Blender 3D Version 2.41 released with a host of new features and improvements.

Blender is a free but professional 3D  modelling and animation program.

Blender started as an in-house 3D animation tool but was kindly released to the public to use for free. In the last couple of years Blender has been released with source code as well. This has helped speed up the devleopment and added many great new features for any budding 3d artist to take advantage of.

Blender is strange to use at at first but when you get the hang of it you can create great looking images and animations.

Blender has many tools to help you create stills and animations as well as varied output formats, ie PAL or NTSC video, panoramic images. The rendering engine also has a raytracing option so you can create realistic looking images.

Amongst the many tools you will find mesh modelling tools, boolean operations, nurbs surfaces and metaballs

Blender 3D also includes animation tools. USing these sophisticated tools you can create moving characters and creatures or  pan through a landscape. Or do both. Blender 3D is so sophisticated you could render and entire movie using it. There are even post production features which allow you to fade scenes in and out.

For more about Blender 3D check out the website.