Blender is a free, open-source software with incredible strength – to the extent its full potential is limited by your computer, not the other way around. Blender is most commonly used for 3-D animations and image renders, but it can also be used for things like video editing (although it doesn’t do audio editing beyond cutting and pasting) and 2-D animation. It also comes with VFX built into it, and more can be imported easily to slip over clips of video. You want to run a simulation for a rendering project? Blender can do that. You want high-quality models? Blender can do that, too! You want to rig up a model you downloaded elsewhere for your bootleg cartoon? Blender will enable you!
Blender is one of the most powerful free tools to do any one of these things on the market, and it does all of them! And it’s open-source – it can never decide to simply paywall features you used to be able to access, or demand a cut of any profits you make off of a project. It’s free to use and free to download. Animation was the game of studios and extremely dedicated hobbyists for decades, so for such a powerful tool to be free to amateurs and pros alike has opened a whole new world of art. Suddenly, without needing to pay for the software, getting started seems less daunting! A hobbyist can publish for free to establish a fanbase willing to crowdfund for longer, more difficult projects.
That said, the learning curve is harsh – there are multiple hours-long courses simply on how to get started, so it’s best to have an idea of what you’re aiming to do before you jump in. Animation is quite different from video editing, which is quite different from rigging and modeling. Blender will show you a different set of tools depending on what you select, fine-tuned for every option!
While difficult to get started with (there are also plenty of resources online for troubleshooting issues, and somehow you, too, will discover an issue seemingly nobody else as ever had before if you start a project), the possibilities are endless. Users can create almost anything they can imagine with Blender once they’ve got a grasp on the tools. You can even make your digital dolls look like they’re made out of clay or felt, an incredible feat for anyone who’s ever tried to do Claymation as originally conceived. Again, the ceiling on your textures is determined by your computer, not by Blender itself – if it’s powerful enough, you can make nearly anything digitally. Youtube is full of impressive Blender projects, short films to full length movies, all sorts of art styles.
The sky’s the limit!
