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Blender Goes Freeware

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the the-third-dimension-comes-free dept.

xype writes "I just got a mail from NaN (the company developing Blender) that the new 1.8 release is out now - and it's freeware, without any "optional features one needs to pay for"! B@rt of NaN also gets into detail about NaN's plans around opensourcing parts of Blender." For those in the dark, Blender is a 3D Modeling/Rendering application for Linux [Update by nik: And FreeBSD (freebsd.org hosts the US mirror), and SGI, and Sun, and others]. Its not 3D Studio, but it'll do a lot of the same stuff.

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand Non-Free "freeware" by Sleepy · · Score: 5

    I am glad this is freeware, but there's some drawbacks.

    Because this is "free enough" for people who don't care about freedom, there will not be enough real demand for a good, GPL or even BSD licensed 3D app. Look at the legions of POVRAY users.. although it's a good app, it's matured slowly *because* the authors are not prepared to "let go", or lead. Another example is VRML... we HAVE VRML viewers, but they're binary things and they suck. This plays right into the hands of companies like Microsoft, who every 9 months announce a new 3D format (which has yet to materialize, but vaporware still does freeze the market).

    I respect people's right to choose their own licenses, but to me proprietary freeware is worst than shareware. Anyone ever look at the work plowed into mIRC for Windows? What a *waste* of time (and apparently, years of someone's life).

    I'll still gladly download the new version. I hope I can actually import an ASCII camera path animation so I can attempt a real "match move" with it. It ain't Alias/Wavefront's Maya, but after Houdini this is the premiere 3D app for Linux.

  2. Blender has lots going for it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5
    I'm a very happy C-key user. I paid to get all the features plus a stunning manual which helped over the learning curve. I'm very happy to see NaN has used that financial support to make those features completely free (as in beer). C-key users get a bonus though - a gift-wrapped Tutorial Guide as a way of saying thanks.

    Blender isn't quite there yet for game development and commercial character animation but the progress it has made so far is incredible. NaN say Game Blender (v 2.0) out in November this year will address the needs of game developers much more specifically a la character modelling, skins and the like.

    But in the meantime, here are the benefits of the package (as I see them):

    * kick-butt all-round cool 3d modeller, renderer and animator suite
    * it's a whopping 1 Mb download
    * Free as in Beer with Free as in Speech in the works
    *runs on SGI Irix 5.3/6.x, Sun Solaris 2.6, FreeBSD , Linux x86, Linux Alpha, PPC Linux Macs, BeOS, Windows 95/98/NT
    * has been used for commercial (i.e. studio quality) animations and TV ads so it's not Mickey Mouse
    * very nice to use once you understand how it works
    * exports a range of file formats
    * built-in post processing and sequence editing
    * built-in Python scripting (you can do anything with this feature)
    * supports hardware acceleration
    * plugins
    * the developers listen on the mailing list and take people's feature requests seriously
    * I could go on and on here...

    See it for yourself and decide...