Blender is Opensource software that very good image for the blind 3-dimensional (3D), now with the opensource lisence, you may no need to worry about software expired. <
Blender has a personal touch, offering a unique approach to the 3 dimensions. Using Blender to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations, business graphics, to do the morphing, or design user interface. buddy can easily build and manage complex environments. The renderer is versatile and very fast. All the basic principles of animation (curves & keys) are implemented properly.
Here it is the simply tutorial that i took from this site
1.You may want to download, and install Blender first. When writing this tutorial, I use version 2.4.5. When you open Blender for the first time, you will see interface like image below. There are header, window and panel. Also there are cube, lamp and camera available in viewport
2.Blender uses a lot of windows. You can use window for many things inluding viewport. You can split window, for example to use one window as Top viewport and another as camera viewport. To split window, just move cursor to window border. This border is located on left, right, top and bottom (shown below as green color). Right click and then choose Split Area. After that, you can choose where you want to split window. Each newly created window, will also have header in the bottom of it.
3. You can split windows as much as you can. Vertical or horizontal. To join windows again, just right click at border and choose Join Areas. Then, you can select adjacent window to be joined.
4. Note: I found splitting windows is cool but inefficient. I prefer to use predefined lay-out in Blender. Make sure cursor is inside window, and press Ctrl+Numpad 4 or 6 (with Num Lock off). You can press several times until you find desired layout. Image below shows example of layout choice.
5. Each windows can have specific function. By default, each splitted windows will have 3D view / viewport type (shown in bottom left). Right now, let's focus on 3D view window type first. Using 3D view, you can view object in 3D environment (Front, Side, Top, Camera, etc). To change view you can click View button in window header, or using Shortcut: Front (Numpad 1), Side (Numpad 3), Top (Numpad 7), Camera (Numpad 0), and Perspective (Numpad 5). To use this shortcut, your cursor need to be inside window and Num Lock in keyboard is active.
6. Next, to rotate, pan, and zoom. If you have 3 button mouse with scroll wheel, you can have all benefit Blender offer. For example, to rotate / arc-rotate view you can click middle mouse button and drag to any direction. If you don't have 3 button mouse, you can press Alt then click left mouse button and drag. Other shortcut for viewing in 3D viewport can bee seen in image below.
7. Next, about selection. In Blender, you use right click mouse to select object. First, press Home to view all object. Then practice to select object in the screen by right clicking. Selected object will shown with pink border. To select more than one object, hold Shift while right clicking.
Left click mouse is used to move 3D cursor position (red-white circle). 3D cursor is used as reference point when you add new object in 3D viewport.
Next, in this lesson, I will show you how to add object, moving, rotating, and scaling. Also you will know how to add simple texture, create animation and also render the result.
8. First, delete selected object (cube) by pressing Del in keyboard. Your cursor must be inside window to enable deleting. Next, you will add another object into the window. To add object, just click Add button at top header. Or you can just press Spacebar to open contextual menu. By the way, your cursor should be inside the window. Choose Add>Mesh>Monkey.
9. Remember about 3D cursor? Monkey object should be created in exact location of 3D cursor. By default, newly created object is in Edit Mode. This mode will allow you to move its sub-object, like vertices. For this moment, let's change to Object Mode. This mode lets you modify object as a whole.
To move, rotate, or scale object, you can use 3D transformation button located in the window header. Or you can use shortcut: move (g = for grab and move), rotate (r), scale (s)
10. Now, let's reset Blender. In top header, click File>New. You will have erase all objects, and come out with defaut interface, with a cube in 3D viewport. Next, you will try to apply some texture to this cube. In bottom header, click Shading button (F5). Make sure Material button is active. In Links and Pipeline panel, you can see material name, and what object this material assigned to. Then, you can see in Texture panel what texture assigned to this material. You can apply several texture to one material, simply by click texture slot and assign texture to this slot. For now, leave all settings as is.
Material control how a surface reacts to light. Mostly you control what shaders you use, etc. Meanwhile, texture controls how object appear, like color, rough or smooth, etc.
11. To modify texture, you can click Texture button (F6). For now, we have texture named "Tex" applied. You can modify this texture. Choose Image texture type. Then, in Image panel, click Load button.
12. Your window will turn to File Browser type window. Use any bitmap file as texture, and click Select Image button. You will go back to 3D view window. Then, you can see bitmap preview. By default, this texture is applied as Color map.
13. Next, we are going to create simple animation. We need to use Timeline window. You can split window vertically. Then, change window type to Timeline. Resize Timeline window if necessary by dragging the border. In Timeline you can see current frame shown as green vertical line.
To create keyframe, simply press "i" in keyboard. Make sure your cursor is inside the 3D view window. Select Loc. This means you create keyframe for Location. When keyframe is created, in Timeline it shown as yellow vertical line.
Then, in Timeline window, move to frame 50 by dragging green vertile line (current frame). Move obbject to another place. Press "i" again to create keyframe, and select Loc. In Timeline window, you can click Play button to see the animation
14. Next, step is to render. You can render a single image or animation video. First, click Scene button (F10). Make sure small Render button is active. First, you may want to set file path. You can set output path and background image path. Output path is where you save you rendered file. And background image is used for background rendering. If you want background image appear in rendering, don't forget to click Backbuf button. Next, in Format panel you need to specify resolution and output file format (JPG, AVI, etc).
For single frame render, first specify current frame you want to render, then click RENDER button (pink button)
For animation, specify animation range, and click ANIM button.
15. Note: For me, output path in Render panel doesn't seem to work when I render single frame. After single frame render finished, I press F3 to save image manually.
