The classic free Anim8or software has finally hit 1.0

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

If not for a spurious CGTalk post, I wouldn’t have even noticed as the news actually dates from May
http://anim8or.com/download/index.html

As expected for any piece of free software that isn’t developed from an organization called the BF, the release notes are not that impressive (though for users pining for nostalgia, they can now create IK rigs and knife through meshes when modeling).

In addition, it looks like users can now render Chrome spheres on checkered floors (the year 2013 brought a basic raytracer), so those images from the 1980’s can be rendered now. People are apparently still using it though, and I would think the best thing now would be for the creator to make it open source (because as it is, the rather minimal rate of improvement can only go up).

And to think there was a time where it actually had advantages over Blender (such as modifiers and modeling with Ngons), this only shows that FOSS is the only free software model that seems to work if not backed by a large company. Still, it might be fun to give it a spin just for kicks (even though you’re not going to get any production-quality results).

Nostalgia trip, fun little piece of software, possible idea for “baby’s first 3D app.”, or should it go EOL?

2

As long as Blender 101 is at discussion state or is a WIP, there is a place for “baby’s first 3D animation app.”

This new interface seems to adopt big apps changes ( layers as collections of objects, fast-select).
UI still seems to be enough complete to understand basics and enough simple to avoïd to become frightening.
Being efficient is another problem that is not beginners’ problem. For this one, we are searching for solutions in Blender.