Blender 2.49 proves itself as one of the best 3D applications (and its free!)

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Interface

• Revolutionary non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
• Flexible and fully configurable window layout with as many screen setups as you prefer
• Undo support on all levels
• Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
• Any window space can be easily switched to any window type (curve editor, NLA, 3D view etc)
  
• Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
• Graphical user interface for Python scripts
• Custom themes
• Consistent interface across all platforms

Rigging

• Fast skeleton creation mode
• Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
• Fast envelope based skinning
• Automatic Skinning that really works (heat equilibrium based)
• Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
• Double Quaternions reduce shrinking and other bone deformation errors
• Volume deformer uses a mesh cage to deform complex meshes with great results
• Bone layers and colored groups for better rig organization
• B-spline interpolated bones; forget about elbow twists
• Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
• PyConstraints; if you need something not yet implemented code it in python with real time feed back, no compiling needed

Animation

• Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics with pole target support
• Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
• Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
• Automated walkcycles along paths
• Animated constraint system
• Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
• Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
• Character animation pose editor
• 'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
• Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
• Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
• Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects

UV Unwrapping

• Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods
• Interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning
• Proportional falloff editing of UV maps for smooth transformations
• Seam based unwrapping
• Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, View projections
• Catmull-Clark subdivition of UVs for less distortion
• Minimize stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion
• Multiple UV layers

Demo Movie

Physics and Particles

• Particle system can be atached to any mesh object. Control methods include weight painting, textures, curve guides, wind and vortex effects. Particles can be deflected by moving geometry
• Hair strands can be created by a static particle system, supporting all particle control methods
• Fluid simulator with fully animated inflow, outflow, obstacle and fluid objects. Gravity and viscosity settings can also be animated. Supports vector blur and is integrated with the particle system
• Realtime soft body solver integrated in mesh, lattice, curve and text objects. Supports collision detection and particle field effects like Wind or Vortex, soft bodys can also be baked for faster playback/rendering
• Game engine rigid body physics can be easily baked into animation curves

Realtime 3D/Game Creation

• Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
• Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
• Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
• Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
• Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
• Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
• Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
• Support all OpenGL^TM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
• Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
• Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
• Audio, using the SDL toolkit
• Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces

Modeling

• A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
• Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
• Full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
• Modifier stack deformers such as Lattice, Curve, Armature or Displace
• Mirror modifier with middle vertices clipping and automatic deletion of inner faces
• Non destructive real time Boolean and Array modifiers
• Mesh modeling based on vertex, edge and/or face selection
• Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
• Python scripting access for custom tools

Rendering

• Very fast inbuilt raytracer
• Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
• Tile-based and fully threaded
• Render layers and passes
• Render baking to UV maps and object to object baking (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
• Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
• Halo, lens flares and fog effects
• Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Edge rendering for toon shading
• Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
• Ambient Occlusion
• Radiosity solver
• Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman, Povray, Virtualight, Lux, Indigo and V-Ray - See Resources for a full list.

Shading

• Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
• Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
• Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
• PyNodes: write your own Python shaders with realtime feedback, no need to compile
• Material previews rendered by main render engine
• Fast, realistic subsurface scattering
• Blurry reflections and refractions
• Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
• Versatile procedural textures system
• Reflection maps
• Normal, displacement and bump maps

Imaging and Compositing

• Compositor tightly integrated and aligned with the rendering pipeline
• MultiLayer OpenEXR files allow to store and reuse raw renderlayer and passes data
• Complete list of composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators and mixers including Chroma Key, Blur, RGB Curves, Z Combine, Color Ramp, Gamma Correct
• Preview panel to define the portion of interest. A composite then only happens on this part
• Threaded and memory efficient (up to 8 processors)
• Near realtime sequencer can edit hours of video
• Waveform and U/V scatter plots
• Open and write many audio & video file formats using ffmpeg
• Can render using frameserver-support directly into foreign applications
• Supports float images as well as regular 8 bits images
• Curves tool allows you to create a mapping from the float range to a displayable result (for HDR images)

Files

• Save all scene data in a single .blend file, even images, sounds or fonts can be packed for easy transportation
• Powerful built-in database system allowing instances, scene management, and dynamic linking multiple project files
• .blend format supports compression, digital signatures, encryption, forwards/backwards compatibility and can be used as a library to link to from other .blend files
• Read and write support for many other 2D and 3D formats
• 2D
  TGA, JPG, PNG, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
• 3D
  3D Studio, AC3D, COLLADA, FBX Export, DXF, Wavefront OBJ, DEC Object File Format, DirectX, Lightwave, MD2, Motion Capture, Nendo, OpenFlight, PLY, Pro Engineer, Radiosity, Raw Triangle, Softimage, STL, TrueSpace, VideoScape, VRML, VRML97, X3D Extensible 3D, xfig export

Supported Platforms

• Windows 2000, XP, Vista
• Mac OS X (PPC and Intel)
• Linux (i386)
• Linux (PPC)
• FreeBSD 5.4 (i386)
• SGI Irix 6.5
• Sun Solaris 2.8 (sparc)

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