Blender is the perfect all-in one 3D modelling software. Get all the bells and whistles of a commercial animation and modeling software for ZERO dollars. Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, Blender is an open source software under the GNU Public License.
It has become the first choice software for even professional animators and has spawned great animation films as well. Films like Big Buck Bunny and the most recent film, Sintel, were created from this groundbreaking software.
If you’ve ever watched 3D animation films like Toy Story or maybe Finding Nemo and wished you could do films like that as well, then you’re in luck. With Blender, creating original and creative animation films has been made accessible to even non-professional animators. No need to spend xxx amount of dollars just to get the same quality of animation that you see in commercial software.
Blender provides all the things you need as you create your very own film. It addresses almost every aspect of animation film making. Several of the major categories that it offers in the program include the following:
- Interface
- Modeling
- Rigging
- Rendering
- Animation
- UV Unwrapping
- Shading
- Physics and Particles
- Imaging and Compositing,
- Real Time 3D/Game Creation
Even if you happen to be an absolute novice and simply want to create a mini 3D animation film for  fun, Blender can help you out. The Blender Community was thoughtful enough to provide helpful tutorials that enables even the most absolute novice, use this cool program. Each tutorial shows the ins and out of the program, allowing even those with the most basic computer skills and almost zero animation knowledge create 3D models. Of course, it requires quite a bit of patience to learn the program, but it’s not impossible.
It’s quite amazing that such a program exists and that it’s being given away for free. (You can also donate to support the community.) For the most part, Blender actually outperforms several commercial animation softwares available in the market.
By downloading this software, you open yourself  up to a whole new world of possibilities in the amazing realm of computer and 3D animation.
This is just one of the amazing demo reels out there created with Blender
Related Links:
Blender Official Website
Blender on CNET
Blender on Bobulous
Blender on Techimo