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Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Blender offers a complete range of tools to thoroughly develop 3D animations and design. Its revolutionary, non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow. The powerful built-in database system allows instances, scene management, and dynamic linking multiple project files. Anti-aliased fonts feature international translation support.

The modeling aspects of the program are various. A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType) are available.

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.57. This is the first stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

The next 2 months we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.58 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.

Features:

Interface

* Non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
* Flexible and fully configurable window layout with as many screen setups as you prefer
* Undo support on all levels
* Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
* Any window space can be easily switched to any window type (curve editor, NLA, 3D view etc)
* Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
* Graphical user interface for Python scripts
* Fully scriptable UI with custom themes
* Consistent interface across all platforms

Modeling

* A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
* Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
* Full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
* Modifier stack deformers such as Lattice, Curve, Armature or Displace
* Mirror modifier with middle vertices clipping and automatic deletion of inner faces
* Non destructive real time Boolean and Array modifiers
* Mesh modeling based on vertex, edge and/or face selection
* Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
* Python scripting access for custom tools

Rigging

* Fast skeleton creation mode
* Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
* Fast envelope based skinning
* Automatic Skinning that really works (heat equilibrium based)
* Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
* Double Quaternion deformation reduces shrinking and other bone deformation errors
* Volume deformer uses a mesh cage to deform complex meshes with great results
* Bone layers and colored groups for better rig organization
* B-spline interpolated bones; forget about elbow twists
* Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
* PyConstraints; if you need something not yet implemented code it in python with real time feed back, no compiling needed

Animation

* Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics with pole target support
* Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
* Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor