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| Blender 1.0 Splash screen by Neo Geo |
You're Probably a Blender User or Enthusiastic about Blender If you fetched this article. Blender has left a mark in the 3D industry that even if you've not used it you must have explored it as a 3D Modeler, Sculpter, or Animator. The 3D powerhouse software Blender didn't start all powerful and Complete, the story of Blender involved a lot of ups and downs, and this is majorly the backbone of Blender's fame.
Table Of Content
- Back to Blender History
- Blender Open Source Story
- The Blender Foundation
- Blender Open Movie Projects
- Blender Big Leap: Blender 2.5 and 2.8
- Blender Today
Back to Blender History
Blender was developed by a Dutch self-taught Software Developer Ton Roosendaal to use in his 3D animation studio NeoGeo. Starting vibrant the studio grew rapidly, winning so many awards and gaining huge recognition. The first source file of the software with the name "Blender " was written by Roosendaal in 1994 and this is considered Blender's birthday to date, his idea was to make Blender and in-house software for NeoGeo but that later didn't become the case grew from its old tools, to new tools including a ray tracer.
Roosendaal invested his savings in a silicon Graphics workstation, with this investment Roosendaal was able to develop the first Blender 1.0 in January 1995 with new tools and majorly a new window that gave users more customization ability. Unfortunately, NeoGeo was unable to withstand the challenges it faced and this led to its closure. Roosendaal was still confident in his software potential and didn't lose hope as he partnered with Frank Van Beek to further develop and market Blender with NaN(Not a Number), they made the software free to download with some functions locked and opened for paid users.
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| Image of Ton Roosendaal thirty years ago from his Twitter |
Blender Open Source Story
After a Computer Graphics Conference in Los Angeles, SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ) Blender Got a total funding of five and a half million US dollars, but despite this funding, Blender Faced economic and management challenges which led to its closure again in 2002.
This time it was hard to start again as Ton Rosendaal now has only ten percent of Shares in Blender and restarting would mean that he buys 90% of the shares from the other investors. This was not possible for Rosendaal so started a non-profit he called the Blender Foundation after he managed to convince the investors to allow the Software to operate as open-source with the hope of getting their money back through Crowdfunding. This plan worked excellently as the Blender community was able to raise one hundred and ten thousand euros in just two weeks of the campaign and paid off the investors.
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| Blender 1.0 interface from Blender3darchitect |
The Blender Foundation and The General Public License (GNU)
With the Blender Foundation alive the Blender GNU License was released in October 2002, The GNU was one of its kind, it not only allows Blender Users to use the software for free but also to use the source code for free for any development. This was one of the defining moments for Blender as the software saw incredible growth, from grants, Volunteers, sponsorships, donations, and huge support from its community meant that it continued to forge ahead.
Blender Open Movie Projects
There was no doubt about what Blender Could do, but to prove that the foundation took it upon itself to make open movie projects with Blender and other Open source softwares that was needed for previz, compositing and Sound design, and some other programs that were not functional at that time in Blender.
With the codename "Project Orange" the open movie project began in 2005 and was named Elephants Dream. The Movie story was about Emo and Proog exploring a mech world with every creature in it metallic. The Movie assets were made available after it was published under the Blender Creative Commons License. This success led to the establishment of the Blender Institute in 2007 situated in Amsterdam, Netherlands with a permanent office and studio for handling Blender Open Movie, Games, and VFX projects.
Other Blender Open movie projects to date are Big Buck Bunny(2008), Stencil(2010), Tears of Steel (2012), Caminandes(2013), Cosmos Laundromat(2015), Glass Half(2015), Agent 327(2017), Daily Dweebs(2017), Hero(2018), Spring(2019), Coffee Run(2020), Sprite Fright(2021), Charge(2022), and Wing It (2023) from blender Studio.
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| Blender Elephants Dream Blend File image from Blender Studio |
Blender Big Leap: Blender 2.5 and 2.8
One of the most significant improvements in Blender was in Blender Version 2.5, with an overhaul of Blender's User Interface, and the introduction of new features including a data asset system, event handling, and an Improved animation system in 2011. After continuous improvements, another milestone was achieved in the release of Blender 2.8 which saw a revamp of Blender's entire UI to a more modern Dark theme, EEVEE a real-time render engine, New remeshing options, A 2D and 3D Animation workflow with a hybrid option. With the release of Blender 2.8 in 2019 Blender gained very wide acceptance and recognition among leading industries in the 3D space, although Blender is not yet the industry Standard Software for 3D Animation and is competing Actively with Industry Standard Software.
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| Blender 2.5 Splash Screen, Image from Graphicslearning |
Blender Today
Blender continues to thrive all thanks to the Blender founder and chairperson of the Blender foundation Ton Roosendaal for his consistent resilience in making sure our favourite Software Blender didn't go into extinction. Blender Current Version 4.0 is a complete 3D powerhouse With modeling, sculpting, and animation workspaces, a compositor, a camera tracker, and majorly all the tools a 3D Artist would need to commence a project.
At the back of this significant growth is the Blender community with so much love and support for the software and foundation, Blender Hosts conferences, and organizes events because of its community and the majority of the Blender improvements are a result of opinions and ideas from its community. Theirs Just So much you can do when you persist and keep trying and the Blender Story Confirms that.
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