Blender Foundation Download

[Ahmend Studioz]

BlenderFoundation is a recognized partner for many big corporations in the technical/creative industry. This not only via the membership of the Development Fund, but especially as official member of:

To keep the Foundation lean and a safe place for Blender, almost all activities of the Foundation are being conducted by the Blender Institute. That includes office rent, daily administration, general management, HR services, online store, Blender Conference organization, participating in events, operational support for blender.org, managing Development Fund grants, software research projects, workshops, meetings, and so on.

The foundation is chaired by Ton Roosendaal, the original author of the Blender software. One of the foundation's stated goals is "to give the worldwide Internet community access to 3D technology in general, with Blender as a core".[4]

The foundation provides various resources to support the community formed around using and developing Blender. In particular, it organizes an annual Blender Conference in Amsterdam[5] to discuss plans for the future of Blender, as well as staffing a booth to represent Blender at SIGGRAPH.[6][7] Donations are also used to maintain the Blender website and hire developers to improve the Blender software.[4]

The foundation is funded entirely by donations from entrepreneurs, companies, and users.[8] Many video game publishers such as Epic Games, Ubisoft, Activision, Valve, and NetEase have made contributions. Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Meta, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google have also funded the project.[9]

In 2019, Epic Games awarded the Blender Foundation a US$1,200,000 grant as part of their Epic MegaGrants initiative.[10] Founder and CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney stated, "Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem" and that "Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators."[11]

The Blender Foundation maintains several community-driven "Open Projects" through its affiliated Blender Institute program, including several freely licensed films and a free, open-source video game Yo Frankie! (2008).[12] According to the Foundation, these projects are intended "to validate and improve the 3D open source content creation pipeline with Blender". Each project was created using the Blender software and released under permissive license terms, along with the source material. In addition to demonstrating the capabilities of the software, the Open Projects provided detailed production material (sketches, tutorials, textures and models, etc.) to serve as examples for the Blender user community, as well as finished products that could be widely used for other purposes.[13]

On 18 March 2006, the Blender Foundation released its first film, Elephants Dream.[14] In response to the success of Elephants Dream, the Blender Foundation established the Blender Institute to support future software and content development projects. The Blender Institute operates out of a studio within the Entrepotdok building in Amsterdam, where the Blender Foundation is also located, and is headed by Ton Roosendaal.

On 10 April 2008, the Blender Institute released its second film, Big Buck Bunny.[15][16][17] Based on the movie, the Blender Institute released its first Open Game project Yo Frankie!, in November 2008.

In October 2011, Concept/Script Development began for Blender's fourth open film project titled Tears of Steel. Contrary to previous Blender Institute projects, which were 100% computer graphics, the focus of Tears of Steel was the combination of live action footage with computer generated characters and environments. The live action footage was shot with a high-end Sony F65 camera. The project was released on 26 September 2012.[18]

The Gooseberry Open Movie Project is the fifth Open Movie Project initiated by the Blender Foundation. Ton Roosendal announced the project in January 2010.[19][20] The most ambitious project yet, one of the primary goals is for the Gooseberry Open Movie Project to be the first full-length film produced by the Blender Institute. Work on the film, called Cosmos Laundromat, began in 2014[21] (although a release date was not yet announced). A ten-minute pilot, entitled Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle was released on YouTube and Netflix on 10 August 2015[22] and premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival on 24 September 2015.[23] The pilot won the Jury's Prize at Animago 2015,[24] an international conference for 3D animation.

Hero, the sixth Open Movie Project, was announced in September 2017 and released on 16th April 2018.[26][27] The technical target for Hero was to use and improve the Grease Pencil tools.

There are a couple issues, but primarily they all focus around the Blender User Experience-- and the trajectory it has taken since the wonderful UI work done by those there at Blender for the 2.8 launch.

I belong to several other forums, and there still is a consensus Blender is just too hard to learn. I have to agree to some extent. I know friends who have used 3D for many years who truly want to learn Blender, but become too frustrated in the OOBE (Out Of Box Experience-- first time users).

Imagine the vision of a Blender that is a schools first choice to teach 3D because it is so simple for students to start and learn. That anyone wanting to update their kitchen, or fiddle in their workshop would see as the obvious and simple choice. I believe it can be done, but will need more than UI tweaks to accomplish. I believe there needs to be a dedicated mission, driven from the top, to make such changes.

We can include here also people that is proficient in other packages but understand that Blender is different and they have to learn Blender as it is, not to try to learn Blender as if it were one of the other packages they know.

IMO, there are a number of ways to ideate on a solution. For instance, Blender builds could be automated to spit out different flavors of Blender: Beginner, intermediate and advanced. Or there could be different modes for workspaces and built in guidance systems, perhaps with an AI component that tried to suggest next steps.

And most importantly, better communication for strategies to help complete projects. What are some good ways to model this? Should I UV map or not? What are the best settings for EEVEE given my project and my hardware? These are all valid new user questions, which can be aided with innovative problem solving and technology.

Imagine the vision of a Blender that is a schools first choice to teach 3D because it is so simple for students to start and learn. That anyone wanting to update their kitchen, or fiddle in their workshop would see as the obvious and simple choice. I believe it can be done, but will need more than UI tweaks to accomplish. I believe there needs to be a dedicated mission, driven from the top, to make such changes.

I hesitantly agree. Ease of use should never take away from the complexity the program can offer people who need it. The way you word it sounds a lot like hiding features or neglecting them. Blender is finally aproaching a feature set where professionals are starting to notice that it is catching up as a true alternative. That is a very important thing - especially as Open Source Software. The last thing we should do now is putting the ease of entry so much in the foreground that the powerful features become harder to manage.

I am all for ease of use. User Experience is extremely important and I also agree that Blender would benefit from a UX lead to keep things consistend and easy to use all around. I also think that Blender should be taught in schools but we have to be very carfeul to not let the ease of use dictate the more powerful features to become more unpleasant to use.

These two I agree with a lot!

Any program benefits from improving the UX but Blender currently still has a few very low hanging fruit left that could help with the complexity all big 3D program bring (not counting the specialized tools that focus on one thing only, like RizomUV or InstantMeshes).

Perhaps I am not communicating clearly. I only ask that UX, and ease of use is made as serious a priority as adding the next great set of features. And that the same innovation and creativity be used to create a better on ramp experience for new users.

I understand this task may not be for longtime Blender pedigreed users, but rather for a different set of users who would like to see Blender be easy to use and accessible to all people, regardless of their professional propensities and desires.

I think that you are overestimating manpower of Blender Foundation & Blender Institue.

They are collecting founds through development fund, blender cloud and blender store to pay developers to maintain and improve the software.

But current status is 18 people paid to maintain the 15 modules and all official blender websites used to communicate with community.

That is less than 2 developers per modules.

What you are mentioning, here, is the teaching of 3D rendering.

Blender Institute is doing that by producing Open Movies and delivering blog articles and Tutorials accessible through Blender Cloud.

It is an occasional way to teach Blender and far to be as structured as a schedule from a 3D school that a student will leave after 3 or 5 years.

Some parts of Blender are easy to use and very intuitive. That was the whole point of new 2.8 UI refactor.

Some parts are not. And, IMO, the reason is because Blender 2.8 design refactor is not finished.

And at the current rhythm of development, it will only be completed in several years, after 3.0 release.

Each developer has onto his workboard on d.b.o, literally, almost a thousand of tasks assigned to him.

For each new tool, he delivers ; several bugreports tasks are opened that he has to solve, too.

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