Blender

Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. It also features a built-in game engine.

You can download it from HERE

Blender's user manual is available online in several languages in wiki format, and is constantly updated by a worldwide collaboration of volunteers every day. You can get involved as an author here.

Docs and videos

Blender Quickstart

Tutorials

Video Tutorials

Python API reference (2.4)

Python API reference (2.6)

Bundled Python scripts (2.6)

Blender Hotkey Reference [PDF, 263K]

Official Blender YouTube channel

Supported Platforms

Blender is avaliable cross platform, but utilizes OpenGL for drawing the entire interface. That means you best use a graphics card and drivers that conform to the OpenGL specifications.

Unfortunately there are a lot of cheap graphics cards on the market that only support a basic sub-set of the OpenGL specs. VIA and Intel cards are infamous for this.

The Blender developer team welcomes all efforts to bypass issues with specific configurations, but we can only support the platforms well that are in use by active coders... check this list in wiki for which platforms are in active development.

Support forums & chat

The Blender community offers a wealth of excellent websites with support forums. 

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions are available on many topics, such as Using Blender, the GNU GPL license and related to the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms.

Demo files

Download the "regression suite", a collection of 50+ .blend files showing Blender features.

Feature videos of a wide range of Blender options

Browse the Blender download server with demos and movies

Contact other educators

The Blender Foundation considers education and training projects crucial for a succesful Open Source project. We are currently coordinating knowledge on this area, sharing experiences, and evaluating proposals for official (certified) training programs on the bf-education mailing list. Everyone interested in the topic is free to join.

Certified Training

World-wide many universities, schools and institutes are now offering Blender training and classes. Click on the title above if you are looking for qualified trainers, or if you are a trainer who wants to become certified.

Features

Discover the wide toolset available in Blender, defining a complete pipeline (from modeling to sequence editing) controlled by a flexible and consistent user interface.

Gallery

Gallery of pictures showing some of the best artworks created by the community as well as in commercial productions.

Movies

Blender's animations systems supports a variety of techniques and tasks, allowing the creation of complex animations.

Feature Videos

Some of Blender's top features are presented in this gallery.