What Is Blender?

Blender is open-source software that provides one of the most complete 3D-graphics creation suites. It includes tools for modeling, texturing, shading, animation, compositing, rendering, video editing, and more. Since the development of version 2.50, which introduced a completely new user interface (UI), Blender’s user base has grown significantly. It has reached animation studios and is now being used in top movie productions (Life of Pi and Red Riding Hood, for example, shown at the Blender Conference 2013 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

Its principal target audience is professional, freelance 3D artists and small studios, and Blender works very well for their needs. It still isn’t widely used by big studios for several reasons. Larger studios typically have long-established software, and the commercial software they use often has impressive third-party plug-ins developed over several years for specific uses in production. Blender is still growing and lacks a lot of third-party support, but despite being relatively new to the professional landscape (initially, it was used mainly by hobbyists), it is overcoming those problems and big productions have begun to use it for processes such as modeling and UV unwrapping—two areas in which Blender is very efficient.

Blender is known for being very different from other software and that’s why some people are hesitant to use it. It doesn’t follow a lot of the same standards that other 3D software has been using for decades, and this is usually an issue for new users. That’s also the charm of Blender—once you experience it, it is very possible that you’ll love it because it is so different! Initially, you may find that a lot of features and techniques are difficult to understand, but once you learn the basics, everything then begins to seem very intuitive and sensible.

Blender, because it is open source, doesn’t need to sell licenses so it can bypass the way other software use to work and go for something new and quite unique. In the words of Ton Roosendaal (Blender Foundation’s chairman and creator of Blender), “I would never look up to average—I want to lift up the average. It’s not following conventions, it’s following a vision.”

Blender’s development is funded primarily through voluntary donations from users. This should give you an idea of how a lot of people find it so useful that they donate to its continued development even when they can use it for free. This can be difficult to understand for people who use only commercial software, but it’s something you often find with open-source software: people are more willing to contribute because it’s free.

Popular, open-source software such as Blender has a lot of contributors and grows quite fast. This is very good for users because you get new features and tools periodically. It has a downside, though: It’s difficult to stay abreast of everything new and be aware of updates to the latest versions. Also, instructional material has a short lifespan, even when it can be used for years, because even though the basics are the same, certain options, icons, and other features can experience subtle modifications in a newer version.