{"id":684,"date":"2014-09-20T02:21:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T02:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsetailnebula.com\/?p=684"},"modified":"2014-10-27T16:47:51","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T16:47:51","slug":"this-software-is-amazing-and-its-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.horsetailnebula.com\/?p=684","title":{"rendered":"“Blender” — amazing free software"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine is studying Game Design in college. When I asked him what he was up to this week, he said he was building a door in a blender.<\/p>\n

\"door<\/a><\/p>\n

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Or something like that. After asking more questions I found out that he is learning to use some software<\/strong> called Blender. It is FREE and PROFESSIONAL LEVEL — people actually make games with it. Hard to believe? Well, check this out<\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blender_%28software%29<\/a><\/p>\n

Blender<\/b> is a professional free and open-source<\/a> 3D computer graphics software product<\/a> used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender’s features include 3D modeling<\/a>, UV unwrapping<\/a>, texturing<\/a>, raster graphics editing<\/a>, rigging and skinning<\/a>, fluid and smoke simulation<\/a>, particle<\/a> simulation, soft body<\/a> simulation, sculpting<\/a>, animating<\/a>, match moving<\/a>, camera tracking<\/a>, rendering<\/a>, video editing<\/a> and compositing<\/a>. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I watched a few of the tutorial videos. This is some very very very deep<\/em> software (I mean, it will do a billion and one things). But there were also some tutorial videos that were more approachable — they were mini-projects. “How to make a landscape” “how to make a fuzzy stuffed bear” “how to make a planet bursting into pieces”. For some reason these reminded me of the old Bob Ross painting shows\u00a0 on TV…<\/p>\n

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\"bob-ross\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…which gives you an idea how old I am, since he passed on to the land of Happy Happy Trees back in 1995. Anyway, the Bob Ross classes were formulaic (here’s how to paint a tree, here’s how to paint a mountain) — not “real” oil painting. But they got you elbow-deep into the paint, and you could continue learning from there.<\/p>\n

Here are two of the Blender tutorial vids I watched this evening. This one is on how to build an island…<\/p>\n

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