Free - Advanced Open-Source 3D Computer Graphics Software

Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. It also features a built-in game engine.

Below is a sample video tutorial:

Features:

Interface


The Interface allows you to change, adapt and re-distribute the layout of all UI components and tools to suit the task at hand.

From the smallest adjustment in size to a full custom interface, all this adaptability and ease of change allows for smooth and organic work flows with natural scene interaction.

• Fully customizable Interface
• Non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
• Undo support on all levels
• Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
• Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
• Fully scriptable UI with custom themes
• Consistent interface across all platforms

Character Modeling


With a great variety of tools available, Sculpting can be used to create very detailed organic looking characters. Coupled with modifiers like multi-res, the models can be very complex while the interface remains responsive.

Because these tools are available within Blender itself the production is greatly streamlined, and with GLSL support the results are instantaneous.

• Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
• Full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
• Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
• Python scripting access for custom tools.

Rigging


Transforming any model into a posable character has never been easier, with highly sophisticated methods of deformation calculation that allow realistic mesh displacement.

Specialized add-ons give you the power to create professional grade rigs for your characters in just a few steps.

• Fast skeleton creation mode
• Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
• Fast envelope based skinning
• Automatic Skinning that really works (heat equilibrium based)
• Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
• Double Quaternion deformation reduces shrinking and other bone deformation errors
• Volume deformer uses a mesh cage to deform complex meshes with great results
• Bone layers and colored groups for better rig organization
• B-spline interpolated bones; forget about elbow twists
• Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
• PyConstraints; if you need something not yet implemented code it in python with real time feed back, no compiling needed.

Solids Modeling


Hard surfaces and Subdivision surface modeling benefit from tools that range from community provided complex primitives to stackable modifier.

The modifiers allow non destructive alterations to a base mesh, these can be easily modified, interchanged and undone.

• A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
• Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
• Full multi-resolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
• Modifier stack deformers such as Lattice, Curve, Armature or Displace
• Mirror modifier with middle vertices clipping and automatic deletion of inner faces
• Non destructive real time Boolean and Array modifiers
• Mesh modeling based on vertex, edge and/or face selection
• Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
• Python scripting access for custom tools.

Animation


Thanks to flawless integration, tasks as simple as walk cycles or as complex as lip syncing can be undertaken with more emphasis on the results and the fine tuning.

With the Non-Linear Animation (NLA) independent movements, poses, and gestures can be combined into complex actions, and reordered or altered individually, without having to remake the whole animation.

• Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics with pole target support
• Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
• Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
• Automated walkcycles along paths
• Animated constraint system
• Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
• Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
• Character animation pose editor
• 'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
• Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
• Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
• Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects.

Rendering


True and tested, the robust default render engine is an industrial strength image generator.

With powerful optimization for material nodes and procedural textures, along with fully compliant support for farm rendering, the Blender internal render engine is reliable, fast and efficient.

• Fast inbuilt raytracer
• Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
• Tile-based and fully threaded
• Render layers and passes
• Render baking to UV maps and object to object baking (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
• Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
• Halo, lens flares and fog effects
• Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Edge rendering for toon shading
• Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
• Ambient Occlusion
• Approximate Global Illumunination
• Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman, Povray, Virtualight, Lux, Indigo and V-Ray - See Resources for a full list.

UV Unwrapping 


Using any of the multiple available tools to project meshes, it is straightforward to manage texture space for a given geometry.

Projections can be exported as image layouts, the unwrapped area can be adapted to existing images, apply multiple textures and special materials like specular and bump maps, alterations can be done interactively and see the results in real time.

• Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods
• Interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning
• Proportional falloff editing of UV maps for smooth transformations
• Seam based unwrapping
• Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, View projections
• Catmull-Clark subdivition of UVs for less distortion
• Minimize stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion
• Multiple UV layers

Raytrace Rendering


Create stunning visuals using a render engine that treats light in a more natural way, with the Cycles Render Engine.

Unleash the power of your graphic card with Blender providing full support to GPU rendering.

• Fast pathtracer
• Global Illumination
• Fully threaded on the CPU
• Support for GPU rendering (CUDA, OpenCL in development), even on multiple GPUs
• Physically based, node shader system
• Render layers and passes
• Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
• Interactive live rendering in any 3d view
• Ambient Occlusion
• Native Depth of Field

Physics and Particles


Complex and dynamic materials that interact with each other and their environment are easy to set up and control, alter the natural flow of water or set flags to rail in the wind with special effectors.

From a crumbling building, an exploding ship or a refreshing glass of water to hair that wades in the air, fluffy fur or a patch of grass, the physics and particle system will deliver great looking results.

• Particle system can be atached to any mesh object. Control methods include weight painting, textures, curve guides, wind and vortex effects. Particles can be deflected by moving geometry
• Hair strands can be created by a static particle system, supporting all particle control methods
• Fluid simulator with fully animated inflow, outflow, obstacle and fluid objects. Gravity and viscosity settings can also be animated. Supports vector blur and is integrated with the particle system
• Realtime soft body solver integrated in mesh, lattice, curve and text objects. Supports collision detection and particle field effects like Wind or Vortex, soft bodys can also be baked for faster playback/rendering
• Game engine rigid body physics can be easily baked into animation curves.

Shading


Combining textures with fine grained deformation, complex materials can be applied and directly altered in the viewport.

With the completely node based Blender Shadding system, complex computed colors can be obtained by the controlled combination of base materials, lighting, and special textures mapped to the geometry.

• Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
• Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
• Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
• PyNodes: write your own Python shaders with realtime feedback, no need to compile
• Material previews rendered by main render engine
• Fast, realistic subsurface scattering
• Blurry reflections and refractions
• Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
• Versatile procedural textures system
• Reflection maps
• Normal, displacement and bump maps.

Realtime 3D/Game Creation

With its complete integration to code base and its totally graphical interface, the game engine is both fully independent from, while at the same time perfectly adapted to, your programing skills

Use the visual data blocks to create your game logic, or code your own, either way once finished your product can be ported to the run time environment of your choice.

• Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
• Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
• Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
• Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
• Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
• Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
• Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
• Support all OpenGL^TM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
• Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
• Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
• Audio, using the SDL toolkit
• Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces.

Imaging and Compositing 


With the compositor fully integrated into the rendering pipeline, there is no need for intermediate files or applications, allowing for quick and easy corrections and composites to your rendered scene

But if you need to use intermediate applications Blender can render out all layers and passes to a single multi-layered OpenEXR file for ease of access and efficient use of available hardware.

• Compositor tightly integrated and aligned with the rendering pipeline
• MultiLayer OpenEXR files allow to store and reuse raw renderlayer and passes data
• Complete list of composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators and mixers including Chroma Key, Blur, RGB Curves, Z Combine, Color Ramp, Gamma Correct
• Preview panel to define the portion of interest. A composite then only happens on this part
• Threaded and memory efficient (up to 8 processors)
• Near realtime sequencer can edit hours of video
• Waveform and U/V scatter plots
• Open and write many audio & video file formats using ffmpeg
• Can render using frameserver-support directly into foreign applications
• Supports float images as well as regular 8 bits images
• Curves tool allows you to create a mapping from the float range to a displayable result (for HDR images).

Camera and motion tracking


Blender offers tools built-in for VFX production, covering the entire pipeline from footage import, tracking & masking, all the way to final edit and grading. For camera and motion tracking we use the open Libmv library, fully integrated in Blender's "Movie Clip Editor".

• Fast and powerful camera reconstruction
• Real-time preview of 3D and footage combinations
• Support for planar tracking and tripod solvers
• 3D object tracking
• Motion tracks can be applied to Mask points, 3D objects, etc.

Extensible


Blender is not only a program, it is a foundation and a community, as a result whenever you use blender, you are not alone, hundreds of people around the world from programing hobbyists to professionals devoted to the Blender cause contribute enhancements and additional features on a daily bases.

With support ranging from a wide variety of available online resources to friendly IRC communities, Blender will just keep getting better, and who knows, maybe the next great contributor will be, you.

• All program functionalities are conveniently exposed and accessible through python, allowing you to create your own programming based solutions.
• Community contributed add-ons expand every aspect of the functionality including rendering engines, import-export file formats, available mesh objects.

Files

Blender is perfectly aware that your environment will require you to use more than one program, for this reason in comes packed with a myriad of options for interacting with other formats.

From 2D to 3D, simple models and complex scene become completely interchangeable across a vast variety of specialized import-export addons.

• Save all scene data in a single .blend file, even images, sounds or fonts can be packed for easy transportation
• Powerful built-in database system allowing instances, scene management, and dynamic linking multiple project files
• .blend format supports compression, digital signatures, encryption, forwards/backwards compatibility and can be used as a library to link to from other .blend files
• Read and write support for many other 2D and 3D formats
• 2D - TGA, JPG, PNG, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
• 3D - 3D Studio, AC3D, COLLADA, FBX Export, DXF, Wavefront OBJ, DEC Object File Format, DirectX, Lightwave, MD2, Motion Capture, Nendo, OpenFlight, PLY, Pro Engineer, Radiosity, Raw Triangle, Softimage, STL, TrueSpace, VideoScape, VRML, VRML97, X3D Extensible 3D, xfig export.

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