I'm reacquainting myself with Blender, so I thought I'd point you folks towards it in case you're not familiar. If you haven't seen it yet (or if it's been a while), Blender 3D has matured over the years as a terrific tool for creating 3D content. Modeling, animation, rendering and even realtime 3D/game creation using the built-in tools. That's a lot of stuff (and buzz-words for those of you new to 3D lingo).

My recent interest in the program has been spurred by the financial strain of having to upgrade all my content creation tools yet again... it's so stinkin' expensive for a small dev shop! Well, Blender is very powerful and free... free. Nummy.

One thing I'm going to play with real soon is the exporter for creating DTS models for the Torque Game Engine. I had heard about it a long time ago, but didn't have time then to play with it. Using Blender to create Torque 3D content provides a fantastic low-cost solution for indie developers and definitely for schools on a tight budget, I think.

I'm not going to go into a review of the product here since I'm not really qualified (game design is my forte, not 3D content creation as much,) but I do use the tool on occasion. Maybe I'll dive back in in full force and really learn the newer features of Blender and get more adept at using it.

For now, if you want more information, you'll just have to run over there and do your own reasearch! :)