The software
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, and motion tracking. It even does video editing and game creation. Advanced users employ Blender’s API for Python scripting to customize the application and write specialized tools; often these are included in Blender’s future releases. Blender is well-suited to individuals and small studios who benefit from its unified pipeline and responsive development process. Examples from many Blender-based projects are available in the showcase.
Blender is cross-platform and runs equally well on Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. Its interface uses OpenGL to provide a consistent experience. To confirm specific compatibility, the list of supported platforms indicates those regularly tested by the development team.
As a community-driven project under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the public is empowered to make small and large changes to the code base, which leads to new features, responsive bug fixes, and better usability. Blender has no price tag, but you can invest, participate, and help to advance a powerful collaborative tool: Blender is your own 3D software.
The organization
Blender Foundation is a Dutch public-benefit corporation, established to support and facilitate the projects on blender.org.
Read more about the organization
Our mission
We want to build a free and open source complete 3D creation pipeline for artists and small teams.
Read the mission statement about what Blender is by Foundation Chairman Ton Roosendaal.
The license
You are free to use Blender for any purpose, including commercially or for education. This freedom is being defined by Blender’s GNU General Public License (GPL).
Read more about the license.
Vid Source - tutor4u
Development
Blender is being actively developed by hundreds of people from all around the world. These include animators, artists, VFX experts, hobbyists, scientists, and many more. All of them are united by an interest to further a completely free and open source 3D creation pipeline. The Blender Foundation supports and facilitates these goals—and employs a small staff for that—but depends fully on the global online community.
More help is always welcome! From developing and improving Blender to writing documentation, etc, there are a number of different things you can do to get involved.
Features
Photorealistic Rendering
Blender now features a powerful new unbiased rendering engine called Cycles that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering.
The built-in Cycles rendering engine offers:
- GPU & CPU rendering
- Realtime viewport preview
- HDR lighting support
- Permissive License for linking with external software
Fast ModelingBlender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze.
Blender’s modeling tools include:
- Keyboard shortcuts for a fast workflow
- N-Gon support
- Edge slide, collapse and dissolve
- Grid and Bridge fill
- Python scripting for custom tools and add-ons
Realistic Materials
With Blender’s new rendering engine the possibilities for materials are endless.
Key features are:
- Complete Node Support for full customization
- Physically accurate shaders like glass, translucency and SSS
- Open Shading Language (OSL) support for coding unique shaders
Fast Rigging
Transforming a model into a posable character has never been easier!
Blender offers an impressive set of rigging tools including:
- Envelope, skeleton and automatic skinning
- Easy weight painting
- Mirror functionality
- Bone layers and colored groups for organization
- B-spline interpolated bones
Animation toolset
Whether it’s simple keyframing or complex walk-cycles, Blender allows artists to turn their still characters into impressive animations.
Animation feature set offers:
- Automated walk-cycles along paths
- Character animation pose editor
- Non Linear Animation (NLA) for independent movements
- IK forward/inverse kinematics for fast poses
- Sound synchronization
Sculpting
Experience the joy of sculpting organic subjects using the built-in sculpting feature set.
Sculpting set includes:
- 20 different brush types
- Multi-res sculpting support
- Dynamic Topology sculpting
- Mirrored sculpting
Fast UV Unwrapping
Easily unwrap your mesh right inside Blender, and use image textures or paint your own directly onto the model.
Blender allows for:
- Fast Cube, Cylinder, Sphere and Camera projections
- Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping (with edge seams and vertex pinning)
- Painting directly onto the mesh
- Multiple UV layers
- UV layout image exporting
Full Compositor
Blender comes with a fully fledged compositor built right in. That means no more exporting to third party programs, you can do it all without leaving the program.
The compositor comes with:
- Impressive library of nodes for creating camera fx, color grading, vignettes and much more
- Render-layer support
- Full compositing with images and video files
- Ability to render to multiLayer OpenEXR files
- Multi-threaded
