Even if you are not into 3D modelling/animation you might want to have a look at where open-source 3D software is today: www.blender.org is the new and redesigned homepage for this incredible software that is basically a virtual film studio in an under 14 MB free download – available for all major platforms (download page) – here all the new features explained.

Blender is being developed/promoted by the Dutch non-profit Blender foundation that also co-produced Elephant’s Dream, “the world’s first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license.”

Instead of boring you with technical details here my personal Blender story:

About two years ago I decided that I finally should learn 3D and downloaded the (100+ MB) learning edition of Maya (one of the major players in the 3D software market). I had some problems getting Maya to run on my Mac, but eventually it loaded, slowly, but it did. Soon I found out that I would not be able to use any of my work since files saved with the Maya learning edition all would have a clearly visibly watermark across the finished project… Well, I was neither willing to get a loan from my bank to be able to afford the full version, nor did I want to get the “free” one that you can find online at the usual places. Instead I did a little research and found out that there is this open-source 3D project called Blender…

It took me about another year until I finally started learning Blender/3D. My experience so far (since last summer): 3D is hard to learn and Blender might appear specially hard at first, but don’t be intimidated by the unusual Blender user interface – every minute you spend learning this software will most probably be worth it: once you are familiar with the Blender UI you will probably find that it allows you to work much faster than the other commercial apps do! Blender is also very well documented – everything about Blender (User’s Manual, Noob to Pro Wikibook, tutorials, forums and much more) can be found via the BlenderWiki. I can also recommend the BlenderNation blog that brings “Fresh Blender News, Every Day”.

Blender really is quite incredible and there is a very active community of developers constantly working on yet another great update – I am sure that it is only a matter of time until Blender will be widely known as the “Linux of 3D apps”…

Tags: blender, 3d, open-source