On Mon, 10 Mar 2003 23:54, Helmut Walle wrote: > Anyway, once you get going with Blender, it is really fun to exploit > all the neat things like inverse kinematics for making things walk, > particle models for emitting puffs of smoke, or for growing fur, or > simple key frame animations, if you like with cartoon-style > rendering... Blender is a professional 3D modeling and rendering > software, the emphasis is on fast rendering of animations, not so much > on highest quality rendering of single images.
Speaking of Blender, The Blender Foundation recently released the first Open Source version of Blender (version 2.26, 11 Feb 2003). For those who were not following it, a quick history. Blender was created, closed source but free (as in free beer). Company (NaN) decides to get out of developing it and offers it for sale. Open Source community raises 100k euro to buy it and then develop/release it as open source. It is really cool to see projects develop like this. Blender could have easily died. I hope other companies that have old/non-key software that might be useful to someone else will Open Source it in the same way when they are no longer generating revenue/economic value from it. Later Lee "I'm still waiting for a POVRay exporter" Begg > > Cheers, > > Helmut.
