These are the features of the software.
Interface
Revolutionary 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
Windows for animation curves/keys, outliner, schematic scene diagram, generic node editing system, non-linear video sequence editing, character animation action editor, non-linear animation mixer, image/UV editing, file/image selection and file management
Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
Graphical user interface for Python scripts
Custom themes
Consistent interface across all platforms
Rigging
Fast skeleton creation mode
Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
Fast envelope based skinning
Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
Bone layers for better rig organization
B-splines interpolated bones
Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
Animation
Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics
Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
Automated walkcycles along paths
Animated constraint system
Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
Character animation pose editor
Animated deformers (Lattice, Curve)
'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects
UV Unwrapping
Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping methods
Interactive transform of UV maps by vertex pinning
Proportional falloff editing of UV maps for smooth transformations
Seam based unwrapping
Cube, Cylinder, Sphere, View projections
Catmull-Clark subdivition of UVs for less distortion
Minimize stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion
Multiple UV layers
Demo Movie
Physics and Particles
Particle system can be atached to any mesh object. Control methods include weight painting, textures, curve guides, wind and vortex effects. Particles can be deflected by moving geometry
Hair strands can be created by a static particle system, supporting all particle control methods
Fluid simulator with fully animated inflow, outflow, obstacle and fluid objects. Gravity and viscosity settings can also be animated. Supports vector blur and is integrated with the particle system
Realtime soft body solver integrated in mesh, lattice, curve and text objects. Supports collision detection and particle field effects like Wind or Vortex, soft bodys can also be baked for faster playback/rendering
Game engine rigid body physics can be easily baked into animation curves
Realtime 3D/Game Creation
Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
Support all OpenGLTM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
Audio, using the SDL toolkit
Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces
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
Rendering
Very fast inbuilt raytracer
Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
Tile-based and fully threaded
Render layers and passes
Render baking to UV maps (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
Halo, lens flares and fog effects
Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
Edge rendering for toon shading
Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
Ambient Occlusion
Radiosity solver
Integral support for the Yafray render engine
Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman (RIB), Mental Ray, Povray, Virtualight, Indigo
Shading
Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
Material previews rendered by main render engine
Fast, realistic subsurface scattering
Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
Versatile procedural textures system
Reflection maps
Normal, displacement and bump maps
Imaging and Compositing
Compositor tightly integrated and aligned with the rendering pipeline
MultiLayer OpenEXR files allow to store and reuse raw renderlayer and passes data
Complete list of composite node filters, convertors, color and vector operators and mixers including Chroma Key, Blur, RGB Curves, Z Combine, Color Ramp
Preview panel to define the portion of interest. A composite then only happens on this part
Threaded and memory efficient (up to 8 processors)
Near realtime sequencer can edit hours of video
Waveform and U/V scatter plots
Open and write many audio & video file formats using ffmpeg(linux only at the moment, FFMPEG for Windows/OS X is scheduled for next release)
Can render using frameserver-support directly into foreign applications
Supports float images as well as regular 32 bits images
Curves tool allows you to create a mapping from the float range to a displayable result (for HDR images)
Files
Save all scene data in a single .blend file, even images, sounds or fonts can be packed for easy transportation
Powerful built-in database system allowing instances, scene management, and dynamic linking multiple project files
.blend format supports compression, digital signatures, encryption, forwards/backwards compatibility and can be used as a library to link to from other .blend files
Read and write support for many other 2D and 3D formats
2D
TGA, JPG, PNG, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
3D
3D Studio, AC3D, COLLADA, DEC Object File Format, DirectX, Lightwave, MD2, Motion Capture, Nendo, OpenFlight, PLY, Pro Engineer, Radiosity, Raw Triangle, Softimage, STL, TrueSpace, VideoScape, VRML, VRML97, Wavefront, X3D Extensible 3D, xfig export
Supported Platforms
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista
Mac OS X (PPC and Intel)
Linux (i386)
Linux (PPC)
FreeBSD 5.4 (i386)
SGI Irix 6.5
Sun Solaris 2.8 (sparc)
