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Hello there,

I suppose my title says it all and you might aswell not bother to read through this anymore afterall he is gonna be telling us why blender is helpful because it free... well if you think so then you would be a well reasoning human being and honestly you wont be so far from the truth.

However reading this should open your mind to both the things you knew and those you may not know or better still those your refuse to accept.

I have set up a group on facebook for the past 4 years find it here https://www.facebook.com/groups/AWAFoundation/, this has been the major pool of talents and idea for the entire West Africa cg industry, so I went ahead to post a status there, it goes

''PLEASE LEARN BLENDER! no matter how good you are in c4d, autodesk products, z-brush even if you are a 2d artist... learn blender... it will save Africa CG industry... ultimately.''

I received a couple of comments, a few already keyed into my idea and have been learning it in addition to what tool they already use however most responses were asking me to give reasons why I think so. This elicited writing this blog which is simply the expansion of my response.

Blender is not a new kid on the block, it was started since the mid 90's but releases around early 2000 and its a Dutch studio initiative as far as I know (Dutch is Netherlands or Holland). There has been several version which many people do not know about talking about Blender 1.x series which grew incrementally and at the moment there is Blender 2.65 and Blender keep on to amaze people, right now Blender is the most widely used and strongest Open source 3d tool user community because of the enthusiasm of users, the production its been used for and capabilities.

I got my very first introduction to Blender while in Capetown, at a time when I decided to explore the world of Open Source OS I then began to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows, those days Blender was part of the Ubuntu iso disc image or download so when I was given the opportunity by my studio triggerfish to learn Blender under the tutelage of Allan Liddle (SA) a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer I jumped at it.

Going forward I need to mention that I am not a blender evangelist and I admit that I do not know all the ins and out but yeah I have used it along my journey in 3d animation being open source 3d tool which you can download and use for free. I find Blender would be very useful to set up the industry for a couple of reasons.

For MAX or Maya need you to spend over $3,000, cheaper alternatives like C4D still cost $990 but I forgot... its a world of piracy out there so you wont bother purchasing either anyway would you?

I do organise an annual cg challenge within the fb group I mentioned earlier and for the 2nd AWA challenge of 2012 we had one of the entry submitted and done in Blender here is the result and I love the whole feel


More recently I also noticed awesome works coming from the other blender community on fb and these guys are displaying superior work that some of the other software USERS may have not achieved while this is not a software superiority contest though but what people usually really need is where these 3d apps can overlap each other.

I dare say that Blender being a free software can give you same or in some cases better results than purchased 3d software... most users would never exploit its full capabilities even though its free software... what then)

Another important feature of Blender is how many features it actually has, polygon modeling using Catmull-Clark subdivision, NURBS surfaces, metaballs, vector fonts, bezier and B-spline curves, its got sculpting tools like Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate and Grab, it provides smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling, along with a modifier stack. Blender allows you to create a full skeleton for rigging, along with deformers and constraints, you can do 3D painting of your models. It provides full animation tools, high quality rendering using a built-in raytracer, UV unwrapping tools, a physics engine, composition tools, and even a real-time game engine, its basically being developed to be all inclusive such that you can achieve everything you want in it without having to go outside of it (the awesome artist is the one who will know how to use blender and also combine it with some other tools like zbrush then render in somewhere else (as you may like it).

Still on what blender can handle, 2d guys can also do their cut out animation in blender or even drawing and painting. The toon shader is a very useful tool for both 2d and 3d artist, ou can create you work in 3d model and render our in toon which is more like 2d effect making your 2d work looks high end

Have you checked out the architectural tools built into blender, it measures accurately and does a lot for your already and this part of it is highly intuitive.

Also Blender offers you a non-linear video editor and very useful for motion graphics, like you would have in final cut or premiere pro etc, for what you may need basically its way above average and some artist only use the video editor in blender alone.

Most things are achieved in blender in fewer clicks than in some other commercial 3d programmes and just by using a single button or mouse clicks, no need to memorise a lot of shortcuts, its a bit intuitive... but then you can also map your favourite 3d tool keyboard into blender and for instance use Maya key maps while in Blender... go check out how you save your projects too, very smart saving method and you do not need to navigate all over.

Have you noticed how light-weight blender is in size??? isnt that an added advantage for something to be light on your pocket and also be light on your drive storage/memory yet have equal capability as the heavy ones?

What matters is not what one software can do and the others cant again, its all about the areas where they overlap each other but if you are looking for a stand alone 3d app with LOADS of possibilities, its Blender...

Agreed that it may be bit daunting for people maybe because they are used to other 3d apps and wont wanna adapt to change easily however once you know Blender you would wanna remain with it.

Blender now also offers a sculpting tool like mudbox or zbrush or sculptris would do but again remember this is not being funded with its revenue like other 3d apps so it takes the efforts of people to get it running and the development speed may not be like the commercial ones but this makes it also nice cos you have a huge base of online helpers and a dedicated community to help fix things.

More and more studios are looking up the blender direction or at least they have it as an additional part of their arsenal of tools if not solely used, it can also save out in other formats that can be transferred to other programmes which is a common challenge with open source tools.

I should mention here that I used blender to composite and light for SOPO a unicef project I was part of while at triggerfish, it was a low budget short and Blender was the solution to cut cost but still achieve production quality although we used Lightwave3d in support but note that its isnt maya or max or Softimage.
I only picked blender up for a couple of weeks before the project and when it was all done the external director sent words back to say how delighted they were with the lighting and comp done in blender.

This brings me to the main point for Africa, blender is not doing something so unique that others can not do and its not the best at everything (certainly the best at some things though) but for cash strapped African studios who want to get up there with speed and not have to spend too much setting up, Blender is a ready solution.
Imagine the leverage effect you will get when you have done away with little production set up cost including hardware requirements as blender would work on low spec systems too.

Blender is a GNU Open source tool just like Linux (meaning free to use) and guess what, Linux also Open source, are the best platform for building a render farm so imagine your Blender 3d tool with your huge Linux based render farm which you can build locally, I am sure by now you can begin to imagine the potentials for growth and advantage you will have if you decide to go this route.

What Africa needs now is not the big names and expensive tool but we need a proof of concept, either you animate in Maya or Blender, just get it right, either you model in max or blender, get the basics right and then doing it where you do not have to bother about cost really or licensing issues etc would mean you can focus on the core of what you are doing. You will get jobs done at not even half but at a fraction of the normal cost otherwise and of course you can add some other commercial software to support your pipeline for an enhanced quality of production if you like.

Despite the number of so called 3d studio and the number of years some so called 3d artists have been using Maya, Cinema4d or Max in our own Africa, there hasnt been any headline worthy production coming out of Nigeria for instance, I did not see any from Ghana too so far, just small in-house tiny jobs that no one is aware of on the big stage, if we continue this way without changing our approach then the entire industry is bound to remain unnoticed for a while to come and that means investments in the industry would not happen on time.

Finally, what is the harm in knowing how to use something that is free to use and capable, then going ahead with your normal Maya, max, c4d etc on the side (pirated or licensed as the case may be) ... its all good, just know all you can (which is not the same as know everything there is) within your line of trade as you never know when it could be handy.