Blender 2.48 released
Observationer
When Blender 2.48 came out a couple of days ago I decided to give it a try. I had no real previous experience of the application besides some half hearted attempt that resulted in me finding the GUI confusing and uninstalling. However this time was different.
After spending some time with tutorials, reading about Blender and watching the result produced with it I was getting hooked. The thing that struck me was that this free program got feature updates that should make all of the mayor 3D developers nervous. But most important of all – the dedicated community that makes sure it never gets old and tired. I believe this will make Blender (and similar apps) market leading in time. Don’t believe me? Listen to what Shawn Kelly, cofounder of Animation Mentor and senior animator at ILM has to say on the subject:
…”I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the world was stunned by a true blockbuster film someday, created by people collaborating in their garages all over the world”
(Full interview at www.blendernation.com)
The modeling in Blender is really intuitive and once you get the hold of some shortcuts it’s fast to work with. There are some free tutorials in the various forums and at Blender.org but I highly recommend the Creature Factory DVD if you wish to take it further. And don’t forget the Manycandy rig by Bassam Kurdali. It’s free and totally amazing.
Read more and download blender at Blender.org
Martin Lindelöf
2008.10.22
10:49
Yeah it’s awesome. And i’ve tried some high-end 3D applications, but I did as you. Used blender a while ago, uninstalled. But now I gave it a try and totally love the GUI and that it’s 100% configurable.
you can make your own setups (themes and how you navigate the viewport) and also the layout. So you’re not restricted to some predefined setups.
And a cool thing is that some people raise money, … you have a donate list of people and how much they gave to the project. And then they hire programmers to develop a wanted app. And when it’s done it’s OpenSource and GNU_GPL licence free.
that’s awesome.
Some stuf you really need to do, is to pivot around selected object in preferences. And learn to move with alt+shift, and click drag with mouse.
to dolly move camera with alt+ctrl and mouse movement.
and the mouse gestures.
a straight line = start move selected object.
a V shaped line = start scale the object
a C or Circle (O) = start rotating object
and the lost have-to , is get rid of the themes icons that are so 90′s :D
and get theese instead
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=82903
or theese
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=84971&highlight=theme+icons
(version 2b is awesome!)
(a quick notice on the theme icons! it took me a whole night to understand where to put ‘em. You cant make a .blender folder in your application/blender folder. and You cant browse the content of the blender.app! )
This is the right solution for a mac.
you make a .blender folder in your users home directory, and the make a icons , and put the png’s there.
on a Windows machine you just make a .blender folder where you installed blender, and make a icons folder and put the png’s there. same on a linix machine.
that’s it.
in the near future when time is given Im thinking of starting a proper swedish 3d modeling / compositing – community site for blender, where you can post project, get feedback. post fixs and answers to common problems. and exchange themes.
and some tutorials for beginnners so more people start using blender!
/Martin
Heikki
2009.05.29
17:32
Me too. I installed and uninstalled Blender years ago, but now I started using Blender from version 2.47 and I had professional 3DS Max background. I love the thing, the lightspeed modeling and very flexible GUI that bends to your every need. Nice to know Blender gets some love from another scandinavian professional designers!