Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Getting to Know Blender

Blender is a free and open source 3D modeling and animation suite. Yikes! What a mouthful, huh? Put simply, Blender is a computer graphics program that allows you to produce high-quality still images and animations using three-dimensional geometry. If you've seen an animated feature film or watched a television show where they go behind the scenes and explain how they made an actor look like he's being chased by a giant monster although he's really just standing in a big green room, you've seen what can be done with 3D computer graphics. In the right hands, Blender is capable of producing this kind of work. With a little patience and dedication, your hands can be the right hands.

One thing that makes Blender different and special compared to other comparable 3D software is the fact that it is free and open source. Being free and open source means that not only can you go to the Blender Web site (www.blender.org) and download the entire program right now without paying anything, but you can also freely download the source, or the code that makes up the program. For most programs, the source code is a heavily guarded and highly protected secret that only certain people (mostly programmers hired by the company that distributes the program) can see and modify. Because it's open source, anybody can see Blender's source code and make changes to it. The benefit ...