Greatest part for me is the fact that people put all the tutorials you could ever need online for free! The software is a simple download/install, it's totally free, the interface is a little complicated but not too difficult. It's amazing....any joe blow can download this thing and in a couple weeks doing tutorials and stuff he can begin to call himself a 3D graphics designer. This is such a HUGE paradigm shift. Will be interesting to see how Blender affects the creative world.

Guys... the reason this is free is that people all over the world got together and raised a LOT of money so that everyone would have access to a good 3D art platform, no matter who they are, or how much money they have. With Blender, even kids in the third world can learn to be Holywood artists, or can design new buildings for their city, if they can find a computer. More importantly for most of us, we can now share 3D art, without the person we give our creations to needing to buy an expensive program to use what WE made.

It's GREAT that people like Blender after all the effort hard work people have put in, but please don't suggest that Blender is "so good they should charge money for it". Blender is FREE in the sense of Freedom (see http://gnu.org/philosophy for details). The idea is that it's SO good, no one should be charged for it.

This is probably the best 3-D tool I've used and I've probably only used 20% of what it has to offer. Don't understand how/why they still offer this for free even though people would be willing to pay 100s of dollars for this.

If you haven't already, download and use it today!!

until i installed Leopard on my iMac and the interface speed just crawls. I'm not a power user so it doesn't matter as much. The Blender community reacts very quickly and I'm sure there will be a fix pretty soon, if there isn't one out there already

Blender is the most amazing 3d tool. It is simply brilliant. Its so good that you wouldn't mind paying for it. It's got a heap of features that the commercial apps have such as Nurbs, Zbrush and Mudbox type sculptor inbuilt! The interface is really easy to use, in my opinion even better than most of the paid apps! Read the tutorial at http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-... and you will believe. It can be customized and themed how ever you like. Sure it's different, it makes it easy to work with in 3d with so many different sections and functions. The interface is fully customizable & flexible - you can remove the windows you don't want, and work with only one if you like, and if you want another one or more, you can place them where you like by splitting the frame where you choose.

This is the reference project for OSS non-believers. If you want to learn 3d be smart and go download Blender and read the link I listed concerning the interface, do some more tutorials and download the manuals, and examples. If you learn Blender you'll learn all the necessary fundatmentals in 3d sculpting and animation. With a little patience, and study you'll be on your way to making a cool 3d object, scene or even a movie.

In summary this is a great tool that professionals can use with lots of features. The cloth plugin, which is almost complete, will make this FREE software even more amazing! The end effect will be that it will drop the prices of commercial applications, such as 3dsmax, and Maya! Save yourself 1000's of dollars and go with Blender! As a creative human, it really does amaze me that Blender is truly free.