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I haven't ever seen it mentioned here and since people are often making requests for 3d apps I thought I'd tell you guys about Blender - a completely free 3d modeling application. I just downloaded it and it seems horribly complicated so I haven't had a chance to work with it yet - plus I'm at work. I've heard it compared to Lightwave in terms of it's capabilities but since I've never used Lightwave and have just barely toyed around with Blender I can't compare the two. I'm sure there are some people here that can work their mojo and turn out some pretty killer work with this app though. The download is small, just over 2mbs, but it seems you get a fully functional 3d modeling/rendering program that is very powerful. You can download it from (url="http://"http://www.blender3d.org/Download/")http://www.blender3d.org/Download/(/url) It runs on OS X and many other systems.
Enjoy and let's see what you guys can come up with.
------------------ ((Ż'ˇ.¸(Ż'ˇ.¸Ť-KAME-ť¸.ˇ'´Ż)¸.ˇ'´Ż)) I used to jog but the ice kept falling out of my glass. (url="http://"http://www.0three0.net/l-1551/")L 1551(/url) - The official site of RONIN and The Way and the ten thousand things
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I've heard baaad things about blender. But hey, if its free its free.
------------------ "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."-Albert Einstein
ill give it a shot
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.infini-dmaniac.tk")Infini-d Maniac's Studios (aka curufinwe studios)(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/")Terragen(/url) Play that funky music white boy!
First Impressions
Like I said, I've never seen anything about Blender on these boards before - and the entire program is news to me, I'd thought I just give you guys some of my thoughts on it so far...
Definetly not user friendly - but it's not Pov-ray either. I spent a couple hours messing with it, reading the online manual and trying to get a feel for the controls and really didn't get anywhere. Course that's not saying much. I'm most definetly not talented at 3D apps. My biggest gripes about the program would be that there doesn't seem to be any Undo at all. So if you make a mistake you could very well be screwed. Selecting areas is also a pain. From what I can tell you can only select vertices. Not a terribly big deal but to make it worse is that if you're not careful you're likely to select vertices on the opposite side of the object you're selecting. But there doesn't seem to be any way to select edges or faces. You can however select the entire object. Rotating windows is a bit chaotic and there is no isometric view. You can set a camera in the proper place though to compensate for this. Changing between views seems to have some problems as well. Occasionally it seems to give you the opposite view of what you requested. Additionally, many of the controls are keyboard shortcuts. This is good since digging through the seemingly billions of buttons gets tiresome but it makes memorizing the shortcuts almost a necessity.
All in all though, I'd have to say that so far I'm still intrigued by it. Considering that it's completely free and native to OS X is enough to make me stick with it a little longer to see if I can't get the hang of it. Especially, since it seems to be a very powerful program in the right hands. I still prefer the simply yet effective control of Wings3D but for me to move completely over to OS X, it's not a viable option (Strata and ResEdit are the only reasons why I haven't dumped 9). I didn't play much with the textures or rendering at all. The actual render that I did do came out pretty decent as so did the simple texture. I'll probably mess more with those tomarrow. There are also some other very cool features that I've only touched for a moment. Basically, if I can get past the learning curve, I'll definetly be making a lot of use of Blender for future plugs. From what I've seen it can do some pretty killer work.
Ohhhh, no fair it won't run on OS 8.x or even 9.x :frown: Me sad now!
-Starbridge42
------------------ Hey! If I want cheesey poofs, I'll get cheesey poofs! -Eric Cartman Law Enforcer "Respect my Authorita!"
ive never trusted those "galleries" right in the program's webpage. They seem to have amazing pictures 5 minutes after the program is released. Nothing ensures me that they were created with blender.
yep. I've known about blender for years. I've used it many times on my brother's SGI.
Curufinwë - thats because they were probably made on a SGI before the mac version came out.
I find it comparable with lightwave. Its powerful, mind you, but like all programs, you just have to know how to use it.
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Quote
Originally posted by Admiral Zombat: **yep. I've known about blender for years. I've used it many times on my brother's SGI.
I find it comparable with lightwave. Its powerful, mind you, but like all programs, you just have to know how to use it.**
I figured someone had to know about it since it's been around a while. Just surprised no one's ever said anything about it given the seemingly weekly requests for 3D programs. I'm really starting to like it as I get the hang of it. I found an undo feature although you have to be careful with it. I'm sure many things would be easier if I could just learn the proper way to do them.
Hey Admiral, you wouldn't know how to mirror an object in it would you? I figured out the lathe and rotate/duplicate but I can't seem to find a mirror function and I can't figure out how to use the workaround like in Strata.
i found some good tutorials on the program here (url="http://"http://10secondclub.org/users/juicy/")http://10secondclub.org/users/juicy/(/url)
I'm usualy not very good with 3D programs, but these tutorials have made it fairly simple It is quite hard to understand at first, but these tutorials seem good.
------------------ "It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "The One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse." The Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse encounter unexpected difficulties. Terry Pratchett, Sourcery