Blender 2.66: The Answer to Your Modeling, Rendering, Visualization and Animation Needs

Not Long Ago, In The Industry Not Far Away ...
For those who have been in the 3D industry in Indonesia since 90's, you may be familiar with 3ds Max which I introduced to Indonesian market in 1996. I knew so many people not only in Indonesia, but some industry major players as well. One of the highly known and respected, is Daniel Martinez Lara known as Pepe. You may want to check his website at www.pepeland.com. He was one of few well known 3ds Max pioneering animators in the world. Why?  Because 3ds Max was not being considered as a professional choice. I was also struggling in order to introduce 3ds Max in Indonesia. His thoughts were awesome in order to open up people's mind.

An interesting thing happened around 2008 when I found a "tiny" little announcement he made at that time, on his website. You can click on the picture on the left to find out.

That, really amazed me at that time. It was a small step for one person, but huge leap for mankind. Well, it's not Apollo 11 landed on the moon, but as 3ds Max evangelist, he started to play and use Blender as his main 3D tool. He even established animation school and use blender too! That started to trigger me to know more about Blender. You can check Daniel's masterpiece as well at his website. You'll be stunned and amazed.


You Can Use This! ... Blender Time!
www.blender.org, that's the place to start your Blender3d experience. You can download it and start to build your experience in using Blender. It's been years since Blender started its debut. Now, it reaches version 2.66.

What's New in Blender 2.66
There are plenty new solid features inside Blender 2.66 that can put your jaws on the floor. If I should put in on this writing, it will take pages to describe.

However, you could visit BLENDER COOKIE YouTube Channel at THIS LINK, then get yourself amazed with the new stuffs in Blender.

I'm New To Blender, How Do I Start?
No need to be worried about it, my friend. That's the same question I had in mind while ago. Whether you're a veteran in 3D animation, or just putting yourself next to the starting grid, you'll find an essential answer: START LEARNING. "But where?" That should be the next question right? Okay, there are lots of things you could start learning Blender. I'll name a few for you. Click on each link to open it.

1. Blender's Official Tutorial Page
2. Blender Cookie
3. Blender Nation
4. Blender Guru

There are plenty of Blender communities around the world, so you don't need to feel that you're alone. Those communities and the members as keen to share their experience with you. They will give you priceless suggestions and recommendations, and eventually, help you to solve your problems in Blender should you encounter one, or more.


Why Should I Use Blender?
Well, I'm not saying everyone should migrate to Blender. In Indonesia, as this is the market I know so well, majority of 3D software users will appreciate Blender once they find what Blender can do for them. Most of them may think:

• Is modeling task easy to perform with Blender?
• I'm very familiar in using popular 3d software, but I'm not familiar to pay for it. Will blender keep me out from paying the license?
• Is rendering in Blender as good as other commercial software?
• Is Blender ready for production?

Happily, I could say that the answers for those questions are YES. You can perform modeling in Blender very very fast. Blender rendering options (Cycles, Yafray, etc.) support bunch of features you'll need to have for photorealistic rendering such as GI, component, etc. And the best news for you which you may already knew, IT'S FREE without any catch, at all. So, feel free to install it inside any computer you have without the worry of software audit request and legal lawsuite. BLENDER IS COMPLETELY FREE. You have the freedom to use it, install it, .... and be creative with it.


Bottomline 
Save your money to invest on proper hardware such as HP Workstation with all fancy stuffs you need included such as Nvidia Quadro or AMD FirePro professional graphics, higher ECC RAM, RAID0 or RAID1 HDD. Or even SSD as your main storage engine! You'll appreciate your smart investment.