Blender 2.4: a free modeling animation rendering suite

[womball]

Blender is a great program, not just because its free, but you can do about anything with it in terms of 3d animation. I would highly recommend downloading it and learning it. Its good to be strong in both areas of animation since they can be layered interestingly. The latest version will bring it up to strength with the big name applications, and its constantly being updated. Very big user base too. I learned a ton of 3d concepts on it.

[Terro]

Blender is a great application. I use it once in a while. But beware , it's very hard to pick up if you are used to MAX, LW, Maya , or C4D. I'm pretty efficient in 3D and I still have issues with the endless amount of options blender has available. Blender is very professional for a open source application and from what I remeber it's coded completely in java.

[womball]

I thought it was coded in Python, that's what it uses for scripts at least. I hope to enter at least one Spectacular 3d entry for cgtalk using Blender, that might shake things up. :D

[sciboy]

Java and Python? ARE YOU MAD!
It's definitely either C or C++, with Python embedded for scripting.

[Terro]

Your right.


Blender is at this point a quite large program of 300,557 lines: 211,035 lines C, 88,029 C++ and 894 Python.

[captain crap]

i don't get how to use it than again i don't know how to use any 3d software:Xead:

[avid_user]

How does it compare to Maya and 3ds Max in features?

[Monsieur Rat]

Avid: It doesn't compare. Not really. It's only good quality is that it's free. I used it for a couple years before Maya, and it's nice to learn the ropes, but thats it. If you take 3D really seriously, Blender is not for you.

[Meschaffe]

The other perk is that it's open source. If there's anything specific you need added, it can be done fairly easily either as a script or a module in the source. If you've got someone in your studio who's technically inclined and you'd like to pull apart or add to a pretty solid app, Blender's your man.

[Squash-n-Stretch]

http://www.spaghettimoon.co.uk/downloadpot.htm

Found these, downloading now. Should get some people into using a program with a very funny ui. Enjoy em :)

[Black Spot]

I’m not really into 3D, but I downloaded this some time ago for the kids. I even wrote out the basic instructions for them, but it’s a real steep learning curve if you want to make realistic characters. I found it not too dissimilar to Ami8or – it took me about three weeks to make and get that stupid bird running across a table from the tutorial. 3D is a lot of (frustrating) work at the beginning, which is why I probably prefer 2D for its immediate hit. Antics 3 would be okay if I could figure out how to re-mesh the figures you get (I do believe it’s possible), and I might have a real go later this year when I have a quiet house and can concentrate. ;)