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Blender

Blender 2.46
Maintainer	Blender Foundation
Latest Version	19 May 2008
Website	Blender
Forum Link	CGTalk Forum

Contents 1 What is Blender? 2 Cross Platform 3 Multi-Lingual 4 Modeling 4.1 Subsurf Polygonal 4.2 Metaball 4.3 NURBS 5 UV Mapping 6 Texturing 6.1 Procedural 6.2 Paint Based 7 Animating 7.1 Rigging 7.2 Weighting 7.3 Morph Targets 7.4 Animation Controls 8 Particle System 8.1 Basic Particles 8.2 Particle Hair 9 Simulation 9.1 Hard Body Dynamics 9.2 Soft Body Dynamics 9.3 Fluid Dynamics 9.4 Crowd Dynamics 10 Post Effects 10.1 Node Based Compositing 10.2 Non Linear Editing 11 Rendering 11.1 Integrated Renderer 11.2 External Renderers 11.2.1 YafRay 11.2.2 Aqsis 11.2.3 Indigo 12 Workflow 13 Scripting 14 Importer and Exporters 14.1 Import: 14.2 Export: 15 Tutorials 16 Revision History 17 Upcomming features

What is Blender?

Blender is a cross-platform, open source 3D modeling and animation suite developed and maintained by the Blender Foundation. Blender features many powerful features normally associated with commercial 3D applications, which is unsurprising considering it was originally developed as an in-house animation tool by Dutch company NaN (Not a Number). Blender has a huge user community and is arguably among the best free software of its kind.

The Blender Foundation and user community operate a comprehensive Blender wiki with a huge range of information, tutorials and other resources. You can find this wiki at http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page.

Cross Platform

Blender is available on all major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux) and due to being open source has been ported to most operating systems including portable systems such as Pocket PC.

Multi-Lingual

As of version 2.44, Blender´s interface has been translated into English, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, German, Finnish, Swedish, French, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Croatian, Serbian and Ukranian.

To change the language of your Blender interface, go to User Preferences >> Language & Font >> International Font >> and select the language of your choice. Remember to save your user default settings to make the change permanent.

Modeling

Subsurf Polygonal

Blender has a fast subsurf implementation and good quality basic polygon tools.

Metaball

Blender has basic metaball and metaelement support

NURBS

Blenders NURBS support is quite limited and provides only very basic NURBS functionality

UV Mapping

Blender has one of the best UV mapping tools available - its uv mapping is based on the ABF++ algorithm, which is more advanced than pelt mapping (most older tools), and LSCM based mapping tools

Texturing

Procedural

Blender has a node based materials system which can be used in addition to or as a replacement for its older non node materials system.

Paint Based

Blender has 2d and 3d painting tools - however they have historically been too slow and imprecise for precision work, thus requiring external paint tools for detail.

Animating

Rigging

Weighting

Morph Targets

Animation Controls

Particle System

Basic Particles

Particle Hair

Simulation

Hard Body Dynamics

Blender has multiple integrated physics engines/solvers, however the currently most used is the Bullet Physics engine.

Soft Body Dynamics

Fluid Dynamics

Blender has an integrated fluid dynamics solver, which can be used for liquid fluids such as water, oil, and honey.

Crowd Dynamics

Blender has basic crowd dynamics provided through a free plugin called 'BlenderPeople'

Post Effects

Node Based Compositing

Blender has an integrated node based compositor, which is integrated into the rendering pipeline.

Non Linear Editing

Blenders 'sequencer' provides basic non linear editing capabilities.

Rendering

Integrated Renderer

ScanLine and Hybrid Raytracing

External Renderers

YafRay

YafRay is a powerful raytracer, released under the LGPL license. It enables you to create fantastic images and animations of a photorealistic quality.

YafRay makes it possible to iluminate scenes by means of a complete global ilumination system, using Montecarlo and Quasimontecarlo aproximations. To solve the ilumination problems that arise when inside interior spaces, we can rely on a photon mapping system, that together with irradiance cache and shadow refinement, produces high quality results."

http://www.yafray.org/

Aqsis

Aqsis is a GPL licensed Renderman compliant Render.

Indigo

Indigo is a new, free, actively developed, unbiased render engine.

Employing advanced features such as Metropolis Light Transport, Spectral light calculus, a virtual camera model, physical sky and more, Indigo can achieve much more realistic results than traditional GI raytracers.

Indigo does not need any render parameters like GI samples, AO samples, AA samples, Soft shadows, etc, and complicated lightning setups to achieve realistic results. Indigo is free for non- and commercial use, but as of writing is not open-source."

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/index.php

Workflow

Scripting

Blender has python based scripting. Blender is also 'open source' which means that coders can add features directly to the core code base or even rewrite core pieces of functionality, or expose additional parts of the internal API to the python scripting base.

Importer and Exporters

As of Blender 2.42a, these are the default Import/Export Options:

Import:

3D Studio (.3DS) AC3D (.AC) Biovision Motion Capture (.BVH) Collada 1.3.x & 1.4 (.DAE) DEC Object File Format (.OFF) DirectX (.X) DXF (R12 and R14 work the best) Google Earth (.KML & .KMZ) LightWave (.LWO) MD2 (.MD2) Nendo (.NDO) OpenFlight (.FLT) 2D Path (.SVG & .PS & .EPS & .AI & .XCF) Pro Engineer (.SLP) Radiosity (.RADIO) Raw Faces (.RAW) Stanford PLY (.PLY) Stereo Litography (.STL) TrueSpace (.COB) VideoScape Wavefront OBJ (.OBJ & .MTL) Wings 3D (.WINGS) VRML 1.0

Export:

3D Studio (.3DS) AC3D (.AC) Biovision Motion Capture (.BVH) Collada 1.3.x & 1.4 (.DAE) DEC Object File Format (.OFF) DirectX (.X) DirectX8 Mod 1.3.1 (.X) DXF Extensible 3D (.X3D) Lightwave (.LWO) Lightwave Motion (.MOT) MD2 (.MD2) Nendo (.NDO) OpenFlight (.FLT) OpenInventor (.IV) Radiosity (.RADIO) Raw Faces (.RAW) SoftImage (.XSI) Stanford PLY (.PLY) Stereo Litography (.STL) TrueSpace (.COB) VideoScape VideoScape with Vertex Colors (.OBJ) Wavefront OBJ (.OBJ & .MTL) Wings 3D (.WINGS) VRML 1.0 VRML 97 (.WRL) Xfig Export (.fig)

Most of the format support is via bundled python scripts that utilize the included python interpreter. However some scripts (for instance Collada) require a full python installation.

Blender can also read and write most 2D (still image and video) formats, including DPX, OpenEXR, Cineon, and Radiance HDR. It can also write straight to the system frameserver if it is available.

Tutorials

1. Modelling a Porsche

Note: This tutorial is in French with an English translation on the left-hand side.

This tutorials explains how to model a Porsche using blueprints and extruding planes. This is a very descriptive tutorial which is more about learning the technique then step-by-step production. I recommend this tutorial for people interested in making more toonish cars.

Recommended For: Beginner - Intermediate (Have basic Blender knowledge)

Link: http://perso.orange.fr/speedtiti/tutoriels.htm

2. Blender Course

Note: This course contains many tutorials in PDF and Video format.

These tutorials are perfect for anyone that is just getting started with Blender. It is also useful to those already accustomed with it. It helps explain basic aspects of modelling, texturing, lighting, rendering and animating. After taking the course and watching all the videos, you will be much more knowledgable in the Blender field.

Recommended For: Anyone interesting in Blender

Link: http://ocw.tufts.edu/Course/28/Learningunits

Revision History

Upcomming features

FAQ & TRIVIA

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• This page was last modified 19:14, 7 June 2008.
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