La storia di 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.

Pietre miliari di versione / revisione¶

La Partenza!

1.00 – Gennaio 1994: Blender in sviluppo <https://code.blender.org/2013/12/how-blender-started-twenty-years-ago/> __ presso lo studio di animazione NeoGeo.
1.23 – Gennaio 1998: Versione SGI pubblicata sul web, IrisGL.
1.30 – Aprile 1998: Versione Linux e FreeBSD, porta su OpenGL e X11.
1.3x – Giugno 1998: Fondazione di NaN.
1.4x – Settembre 1998: Rilascio della versione di Sun e Linux Alpha.
1.50 – Novembre 1998: Pubblicato il Primo Manuale.
1.60 – Aprile 1999: C-key (nuove funzionalità dietro un lucchetto, $ 95), versione di Windows rilasciata.
1.6x – Giugno 1999: Rilascio di BeOS e PPC.
1.80 – Giugno 2000: Fine C-key, Blender di nuovo completamente gratuito.
2.00 – Agosto 2000: 3D interattivo e motore in tempo reale.
2.10 – Dicembre 2000: Nuovo motore, fisica e Python.
2.20 – Agosto 2001: Sistema di animazione dei personaggi.
2.21 – Ottobre 2001: Lancio di Blender Publisher.
2.2x – Dicembre 2001: Versione macOS.

Blender diventa Open Source

13 Ottobre 2002:: Blender diventa Open Source, La prima Blender Conference.
2.25 – Ottobre 2002:: Blender Publisher diventa liberamente disponibile e viene creato l’albero sperimentale di Blender, un parco giochi per programmatori.
2.26 – Febbraio 2003:: La prima versione di Blender veramente open source.
2.27 – Maggio 2003:: La seconda versione di Blender open source.
2.28x – Luglio 2003:: Primo della serie 2.28x.
2.30 – October 2003:: Rilascio in anteprima del restyling dell’interfaccia utente 2.3x presentato alla 2nd Blender Conference.
2.31 – December 2003:: Aggiornamento al progetto UI 2.3x stabile.
2.32 – January 2004:: Una grande revisione delle capacità di rendering interno.
2.33 – April 2004:: Ritorna il Game Engine, occlusione ambientale, nuove trame procedurali.
2.34 – August 2004:: Interazioni tra particelle, mappatura UV LSCM, integrazione funzionale YafRay, pieghe ponderate nelle superfici di suddivisione, shader di rampa, OSA completo e molti (molti) altri.
2.35 – November 2004:: Un’altra versione ricca di miglioramenti: ganci di oggetti, deformazioni di curve e conicità di curvatura, duplicatori di particelle e molto altro.
2.36 – December 2004:: A stabilization version, much work behind the scenes, normal and displacement mapping improvements.
2.37 – June 2005:: Strumenti e widget di trasformazione, corpi molli, campi di forza, deflessioni, superfici di suddivisione incrementale, ombre trasparenti e rendering multi-thread.
2.40 – December 2005:: Rielaborazione completa del sistema di armatura, chiavi di forma, pelliccia con particelle, fluidi e corpi rigidi.
2.41 – January 2006:: Molte correzioni e alcune funzionalità di Game Engine.
2.42 – July 2006:: Rilascio di nodi, modificatore di array, sfocatura vettoriale, nuovo motore fisico, rendering, sincronizzazione labiale e molte altre funzionalità. Questa era la versione successiva a Project Orange.
2.43 – February 2007:: Maglie multirisoluzione, trame UV multi-layer, immagini multi-layer e rendering e baking multi-pass, scultura, retopologia, più mascherini aggiuntivi, distorsione e nodi filtro, miglioramenti di modellazione e animazione, migliore pittura con più pennelli, particelle fluide, oggetti proxy , Riscrittura del sequencer e texturing UV post-produzione.
2.44 – May 2007:: La grande novità, oltre a due nuovi modificatori e al risveglio del supporto del sistema operativo a 64 bit, è stata l’aggiunta dello scattering del sottosuolo, che simula lo scattering della luce sotto la superficie di oggetti organici e morbidi.
2.45 – September 2007:: Correzioni di bug gravi, con alcuni problemi di prestazioni risolti.
2.46 – May 2008:: La versione Peach è stata il risultato di un enorme sforzo di oltre 70 sviluppatori che hanno apportato miglioramenti per fornire capelli e pellicce, un nuovo sistema di particelle, una migliore navigazione delle immagini, un panno, una cache fisica senza soluzione di continuità e non intrusiva, migliorando i riflessi, AO e render baking, un modificatore di deformazione della mesh per i muscoli e così via, un migliore supporto per l’animazione tramite strumenti di armatura e disegno, skinning, vincoli e un colorato editor di azioni e molto altro. Conteneva i risultati di Project Peach.
2.47 – August 2008:: Rilascio bugfix.
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 – The Recode!

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 da 2.6x a 2.7x - Miglioramenti e stabilizzazione

2.60 – October 2011:: Internazionalizzazione dell’interfaccia utente, miglioramenti nel sistema di animazione e GE, modificatori dei gruppi di pesi vertici, audio e video 3D e correzioni di errori.
2.61 – December 2011:: Il renderer Cycles è stato aggiunto al trunk, è stato aggiunto il tracker della fotocamera, vernice dinamica per modificare trame con contatto / approssimazione mesh, modificatore Ocean per simulare oceano e schiuma, nuovi componenti aggiuntivi, correzioni di bug e altre estensioni aggiunte per 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:: Bmesh è stato unito al tronco, con il pieno supporto per i poligoni n-side, il nascondiglio scolpito, una fotocamera panoramica per Cycles, trame ambientali con sfere a specchio e trame di precisione float, rendering livelli maschera di livello, occlusione ambientale e visualizzazione viewport di immagini di sfondo e livelli di rendering . Sono stati aggiunti nuovi componenti aggiuntivi di importazione ed esportazione e 150 correzioni di errori.
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:: Miglioramenti di fuoco e fumo, shader anisotropico per Cycles, miglioramenti del modificatore, lo strumento Bevel ora include arrotondamenti, nuovi componenti aggiuntivi e oltre 200 correzioni di errori.
2.66 – February 2013:: Topologia dinamica, simulazione del corpo rigido, miglioramenti dell’interfaccia utente e dell’usabilità (incluso il supporto per i display retina), Cycles ora supporta i capelli, lo strumento Bevel ora supporta il bisello dei singoli vertici, nuovo: doc: modificatore` Mesh Cache </ modelling / modificatori / modifica / mesh_cache> e il nuovo: doc: modificatore UV Warp </ modelling / modificatori / modifica / uv_warp> `, nuovo risolutore di fluidi di particelle SPH. Più di 250 correzioni di errori.
2.67 – May 2013:: Sono stati aggiunti Freestyle, miglioramenti del sistema di verniciatura, scattering del sottosuolo per Cycles, libreria Ceres nel motion tracker, nuovi nodi Python personalizzati, nuovi strumenti di modellazione mesh, supporto migliore per il testo UTF-8 e miglioramenti negli editor di testo, nuovi componenti aggiuntivi per la stampa 3D , oltre 260 correzioni di errori.
2.68 – July 2013:: Strumenti di modellazione nuovi e migliorati, tre nuovi nodi Cycles, grandi miglioramenti nel motion tracker, script e driver Python sono disabilitati per impostazione predefinita quando si caricano i file per motivi di sicurezza e oltre 280 correzioni di errori.
2.69 – October 2013:: Ancora più strumenti di modellazione, Cycles migliorato in molte aree, il tracking dell’aereo viene aggiunto al motion tracker, un migliore supporto per l’importazione / esportazione di FBX e risolti oltre 270 bug.
2.70 – March 2014:: Cycles ottiene il supporto volumetrico di base sulla CPU, ulteriori miglioramenti al motion tracker, due nuovi modificatori di modellazione, alcuni miglioramenti della coerenza dell’interfaccia utente e oltre 560 correzioni di errori.
2.71 – June 2014:: Il motion blur della deformazione e il supporto fuoco / fumo sono stati aggiunti a Cycles, i popup dell’interfaccia utente sono ora trascinabili. Esistono ottimizzazioni delle prestazioni per la modalità scultura, nuovi tipi di interpolazione per l’animazione, molti miglioramenti a GE e oltre 400 correzioni di errori.
2.72 – October 2014:: Cycles ottiene volume e supporto SSS sulla GPU, vengono aggiunti menu a torta e migliorate notevolmente le descrizioni dei comandi, viene aggiunto lo strumento di modellazione di intersezioni, il nuovo nodo Sun Beam per il Compositor, il Freestyle ora funziona con Cycles, il flusso di lavoro per la verniciatura delle trame viene migliorato e oltre 220 correzioni di bug.
2.73 – Gennaio 2015:: Cycles ottiene un supporto volumetrico migliorato, un importante aggiornamento a Grease Pencil, Windows ottiene Input Method Editors (IME) e miglioramenti generali a pittura, stile libero, sequencer e componenti aggiuntivi.
2.74 – Marzo 2015:: Supporto per normali personalizzate, composizione delle finestre e miglioramenti della dinamica dei capelli.
2.75 – Luglio 2015:: Pipeline stereo / multi-view integrata, modificatore Smooth Corrective e nuovo grafico di dipendenza dello sviluppo.
2.76 – Novembre 2015:: Supporto Pixar OpenSubdiv, aumento delle prestazioni di Viewport e File Browser, offset automatico del nodo e una striscia di effetti di testo per Sequencer.
2.77 – Marzo 2016:: Supporto OpenVDB per la memorizzazione nella cache di simulazioni di fumo / volumetriche, migliorata dispersione del sottosuolo Cycles, scolpitura del tratto Grease Pencil e flusso di lavoro migliorato e rielaborazione della gestione delle librerie per gestire blocchi di dati mancanti ed eliminati.
2.78 – Settembre 2016:: Supporto per Cycles d’immagini stereo sferiche per VR, Grease Pencil funziona in modo più simile ad altri software di disegno 2D, supporto per l’importazione e l’esportazione di Alembic e miglioramenti a Bendy Bones per manovre più semplici e semplici.
2.79 – Settembre 2017:: Nuove funzionalità Cycles: Denoising, Shadow catcher e nuovo Principled shader. Altri miglioramenti sono stati apportati a Grease Pencil e Alembic. È stato inoltre aggiunto il supporto per i modelli di applicazione.

Blender 2.8 - UI Rinnovata

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 – Novembre 2019:: Revamped sculpting tools, Cycles OptiX accelerated rendering, denoising, many EEVEE improvements, library overrides, UI improvements and much more.
2.82 – Febbraio 2020:: Supporto UDIM e USD, Mantaflow per fluidi e simulazione del fumo, Denoising AI, miglioramenti di Grease Pencil e molto altro.
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.