Free Shredder 3D Program?

December 27th, 2001, 11:32 AM

Has anyone heard of this program? Blender3d. Has anyone heard of it? Is it any good? Thoughts and opinions welcome.

Thanks.

Thomas P · December 28th, 2001, 09:27 AM

Blender has been around for a while and is completely free (well, almost). It is very capable of turning out spectacular images and is very popular with folks. The only 'cost', and worth the investment, is the manual. Blender has a different approach to modelling in its layout and many find it difficult to master. I have heard that if you have never used or been influenced by other programs you can more easily master it.

December 28th, 2001, 11:01 AM

I don't understand, your the second person to say that you have to pay for the manual. But they have the manual for download. And You DO have to pay for the REAL version of Blender. It's around $345.00 as of Janurary. Am I missing something here?

Thomas P · December 28th, 2001, 06:58 PM

It is a free program - Creator is the core modeler and is still free. 'Publisher' is a more complete package and is a commercial product. The manual they have is for version 1.8 which they don't make available anymore and you need to purchase the 2.x version manual. With 2.x they have decided to go more in the direction that GMAX has been developed for which is game designers and hardcore players who want to model thier own objects or characters. You still can do some cool stuff though in 2.x.

Have you thought of going to the web site?

December 29th, 2001, 11:13 AM

Yea, I finally found the website. Thanks for asking...

February 14th, 2002, 07:30 AM

Heh, decided I'd check here.
Blender is an EXCELLENT program, and 100% freeware. they have it set up so you CAN buy a license to use it professionally/get the newest updates as soon as there ready. as a freeware program, updates lag behind a month or two.

you can view some examples of sci-fi work I've done in Blender here:
www.b5-blender.com

and
www.b5-blender.com/render/

all of that is 100% blender, some have a little touch up in PSP 7 though.

Thomas P · February 14th, 2002, 12:15 PM

People, any of you who think blender may be for you should look at his site (A2597).

February 14th, 2002, 01:07 PM

heh, truthfully, I stink at blender. if I REALLY worked on my pictures, they would look ALOT better. as is, I rarely spend more then 30 minutes on a picture, and at the most, two hours.
(Modeling is another thing, an example of a WIP model I have going can be viewed here: http://www.b5-blender.com/render/beowulf/

bear in mind that it isn't even 50% done, and parts of it need to be re-modeled. for a much better example of a sci-fi model done in Blender, look below. The model was 100% done in blender, and (Last I heard) the author was hired by Lucas Arts.

http://www.blender.nl/gallery/Blende...iliofalcon.jpg

another excellent work of art done in blender:

http://www.blender.nl/gallery/Blende...io_2000_12.jpg

Those are good examples of what Blender CAN do. I definetly encourage you to use it. I hear (Alot amazingly) that my tutorials help get over the learning curve, so you can check them out at my site.