Blender 2.62 Free, 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and also features a game engine

Review for Blender :

Blender is an open-source application that allows you to create a wide range of 2D and 3D content. It provides professional modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing tools.
Blender is more oriented toward advanced users, and the seemingly complex user interface is proof of that. Fortunately, this software comes with a well-structured user manual and tutorials.
Plus, because Blender is open-source, there is a vast online community that can help you get familiarized with it. If you are a curious amateur about 3D graphic editing, you can easily lose yourself in the documentation.
One of the most important aspects of Blender is the fact that it lets you view all tools and features, without making you drag anything around. So, you can add modifiers (e.g. array, boolean, edge split, mask, mirror, multiresolution, lattice, mesh deform, smooth, wave, collision, explode, smoke), render an image, use Undo and Redo, take a screenshot or screencast.
Additionally, you can customize themes in the settings menu or by modifying the script in Python, but also use the grease pencil, UV unwrapping, texture painting, vertex paint, halos, shading, physics, a game logic editor, rigging (armatures, skinning, posing), world and ambient effects, and many more.
We were not able to find any errors or bugs in this program, but it uses a high amount of CPU and system memory, which is normal when you consider its level of complexity. So, if you want to get a first-hand look at a professional 3D graphic editor, give Blender a shot. Power users are strongly advised to commit to it.

 

Here are some key features of "Blender":

· Revolutionary non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
· Flexible and fully configurable window layout with as many screen setups as you prefer
· Undo support on all levels
· Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
· Any window space can be easily switched to any window type (curve editor, NLA, 3D view etc)
· Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
· Graphical user interface for Python scripts
· Custom themes
· Consistent interface across all platforms
· Fast skeleton creation mode
· Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
· Fast envelope based skinning

· Automatic Skinning that really works (heat equilibrium based)
· Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
· Double Quaternions reduce shrinking and other bone deformation errors
· Volume deformer uses a mesh cage to deform complex meshes with great results
· Bone layers and colored groups for better rig organization
· B-spline interpolated bones; forget about elbow twists
· Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
· PyConstraints; if you need something not yet implemented code it in python with real time feed back, no compiling needed
· Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics with pole target support
· Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
· Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
· Automated walkcycles along paths
· Animated constraint system
· Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
· Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
· Character animation pose editor
· 'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
· Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
· Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
· Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects
· Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods
· Interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning
· Proportional falloff editing of UV maps for smooth transformations
· Seam based unwrapping
· Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, View projections
· Catmull-Clark subdivition of UVs for less distortion
· Minimize stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion
· Multiple UV layers
· Particle system can be atached to any mesh object. Control methods include weight painting, textures, curve guides, wind and vortex effects. Particles can be deflected by moving geometry
· Hair strands can be created by a static particle system, supporting all particle control methods
· Fluid simulator with fully animated inflow, outflow, obstacle and fluid objects. Gravity and viscosity settings can also be animated. Supports vector blur and is integrated with the particle system
· Realtime soft body solver integrated in mesh, lattice, curve and text objects. Supports collision detection and particle field effects like Wind or Vortex, soft bodys can also be baked for faster playback/rendering
· Game engine rigid body physics can be easily baked into animation curves
· Very fast inbuilt raytracer
· Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
· Tile-based and fully threaded
· Render layers and passes
· Render baking to UV maps and object to object baking (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
· Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
· Halo, lens flares and fog effects
· Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
· Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
· Edge rendering for toon shading
· Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
· Ambient Occlusion
· Radiosity solver
· Integral support for the Yafray render engine
· Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman (RIB), Povray, Virtualight, lux render, Indigo, V-Ray
· Compositor tightly integrated and aligned with the rendering pipeline
· MultiLayer OpenEXR files allow to store and reuse raw renderlayer and passes data
· Complete list of composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators and mixers including Chroma Key, Blur, RGB Curves, Z Combine, Color Ramp, Gamma Correct
· Preview panel to define the portion of interest. A composite then only happens on this part
· Threaded and memory efficient (up to 8 processors)
· Near realtime sequencer can edit hours of video
· Waveform and U/V scatter plots
· Open and write many audio & video file formats using ffmpeg
· Can render using frameserver-support directly into foreign applications
· Supports float images as well as regular 8 bits images
· Curves tool allows you to create a mapping from the float range to a displayable result (for HDR images)

Requirements:

· 300 MHz CPU (2 GHz recommended)
· 128 MB RAM (2 GHz recommended)
· 1024 x 768 display with 16 bit color (1920 x 1200 display with 24 bit color recommended)
· 20 MB free HDD space
· 3 button mouse
· Open GL Graphics Card with 16 MB Ram (128 MB recommended)

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Softpedia guarantees that Blender 2.62 is 100% FREE, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.