Blender 2.62 RC / 2.61

Blender is an open source and feature-packed 3D creation software suite which offers support for the entire 3D pipeline: rigging, modeling, simulation, animation, compositing, rendering, and motion tracking. You can even use the program to create games and edit videos.

Blender comes with an innovative and powerful rendering engine known as Cycles that provides ultra-realistic rendering. The integrated engine offers Real time viewport preview, GPU & CPU rendering, HDR lighting support, and much more.

Blender comes with a rich collection of modeling tools which will help you create, edit and transform your 3D models with minimum effort. The modeling toolkit includes support for N-Gon, Grid and Bridge fill, Edge dissolve, slide and collapse, Keyboard shortcuts, and Python scripting for custom add-ons and tools.

Blender offers endless possibilities for materials. The utility features physically accurate shaders, such as translucency, glass, and SSS. The program also includes full Node Support for complete customization. In addition, the software comes with OSL (Open Shading Language) support for creating unique shaders.

Blender comes with a rich collection of rigging tools, including easy weight painting, skeleton, envelope and automatic skinning, mirror functionality, B-spline interpolated bones, bone layers and colored groups for better organization.

Blender enables you to turn you characters into great-looking animations. The application features an animation toolbox which offers a powerful character animation pose editor, sound synchronization capabilities, automated walk-cycles along paths, Non Linear Animation for independent movements, inverse and forward kinematics for fast poses, and much more.

Blender allows you to sculpt organic subjects with the aid of the integrated sculpting feature set which provides Mirrored sculpting, Multi-res sculpting support, Dynamic Topology sculpting, and 20 different brush types.

Blender lets you effortlessly unwrap your mesh within your program. You can also use a wide variety of image textures, or you have the possibility to paint your own directly onto your 3D model. The application allows several UV layers, painting directly onto the mesh, Cylinder, Fast Cube, Camera and Sphere projections, Angle Based and Conformal unwrapping, UV layout image exporting, Compositing, and UV Unwrapping inside the program.

Blender comes with a built-in compositor which allows you to perform all your tasks without using third party applications. The compositor provides render-layer support and is able to perform rendering to multiLayer OpenEXR files. Moreover the utility offers an impressive library of nodes which will help you create various color grading effects, camera fx, vignettes and much more.

Blender comes with a powerful and complete game engine which enables you to create full-featured 3D games within the application. The utility allows you to create and code your own game logic and offers complete Bullet Physics integration. You can also port your 3D models to any other game engine. The application comes with support for OpenGLTM dynamic lighting, animated materials, and toon shading. Support for Parallax and Normal Mapping is included as well. You can playback your games inside the program without preprocessing or compiling.

Blender also features object and camera tracking. The program enables you to easily import raw footage, mask areas, track the footage, and view all the camera movements in your 3D scene without switching between multiple applications.

The Camera and Object Tracker comes with powerful and complex camera reconstruction, manual and automatic tracking, support for Tripod solvers and Planar tracking, real-time preview of your 3D scene and tracked footage.

Blender comes with a rich library of extensions which will enhance the program's functionality. The collection of extensions includes Fracture Objects, various generators for terrain, trees, clouds and ivy, 3D Printing Toolbox, and much more. In addition, the program also offers support for DirectX, AfterEffects, Unreal Game Engine and much more

Blender integrates a powerful and comprehensive video editor which lets you perform a series of basic actions, such as splicing and video cuts. More complex tasks can be performed as well, including video masking. The Video Editor offers live preview, histogram, chroma vectorscope, and luma waveform displays, adjustment layers, keyframes, speed control, transitions, filters and more. The program features maximum 32 slots for adding images, videos, scenes, audio, effects and masks. You can perform various tasks, such as audio mixing, scrubbing and syncing. Waveform visualization is available.

Blender offers import and export support for a vast array of file formats. The program is able to support a wide variety of image, video, and 3D formats, such as JPEG, AVI, Alembic, JPEG2000, MPEG, 3D Studio (3DS), PNG, Quicktime, COLLADA (DAE), TIFF, Filmbox (FBX), SGI Iris, Autodesk (DXF), Radiance HDR, Wavefront (OBJ), TARGA, DirectX (x), Cineon, Lightwave (LWO), DPX, Motion Capture (BVH), OpenEXR, SVG, X3D, STL, VRML97, Stanford PLY, and VRML.

Blender comes with a friendly and flexible interface, being accessible to both advanced and novice users. The layout can be completely customized to suit your specific needs. Blender's user interface offers crisp text, consistency across all platforms, and no disruptive pop-up windows.