Developed as the in-house software of a high quality animation studio, Blender has proven to be an extremely fast and versatile design instrument. The software has a personal touch, offering a unique approach to the world of Three Dimensions. Use Blender to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations, business graphics, to do some morphing, or design user interfaces. You can easy build and manage complex environments. The renderer is versatile and extremely fast. All basic animation principles (curves & keys) are well implemented.

Currently Blender is available for:

- SGI with Irix 5.3. (R3k or R4k) or Irix 6.2 (R4k, R5k).
- FreeBSD (i386) 2.2
- Linux (i386, Alpha) libc5, libc6
- Sun Solaris 2.6 (sparc)
- Windows 95, 98, NT (i386)
- BeOS 4.5 (i386)

1.2 Is Blender free?

Blender is and will remain free in it's basic version, which in itself is a fully functional animation package. You can use it for whatever you want in whatever project you want. If you are unsure about details, or if you want to distribute Blender, contact the Blender staff over at NaN. There is a 'complete' version of Blender, which however requires the C-Key, which you can obtain in the Blender Shop.

1.3 What about ports?

NaN has received hundreds of e-mails by people requesting a port to other systems / OS's.
The deal NaN can make is this:

Do a donation!

- a representative xxxx machine (if it runs a this one, most others work too?)
- the box, harddisk, memory, graphics, OpenGL or Mesa installed, C compiler, keyboard, mouse, ethernet connection, ... everything! (The monitor would be cool too!) Plug and play.
- you arrange and pay for transportation.

This is what you can get:

- Blender running at your box!
- The coming manual for free. Personally signed, and packed with extra love.
- All other Blender products NaN brings out for one year for free.
- You decide how (where) to publish this version. (But for free of course)

Blender needs to be cross-platform identically. NaN also wants to keep the C-code as clean as possible. Therefore, making Unix/X-window versions will be a LOT more easier than for exampe a BeOS or Windows95 version. The basic requirements for a Blender port are a port of OpenGL and a port of GLUT to the targeret systems, as these two represent the core ob Blender.

Also the freeware (and later possibly GPL) strategy of Blender is important. It has to 'fit in' the platforms ported to. It's about the 'public image' of Blender. NaN does not reject a Windows port for this reason, but it's considered the least interesting of all ports to be made ;-)

Last updated 26-aug-99, xype|samo korosec