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Image credits :
westonhighschool libraryon Flickr , CC BY-SA 2.0
The opening ceremony at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio featured snowboarder Amy Purdy wearing a 3D printed dress, wearing prosthetics printed from the same material as the dress, and dancing with a Kuka robotic arm.
The dance was a statement about the merging of the human spirit and technology. "The backstory, which mainstream media passed over, was the critical role open source software played in the making of the dress: it was created using Blender and Python .
Image by Danit Peleg. Used with permission.
Occasionally I'll come across someone involved in computer graphics who has never heard of the increasingly popular open source 3D animation software, Blender. To be fair it’s primarily known in the open source community, but it’s become a global phenomenon for millions of aspiring artists and animators. The open movie project showcases some of what Blender can do. And when it comes to 3D printing, it’s the most popular solution out there for creating and preparing models .
Falling into open sourceI first discovered Blender while attending college in 2006 as a music major. While I was working part time for the school’s engineering department, I went over to one of the houses on campus to fix someone's bathroom sink drain. The tenant just happened to be Nathanael Anderson , an ardent supporter of the open source community. He recently made a splash on linux Journal as one of the first people out there to create a custom version of Rock Band that uses a real guitar with a midi pickup. Last I heard he accepted a job using VR to create educational tools in the field of medicine.
When I met Nat, I had almost no experience with computers. I had purchased a laptop that I used to take notes, but my knowledge didn’t extend much further than a basic understanding of Microsoft Word.
He on the other hand, he was a different breed. His home was a sight to behold: There were electronic devices of every description covering every flat surface and even lining the walls. Computer monitors were spitting out mysterious lines of code too fast to read. I still have no idea what most that stuff was for. He had cannibalized a slide projector to make a custom home theater system for movies and games. Later he showed me how to use the Fresnel lens with sunlight to liquefy pennies.
In spite of my complete lack of knowledge regarding anything related to computer code, I had an idea for making artificial intelligence more human using a random number generator to create the illusion of individuality and free thought. As I wrenched on the bathroom sink, I kept talking about my ideas. Nat and I hit it off and became friends. Over time, he began introducing me to the world of computer science.
Once he fixed my laptop after someone spilled tea on it, and when I got it back from him he had installed several open source programs on it including Blender.
Learning BlenderI always liked the idea of doing animation: As a kid I made several stop action videos with an old VHS camcorder using Legos and modeling clay. Nat kept pressuring me to start using Blender, and I eventually caved. I followed a simple tutorial and made a chess piece with a few keystrokes. My brain exploded. Here was a way to use math to make artwork. When I discovered key frame animation I had to gather the exploded gray matter so my brain could explode again.
Blender became an instant obsession. I had no idea animation could be this easy.
After a few weeks of playing around with Blender, I was sitting at a Starbucks trying to figure out how to animate a robot using an armature with vertex weights. 3D was still fairly novel then, so when a web developer saw 3D on my computer he dropped everything and started asking me about it. He wanted me to make an animated commercial for a record company. The commercial would consist of a giant medallion covered in gemstones spinning through space and crashing into a lava field leaving an impression of the record company's logo. It required light caustics, flowing lava, fire and smoke effects, camera targets, path follow―all the nitty gritty details of UV mapping and material setup about which I knew nothing.
It took me about three weeks to learn enough to make the commercial. The web developer and the recording artist loved it, but that was partially because it was the first 3D they had access to. I was paid a whopping $300 for the work, but I didn’t care. My eyes were opened to the possibility of making money by playing with free software.
Kittens and architectureI started with small freelance projects and eventually had a respectable portfolio. I put together a pitch for the game Kung Fu Kittens with a lot of renders of kittens in various martial arts poses. The game never made it past some prototypes in Unity, but with the kitten renders in my portfolio I landed my first full-time job doing visualizations at an architectural company in Boise, Idaho. For some reason the kitten renders impressed the department head, and I've been making a living exclusively using Blender and Python for about seven years now.
I transitioned from animator to developer about two years ago. I now work as a simulation engineer for Gerber Technology . I ended up at Gerber because they are in the process of developing a 3D solution for visualizing pattern design and simulating textile properties for the apparel industry, and they chose Blender as a development environment. I spent a few years making game assets so I knew some t