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>Blender Documentation Volume I - User Guide: Last modified April 29 2004 S68</TH
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>Blender's History</H1
><P
>In 1988 Ton Roosendaal co-founded the Dutch animation studio
<I
CLASS="emphasis"
>NeoGeo</I
>. NeoGeo quickly became the largest 3D
animation studio in the Netherlands and one of the leading animation
houses in Europe. NeoGeo created award-winning productions (European
Corporate Video Awards 1993 and 1995) for large corporate clients such as
multi-national electronics company Philips. Within NeoGeo Ton was
responsible for both art direction and internal software development.
After careful deliberation Ton decided that the current in-house 3D tool
set for NeoGeo was too old and cumbersome to maintain and upgrade and
needed to be rewritten from scratch. In 1995 this rewrite began and was
destined to become the 3D software creation suite we all now know as
<I
CLASS="emphasis"
>Blender</I
>. As NeoGeo continued to refine and improve
Blender it became apparent to Ton that Blender could be used as a tool for
other artists outside of NeoGeo.</P
><P
>In 1998, Ton decided to found a new company called Not a Number
(NaN) as a spin-off of NeoGeo to further market and develop Blender. At
the core of NaN was a desire to create and distribute a compact, cross
platform 3D creation suite for free. At the time this was a revolutionary
concept as most commercial modellers cost several thousands of (US)
dollars. NaN hoped to bring professional level 3D modelling and animation
tools within the reach of the general computing public. NaN's business
model involved providing commercial products and services around Blender.
In 1999 NaN attended its first Siggraph conference in an effort to more
widely promote Blender. Blender's first 1999 Siggraph convention was a
huge success and gathered a tremendous amount of interest from both the
press and attendees. Blender was a hit and its huge potential
confirmed!</P
><P
>On the wings of a successful Siggraph in early 2000, NaN secured
financing of 4.5 million EUR from venture capitalists. This large inflow
of cash enabled NaN to rapidly expand its operations. Soon NaN boasted as
many as fifty employees working around the world trying to improve and
promote Blender. In the summer of 2000, Blender v2.0 was released. This
version of Blender added the integration of a game engine to the 3D suite.
By the end of 2000, the number of users registered on the NaN website
surpassed 250,000.</P
><P
>Unfortunately, NaN's ambitions and opportunities didn't match the
company's capabilities and the market realities of the time. This
overextension resulted in restarting NaN with new investor funding and a
smaller company in April 2001. Six months later NaN's first commercial
software product, <I
CLASS="emphasis"
>Blender Publisher</I
> was launched.
This product was targeted at the emerging market of interactive web-based
3D media. Due to disappointing sales and the ongoing difficult economic
climate, the new investors decided to shut down all NaN operations. The
shutdown also included discontinuing the development of Blender. Although
there were clearly shortcomings in the current version of Blender, with a
complex internal software architecture, unfinished features and a
non-standard way of providing the GUI, enthusiastic support from the user
community and customers who had purchased Blender Publisher in the past,
Ton couldn't justify leaving Blender to disappear into oblivion. Since
restarting a company with a sufficiently large team of developers wasn't
feasible, in March 2002 Ton Roosendaal founded the non-profit organization
<I
CLASS="emphasis"
>Blender Foundation</I
>.</P
><P
>The Blender Foundation's primary goal was to find a way to continue
developing and promoting Blender as a community-based <A
HREF="http://www.opensource.org/"
TARGET="_top"
>Open Source</A
> project. In July
2002, Ton managed to get the NaN investors to agree to a unique Blender
Foundation plan to attempt to Blender as open source. The "Free Blender"
campaign sought to raise 100,000 EUR so that the Foundation could buy the
rights to the Blender source code and intellectual property rights from
the NaN investors and subsequently release Blender to the open source
community. With an enthusiastic group of volunteers, among them several
ex-NaN employees, a fund raising campaign was launched to "Free Blender."
To everyone's surprise and delight the campaign reached the 100,000 EUR
goal in only seven short weeks. On Sunday October 13, 2002, Blender was
released to the world under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(GPL). Blender development continues to this day driven by a team of
far-flung, dedicated volunteers from around the world led by Blender's
original creator, Ton Roosendaal.</P
><P
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>Blender's history and road-map</I
> <P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
>1.00 Jan 1995 Blender in development at animation studio
NeoGeo</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.23 Jan 1998 SGI version published on the web, IrisGL</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.30 April 1998 Linux and FreeBSD version, port to OpenGL and
X</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.3x June 1998 NaN founded</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.4x Sept 1998 Sun and Linux Alpha version released</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.50 Nov 1998 First Manual published</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.60 April 1999 C-key (new features behind a lock, $95),
Windows version released</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.6x June 1999 BeOS and PPC version released</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>1.80 June 2000 End of C-key, Blender full freeware
again</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.00 Aug 2000 Interactive 3D and real-time engine</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.10 Dec 2000 New engine, physics and Python</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.20 Aug 2001 Character animation system</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.21 Oct 2001 Blender Publisher launch</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.2x Dec 2001 Mac OSX version</P
></LI
></UL
> <P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
><I
CLASS="emphasis"
>13 October 2002 Blender goes Open Source, 1st
Blender Conference</I
></P
></LI
></UL
> <P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
>2.25 Oct 2002 Blender Publisher becomes freely
available</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>Tuhopuu1 Oct 2002 The experimental tree of Blender is created,
a coder's playground.</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.26 Feb 2003 The first true Open Source Blender</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.27 May 2003 The second Open Source Blender</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.28x July 2003 First of the 2.28x series.</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.30 October 2003 At the 2nd Blender Conference the 2.3x UI
makeover is presented.</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.31 December 2003 Upgrade to stable 2.3x UI project.</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>2.32 January 2004 Major overhaul of internal rendering
capabilities.</P
></LI
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