Software for Free

Never having really succumbed to the geek side of computing it had always been my intention to refrain from anything open source. "How could it be any good?", I'd think. If it was as good as it's authors seemed to think it was then surely they'd charge cold, hard cash for their efforts, and so I remained in blissful ignorance of probably the greatest piece of open source software out there, Blender. That was until a few months ago when I saw Blender featured in a magazine.

The power of this program is truly amazing, matched only by it's speed of development.

It just so happened I was on the lookout for a powerful 3D modelling and rendering package capable of creating professional images and animations. All the usual suspects had been researched and evaluated. TrueSpace, 3D Studio Max, Lightscape etc. All were horrendously expensive and difficult to use. As a Mechanical Design Engineer 3D modelling holds no fear for me, therefore it was really the scene creation, lighting, material setup and animation capabilities that were of interest.

I discovered that Blender had a growing following of 3D artists, mainly attracted by the zero cost but equally to the huge, friendly support community built around it. The power of this program is truly amazing, matched only by it's speed of development. Rarely a month goes by without a new update release with even more powerful features added. It does have a reputation for having, what is described as, an "unusual user interface" but I must confess I have found it very easy to get used to. Admittedly, I do not use the modelling features but prefer to import from another package to Blender for scene setting and rendering. There are numerous blender scenes (.blend) available and tutorials to get you started (just do a google for Blender). The best source of information can be found on the Elysiun Forums.

The home page for the entire project development can be found at the Blender.org site and the latest builds can be downloaded for a variety of operating systems at the Blender3D.org site. Give it a go. I fully intend to implement Blender as one of the key software packages for my "soon" to be revealed Business venture.

Category:

• 3D
• Blender