A história do 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 totaling 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 license.

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.

Versões e seus principais marcos¶

O início !

1.00 – Janeiro de 1994: O Blender está em desenvolvimento no estúdio de animação NeoGeo.
1.23 – Janeiro de 1998: A versão para SGI foi publicada na Web, IrisGL.
1.30 – Abril de 1998: Versões para Linux e FreeBSD, portadas para OpenGL e X11.
1.3x – Junho de 1998: A NaN foi fundada.
1.4x – Setembro de 1998: Versões para Sun e Linux Alpha lançadas.
1.50 – Novembro de 1998: Primeiro manual publicado.
1.60 – Abril de 1999: Chave C-key (novas funcionalidades necessitam desbloqueio, $95), lançada versão para Windows.
1.6x – Junho de 1999: versões para BeOS e PPC lançadas.
1.80 – Junho de 2000: Fim da necessidade da C-key, o Blender se torna um “freeware” completo novamente.
2.00 – Agosto de 2000: Motores 3D interativos e de tempo real.
2.10 – Dezembro de 2000: Novo motor, físicas e Python.
2.20 – Agosto de 2001: Sistema de animação de personagens.
2.21 – Outubro de 2001: Lançamento do Blender Publisher.
2.2x – Dezembro de 2001: versão para macOS.

O Blender se torna um software de código fonte aberto

13 de outubro de 2002:: 13 de Outubro de 2002: O Blender se torna “um software de código fonte aberto.”, 1ª Conferência Blender.
2.25 – Outubro de 2002:: O Blender Publisher se torna disponível gratuitamente e a árvore experimental do Blender é criada (chamada de Tohopuu), um parque de diversões para programadores.
2.26 – Fevereiro de 2003:: O primeiro Blender totalmente de código fonte aberto.
2.27 – Maio de 2003:: O segundo Blender totalmente de código fonte aberto.
2.28x – Julho de 2003:: Primeira série das versões 2.28x.
2.30 – October 2003:: Versão de previsão da reforma da interface de usuário para a versão 2.3x apresentada na segunda conferência Blender.
2.31 – December 2003:: Atualização para a versão estável do projeto da interface de usuário 2.3x.
2.32 – January 2004:: Uma reforma generalizada das capacidades internas de renderização.
2.33 – April 2004:: O retorno do motor de jogo, oclusão ambiente, e novas texturas procedurais.
2.34 – August 2004:: Interações entre partículas, mapeamento UV tipo LSCM, integração funcional com o motor de renderização YafRay, pesos de vincos nas superfícies de subdivisão, sombreadores em formato de gradiente, OSA pleno para antisserrilhamento, e muito mais.
2.35 – November 2004:: Outra versão cheia de melhorias: ganchos para objetos, deformações de curvas e objetos afiladores para curvas, duplicadores de partículas e muito mais.
2.36 – December 2004:: A stabilization version, much work behind the scenes, normal and displacement mapping improvements.
2.37 – June 2005:: Ferramentas e ícones de transformação, corpos macios, campos de força, deflexões, superfícies de subdivisão incrementais, sombras transparentes, e renderização multi-tarefada.
2.40 – December 2005:: Reformas completas do sistema de armadura, shape keys, fur with particles, fluidos e corpos rígidos.
2.41 – January 2006:: Muitos consertos, e algumas funcionalidades para o motor de jogo.
2.42 – July 2006:: A liberação dos nós (nodes), Array modifier, vector blur, novo motor de física, renderização, sincronização labial, e muitas outras características. Este foi o lançamento seguinte Project Orange.
2.43 – February 2007:: Malhas multi-resolução, texturas UV multicamadas, imagens multicamadas e renderização e baking multi-pass, escultura, retopologia, múltiplos mattes adicionais, nós de distorção e filtragem, modelagem e melhorias na animação, melhor pintura com múltiplos pincéis, partículas fluidas, objetos proxy, reescrita Sequencer e texturização UV pós-produção.
2.44 – May 2007:: A grande novidade, em adição a dois novos modificadores, e os novos esforços para suportar Sistemas Operacionais de 64 bits, foi a adição de espalhamento de sub-superfície, que simula a luz se espalhando abaixo da superfície de objetos orgânicos e macios.
2.45 – September 2007:: Consertos de defeitos bastante sérios, com algumas questões de performance resolvidas.
2.46 – May 2008:: O lançamento da Peach foi o resultado de um enorme esforço de mais de 70 desenvolvedores fornecendo melhorias para fornecer cabelos e peles, um novo sistema de partículas, navegação de imagem melhorada, pano, um cache de física sem costura e não intrusiva, renderizando melhorias nos reflexos, AO, e render baking, um modificador de Mesh Deform para músculos e tal, melhor suporte de animação via ferramentas de armadura e desenho, skinning, constraints e um colorido Action Editor, e muito mais. Contém os resultados do Project Peach.
2.47 – August 2008:: Versão de lançamento de consertos.
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 – O Recodigo!

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 até versão 2.7x – Melhorias e estabilizações

2.60 – October 2011:: Internacionalização da UI, melhorias no sistema de animação e no GE, modificadores de grupos de peso de vértices, áudio e vídeo 3D e correção de bugs.
2.61 – December 2011:: O renderizador Cycles foi adicionado, o camera tracker foi adicionado, pintura dinâmica para modificar texturas com contato/aproximação de malha, o modificador Ocean para simular oceano e espuma, novos add-ons, correções de bugs e mais extensões adicionadas para a API Python.
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 foi fundido, com suporte total para polígonos n-face, sculpt hiding, uma câmera panorâmica para Ciclos, texturas de ambiente de bola de espelhos e texturas de precisão de flutuação, camadas de máscara de renderização, oclusão ambiente e visualização de imagens de fundo e camadas de renderização. Novos add-ons de importação e exportação foram adicionados, e 150 correções de bugs.
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:: Melhorias de fogo e fumaça, shader anisotrópico para Cycles, melhorias de modificadores, a ferramenta Bevel agora inclui arredondamento, novos add-ons e mais de 200 correções de bugs.
2.66 – February 2013:: Topologia dinâmica, simulação de corpos rígidos, melhorias na interface de usuário e da usabilidade (incluindo o suporte aos novos monitores de alta resolução retina), o renderizador Cycles agora tem suporte a cabelos, a ferramenta de chanfro agora suporta operações em vértices individuais, um novo modificador para Cache de malhas e o novo modificador Conformar UV, novo solucionador de partículas de fluido SPH. Mais de 250 consertos de defeitos.
2.67 – May 2013:: Freestyle foi adicionado, melhorias no sistema de pintura, dispersão subsuperficial para Cycles, biblioteca Ceres no motion tracker, novos nós Python personalizados, novas ferramentas de modelagem de malha, melhor suporte para texto UTF-8 e melhorias nos editores de texto, novos add-ons para impressão 3D, mais de 260 correções de bugs.
2.68 – July 2013:: Novas e melhoradas ferramentas de modelagem, três novos nós Cycles, grandes melhorias no motion tracker, scripts Python e drivers são desabilitados por padrão ao carregar arquivos por razões de segurança, e mais de 280 correções de bugs.
2.69 – October 2013:: Ainda mais ferramentas de modelagem. O renderizador Cycles foi melhorado em muitas áreas, o rastreamento de planos foi adicionado ao rastreador de movimentos, e um melhor suporte para importação e / ou exportação FBX, e quase 270 consertos de defeitos.
2.70 – March 2014:: O renderizador Cycles recebe suporte volumétrico básico através da CPU, muitas melhorias no rastreador de movimentos, dois novos modificadores para modelagem, algumas melhorias na consistência da interface de usuário, e mais de 560 consertos de defeitos.
2.71 – June 2014:: Deformação motion blur e suporte a fogo/fumaça é adicionado aos Cycles, pop-ups de IU agora podem ser arrastados. Há otimizações de performance para o modo escultura, novos tipos de interpolação para animação, muitas melhorias para o GE, e mais de 400 correções de bugs.
2.72 – October 2014:: Cycles ganha volume e suporte a SSS na GPU, menus de redondo tipo torta são adicionados e dicas de ferramentas muito melhoradas, a ferramenta de modelagem Intersection é adicionada, novo nó Sun Beam para o Compositor, Freestyle agora funciona com Cycles, o fluxo de pintura de textura é melhorado, e mais de 220 correções de bugs.
2.73 – Janeiro de 2015:: Ciclos recebem suporte volumétrico melhorado, grande atualização para Grease Pencil, Windows recebe Editores de Método de Entrada (IMEs) e melhorias gerais para pintura, Freestyle, Sequenciador e add-ons.
2,74 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-74/>`__ – Março de 2015:: Suporte a normas personalizadas, composição de viewport e melhorias na dinâmica do cabelo.
2,75 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-75/>`__ – Julho 2015:: Integrado stereo/multi-view pipeline, modificador Smooth Corrective e novo gráfico de dependência de desenvolvimento.
2,76 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-76/>`__ – Novembro de 2015:: Suporte Pixar OpenSubdiv, Viewport e File Browser para aumentar o desempenho, offset automático do nó e uma faixa de efeito de texto para o Sequencer.
2,77 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-77/>`__ – Março 2016:: Suporte OpenVDB para caching de simulações de fumaça/volumetria, melhoria Cycles subsurface scattering, escultura Grease Pencil stroke e melhoria do fluxo de trabalho, e manipulação de biblioteca retrabalhada para gerenciar blocos de dados ausentes e excluídos.
2,78 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-78/>`__ – Setembro 2016:: Suporte de ciclos para imagens estéreo esféricas para VR, Grease Pencil funciona mais similar a outros softwares de desenho 2D, suporte à importação e exportação Alembic e melhorias para a Bendy Bones para facilitar e simplificar rigging.
2,79 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-79/>`__ – Setembro 2017:: Novos novidades no Cycles: Denoising, Shadow catcher, e o novo Principled Shader. Outras melhorias foram feitas no Grease Pencil e no Alembic. Também foi adicionado suporte para os modelos de aplicação.

Blender 2.8 – Revamped UI

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 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/>`__ – Novembro de 2019:: Revamped sculpting tools, Cycles OptiX accelerated rendering, denoising, many EEVEE improvements, library overrides, UI improvements and much more.
2,82 <https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-82/>`__ – Fevereiro de 2020:: Suporte UDIM e USD, Mantaflow para fluidos e simulação de fumaça, denoising de IA, melhorias no Grease Pencil, e muito mais.
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:: Nós de Geometria, ferramenta primitiva de adição, melhoras de escultura, edição de curva no Grease Pencil, captura do atributo Cor no Cycles, simulação de fluídos APIC, melhoras no Video Sequencer, e muito mais.
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.