Blender



Today Blender 2.66 was released. For those of you who have never heard of Blender it is a open source software that is free. I have only been using it for the past few months trying to get my feet wet in it. My background in 3d is mainly in 3d Max from Autodesk for the last 13 years. So it has been a little bit of learning coming from a different software package. I have found that this program has come a long way since the first time I remember looking at it. For those of you who are interested in 3d or doing something towards gaming. This is a good way to see how most 3d programs work. A lot of the work flow is very similar to other 3d packages out there.

A lot of those work flows include.

• Modeling
• Animation
• Lighting
• Materials
• Rendering

Yes you can learn with demos from Maya,C4D and 3d Max. But most of the demos are limited in their use. Sometimes only giving you 90 days for a trial. At least with Blender you can have it for as long as you need. I've really enjoyed learning the features that Blender has to offer.

Here are two good resources for learning blender
http://cgcookie.com/blender
http://www.blenderguru.com


This was from tonight. Playing with the some 3d text and messing with fluid simulation.