Blender

Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite available for many operating systems including Linux. It used to be developed commercially, but is now released under the GPL. It is the most popular Open Source 3D graphics application available, and is one of the most downloaded with more than 200,000 downloads of each release.

Targeted at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to create 3D visualizations, stills as well as broadcast and cinema quality video, whilst the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback. Blender has a huge variety of uses including modelling, animating, rendering, texturing, skinning, rigging, weighting, non-linear editing, scripting, compositing, post-production and much more.

Blender has a robust feature set similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max and Maya.

Blender 2.48a

Price Free to download Size 13 MB License GNU General Public License Developer The Blender Foundation Website www.blender.org System Requirements 300 MHz CPU 128 MB RAM 20MB Hard disk space 1024x768 16 bit display 3 Button Mouse OpenGL Graphics card (16MB RAM) Requires glibc 2.3.6, includes FFMPG Suits most recent Linux distributions Support Sites: BlenderNewbies, BlenderNation, BlenderArtists, CGTalk, GameBlender, Star Trek: Blender, Kator Legaz, Blender Hotkeys, Blenderwars, Blender Battles, Ingiebee, NaNo Prods, Industrial Meshes, Blenderblog Selected Reviews: Bobulous, NewsForge, PCW, Wordpress

Features include:

• Modeling: 3D Object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves; Multiresolution sculpting capabilities; Modifier stack deformers; Mesh modeling; Python Scripting
• Rigging: Skeleton creation code; Skinning; Bone layers; B-splines interpolated bones
• Animation: Non-linear animation editor; Vertex key framing for morphing, Character animation pose editor; Animated deformers; Audio playback; Animated constraint system
• Rendering: Inbuilt raytracer; oversampling, motion blor, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels; Render layers and passes; Render baking to UV maps, Effects including halo, lens flares, fog, vector motion-blur post-process, and defocus post-process; Export scripts for external renderers
• UV UnWrapping: Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods; seam based unwreapping; Proportional falloff editing of UV maps
• Shading: Diffuse and Specular shaders; Node editor; Subsurface scattering; Tangent shading; Reflection maps
• Physics and Particles: Particle system can be attached to mesh objects; Fluid simulator; Realtime soft body solver
• Imaging and Compositing: MultiLayer OpenEXR support; composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators; 8 processor support; near realtime sequencer; Waveform and U/V scatter plits
• Realtime 3D/Game Creation: Graphical logic editor; Bullet Physics Library support; Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode; Discrete collision detection; Support for vehicle dynamics; Supports all OpenGL lighting modes; Python scripting; Audio
  

Blender also features in our 'Linux Equivalents to Windows Software' section. The category selector below allows you to filter the different types of software included in that separate article.

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Last Updated Friday, December 05 2008 @ 04:09 AM EST