Chapter 1. History and Installation

First and foremost, Blender is a 3D modeling and animation studio package. If you are familiar with Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, NewTek LightWave, or other 3D modeling/animation applications, you'll have an idea of what Blender is like. If not, don't worry, you're in for a treat.

Think of animated cartoons, along the lines of those produced by DreamWorks, Pixar, and so forth. Think in terms of Shrek, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Kung-Fu Panda, VeggieTales, and so on. While those movies may not have actually used Blender (I'm throwing out random examples that most readers have heard of to give you an idea), they are in the genre of 3D animation that you would typically expect from Blender. Some clever computer graphics people spent time creating all the 3D characters in those movies, lovingly rigged them for animation, and rendered off the final film mix. To do this, they needed some pretty powerful computer programs known as 3D animation packages. And that is the kind of program that Blender is.