As a popular open-source program, Blender is popular among the artists for creating animated films, motion graphics, 3D printing ready models, digital art, and various other sorts of animated graphics.
Blender offers a wide range of features that allows the users to create interactive 3D models and graphics for any sort of work. So, let’s know about the things which make this software suitable for 3D animation works.
Blender is equipped with raster graphic editing, UV unwrapping, sculpting, rigging, match moving, and compositing tools which makes it a great package for 3D animation. Using its dope sheet and graph editor, it becomes easy to use all the features and tools along with live visuals for interactive 3D animation works.
Blender is a great software to start your career in the field of 3D animation and learn new things for free. However, when it comes to top-notch 3D animations such as 3D games, movies, and advanced motions, this tool may not be suitable for some tasks.
For realistic simulation and modeling works, you can use its cycling feature. The cycle is actually a path tracer engine which you can easily customize and observe to easily edit the movements and motion. Also, it has an in-built game engine that makes suitable for game animation tasks.
Blender was created by people who worked in an animation studio called Neo Geo. Back in the early 90s. Even though its development was slow compared to the other through the software in the industry, it kept growing and becoming better. So, let’s know whey Blender is good or bad for 3D animation tasks. You can know more about it on Wikipedia too.
Main Features of Blender For 3D Animation
Character Animation
Blender is equipped with some of the best animation tools. Blender’s animation features are set offers, pose editor, character animation, non-linear animation for independent movements, and sound synchronization. Also, we can’t forget rigging, which is a vital part of any animation pipeline.
Overall, the Blender offers a set of rigging tools, including skeleton, envelop, and automatic skinning. Blender also allow you to create bone layers. Also, you can use its mirror functionality and rigging tools to create amazing animations.
In other words, you can use Blender to create different animated characters such as human beings, monsters, animals, birds, etc. Also, you can use various plugins to make your character animation tasks easy and effective.
Non-Character Animation
Blender can also make your non-character 3D animation tasks pretty easy and simple for you. Using its rigging and animation tools, you can create amazing vehicles, buildings, fires, blasts, trees, and different other animations.
Also, you can use different add-ons to make your animation tasks much easier. Also, weapons are another thing that needs advanced rigs and realistic animations, especially in the first person shooter video games.
So, to create amazing animations for different things along with your character, you have to create a different rig and then animate it. Although it is required to have a good expertise in order to make weapon and other complex animations.
Motion Graphics
When you want to focus just on geometry, distortion, areas, and some particles with effects and texts, Blender can help you with this tool
Of course, Blender needs to see more development to be like Cinema 4D, when it comes to motion graphics, but you can still use it to create amazing motion graphics.
Especially for 3D game development, Blender can offer you its amazing features to create motion graphics. However, you may have to pay for paid plugins to get the most out of it.
2D animation
Along with its numerous tools and features for creating amazing 3D animations, you can also try to combine things together too. Blender has amazing tools such as grease pencil, paint brushes, and color gradients. For storyboard type animations, you can easily use Blender and receive amazing benefits.
Want to know whether you should use Blender for 2D animation or not, read this article for sure.
Why you should use Blender for 3D animation?
First of all, Blender is a free and open-source software. But, when we look at its cool features, it can help you in numerous ways. Also, when it comes to creating 3D animations, you can use its various tools to make things happen easily. Also, learning Blender is pretty easy as compared to its competitors. Also, it have a lot of things which can help you to create professionals animations for a living.
However, if you are a freelancers or hobbyist animator, Blender can help you to learn various things in this industry.
Popular Games made with Blender
- Dead Cybrog
- Yo Frankie!
- Sintel The Game
- Tomato Jones
Why Blender shouldn’t be used for 3D animation?
If we look 10 years back, we couldn’t expect this software to reach at this level. People were prefering it only to fulfil their hobbies of 2D or 3D animation designs. But, now, Blender is full of excellent features that makes it a great tool for 3D animation.
However, you can’t find good project if you are working only with Blender. Because, the industry is full of highly advanced software like Maya, Houdini, 3DS Max, etc, Blender lacks in various advanced features.
In other words, if you want to do 3D animation as a hobby, just go for Blender. But, if you want to learn a good 3D animation software and then start working as a professional 3D animator, pick any other good and paid software for you.
To create AAA video games, 3D animation movies, live action movies, you can’t rely on Blender. Also, if you want to learn Blender for professional projects, it is only possible through the online classes. Animation schools are not covering this software as good as its nearest competitors.
Best Alternatives to Blender for 3D animation
The reasons why you should use these Blender alternatives is that the latest tools, plugins, and pipelines are developed around them. So, when you have a realtime industry support with latest animation tools, you will be able to create good animations.
- Autodesk Maya
- Cinema 4D
- Modo
- 3DS Max
- Sketchup
- Houdini
Conclusion:
I hope this article will help you to know better about the Blender software. Make sure to share this article with others if you found it helpful.
Also Read: Is Blender a Good Video Editing Software?