Blender Comparison with other 3D software

Blender has a depth and breadth of features comparable to commercial, proprietary, high-end and mid-range 3D software. A fairly comprehensive comparison between the available 3D software can be viewed at the TDT 3D comparison of major 3D packages, a user survey by CGeinie, and at this comparison chart. Blender has areas where it is more limited than many of its commercial counterparts such as a lack of Font Preview for text, lack of N-gon-based modeling workflow and some missing or incomplete modeling tools, and a lack of a standard library of material presets but does have downloadable resources; however, in other areas Blender is on the leading edge such as the advanced algorithms utilized for its UV unwrapping.

Blender has also tended to lack up-to-date and complete documentation (because it was originally an in-house program), an issue that is being addressed through the wikification of the Blender documentation project, the 2006 Blender Summer of Documentation project, and the June 2007 introductory book "Essential Blender", which was published by Blender Foundation. Additionally, a number of other books on using Blender have been published by publishers unaffiliated with the Blender Foundation.

The Blender installer is small compared to other fully-functional 3D graphic software. For example the Blender installer of 2.49 build for Windows 32 bits is 10.5 MB, requiring 36 MB after installation, and a lite build takes 2.2 MB; whereas software like AutoCAD requires around 2 GB. As such, Blender can be easily downloaded (although some guide books still include Blender on a CD).

Development

Since the opening of the source, Blender has experienced significant refactoring of the initial codebase and major additions to its feature set.

Recent improvements include an animation system refresh; a stack-based modifier system; an updated particle system (which can also be used to simulate hair and fur); fluid dynamics; soft-body dynamics; GLSL shaders support in the game engine; advanced UV unwrapping; a fully-recoded render pipeline, allowing separate render passes and "render to texture"; node-based material editing and compositing;

Projection painting

Part of these developments were fostered by Google's Summer of Code program, in which the Blender Foundation has participated since 2005.
 

Game engine GLSL materials.

The current release version is 2.49b. Primarily, the last release, 2.48a was an update to reflect many of the Blender Game Engine changes made throughout the Yo Frankie! project; including real-time shading, many real-time GLSL materials, and updates to the Physics components. Version 2.48a also made changes to the Animation systems, adds Wind simulation, and fixes a number of backlogged bugs.

Blender 2.5 is currently in development with release goals including:
1. a completely new redesigned interface allowing for multi-windowed support
2. custom key mapping
3. an animation system upgrade

The test version release cycle is active, beginning with the release of Alpha 0 version on 24 November 2009. This Alpha 0 version returns some of the functionality included in earlier versions of Blender, but is not complete. New features that were released with this test version include:
1. the new user interface
2. a smoke simulation system
3. the new Animato Animation System
4. an updated toolset, with improved implementaion.

Some functionality that is not yet available includes the Game Engine.

The 2.5 project is set to wrap up spring 2010 with the last beta to be released around the Durian premier and a stable 2.6 release planned for the summer.

Use in the media industry

Blender started out as an inhouse tool for a Dutch commercial animation company, NeoGeo.

Blender has been used for television commercials in several parts of the world like Sydney, Australia and Brazil.

The first large professional project that used Blender was Spider-Man 2, where it was primarily used to create animatics and pre-visualizations for the storyboard department.
"As an animatic artist working in the storyboard department of Spider-Man 2, I used Blender's 3D modeling and character animation tools to enhance the storyboards, re-creating sets and props, and putting into motion action and camera moves in 3D space to help make Sam Raimi's vision as clear to other departments as possible." - Anthony Zierhut, Animatic Artist, Los Angeles.

Friday or Another Day was the first 35 mm feature film to use Blender for all the special effects, made on GNU/Linux workstations.It won a prize at the Locarno International Film Festival. The special effects were by Digital Graphics of Belgium.

Blender has also been used for shows on the History Channel, alongside many other professional 3D graphics programs.

Tomm Moore’s The Secret of Kells, which was partly produced in Blender by the Belgian studio Digital Graphics, has been nominated for an Oscar in the category ‘Best Animated Feature Film’.

Elephants Dream (Open Movie Project: Orange)

In September 2005, some of the most notable Blender artists and developers began working on a short film using primarily free software, in an initiative known as the Orange Movie Project. The resulting film, Elephants Dream, premiered on March 24, 2006. In response to the success of Elephants Dream the Blender Foundation founded the Blender Institute to do additional projects with two announced projects: Big Buck Bunny, also known as "Project Peach" (A 'furry and funny' short open animated film project) and Yo Frankie, also known as Project Apricot (an open game in collaboration with CrystalSpace that reused some of the assets created during Project Peach).

Big Buck Bunny (Open Movie Project: Peach) 

On October 1, 2007, a new team started working on a second open project, "Peach", for the production of the short movie Big Buck Bunny. This time, however, the creative concept was totally different. Instead of the deep and mystical style of Elephants Dream, things are more "funny and furry" according to the official site. The movie had its premiere on April 10, 2008.

Yo Frankie! (Open Game Project: Apricot) 

Apricot is a project for production of a game based on the universe and characters of the Peach movie (Big Buck Bunny) using free software. The game is titled Yo Frankie. The project started February 1, 2008, and development was completed at the end of July 2008. A finalized product was expected at the end of August, however the release was delayed. The game was released on December 9, 2008, under either the GNU GPL or LGPL, with all content being licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.


Plumíferos 

Plumíferos, a commercial animated feature film created entirely in Blender,was premiered in February 2010 in Argentina. Its main characters are anthropomorphic talking animals.


Sintel (Open Movie Project: Durian)
 

The Blender Foundation recently announced its newest Open Movie, codenamed Project Durian (in keeping with the tradition of fruits as code names). It is currently in production, and is planned to be a fantasy action epic, about twelve minutes in length. Some sections were displayed on October 25, 2009,while the full movie is planned to screen in 2010.