV Editing modes.
- Very heavy use of keyboard hotkeys. Most of the commands are given from keyboard. Until the 2.x and especially the 2.3x versions, this was in fact the only way to give commands, and this was largely responsible for creating Blender's reputation as a difficult-to-learn program. The new versions have more comprehensive GUI menus.
- Workspace management. The blender GUI is made up of one or more screens, which each can be divided into sections and subsections that can be of any type of blender's views or window-types. Each window-type's own GUI elements can be controlled with the same tools that manipulate 3D view - for example, resulting in the strange feature of being able to zoom in and out of GUI-buttons in the same way one zooms in and out in the 3D viewport. The GUI's layout and setup is fully controllable by the users, making it possible to set up the interface for specific tasks such as video editing or UV Mapping and texturing and hiding other features that aren't needed for that specific task.
Although Blender (as of Version 2.41) still lacks features found in current proprietary systems (e.g., ngon based modeling workflow), Blender's workspace management is considered to be amongst the most innovative GUI concepts for graphical tools and is believed to have inspired
Proprietary Software vendors' interface design (e.g., Luxology's
Modo ).
Since the opening of the source, Blender has improved and experienced substantial
Refactoring of the initial codebase. This made the addition of features easier. Although Blender is a full featured program, professional users of other programs may find certain areas to be missing, such as the lack of NGon based modeling workflow and some missing or incomplete modeling tools, numerical measuring and manipulation methods, the inability to customize keybindings, lack of a robust cloth dynamics system (will be in 2.42) and will likely encounter limitations in the rendering and materials system such as the lack of node based materials (will be in 2.42), bundled libraries of material presets, multipass rendering (will be in 2.42), or tangent space normal mapping. Blender also tends to lack up-to-date and complete documentation although that has been largely solved by the wikification of the blender documentation project.
Blender 2.40 adds many new features
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Blender 2.41 added a number of improvements
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Current development to be released for 2.42 includes a node based materials system; multipass rendering; node based compositing; improved UV unwrapping; animatable obstacles and fluid sources - for use in the fluid dynamics system; a faster softbody solver; some modeling tool improvements; and vehicle physics for the game engine.
The popularity of Blender has reached approximately 250,000 users using Blender worldwide, and support is widely available. Most users learn Blender through tutorials that various users have written, others learn Blender through many discussion forums on the topic. A popular forum for Blender discussion is Blender Artists, previously known as elYsiun (http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/).
Notable artists using Blender as their main or only tool are
The first large professional project in which Blender was used was
Spider-Man 2 , where it was primarily used to create animatics and previsualizations for the storyboard department.
:"As an animatic artist working in the storyboard department of Spider-Man 2, I used Blender's 3d modeling and character animation tools to enhance the storyboards, re-creating sets and props, and putting into motion action and camera moves in 3d space to help make Sam's vision as clear to other departments as possible."
- [http://www.anthonyzierhut.com/ Anthony Zierhut , Animatic Artist, Los Angeles
In
September 2005 , some of the most notable Blender artists and developers began working on a short film using primarily
Free Software , in an initiative known as the Orange Movie Project. The resulting film, ''
Elephants Dream '', premiered on
March 24 ,
2006 .
Is the first 35mm feature film to use Blender for all the special effects, made on Linux workstations.
Friday Or Another Day won a prize at the Locarno Film Festival. The special effects were by
Digital Graphics of Belgium.
Links:
SFX ,
Blender SFX ,
Official Homepage .
