Seeing that my previous post was recommending Wings3D started me thinking. Although I use Wings3D in my work flow, I utilize Blender primarily for 3D work. Blender is not focused on the beginner because of the plethora of task you can potentially begin and complete within Blender.
Say for instance, I want to build my own video game. That is a gigantic task, but it can be done utilizing Blender exclusively. Now that is great for a beginner who is serious and not just a hobbyist. Because you can learn every facet of game development while exercising to fruition that nearly "impossible" task. You could potentially become a sought after game developer with a Free Open Source Software suite. Sweet?
I could decide to make a music video to my new song or 3D visualization for any creative work. Blender can be used to model, rig, animate, & assemble the video or real-time walk-through. No area of production is uncovered. If you are ambitious enough to make use of the motion tracking and compositor, then no area of modern visual expression is left out of your reach.
Ok, Blender is not easy to learn, but vast resources are available to those that are serious enough to pursue it. Don't expect great things right away. Look for and follow tutorials. So much of learning is doing that I recommend following every tutorial that looks interesting to you. Do them over and over until you can finish the tutorial in the length of time that the tutor made the video. I started with a tutorial to make a baseball. If you find it then you'll understand why I found it challenging. Making the lases war very educational, but the entire tutorial taught me so much about MODIFIERS. After working with Wings3D for so long, I had not ever imagined what I was missing by not working with modifiers. It is funny how many times I wondered how the best 3D modelers achieved such amazing models. I thought, "This is going to take forever and then I may never become that good". Not so my friend, You will notice you skill level soar once you begin working with modifiers. Highly complex scenes are achieved with much less effort than you can imagine as a beginner with the use of modifiers.
One of the best features with Blender is the exporters. You can export any format that is freely available. Meaning that Blender does not play favorites like the pricey proprietary software. You can even export you new video game as an executable. You very own MyGame.exe!
So for this update, I simply want to add Blender to the list of modern free open source software for the determined beginner.
