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Many school districts and community colleges would love to offer their students courses in 3D graphics and animation but cannot afford the high cost of licenses and hardware for the popular commercial 3D packages. The solution?

Blender.

Blender is a 3D graphics and animation program, used around the world by 3D professionals, students and hobbyists. It has an extensive feature list, an enormous online support community and many opportunities for participation and contribution to its future development. Some of the great work being done with Blender includes, in order, the blender.org gallery, the Elephants Dream short animation and Plumiferos, a feature-length animated film:

Why Is Blender Ideal for Introducing 3D Animation to Your Arts Program?

• Cost. Blender will not touch your budget. As free, Open Source software, there is no cost, ever, to download Blender, install it, use it, copy it or share it. Also, Blender’s computing hardware requirements are modest, and in most cases, it will happily run on the computers that are already at your facility. (more)

To make your IT people happy, Blender will run even on older Pentium III hardware with as little as 256MB of RAM. The program itself takes up less than 20MB of space, and its installation is restricted to a single directory. In fact, Blender can be easily run directly from a CD or USB stick. Blender never “phones home” or nags you or your system administrators in any way. Blender is licensed under the GNU GPL, the full text of which can be found here.

• Work flow. Blender has developed a production-tested work flow for image and animation creation that will get your students familiar with basic and advanced skills applicable to the entire industry. (more)

Blender features polygon and sculpt modeling, a node-based material and texturing system, object level and character animation through armatures, keyframe, path and procedural animation, shape animation (morphing), several simulators (rigid and soft bodies, fluids), particle systems, a powerful internal renderer, and integrated non-linear editor and node-based compositor. A complete feature list can be found here.

• Support. Blender has a thriving online community that hosts a great number of tutorials and is quick to respond with helpful solutions to questions and problems.(more)

Although there are language- and project-specific sites for Blender located around the Internet, the biggest gathering of Blender users and the best place to get help is forum on blenderartists.org. Answers to almost all questions new users might have, as well as extensive tutorial lists can be found in the Support section of the forum. In addition, many Blender users hang out on irc in the #blenderchat room. The Blender developers maintain a constant presence in the #blendercoders room, and can answer highly technical or bug-related questions that have stumped everyone else.

• Freedom. As mentioned before, Blender and the Blender Foundation adhere to the values of Open Source freedom, which fit very well with the educational commitments of providing a quality instruction for all people, regardless of income or background. Students can even install and run it on their home computers without cost or worry.(more)

The free, Open Source software movement is committed to the notion that knowledge and innovation should be freely available to all people, for the benefit and advancement of humanity. Blender is now, and will always be free and open. You never have to worry about purchasing upgrades or installing multiple copies of the software on additional machines.

What Materials Are Available for Classroom Instruction?

The Essential Blender, the Blender Foundation’s latest book, is an excellent classroom resource. This four hundred page illustrated tutorial guide includes chapters and tutorials for every major section of 3D production, as well as sections for getting oriented both in 3D and in the Blender interface. In conjunction with a focused classroom project, it can help students to learn the foundational skills they will need to become 3D artists and animators.

The Blender Foundation’s commitment to Open Source ideals carries over to this book as well. While the printed book itself enjoys standard copyright protections, the raw text and images of The Essential Blender are licensed as “Open Content” and are freely available for use and distribution at no cost, as long as a few small requirements are observed. Although we believe that design and physical production of the book itself add a great deal to the understanding of the material, this means that it would be possible to set up a trial Blender classroom experience at absolutely no cost to the school.

Of course, we hope that upon seeing the value that Blender and The Essential Blender can bring to your art department that each student could be outfitted with a proper textbook.

How Can I Get Started?

Probably the best way for an art educator to get started is to order The Essential Blender from the blender.org e-shop. Although you can download Blender for free from blender.org, the book comes with a CD containing the latest compatible version of Blender. All powerful 3D tools are complex, and your odds of not becoming frustrated if you simply download and run Blender without instruction are quite high.

If you are thinking of including Blender and 3D in your arts program, feel free to contact me. I will be more than happy to answer any questions or concerns you might have. I believe that it is in the best interests of both Blender and the educational community at large to encourage all forms of artistic creativity in the most open and accessible way possible.

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