On 10.05.09, In Do you want to create amazing 3D images or animations? Then you should have a look at the new, free and open-source Blender Version 2.5.
Maybe you have already seen these amazing animated movies that have been created entirely by the computer. You don’t need to spend millions of dollars on equipment to do such an animation film by your own, but you may need to learn some new tools though.
Blender 3D is a free and open-source animation software that can be used to model and animate 3D objects.
At the blender website, you will find amazing examples of what you can with blender. For example, visit the Art gallery: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery/
or watch/download one of the free open-source movies that have been produced with blender: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/movies/
If you want to get started with 3D animation, the most intimidating step was to learn the software. Blender was never known as “easy-to-learn”, so most people gave up after starting the program the first time. But now, the blender developers have refurbished their software entirely. Have a look at their new and improved user interface by downloading the pre-release of version 2.5: http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/
It’s called “alpha” software because it’s not finished yet. That means that you can use it already to learn how it works, but you may encounter some technical flaws and crashes. I have tried it for some simple work so far and it usually did not crash most of the time. Even after a crash, you can now recover the last auto-saved state of your work.
Unfortunately, most of the beginner-level tutorials on the Internet have not been updated to the new version yet. But if you like to see a real blender guru at work with some fancy stuff, I recommend to visit http://www.blenderguru.com/ where Andrew Price will show you how to create realistic clouds and other amazing tricks.
More useful tutorials for blender can be found at http://www.blendercookie.com and if you like to have valuable blender resources built-in to your browser, then you should get the BlenderNewbies toolbar for your browser: http://blendernewbies.communitytoolbars.com/ where you get featured articles, tutorials and a blender-related search feature directly in your browser bar.
My conclusion on the new blender version 2.5: Don’t hesitate to try it out. It has never been easier to do 3D animation with free software.
