When it comes to entering the world of 3D graphic creation and designing it isn't necessary to buy an expensive program with a prohibitive license. There are free open source alternative which guarantee the same professional results, like Blender, to name an example.

The open source 3D contents creation suite.

Blender is a 3D modeling, rendering and animating program which guarantees professional results despite being free and working without comprising hardly any system resources.The options included in Blender are many: modeling, UV mapping, animation creation, texture design, scripting, composing...

Features

• 3D animation, modeling and design program.
• Includes a quick skeleton creation mode.
• Different modeling methods with polygonal mesh, NURBS, bezier and B-spline curves, source vectors, etc.
• Allows you to model meshes based on vertex, edge or face selection.
• Carry out Armadure deformation.
• Allows inverse cinematics.
• Transform UV maps interactively and use several layers.
• Includes Game Blender to develop video games.
• Customize and configure any task with Python scripts.
• Compatible 2D formats: TGA, JPG, PNG, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, Iris, SGI Movie, TIFF, PSD, etc.
• Compatible 3D formats: 3D Studio, AC3D, FBX Export, DXF, Wavefront OBJ, DEC Object File Format, DirectX, Lightwave, MD2, Motion Capture, PLY, Pro Engineer, Radiosity, Raw Triangle, Softimage, STL, TrueSpace, VideoScape, VRML, VRML97, etc.

Support and learning

Blender has nothing to envy of programs with similar features like Maya or 3ds Max. If you want to create your own 3D graphic projects, you will find all the help you may need in the application's forum, where thousands of users share their knowledge and experience.

Download Blender for free and you will be able to model, animate and render your own 3D scenes.

Requirements and additional information:

• Requires having Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package installed.