My Experiments With Blender
For those of you who don't know, Blender is a free and open source 3D software similar to Cinema 4D or Maya. Yeah, you heard it right, its free and open source. It's for those people who don't have a thousand dollars to spend just to try out a 3D software. If you're limited to a computer that costs less than a thousand bucks, chances are that you're better off starting with Blender. Once you have a grip on Blender, you could upgrade your hardware, specifically your graphics card, to get faster renders, and save a lot of waiting.
Blender is intensive. Not just the interface, but the actual rendering. Even for seriously small projects (to make a realistic scene with 4 or 5 characters) the render times can be frustrating if you don't have a decent graphics card. And people say that the interface is confusing to a newbie. To the contrary, its actually been designed intuitively, and once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder why all the other programs didn't have a similar workflow.
I had heard of Blender and knew what it was, but I hadn't actually checked it out. I used to be of the opinion that it was open source and therefore of no use. But then one of my best friends showed me a youtube video of a tutorial in which they made a simple cup. I was hooked! Since it was free and I knew my computer had a decent graphics card, I went ahead and purchased downloaded it for free. :)
And then I watched this tutorial : Blender Tutorial for Beginners - Cloth Napkin [youtube.com/watch?v=2zd1AI198I8
](youtube.com/watch?v=2zd1AI198I8)Watching that video and seeing how easy it was to create a realistic scene, I decided to try it out for myself, and here is the result :)
The journey is rewarding, although the wait to get the final result is frustrating and hot. My graphics card does in excess of 70°C (~160°F) while rendering. I would recommend not doing this on a laptop, but if you have a decent cooling solution, then go for it.
So for those of you wanting to try out some 3D modelling, I highly recommend Blender. In the end, the limit to your creativity is not the software, but the hardware. At first it may seem alien to you but try doing stuff along with tutorials (plenty on YouTube) and you'll soon get the hang of it. Get the latest version of Blender at blender.org. Happy Blending :)
Originally posted here