Blender

What is Blender?

Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software tool set that runs on Windows, macOS, BSD, Haiku, IRIX and Linux. It is used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, and virtual reality. It is also used in creating video games. [1]

Features:

• Modeling - "Blender has support for a variety of geometric primitives, including polygon meshes, Bézier curves, NURBS surfaces, metaballs, icospheres, text, and an n-gon modeling system called B-mesh."
• Modifiers - "Modifiers apply various non-destructive effects which can be applied upon rendering or exporting, such as subdivision surfaces."
• Sculpting - "Blender has multi-resolution digital sculpting, which includes dynamic topology, "baking", remeshing, re-symmetrization, and decimation."
• Geometry nodes - "Blender has a node graph system for procedurally and non-destructively creating and manipulating geometry."
• Simulation - "Blender can be used to simulate smoke, rain, dust, cloth, fluids, hair, and rigid bodies."
• Fluid simulation - "The fluid simulator can be used for simulating liquids, like water being poured into a cup."
• Cloth Simulation - "Cloth simulation is done by simulating vertices with a rigid body simulation. If done on a 3D mesh, it will produce similar effects as the soft body simulation."
• Animation - "Blender's keyframed animation capabilities include inverse kinematics, armatures, hooks, curve- and lattice-based deformations, shape keys, non-linear animation, constraints, and vertex weighting."
• Rendering - "Blender includes three render engines since version 2.80: EEVEE, Workbench and Cycles. Cycles is a path tracing render engine."
• Cycles - "Cycles is a path-tracing render engine that is designed to be interactive and easy to use, while still supporting many features."
• GPU rendering - "Cycles supports GPU rendering, which is used to speed up rendering times."

[2]

Why use it for sims?

• Apps like 3DSimEd provide the minimal set of 3D tools and features required for sims (eg. cars and tracks in racing sims) but lack some of the more advanced and modern features of a full, modern 3D software solution

Resources

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