Blender 2.71
About
Welcome to Blender, the free, open source 3D application for modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, video editing and game creation. Blender is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and has a large world-wide community.
Blender can be used freely for any purpose, including commercial use and distribution. It's free and open-source software, released under the GNU GPL licence. The entire source code is available on our website.
For more information, visit blender.org.
2.71
The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.71. This release is the second official stable release of the Blender 2.7 series. More information about this release.
Bugs
Although Blender 2.71 is considered a stable release, you may encounter a bug. If you do, please help us by posting it in the bug tracker or using Help → Report a Bug from inside Blender. If it wasn’t reported yet, please log in (or register) and fill in detailed information about the error. Please post detailed instructions on how to reproduce it or post a .blend file showcasing the bug.
Package Contents
The downloaded Blender package includes:
• The Blender application for the chosen operating system.
• Scripts for importing and exporting to other 3d formats.
• Readme and copyright files.
Installation
Windows: The download .zip contains a Blender folder. You may put this anywhere on your hard drive. To launch Blender, double-click on Blender.exe.
Linux: Unpack the archive, then run the Blender executable.
Mac OS X: The downloaded package includes blender.app. Optionally copy this to your Applications folder, and add it to the dock by dragging it from there to the dock.
Installing Addons (all systems) Addons can be installed from the user preferences addons section, download an addon as a .py or .zip file, then press the "Install Addon" button and select the file to install it.
Getting Started
When opening Blender, you’ll see large 3D view in the center, a Toolbar on the left, a Properties editor and an Outliner on the right and a Timeline at the bottom.
Orbit around in the 3D view by holding the middle mouse button and dragging. Alternatively, hold the alt key and drag the left mouse button. Additionally, hold Shift to pan the view and Ctrl to zoom.
Select objects using the right mouse button. With the object selected, perform actions by clicking any of the tool buttons on the left, or make changes to its properties by altering any of the setting on the right.
For more information on how to use Blender, check out the support page.
Links
Users:
General information www.blender.org
Full release log wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.71
Tutorials www.blender.org/support/tutorials/
Manual wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual
User Forum www.blenderartists.org
IRC #blenderchat or #blender on irc.freenode.net
Developers:
Development www.blender.org/get-involved/developers/
GIT and Bug Tracker developer.blender.org/
Get Involved www.blender.org/get-involved/
IRC #blendercoders on irc.freenode.net
Blender is open-source and free for all to use.
Enjoy.