# Blender

From Wikipedia:

  Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. It further features an integrated game engine.

Blender is best known as a popular open source 3D modelling program.

## Installation

Install the blender package.

## GPU Rendering

Blender only officially supports only the proprietary drivers from both AMD (for GCN cards: AMDGPU; For pre-GCN cards: ATI) and NVIDIA. After installing the proprietary drivers, one can select the graphics card as a compute device under File -> User Preferences -> System.

## Professional Rendering Plugins

Blender is becoming increasingly well known in the professional industry. As such, there are now alternative rendering methods to the Blender Render and Cycles, in the form of plugins. This should serve as a list of the major professional rendering plugins that are released or upcoming for Linux.

### LuxRenderer

LuxRenderer is an open source rendering method that can also make use of openCL to render. To make use of it, simple install the package luxblend25 from the offical arch community repo, Then enable the LuxRender addon in the User Preferences box in Blender.

### RenderMan

RenderMan is a linux compatible proprietary rendering plugin that is free for use with blender under a non-commercial licence. See the Renderman page for setting it up with blender.

### Pro-Render

Pro-Render is an upcoming open source Blender rendering plugin from AMD that will allow any machine capable of OpenCL 1.2 the ability to create realistic GPU renders, allowing for faster work compared to the CPU.

## Troubleshooting

### Blender UI graphical corruption on AMDGPU driver

You may experience graphical corruption on the Blender user interface. Until this is fixed, the workaround is to use Triple Buffering for blender, that however may increase VRAM usage. This can be enabled by going to File -> User Preferences -> System, changing the Window Draw Method to Triple Buffering.

### Blender does not show the AMD card as an OpenCL rendering device

Blender only supports the official AMD proprietary drivers for rendering with OpenCL, meaning you will need to use AMD OpenCL drivers:

- Install AMDGPU#AMDGPU PRO
- Install opencl-amdAUR driver alongside the open source AMDGPU driver

After installation, the AMD GPU should now appear as a selectable device under File -> User Preferences -> System -> Compute Device.

Category:

- Applications