Blender

Origin and development

Produced originally by the Dutch company Not Number Technologies (NaN has) and by the studio of animation NeoGeo , Blender initially was a ray to trace named Traces on Amiga in 1989, the production company made use then of Sculpt3d like Modeleur. The name of Blender arrived only later, inspired of the album Baby of the group Yello, when that became a continuation of complete animation.

The company NaN was founded in 1998 to develop and distribute the software as a Partagiciel, from which certain functionalities were accessible only via a paying license. Later, its author Your Roosendaal found investors to help it to develop his product and to make a Graticiel of it. With the beginning of the year 2002, being given the little of profits that they withdrew some, the investors decided to withdraw their support for Your Roosendaal, which caused immediate the bankruptcy of the NaN company and the closing of Internet site of Blender. Nevertheless, the community of users of Blender (several tens of thousands, even several hundreds) reformed itself quickly within the discussion forum of the Elysiun site (become BlenderArtists today).

July 18th, 2002, Your Roosendaal managed to negotiate the repurchase of the royalty of Blender against 100 000 euros, for the creation of a Foundation Blender and diffusion of the software under the free license LPG. In less than one week, the community of the users had already gathered about half of the sum. And the September 7th, fell the advertisement from the opening of the code of Blender, supervised by the Fondation Blender.

The foundation undertakes then, a great work of revision of the code, in order to make it easier to make evolve/move. Very quickly, it is decided to separate Blender in various libraries in order to be able to make benefit from its technical assets to other software.

Lastly, on February 11th, 2003, leaves the first free version (2.26), which will be followed the May 14th of a version including of many news functionalities, of which a beginning of internationalization, thus allowing nonthe english-speaking to discover this software.

Functionalities

Support of a certain number of techniques of modeling, such as polygonal, subdivision of surface, curved of Bézier, surfaces NURBS, Metaballs and numerical Scuplture.
complete Integration of the Driving of made external YafRay, as well as the possibility of export for many engines such as Indigo, Povray, Kerkythea like Mental Ray.
advanced Management of animations including a system of reinforcement, linear animation (by curves IPO) and nonlinear (by actions), Kinematic reverse, deformations by curves and lattices, Keys Shape (Morphage), constraints, vertexes weighting, bodies flexible and rigid bodies with management of the collisions, simulation of fluids, system of particles.
video Composition ( sequencer and timeline supporting the Plugin S) to which is added a simple synchronization of the band its which must be gone up with an external software (Virtualdub, for example).
Type-setter nodal of image, fully integrated into the flow of returned.
advanced Creation of materials integrating a system nodal.
System of very advanced development UV.
Treatment of lightings advanced by ambient Occlusion and Radiosité (the latter not being related to the ray-tracing, also functions in scanline).
Language of embarked script based on the python giving access the majority functions.
Driving 3D real-time allowing the development of video games or applications using bricks logical, being able to be enriched by scripts python, whose export is possible in vrml 1.0 and 2.0.

Code

An generally accepted idea is to believe that Blender is programmed in Python. This error comes owing to the fact that a console opens with the execution software, announcing that Blender is compiled in Python. Last information on this subject (January-June 2004) makes state of more than three hundred and thousand lines of code including 228.189 (69,49%) lines in C ISO, 96.217 (29,30%) lines in C++ and 3.303 (1,01%) lines in Python (others: 673 (0,20%)).

Blender today

Blender is impressive, not only by the functionalities which it offers or by its extremely flexible management of the windows, but also by its size: all holds in less than 11 Mo.

Its very particular Interface, based on OpenGL, was worth reputation of a long and difficult training a long time to him. Indeed, this interface is based much on the short cut-keyboard: that makes its use not very intuitive for the beginners. However, since its passage to the Open Source, of many improvements were brought there, in particular with regard to the general Ergonomie of the software, gotten by the reorganization of the menus and the addition of contextual menus.

Its passage to the Open Source gave him a very important dash. It changes continuously thanks to the enthusiasm of the team of developers, and it is not rare to see only appearing functionalities as new as important in a few days. The amateurs of Blender keep up to date while following its evolution starting from the almost daily compilations.

Principal Plug-in

The relation between long time and the Python made it possible to constitute an important base of grafts (plugins) which made of Blender a true software of conversion of formats. These tools were written by authors as enthusiastic as voluntary. A good number of them, covered by the license LPG or Blender Artistic License, are gathered and distributed in a package which accompanies the software. These scripts are varied (creation of trees, shells, etc). One can find some of them on the official site.

Blender Artistic License

Blender is also a kind of social phenomenon which gave rise to a considerable number of productions: static teachwares, plugins, images, cartoon films. In fact, a special license was created, Blender Artistic License.

It aims at the teachwares, the files .blend of example as well as the images and animations. It is more restrictive than the Blender Documentation License, but is thought to protect the rights of the authors on their teachwares.

The authors can choose the Blender Documentation License, less restrictive, but no other that of these two licenses will not be accepted for the teachwares on the site of the Fondation Blender.

Blender in cinema industry

The first true community project in which Blender was used was Spider Man 2, where it was primarily used for the creation of animations and the outlines during the development of the model of film.

As an artist of animation working in the section Scénarimage of Spider-Man 2, I used the modeller 3D Blender and the tools for animation of characters to improve the model, to recreate the world and the supports, and to put moving the actions and displacements of camera in space 3D, in order to make limpid the vision of Sam to the other departments. - Anthony Zierhut, Artist of animation, Los Angeles.

Friday or another day is the first Feature-length film using Blender for all the special effects, carried out on stations GNU/Linux. It gained a price with the International festival of film of Locarno. The film the Mask of Red Death also benefitted from all the capacities of Blender. The special effects of these 2 films were carried out by the Belgian company DIGITAL Graphics.

The Orange project (Dream Elephants)

Plumíferos

Plumíferos is a project of commercial film Argentinian entirely created under Blender, of the company Manos Digitales Animation Studio. It is currently available on the official site and of the trailers were presented to the Blender Conferences of 2005 and 2006.

The project Fishes

Since October 1st, 2007, the realizers of Elephants Dream took again service on a new short film, called the Pêche project.

This new shutter leaves on a concept completely different from the first, by giving up with dimensions mystic to go towards “funny and soft one” (“funny and furry” according to the English expression). Its exit is planned for the month of April 2008.

History of the versions

To discover the old versions.

Blender 2.28 - February 11th, 2003
: (This version was the occasion to reform the API python which had been added to the software since 1999. With the great despair of the developers of scripts and Macro S, it had already undergone two incompatible important reforms between them. The new approach makes it possible to add more easily of the functionalities and more quickly to integrate an access to the internal functions of the software.)
Pas of version 2.29
Blender 2.30 - October 30th, 2003
: (the series of the versions 2.3X is characterized by a radical modification of the Graphical interface which became more practical, readable and esthetic.)
Blender 2.31 - November 29th, 2003
Blender 2.32 - February 2nd, 2004
Blender 2.33 - April 30th, 2004
Blender 2.34 - August 5th, 2004
: (major Innovation: the return of the module of play, Blender Range. One finds there also improvements very substantial of the Système of particles.)
Blender 2.35a - November 19th, 2004
Blender 2.36 - December 23rd, 2004
: (Improvement of the effects of Bump thanks to Normal Maps)
Blender 2.37 - May 31st, 2005
: (Innovation: The software body)
Blender 2.37a - June 15th, 2005
Blender 2.40 - December 22nd, 2005
: (Addition of the special effects on the hair and the simulation of dynamics of the fluids)
Blender 2.41 - January 25th, 2006
: (Addition of many functionalities in Blender Range)
Blender 2.42 - July 16th, 2006
: (addition of Nodes which make it possible to publish a material or of " composer" a scene (see composite Node)
Blender 2.42a - July 25th, 2006
Blender 2.43 - February 18th, 2007
: (Addition of returned by master keys, the tools of sculpture of the grid…)
Blender 2.44 - May 13rd, 2007
: (Support of SubSurface Scattering)
Blender 2.45 - September 20th, 2007

Publications

Blender (August 2007), by Jean-Michel and Soler Marie-France, in the collection Choke kit with the editions Pearson/CampusPress, ISBN 978-2-7440-2174-9
free 3D with Blender (October 2006), by Olivier Saraja, in the collection Free access with the editions Eyrolles, ISBN 2-212-11959-3
Blender and POV-Ray (November 2005), by Jean-Luc Ancey, in the Numerical collection Planet with the editions Dunod, ISBN 2-1004-9394-9

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