It looks pretty impressive for being freeware! Particle animation, radiosity rendering and Python scripting.... I'm installing it at the moment to have look.

yeah very impressive.. have u seen the gallary on the website, impressive work.

Not that impressive compared to what expensive 3d programs and renderers can do, but definitely not that bad for an open source program. Does it handles radiosity?

Here it is. A radiosity renderer for Blender. It's free as well.

YafRay

So her's a question to my fellow 3d geeks colleagues surfing this forum: why do you think this freeware program hasn't replaced yet the major programs if it can do the same things?

I wonder why, because the fact you can tinker with this program so much is ultimately very promising.

I'll give a try on my spare time (like I have spare time...)

because they dont have any money for marketing

Looks like you can't save as an .IGES either.

Well, it also looks like the interface is not really user friendly as it could. I guess they'll have to work on that to make it.

Anyone been using blender since this topic was last discussed?
I was thinking of shelling out for a copy of rhino but paused when i saw this...

What bothers me is that the user interface is so different to other programs, albeit its reliance on hotkeys probably makes it fast. I went through the few tutorials they have on the site (lack of documentation is also a problem), but never got any further in using it.

Rhino also started as a freeware if i rmemebr correctly. didn't remain free for too long though.