Die Geschichte von Blender¶

The Beginning¶

Blender was created by Ton Roosendaal, a Dutch art director and self-taught software developer. Attracted to all things technical and creative, Roosendaal began a degree in Industrial Design, but dropped out in order to start his own 3D animation studio, NeoGeo, in 1989 (the video game console of the same name appeared a year later). Initially based in Roosendaal’s attic, NeoGeo grew rapidly, garnering awards and becoming the biggest company of its type in the Netherlands.

Roosendaal wrote the first source files titled „Blender“ on the 2nd of January, 1994, still considered Blender’s official birthday. Originally, Blender was planned as an in-house application for NeoGeo; it grew from a series of pre-existing tools, including a ray-tracer built for the Amiga. This early version of Blender was intended to address a perennial frustration among creatives: when a difficult client requires multiple changes to a project, how do you implement those changes painlessly? Thanks to its highly configurable approach, Blender aimed at providing an answer. (As an aside: the name refers to a song by a Swiss electronic band, Yello).

Roosendaal invested his savings in a Silicon Graphics workstation. Costing the equivalent of thirty thousand US dollars, this computer led to Blender 1.0. Launched in January 1995, this first iteration of Blender proper incorporated then innovative ideas, including a single window which could be subdivided as the user saw fit.

At the time, 3D was considered commercially uninteresting. However, Roosendaal had fallen in love with what he describes as its „magical ability to create a whole world in a computer.“ So when NeoGeo closed, he and partner Frank van Beek founded a new company focused on further developing and marketing Blender. Not a Number (NaN) opened its doors in June 1998, distributing Blender under a freemium pricing strategy: the software was free to download, with NaN selling keys to unlock more advanced features.

Blender Goes Open Source¶

Thanks to this business model, NaN was able to fund a booth at a renowned computer graphics conference in Los Angeles, SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques). As a consequence, Blender attracted two rounds of funding totalling some five and a half million US dollars. Despite this investment, a harsh economic climate, excess spending, and troubled relations between NaN and its investors meant that the company closed in early 2002.

With NaN’s demise, Blender’s development ceased. Unable to buy the rights from NaN’s backers, Roosendaal opted for a novel plan. In May of 2002, he started a non-profit, the Blender Foundation, with the intention of making Blender open-source. His hope was to create a public monument to Blender, and give everyone who had worked on the Blender project the chance to use it for their portfolios. In July of the same year, he launched the first-ever crowdfunding campaign: Free Blender. Thanks to Blender’s community of 250,000 users, the Blender Foundation was able to raise one hundred and ten thousand euros in just seven weeks — sufficient to regain Blender from its investors.

On Sunday, October 13th, 2002, Blender was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, the strictest possible open-source contract. Not only would Blender be free, but its source code would remain free, forever, to be used for any purpose whatsoever.

The success of Free Blender cleared the way for a style of development that has become Blender’s defining strength. While Blender’s evolution is partly driven by grant-funded developers and guided by a core team at the Blender Foundation, Amsterdam, its greatest advantage is a global community of dedicated volunteers. Thanks to their efforts, Blender is able to iterate rapidly and respond to the needs of artists and makers. Such nimbleness and creativity would be much harder within the confines of a traditional business model.

Blender Makes Open Movies¶

As a way to stress-test Blender’s increasing power, the Blender Foundation challenged its community’s most talented artists to make an animated 3D short film. The only criterion was that they had to use open source tools, with Blender prime among them.

Under the codename „Project Orange,“ this project began in 2005, resulting in Elephants Dream, a surreal adventure through a gigantic machine. The film and all its assets were made freely available under a Creative Commons licence.

After the success of Elephants Dream, the Blender Institute was established in the summer of 2007. As well as helping to define the Blender Foundation’s goals, the Blender Institute comprised a permanent office and studio, with the express intention of generating Open Projects related to 3D movies, games or visual effects. As part of its output, the Blender Institute has created a series of Open Movies in collaboration with leading artists. They include the comedy Big Buck Bunny (2008), science fiction thriller Tears of Steel (2012), a poetic fantasy Spring (2019), and horror-comedy Sprite Fright (2021).

Blender Landmarks¶

Each Open Project places new demands on Blender as a 3D creation suite, which in turn leads to further upgrades. While a complete list of updates is beyond the scope of this article, some milestones are worth noting.

Early 2008 saw the start of the Blender 2.5 project. This combined a major User Interface overhaul, with new tool definitions, a data access system, event handling, and a new animation system. For 2.5, the primary goal was to bring the interface standards and input methods up to date.

Cycles is Blender’s production-capable path-tracing render engine, first incorporated into release 2.61, back in 2011. Over the years, Cycles has introduced support for a wide range of rendering possibilities, including AMD and NVIDIA. Similarly, it’s grown to include support for many features including hair, motion blur, smoke and fire, major shaders and materials, adaptive subdivisions, and much more.

With its watershed 2.8 release in July, 2019, Blender broke into the 3D mainstream. Starting with a drastically revamped User Interface, the 2.8 series included a multitude of innovations, from EEVEE (a real-time render engine), to new remeshing options for sculptors, to the integration of Mantaflow, to a fully functioning 2D animation workspace that also offered the possibility of a 2D/3D hybrid workflow.

Although industry recognition for Blender had grown over the decades, 2.8 marked the moment when it was widely accepted as a legitimate alternative to paid competitors. As well as using Blender in their own projects, some of the world’s largest and most recognized companies became regular contributors to the Blender Development Fund, ensuring that Blender can continue to innovate.

As well as Blender and Open Projects made with Blender, there’s Blender Cloud. This subscription-based Open Production platform provides rolling updates on current Open Movie projects, as well as an archive of film assets in .blend file form, animation and shot breakdowns, shaders and textures, and comprehensive training videos from professional artists and developers, often those employed at Blender HQ in Amsterdam.

Blender: Present And Future¶

In total, the Blender organization numbers some twenty-eight employees, working from Amsterdam, remotely, and on a grant basis. For Blender, this team represents only a small part of a much wider community, which it defines as everyone who contributes to Blender’s development, earns their living from Blender, or simply downloads it.

The Blender mission can be summed up as „get the world’s best 3d technology in the hands of artists as open-source, and make amazing things with it.“

Going forward, Blender hopes to become a sustainable, future proof organization, dedicated to furthering its open-source philosophy, its values of curiosity and innovation, a commitment to technical excellence, and increasingly ambitious creative goals.

Meilensteine: Versionen und Verbesserungen¶

Der Start!

1.00 - Januar 1994: Blender wird entwickelt im Animationsstudio NeoGeo.
1.23 - Januar 1998: SGI Version wird im Web veröffentlicht, IrisGL.
1.30 - April 1998: Linux und FreeBSD Version, Portierung nach OpenGL und X11.
1.3x - Juni 1998: Nan wird gegründet.
1.4x - September 1998: Sun und Linux Alpha-Version veröffentlicht.
1.50 - November 1998: Erstes Handbuch veröffentlicht.
1.60 - April 1998: C-key (neue Features hinter einer Sperre, 95$), Windows Version veröffentlicht.
1.6x - Juni 1999: BeOS und PPC-Version veröffentlicht.
1.80 - Juni 2000: Ende von C-key, Blender ist wieder komplett Freeware.
2.00 - August 2000: Interaktive 3D- und Echtzeit-Engine.
2.10 - Dezember 2000: Neue Engine, Physik und Python.
2.20 - August 2001: Charakteranimation.
2.21 - Oktober 2001: Markteinführung von Blender Publisher.
2.2x – Dezember 2001: MacOS Version.

Blender wird Open Source

13 Oktober 2002:: Blender wird Open Source, 1. Blenderkonferenz.
2.25 – Oktober 2002:: Blender Publisher wird frei verfügbar, und der Experimental-Teil von Blender entsteht, eine Spielwiese für Coder.
2.26 – Februar 2003:: Das erste echte Open-Source-Blender.
2.27 – Mai 2003:: Das zweite Open-Source-Blender.
2.28x – Juli 2003:: Erste Version der 2.28x Serie.
2.30 – October 2003:: Vorabversion der 2.3x UI-Überholung auf der 2. Blenderkonferenz präsentiert.
2.31 – December 2003:: Upgrade zur Stabilisierung des 2.3x UI Projekts.
2.32 – January 2004:: Generalüberarbeitung der internen Rendering-Fähigkeiten.
2.33 – April 2004:: Die Spielengine kehrt zurück, Ambient Occlusion, neue prozedurale Texturen.
2.34 – August 2004:: Partikel-Wechselwirkungen, LSCM UV-Mapping, funktionale YafRay-Integration, Faltengewichtung in Subdivision Surfaces, Ramp Shader, volle OSA, und vieles, vieles mehr.
2.35 – November 2004:: Eine weitere Version voller Verbesserungen: Objekt-Haken, Kurven-Deformierungen und Kurven-Tapers, Partikel-Vervielfältiger und vieles mehr.
2.36 – December 2004:: A stabilization version, much work behind the scenes, normal and displacement mapping improvements.
2.37 – June 2005:: Transformations-Tools und -Widgets, Softbodies, Kraftfelder, Deflections, inkrementelle Subdivision Surfaces, transparente Schatten und Multithreading-Rendering.
2.40 – December 2005:: Vollständige Überarbeitung des Skelettsystems, Shape Keys, Fell mit Partikeln, Flüssigkeiten und Festkörper.
2.41 – January 2006:: Viele Fixes und ein paar Spielengine-Features.
2.42 – July 2006:: Das „Knoten“-Release (Nodes), Array-Modifier, Vektor-Unschärfe, neue Physik-Engine, Rendering, LipSync, und viele andere Funktionen. Dies war die Veröffentlichung nach Projekt Orange.
2.43 – February 2007:: Multiresolution Meshes, mehrschichtige UV-Texturen, Multi-Ebenen-Bildern und Multi-Pass-Rendering und Baking, Sculpting, Retopology, mehrere zusätzliche Matte-, Verzerren- und Filter-Knoten, Modellierungs- und Animations-Verbesserungen, besseres Malen mit mehreren Brushes, Fluid-Partikel, Proxy-Objekte, Sequenzer-Erneuerung, und UV-Texturierung in der Postproduktion.
2.44 – May 2007:: Die große Nachricht, neben zwei neuen Modifiern und dem Wiedereinsetzen der Unterstützung von 64-Bit Betriebssystemen, war das Hinzufügen von Sub-Surface-Scattering, was Lichtstreuung unter der Oberfläche von organischen und weichen Gegenständen simuliert.
2.45 – September 2007:: Größere Bugfixes, einige Performance-Probleme gelöst.
2.46 – May 2008:: Die „Peach“-Version war das Ergebnis einer gewaltigen Anstrengung von über 70 Entwicklern, die Erweiterungen für Haare und Fell, ein neues Partikel-System, verbessertes Bild-Browsing, Stoff, einen nahtlosen und nicht-intrusiven Physik-Cache, Verbesserungen beim Rendern von Reflexionen, AO und Render-Baking, einen Mesh-Deform-Modifier für Muskeln u. Ä., eine bessere Animationsunterstützung durch Armature-Tools und Zeichnen, Skinning, Constraints (Beschränkungen) und einen bunten Action-Editor und vieles mehr zur Verfügung stellten. Sie enthielt die Ergebnisse des Projekts Peach.
2.47 – August 2008:: Bugfix-Release.
2.48 – October 2008:: The Apricot release, cool GLSL shaders, lights and GE improvements, snap, sky simulator, Shrinkwrap modifier, and Python editing improvements. This contained the results of Project Apricot.
2.49 – June 2009:: Node-based textures, armature sketching (called Etch-a-Ton), Boolean mesh operation improvements, JPEG2000 support, projection painting for direct transfer of images to models, and a significant Python script catalog. GE enhancements included video textures, where you can play movies in-game, upgrades to the Bullet physics engine, dome (fisheye) rendering, and more API GE calls made available.

Blender 2.5x – Das Neuschreiben!

2.5x – From 2009 to August 2011:: This series released four pre-version (from Alpha 0 in November 2009 to Beta in July 2010) and three stable versions (from 2.57 - April 2011 to 2.59 - August 2011). It was one of the most important development projects, with a total refactor of the software with new functions, redesign of the internal window manager and event/tool/data handling system, and new Python API. The final version of this project was Blender 2.59 in August 2011.

Blender 2.6x bis 2.7x - Verbesserungen und Stabilisierung

2.60 – October 2011:: Übersetzung der Benutzeroberfläche, Verbesserungen im Animationssystem und in der Game Engine, Vertex Weight Groups Modifier, 3D Audio und Video, und Fehlerbehebungen.
2.61 – December 2011:: Der Cycles-Renderer und Kamera-Tracker wurden hinzugefügt, Dynamic-Paint um Texturen mit Meshkontakt/Näherung zu modifizieren, der Ozean-Modifikator, um Ozeane und Schaum zu simulieren, neue Add-Ons, Bug-Fixes, und mehr Erweiterungen für die Python-API.
2.62 – February 2012:: The Carve library was added to improve Boolean operations, support for object tracking was added, the Remesh modifier was added, many improvements in the GE, matrices and vectors in the Python API were improved, plus new add-ons, and many bug fixes.
2.63 – April 2012:: Das Bmesh-System mit voller Unterstützung für N-seitige Polygone wurde in Blender hinzugefügt, Sculpt Hiding, Cycles Render mit Panoramakamera, „mirror ball Environment“-Texturen und „float precision“-Texturen, „render layer mask layers“, „Ambient occlusion und Viewport Darstellung von Hintergrundbilder, neue Import- und Export-Addons wurden hinzugefügt und 150 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.64 – October 2012:: A mask editor was added, along with an improved motion tracker, OpenColorIO, Cycles improvements, Sequencer improvements, better mesh tools (Inset and Bevel were improved), new keying nodes, sculpt masking, Collada improvements, a new Skin modifier, a new compositing nodes backend, and the fixing of many bugs.
2.65 – December 2012:: Feuer- und Rauch-Verbesserungen, anisotrope Shader für Cycles, Verbesserungen bei den Modifikatoren, das Bevel-Werkzeug beinhaltet jetzt Rundungen, neue Addons, und mehr als 200 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.66 – February 2013:: Dynamische Topologie, Festkörper-Simulation, Verbesserungen in UI und Usability (einschließlich Retina-Display-Unterstützung), Cycles unterstützt jetzt Haare, das Bevel-Werkzeug unterstützt jetzt individuelles Vertex-Beveling, neuer Mesh-Cache-Modifikator und der neue UV Warp-Modifikator, neuer SPH-Partikel-Fluid-Solver. Mehr als 250 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.67 – May 2013:: Freestyle wurde hinzugefügt, Paint-System-Verbesserungen, Subsurface-Scattering für Cycles, Ceres-Bibliothek im Motion-Tracker, neue benutzerdefinierte Python-Knoten, neue Mesh-Modellierungs-Werkzeuge, besserer Support für UTF-8-Text und Verbesserungen in Texteditoren, neue Add-Ons für 3D-Drucker, mehr als 260 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.68 – July 2013:: Neue und verbesserte Modellierungs-Tools, 3 neue Cycles-Knoten (Nodes), starke Verbesserungen für Motion-Tracker, Python-Skripte und Treiber sind aus Sicherheitsgründen standardmäßig deaktiviert, wenn Dateien geladen werden, mehr als 280 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.69 – October 2013:: Noch mehr Modellierungswerkzeuge, Cycles in vielen Bereichen verbessert, Plane tracking zum Motion Tracker hinzugefügt, bessere Unterstützung für FBX import/export und mehr als 270 Fehler behoben.
2.70 – March 2014:: Cycles erhält grundlegene Volumetric-Unterstützung auf der CPU, mehr Verbesserungen am Motion Tracker, zwei neue Modellierungsmodifier, einige Verbesserungen an der Konsistenz der Benutzeroberfläche und mehr als 560 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.71 – June 2014:: Deformation-Bewegungsunschärfe und Feuer-/Rauch-Unterstützung in Cycles, UI-Pop-Ups sind jetzt aufziehbar. Es gibt Performance-Optimierungen für den Sculpting-Modus, neue Interpolationstypen für Animation, viele Verbesserungen der Spielengine, und mehr als 400 Fehlerbehebungen.
2.72 – October 2014:: Cycles erhält Volumen- und SSS-Unterstützung auf der GPU, Pie-Menüs wurden hinzugefügt und Tooltips stark verbessert, das Intersection-Modeling-Tool wurde hinzugefügt, ein neuer Sun-Beam-Node für den Compositor, Freestyle funktioniert jetzt mit Cycles, der Texture-Painting-Workflow wurde verbessert und mehr als 220 Fehler wurden behoben.
2.73 – Januar 2015:: Cycles bekommt verbesserte Volumetrik-Unterstützung, großes Upgrade zu Grease-Pencil, Windows bekommt Input Method Editors (IMEs) und allgemeine Verbesserungen zu Painting, Freestyle, Sequencer and Add-ons.
2.74 – März 2015:: Unterstützung for custom-normals, viewport-compositing and Verbesserungen bei den hair-dynamics.
2.75 – Juli 2015:: Integrierte Stereo-/Multi-View-Pipeline, Smooth Corrective Modifier und neuer Entwicklungs-Dependency-Graph.
2.76 – November 2015:: Pixar OpenSubdiv-Unterstützung, Erhöhung der Performance von Viewport and Dateibrowser , Node auto-offset, und ein Texteffekt-Strip für den Videosequenzeditor.
2.77 – März 2016:: OpenVDB-Unterstützung zum Cachen von Rauch-/Volumetrischen Simulationen, verbessertes Cycles Subsurface Scattering, Grease Pencil Stroke Sculpting und besserer Workflow, und überarbeitetes Bibliothekenhandling, um fehlende und gelöschte Datenblöcke zu verwalten.
2.78 – September 2016:: Cycles-Unterstützung für Spherical Stereo Bilder für VR, Grease Pencil funktioniert jetzt ähnlicher wie andere 2D-Zeichnungssoftware, Alembic-Import- u. Export-Unterstützung sowie Verbesserungen an Bendy-Bones zum leichteren und einfacheren Riggen.
2.79 – September 2017:: Neue Cycles-Features: Denoising, Shadow catcher und neuer Principled-Shader. Weitere Verbesserungen an Grease Pencil und Alembic. Unterstützung für Programm-Vorlagen hinzugefügt.

Blender 2.8 – Neugestaltete Nutzeroberfläche

2.80 – July 2019:: A totally redesigned UI for easier navigation; improved viewport, gizmos, and tools. With EEVEE a new physically based real-time render engine was created. The Grease Pencil got a big overhaul and is now a full 2D drawing and animation system. Replacing the old layers, collections are a powerful way to organize objects. Other improvements: Cycles, Modeling, Animation, Import/Export, Dependency Graph.
2.81 – November 2019:: Revamped sculpting tools, Cycles OptiX accelerated rendering, denoising, many EEVEE improvements, library overrides, UI improvements and much more.
2.82 – Februar 2020:: UDIM- und USD-Unterstützung, Mantaflow für Flüssigkeits- und Rauchsimulation, AI-Denoising, Grease-Pencil-Verbesserungen und vieles mehr.
2.83 LTS – June 2020:: 3D Viewport virtual reality scene inspection, new volume object type, Cycles adaptive sampling, Cycles viewport denoising, sculpting improvements, and much more. First LTS release intended to support studio and long-lifecycle project use.

Blender 2.9 – Refining 2.8

2.90 – August 2020:: Improved sky texture, EEVEE motion blur, sculpting improvements, revamped modifier UI, improved modeling tools, and faster motion blur in Cycles.
2.91 – November 2020:: Outliner improvements, property search, improved mesh Boolean operations, animation curves, volume object and display improvements, and more refined sculpting tools.
2.92 – February 2021:: Geometry nodes, primitive add tool, sculpting improvements, Grease Pencil curve editing, Cycles Color Attribute baking, APIC fluid simulations, Video Sequencer improvements, and much more.
2.93 LTS – June 2021:: New geometry nodes, sculpting improvements, Grease Pencil Line Art modifier along with other improvements, an improved DOF for the EEVEE render engine, redesigned Cryptomatte workflow, and more. LTS release for the 2.9 series.

Blender 3.0 – Optimizing Performance

3.0 – December 2021: Asset Browser added, Cycles X, EEVEE Attributes, New geometry nodes, animation update, Grease Pencil Line Art improvements, pose library, Open Image Denoising 2-8x faster, additional support for AMD on linux.
3.1 – March 2022: Major point clouds improvements, Cycles Apple Metal GPU support, Subdivision GPU support, image editor handles larger images, Major performance gains for geometry nodes, context aware search for geometry nodes.
3.2 – June 2022: Light groups for Cycles, true Shadow caustics, volume motion blur, GLTF improvements, AMD GPU Rendering on Linux, painting in sculpt mode, WEBp image support.
3.3 LTS – September 2022: New hair object, procedural UV nodes, Line Art shadow and contour, Intel GPU rendering support via oneAPI, and improvements to library overrides. First LTS release of the 3.0 series.
3.4 – December 2022: Cycles path guiding, sculpting auto masking improvements, even more geometry nodes, UV Editing improvements and Wayland support on Linux.
3.5 – March 2023: New generative hair assets, vector displacement maps for sculpting, viewport compositor, and Cycle’s light trees.
3.6 LTS – June 2023: Simulation nodes added to Geometry Nodes, Cycles hardware ray-tracing for AMD and Intel, UV island packing, asset bundle from Blender Studio and community artists included, new retopology overlay. Final LTS of the 3.0 series.

Blender 4.0 – A Major Leap For Rendering, Creating Tools, and More

4.0 – November 2023: A new Principled BSDF shader with coat and sheen layers, AgX view transform, Voronoi Texture fractal noise, light linking for selective lighting, run Geometry Nodes as Node Tools, snapping improvements including Snap Base, menu and modifier type-to-search, new Inter typeface, streamlined keymap, bone collections, Hydra Storm USD renderer, larger asset library, alignment to the VFX Reference Platform 2023.
4.1 – March 2024: Geometry Nodes baking support, Menu Switch node, OpenImageDenoise GPU acceleration, more realtime viewport compositor functions, simpler animation keyframe insertion, hierarchical bone collections, graph editor click-and-slide, video sequencer performance and color scope improvements, alignment to the VFX Reference Platform 2024, armature and shape key export to USD.
4.2 LTS – July 2024: Next generation of EEVEE with major upgrades to lighting, sun lights, displacement, subsurface, volumetrics, and motion blur, Cycles gains Ray Portal BSDF and Thin-Film Interference, better soft volume rendering with reduced noise, blue noise-based sampling, Blender Extensions platform launched, Khronos PBR Neutral Tone Mapper, sculpting selection improvements, Node inputs support matrices, Node Tools can use mouse position and viewport, video sequencer graphical overhaul, additional USD export options, native portable installation support. First LTS of the 4.0 series.
4.3 – November 2024: Light linking and shadow linking in EEVEE, Metallic BSDF, Gabor noise texture, EEVEE render passes in the compositor, minimum stretch (SLIM) UV unwrapping, numerous Geometry Nodes updates including for…each zone, physics nodes, Grease Pencil engine rewritten for speed and features, over 100 default brushes now included for painting and sculpting, UI area docking.