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Blender is very high quality 3DCG software which can do modeling, animation, composition, editing movie and making 3DCG game. This software is under GPL License. So, you can use this for commercial and non-commercial purpose.
This software was a product of 3DCG production in Netherlands. Now, the blender is belongs to the Blender Organization which Mr. Ton Roosendaal is leaded.

Since Blender is open source code, the development is going all over the world by many programmer and it leads to faster development cycle and give many features.

Followings are overview of Blender major features, How to get Blender, How to install, BlenderHeads Map. You can see more information on the Blender organization official site.

 

Major Features.

	Modeling. Blender has a lot of tool for modeling. For example, if you use Mirror modifier, it make it easy to modeling symmetric object. Subsurf modifier give you a smooth model and so on. It is to many to describe all the tools. You can use Bezier curve and NURBS curve, too.
	Sculpt Modeling. From version 2.43, sculpt mode is supported. This is powerful tool. It is easy to model complex surface object like a famous sculpting tool, Zbrush.
	Shaders. As list in image in left, Blender support various shaders. You can make different surface choosing appropriate one to match your scene. The toon shader can make 2D animation like output. And normal map and Ambient Occlusion can be used. Of course, you can use basic mapping, bump map, color map, alpha map, specular map, displacement and more.
	UV Mapping. Blender has a excellent UV mapping tools. Especially, Live Unwrap Transform is useful. This tool can change UV wrap automatically when user change a part of the map. And multi UV layer is supported.
	Renderer. Blender internal renderer is very fast and good quality. But if you want more photo-real quality, you should use YafRay, Indigo, Sunflow or other external renderers. You can use the YafRay through the Blender interface. For the other renderer, there are exporters to export Blender scene. Render layer function can render a scene separately.
	Animation. Necessary animation tools are supported such as rigging and control weight. All motion of a character are displayed in graph. If you use a shape key, you could control sensitive motion like a facial. And Blender can import a data which is taken by motion capture.
	Particles / Hair To make smoke, Blender has a particle system. If you use it as a static particles, it is possible to make grass and hair.
	Fluid Simulation. Blender supports a fluid simulation. You can make realistic motion of fluid. Since a viscosity can be controlled, it can make various type of fluid.
	Softbody Blender can make a scene which curtain is blowed or softbody object's motion like a jelly. The softbody can detect collision between objects.
	3D Game Creation / Dynamic Simulation. This is unique function of Blender. Blender can make a 3D real time game like the Quake. The game engine which is used in game can bake motion data in order to use it in other 3D animation. And the game engine provides dynamic simulation. （Left image is quoted from Blender.org）
	Composition. After creation of image and animation, Blender can add a DOF effect to them and composite them to real photo or movie Images and lead a movie to other movie in Node function or Video Sequence Editor.
	Programmable （Python) Blender can execute a script written in Python. This makes blender more high functionable. There are so many scripts in the Internet.

 

How to get Blender

You can get Blender from Blender.Org Official Site.
Current available OS are Windows、Mac OS、Linux、Solaris、FreeBSD、Irix.

 

How to install

After downloading Blender file, just double clicked it. Mostly, you don't need to change installation parameters in installation dialog.

 

BlenderHeads Map

This is map to show Blender user in the world. This map show a little number of users, but actually users are many. If you don't mind, add your name onto the map.

 

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