Blender is a free and open-source software used for creating 3D computer graphics.It works on different operating systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, Haiku, and IRIX.It can be used for making 3D models, animations, digital sculptures, visual effects, rendering, compositing, 
motion tracking, drawing, 2D animations, and editing videos.Blender is used to create animated movies, visual effects, artwork, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D apps, virtual reality, and 3D models for video games.
The Academy Award-winning film Flow (2024) was completely made and rendered using Blender.
History
A cube in Blender (version 3.6.2)
Blender began as an in-house tool for the Dutch animation studio NeoGeo, and was first made public on January 2, 1994.
Version 1.00 came out in January 1995, and the main creator was Ton Roosendaal, one of the company’s owners and developers.The name “Blender” was taken from a song by the Swiss electronic band Yello, which NeoGeo used in their showreel.Some of the design ideas and experiences came from an earlier 3D ray-tracing software called Traces that Roosendaal had developed for NeoGeo on the Commodore Amiga between 1987 and 1991.
On January 1, 1998, Blender was released online as SGI freeware.
NeoGeo was later closed, and its clients were taken over by another company.After NeoGeo closed, Ton Roosendaal founded Not a Number Technologies (NaN), which was a reference to the computing term, in June 1998, to continue developing Blender.Initially, it was shared as shareware, but NaN went bankrupt in 2002, which also led to the stopping of Blender development.
In May 2002, Roosendaal started the Blender Foundation, with the goal of continuing Blender’s development and promotion as a community-based open-source project.
On July 18, 2002, he started the “Free Blender” campaign, which was like a crowdfunding effort.The campaign aimed to make Blender open-source by collecting €100,000 (about $100,670 at the time) from the community.On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough money and would release the source code.Today, Blender is free and open-source, mainly developed by its community, along with 26 full-time employees and 12 freelancers at the Blender Institute.
The Blender Foundation initially had the option to use dual licensing, allowing Blender to be released both under the GPL 2.0 or later and a “Blender License” that didn’t require sharing code but asked for payments to the Blender Foundation.
However, this option was never used and was put on hold indefinitely in 2005.Blender is now only available under the “GNU GPLv2 or any later” license, and it was not updated to GPLv3 because the benefits weren’t clear.The binary versions of Blender are under GNU GPLv3 or later because of the Apache libraries included.
In 2019, with the release of version 2.80, the built-in game engine for creating and testing video games was removed.
Blender’s developers suggested that users switch to more powerful open-source game engines like Godot.
Suzanne
Preset Low poly 3D mesh
In February 2002, it was clear that the Blender software company, NaN, was going to shut down in March.
Still, one more release was made, which was Blender 2.25.As a kind of fun Easter egg and a final personal note, the artists and developers added a 3D model of a chimpanzee head, which they called a “monkey” in the software.It was created by Willem-Paul van Overbruggen (SLiD3), who named it Suzanne after the orangutan in the Kevin Smith movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Suzanne is a model used by Blender as an alternative to more common test models like the Utah Teapot and the Stanford Bunny.
It is a low-polygon model with just 500 faces, and it is included in Blender.It’s often used to test out materials, animations, rigs, textures, and lighting setups.Suzanne is included as a base shape, along with other forms like cubes and planes.
The biggest Blender contest gives an award called the Suzanne Award.