Blender - 3D Visualization Alternative

Blender has been in circulation for a while now and becomes more widely used every day. It is a great solution for those getting started or for smaller visulization firms that don't have the pocket book to fordge ahead with 3D Studio Max or Maya. Overall, it's a very comprehensive program and suprisingly fluid with many advanced features. The learning curve is a little steep, however the greatest advantage of this open source program is the immense ammount of support information. In fact, there is so much information available that it's sometimes hard to filter through and find what your looking for. If you have broadband access, I've found that video tutorials with audio are the best way to pick up on how to use Blender's beginner, intermediate, and advanced features. Blender's community is on the cutting edge of product support with the blender wiki book project providing one of the first wiki online support manuals.

As I begin to delve more into 3D studio max (more the industry standard for architectural visualization) I find that many features of blender translate fairly well into 3d studio and it eases the learning curve. Having this said, I have noticed that the development of blender has taken more of a creative media direction with its development. This may or may not be because of the orange project that seems to be pulling the development of blender right now. The architectural visualization tools are not very well refined and "just adding a window" isn't as easy as it should be. Hopefully these tools will develop more in the future and you can be sure that ViZualJourney will let you know when they do.