10 Interesting Facts About Blender                                    

25.06.18

1. Blender's Birthday

January 2nd 2018 marks blender's 24th birthday.

Whilst it's not the date that blender (as a full standalone program) went live, that day an idea emerged from its egg.
Ton Roosendaal explains it as such the backup data, dates back to 2nd of January 1993.
Thus the blender-father decided for his baby to celebrate it's birthday that particular day.

2. Blender, The Origins

Blender originates from an animation company called Neo Geo. The author of the in-house animation application ...?
[someone make a song with ''animation application'' please!]

You guessed it: Ton Roosendaal ! in order to further develop Blender he founded "Not a Number Technologies" [NaN] in 1998: The company went bankrupt though which lead to Blender being released for free under the "GNU General Public License" in search of alternative income methods.

It took Roosendaal only about 7 weeks to gather 100.000 €, which were demanded by the creditors of the newly founded Blender Foundation.
Ton Roosendaal and "Big Buck Bunny"
On April 1st 2006 Ton Roosendaal left the developer team to work for Autodesk...
As Bart from Blendernation explains on the first of April 2006. LINK

3. Life without "UNDO"!

The animators best friend Ctrl+Z wasn't actually implemented until 22. November 2003 ! The first version of Blender went live for free 20. August 2003 though.

Legend says that during that period of time higher numbers of heart attacks and deaths by PCs falling out of open windows were registered all around the world...
(Warren Teitelman (1941 – August 12, 2013) was an American computer scientist known for his work on programming environments and the invention and first implementation of concepts including UNDO, REDO)

4. BLENDER, THE NAME

You might think that the software's name is inspired by the device as seen on the right here. Well you are wrong.

The name ''Blender'' originates from a song by Yello (Album: Baby). Sit back and listen... Or sing it yourself.

5. BLENDER'S OPEN MOVIES

The first Open Movie by The Blender Institute was ''Elephants Dream''. It was greatly financed by DVD-preorders, granting buyers a spot in the credits.

Back then it took 125 days to render the full project for 10 minutes and 54 second of film (that's 15 696 frames for a 24 fps film).

Every Blender Foundation Movie greatly helps to improve Blender's functionality and adds new features to the "game". So if you are looking for some great inspiration, go watch SINTEL!
which is my favorite !

Unfortunately, as these films are released under an open license, people load them up on their own accounts to display them on Youtube with add content ...  I hope you can make the effort and watch them on the official sites.
1. Sintel
2. Hero (first Blender 2D - grease pencil animation)
3. Agent 327
and many more
(from the official Blender Foundation youtube channel)

6. SUZANNE

Picture
The Blender specific test-mesh: ''Suzanne'' originated from an Orang-Utan in ''Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back''. She's quite capable of defending herself in that movie though.

In Blender ... meeeh Let's not talk about all the harassment she's been through (same applies for her BFF ''Cube'').

The Blender-Suzanne was created by Willem-Paul van Overbruggen when Blender NaN was under threat to vanish into oblivion (bankruptcy). Suzanne was released with version 2.25 and little later Blender was saved by the community.

Even though many people think that Suzanne was the first in space it actually was Albert II, a male rhesus monkey( 83 miles (134 km) on June 14, 1949).

Suzanne contains of only 500 Polygons !
  left to right
Jason Lee: Brodie Bruce /
Banky Edwards with Suzanne on his back.
Jason Mewes: Jay
Kevin Smith: Silent Bob

7. SINTELGATE !

In early April 2015 SONY claimed (possibly NOT by design) a copyright infringement against Blender Foundation's official Youtube Account showing the movie Sintel.

The problem probably originated from SONY adding Sintel to their 4K Show-Off data.
Once it was handled as ''theirs'' the automated Youtube Copyright System took it down.
For many this is a perfect example as to why Youtube's ContentID is the wrong way to go.

As of now there's no official explanation or apology from either Google/Youtube or SONY

Update: It looks like this is a recurring problem with Youtube algorithms vs open source video licenses.
Basically youtube is not the evil one here but people who claim a copyright on the blender content.
TROLLS BE GONE!!!
Copyright infringement where there is no copyright. The Youtube ContenID mechanic in full effect

8. NASA is using Blender

NASA has many free 3D models available on their website:

As NASA is a federal institution, their content is released for free and reusable.

They also made this interactive website with Blend4Web and Blender !

9. THERE'S A GAME

And it's called YoFrankie!

Okay well, it might not be the best game out there, but it's the first game made in Blender.



10. HOLY BLENDER!

To wrap things up, here's a wonderful story about animals given a second chance with the help of Blender and a fabulous science team.

You all know that there are many features implemented into Blender.

Animation, Modeling, Simulation,
Particles, Video Editing,
Compositing, etc, etc.

But have you ever heard of the >SAVETHEANIMALS< Button integrated in Blender?

Here's some prove:
Little is known as to how it actually works...

But the team called ''ATOR'' (Arc-Team Open Research) managed anyways!

Using Blender and a 3D printer, they saved ''Victoria the goose, Greenie the parrot and Beakolin the toucan'' from a miserable existance and great pain.

For the full story follow this link:
sample47

Johannes Steidele

- beer brewer -

Just another artist from Berlin working on establishing a film studio to finance the daily pizza and beer. The goal is to build a german beer brewery on the moon (obviously ! ) and to take the world from there on. Well that and to find a magic cure to regrow hair

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