What is Blender ?

Blender is a free 3D graphics application. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications.

Advantages:

Blender is free opensource software and can be used commercially without any restrictions.It is fast, very powerfull and absolutely stable. It is available for several operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Review on BBC network

Here you can download Blender 2.48:

External renderers

There is an excellent integration of external renderers which are freely availble as well. One of my favorites is Luxrender

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LuxRender is an open-source, free software rendering system for physically correct, unbiased image synthesis. Rendering with LuxRender means simulating the flow of light according to physical equations. This produces realistic, photographic-quality images.

We organize Blender courses:

Lessons for individuals as well as for groups up to 6 persons. The courses are taking place in our Punavuoridesign studio in Punavuorenkatu 1.

The courses will also introduce the freely available Luxrender to achieve photo realistic rendering results.

Screenshot of luxrender exporter in Blender!