Will it Blend? A Look at Blender’s New User Interface

” The 3D powerhouse Blender is arguably the most complicated
piece of desktop software in the open source world. It handles
every part of the workflow used to create a CGI film or a 3D game:
creating objects, rigging them to move, animating them, controlling
lighting, rendering scenes, and even editing the resulting video.
Each release packs in more new features than most people can
understand without consulting a textbook (or two). One of the down
sides, though, is that over the years Blender has developed the
reputation of being difficult to learn. Fortunately, the latest
release takes on that challenge head-first, and makes some major
improvements.

“One reason Blender continually adds so many features is that
The Blender Foundation funds its development by using it in
real-world animation projects like Elephants Dream and Big Buck
Bunny. Each movie is run like a commercial studio project, and
whatever the animators need, the developers work on adding in to
the next version of the app. The latest release is dubbed 2.56a,
and is the result of the foundation’s recent Sintel movie project.
Blender’s version numbering system is a bit quirky; all of the 2.5x
series are officially tagged as “beta” releases; the “a” on the
current version marks it as a minor bug-fix to 2.56.”

Complete Story