8 weeks with blender

This is the first chapter of a series of posts about my experience learning and working with the open-source application, Blender. I'll spend at least 30 minutes every day over a period of 8 weeks working directly with Blender and I'll post my discoveries, links and ideas at least once a week. The series assumes no knowledge of Blender by readers. It's a "start from scratch" column.

What is Blender?

Blender is a free, open-source professional 3D application that has a large international community of users and volunteers. Founded by Ton Roosendaal in 1995. Since then Ton has lead the community to develop Blender as a professional 3D tool to "create animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games".

Why Blender?
The reason I've chosen Blender for this 8 week learning quest is because, a) it's free and open-source which means everyone can download and work with the program, b) the community is huge with all kinds of tutorials, free content and plugins being shared every single day, and c) Blender is more than just a 3D application it has a game-engine, a video editor, a compositor and a motion-tracking app all rolled into one.

In short, you can do practically anything in Blender and I hope to work/learn to become proficient with the program and to meet individuals in the community who are artists and coders for Blender. Then I'll bring it all back to you, our reader, and share my discoveries and knowlege

What's to Come

Although I've worked in Blender in the past, I still have a lot to learn. I'll post tutorials, videos, links to websites, links to free content and plug ins, interviews with Blenderheads and I'll share my observations along the way. Plus, I'll post comments and ideas from members of the Blender community.

Unlike my previous "Year with Houdini" articles, I'm going to make this series much less technical. You'll be able to download Blender and try some of the things I learn or you can simply download/view the content I (and the Blender community) provide and work on it yourself in your own time.

The Blender community is incredibly gracious and share practically everything. We'll have a lot of free content in our future articles.

Links

• My friends at the Renderosity Blender forum have been most helpful in planning this series especially Lobo3433.
• Blender.org is the central hub to download the program and meet the community
• Blendernation.com is the second stop on the Blender tour because there is so much content and shared information by the massive Blender community at this website.
• For a complete history of Blender you can check the wikipedia entry or try Blender.org

Current version of Blender is 2.78. Download link here.

 

8 weeks with blende