What is Blender?
Blender is a 3D modeling program — and much, much more.
This description comes from the Blender website: “Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.”
For examples of the above mentioned functions check out Blender’s Features page.
What Blender Can Do For You?
Possible Employment
Learning and working with Blender could lead to viable employment. That’s right. You could actually find money productive work in the field of 3D Modeling. Will this happen for everyone? TBD (to be determined). Most people that toy with the idea of learning Blender will not actually learn it. And most of those that learn it will not persist in working with it long enough break through into the levels of competence required for employment.
However, it is an open path. There is nothing blocking your opportunity other than your own efforts, natural ability, creativity, and persistence.
Great Opportunity for Passion Projects
We all have things we love to do. Or, we would love to do if only we had the skill required. Blender is a very rich source of skills that can enable many different passion projects.
- Raw artistic invention
- Movie Videos
- Whiteboard Explainers
- Sculpture
- 3D Printed Objects
- Cartoons and Anime
- Avatar creation
- Games
- Simulations… & more.
Help in the Virtual Ashram Project
Creating an OpenSim version of the Prosperity Virtual Ashram will require the creation of many resources. Some are listed below:
- Objects of daily use
- Furniture
- Vehicles — cars, boats, airplanes, and more.
- Clothes
- Avatars
- Hair and other avatar components
- Reproductions of ancient and modern sacred sites
Consider all of the places you go in the SL Ashram and consider of the things you do in the SL Ashram. Everything you see — and sit on — will have to be recreated in OS. It is not possible to move objects directly from Second Life to OpenSim. So it is up to us to recreate it.
Expand Your Consciousness
Working in a 3D environment as a creator changes how you view the world. These changes happen on a deep level. It comes with experience — personal experience, personally experienced.
This work with Blender may also encourage reconnection with aspects of your self that you don’t even know you have.
Blender can also be used to expand your footprint through connection with past lives. You wake up one morning with a vague notion about sitting in an old wooden barn on a three legged stool hands on the handle of an antique butter churn. Creating this object, and inserting it into OpenSim can give you the concentrated focus necessary to reconnect to the past life when this occurred.
What is required?
Blender Program
Blender is a free for life download. It can be downloaded from Blender.org
Laptop and/or Desktop
Blender requires a computer that can support graphics. This means either a laptop or desktop computer. Pads and/or phones will not work.
Time
There is an expression some of you may be aware of: “If you don’t use it you lose it.”
My experience with Blender is that when I don’t use it for extended periods of time I forget huge chunks of how it works. So, while it is not strictly speaking required, it is highly recommended that you spend at least 30 minutes a day in Blender. I figure doing this 5 days a week will be sufficient to keep your momentum up.