First Go at Blender

I’m a huge fan of Open Source software, and one in particular, Blender,  has recently re-kindled my interest in 3-D modeling and animation. Blender is a full-fledged Open Source 3-D modeling and animation software that’s been making quite a few headlines as of late, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve used 3D Studio Max before but there’s no way I can afford to buy that, so I downloaded the latest version of Blender (2.49 as of this writing) and started to mess with it.

I’m one of those people who HATES reading software manuals (or any kind of manual for that matter) and I usually just like to tinker with things and figure them out. But I have to admit that the first time I ran Blender, I was completely lost. I think that initial startup screen can really drive some people away immediately because it’s just so different than any other software that I’ve ever used. You get a window staring back at you with a cube in the middle of it. You left click thinking that it will select something, and it doesn’t. Then you look at the bottom of the screen and there are tons of buttons, and panels, and dialog boxes, and buttons. It just freaked me out. I wanted to create something and finally found the menu to add a sphere. But then I had no idea how to select it, scale it, or do anything else to it.

After my first fruitless encounter, I was still determined to give Blender a fair try, so I got on blender.org and started searching for some tutorials. Fortunately there are plenty of great tutorials out there for Blender, as well as a huge community of active and friendly users. I was able to quickly find some excellent tutorials that got me started on my way.

So I started my second session of Blender with a focus on learning the user interface and getting the hang of the way Blender “thinks” and operates. After about 15 minutes, I was thoroughly amazed. Frankly, it’s a beautifully designed program. Once you understand how it works, you realize that it’s really very intuitive and efficient. I’ve only spent about 15 minutes with it so far and was able to make the following experimental geometry which started out as a simple cube:

I still can’t believe that this is Open Source software and free to use. I think it can easily hold its own against most of the high-end commercial 3-D apps. I will definitely be messing with it more and posting my progress here, so keep your eyes peeled!