Blender is the popular Blender open source software for 3D modelling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback packaged as a portable app, so you can do your rendering on the go. This release updates to the latest version of Blender. Note that settings will be reset on upgrade from versions prior to 2.57b. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free.

Software for 3D modeling, rendering, animation, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Modeling. A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType). 'Smooth proxy' style catmull-clark subdivision surfaces. Boolean mesh functions. Editing functions such as extrude, bevel, cut, spin, screw, warp, subdivide, noise, smooth Soft selection editing tools for organic modeling. Python scripting access for custom tools

Features
- Animation
· Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics, auto skinning and interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
· Non-linear animation mixer with automated walkcycles along paths
· Constraint system
· Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
· Character animation pose editor
· Animatable lattice deformation
· 'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
· Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
· Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects
- Realtime 3D/game creation
· Graphical editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
· Collision detection and dynamics simulation
· Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
· Supports all OpenGL lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
· Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
· Audio, using the fmod toolkit
· Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces
- Rendering
· Very fast inbuilt raytracer
· Integral support for the famous Yafray render engine
· Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
· Environment maps, halos, lens flares, fog
· Various surface shaders such as Lambert, Phong, Oren-nayar, Blinn, Toon
· Edge rendering for toon shading
· Procedural Textures
· Ambient Occlusion
· Radiosity solver
· Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman (RIB), Povray, Virtualight
· UV texture editor with various mesh unwrap modes
- Interface
· Flexible user configurable window layout
· Powerful object-oriented data system
· Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
· Windows for animation curves/keys, schematic scene diagram, non-linear video sequence editing, character animation action editor, non-linear animation mixer, image/UV editing, file/image selection and file management
· Inbuilt text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
· Consistent interface across multiple platforms
- Files
· Save all scene data in a single .blend file
· .blend format supports compression, digital signatures, encryption, forwards/backwards compatibility and can be used as a library to link to from other .blend files
· Read / Write TGA, JPG, PNG, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
· Native import and export for DXF, Inventor and VRML files, with python scripts available for many other 3D formats
· Create stand-alone executables containing interactive 3D content or play back with the 3d web browser plugin

Blender 2.69 official release - October 31, 2013
After three release candidate tests, we now have a final stable 2.69 release. Enjoy!
- FBX import is now supported, along with improved export. New mesh modeling tools were added and existing ones improved.
- Modeling
A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.
- Motion Tracker
The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage
- Addons
FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).
- Cycles Render
* Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring.
* Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.
* Tone mapping now works in the viewport, with photographic film emulation.
- More Features
Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.
- Bug fixes
In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.