Transcript Blender: a 3D Animation Software

Blender
Landon Glodowski
Agenda

The History of Blender
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Blender 2.6

Python Scripts
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The Blender Foundation
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The Blender Foundation Projects
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The Blender Institute
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Blendernetwork.org
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Blenders Bad Side
History
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Created By Ton Roosendaal
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Dutch Animation Studio, NeoGeo, is where the first version of Blender was
made in 1995
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Roosendaal took it to his new company, NotANumber in 1998 but soon shut
down in 2002
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Convinced old investors to turn blender into an open source project
Blender 2.6

Free to download
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Has a very small installation package, an average of 115 mg
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Includes features such as
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3D modeling
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UV unwrapping and Texturing
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Rigging and skinning
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Fluid/smoke/particle/Soft body simulation
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Sculpting
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Animating
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Match moving
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Camera tracking
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Rendering video editing and compositing
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A built-in game engine
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Python scripts
Operating Systems
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Windows XP SP3, Vista, 7 or 8
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Mac OS X 10.6 and later
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Linux
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FreeBSD
Average specs for Hardware
Minimal specs for Hardware
32 bits, Dual Core CPU with at least 2 GHZ, and SSE2 support.
2 GB RAM
24 bits 1280x768 display
Mouse or trackpad
OpenGL Graphics Card with 256 MB RAM
Production specs for Hardware
64 bits, Quad Core CPU
64 bits, Dual 8 Core CPU
8 GB RAM
16 GB RAM
Full HD Display with 24 bit color Two times Full HD Display with 24 bit color
Mouse or trackpad
Mouse + tablet
OpenGL Graphics Card with 1 GB RAM Dual OpenGL Graphics Cards, quality brand with 3 GB RAM
Figure 1.1 System Requirements [2]
Python
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Python is an open source language “that is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Ruby,
Scheme or Java
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Libraries of user made Scripts add to blenders features
The Blender Foundation
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One of the few incomes supporting Blender
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Employs Blenders very few employees
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Produces projects to improve the software
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Project Orange
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Project Apricot
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Project Peach
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Project Durian
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Project Mango
Orange
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The project included
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a full recode of the character animation system
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upgrades to the rendering system
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a node-based compositor
The result was “Elephants Dream (2006)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFQxRd0isAQ
Apricot
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This Project focused on the improvement of the game engine
“Yo Frankie (2006)”
Peach
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This project focused on trying to improve the fur and hair animation.
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It also was used to work on outside environments, which included such
elements as grass.
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And also the animation of cartoon characters.
The finished project was the short film “Big Buck Bunny (2008)”.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g
Durian
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The open projects actually showing positive results so they put more money
and effort into their third open movie “Sintel (2010)”.
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Targeting sculpting tools detail,
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Illumination rendering
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All around stability of Blender
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
Mango
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This Project put animations in the same frames as real actors.
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Worked with Blenders’ motion tracker
“Tears of Steel (2012)”
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6MlUcmOul8
The Blender Institute
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Is there to help organize the open projects and the goals The Foundation was
after.
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It also provides a physical building for the projects to be created in that a
small staff can work with the invited teams of artists for each project.
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Everything created within the Blender institute uses open source utilities and
every finished project is published under an open license to make it available
to everyone.
Blendernetwork.org
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Blendernetwork.org is a website that is partnered with the Blender
Foundation.
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The site provides
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a place where the users of Blender can be found.
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online directory and make it possible for users to socialize with other Blender
users.
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Events relating to 3D animation and Blender are posted
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jobs people and companies can place on a “virtual job board”
Blenders’ Negative Aspects
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The ability to render the animations
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With Blender files being so small, sending the files to a “render farm” can easily
solve the rendering problem.
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an average of 66% of users use an external renderer instead of using the internal
renderer included in Blender
Conclusion
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Its creator Ton Roosendaal built a program that he was so involved with that
he kept it going and kept the community involved also.
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Without the Community’s support and money, open source software would not
work as well as it does.
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Without the “corporate greed” involved with so many software programs,
Blender was able to remain free and is ever evolving. Blender is a great
example of how the typical user can compete with the top names in 3d
animation.