The Blender Program

When I first started the Comm. 345 Animation class at Shepherd University, I did not realize that I would be able to actually do work at home from my own computer. I do not have a mac computer with all the expensive software that is on the communications lab computers, and I did not realize that a program existed for free that could do good animation on all types of computers. However, the animation program known as Blender is a free and powerful program that enables users to work from any type of computer they are familiar with.

Since I am a PC user, I have had to do most of my assignments in the lab, however; Blender solves that problem for me and allows me to get the work done both at home and at the lab. The Blender animation program is great because it allows me to work on projects anytime. My time is not very flexible due to having many classes at once, and I do not always have time to be at the lab while it is open. However, this isn't the only great feature of Blender. The program is also free and works much like other well-known animation programs.

Blender is probably overlooked by many people due to it being free. To most people, a free program means that the quality is going to be bad, the program is going to be difficult to work with, or that the program may not have the capacity to do what expensive ones do. However, Blender is not like that. Although it is not the perfect program, it has the capability to do animation just as well as other programs. Also, new features are being made available for it all the time that fix problems and allow more possibilities for animation. One other thing that should be mentioned is the fact that the class is a group of students just trying to learn animation techniques. Since Blender isn't so much different than most other programs, learning animation techniques on it can benefit those who plan on purchasing other programs because it allows those people to have an idea of how to use their other program. This program is also good for students and amateurs because it has many online tutorials that are both official and non-official.

I have found that the online tutorials for Blender can steer an animator in the right direction. As long as the directions are followed closely and the animation is saved frequently, no huge problems normally occur. It is also good to mess around some too. If the animation is saved, their is really nothing to lose by messing around with what the instructions are saying and experimenting. It is just good to be sure that if the animation is previously saved and messing around got bad results, that the bad results are not saved over the old results. Blender has many official tutorials online too in their own website, which happens to have an online version of their book in it. These tutorials and the book are also helpful to beginners.

Blender is a great animation program, especially since it is free and still powerful enough to do most of what other animation programs do. The program is also growing rapidly, so it may not be long before it can do what all the other programs can do. My favorite feature of the program is its ability to work with any type of computer. This allows me to have the time to get my projects done. Blender is also user-friendly due to the many official tutorials on the Blender website.