Blender is a free, open-source, and mind-blowingly powerful 3D graphics tool. Some of the best Blender documentation is in the form of a community-authored wiki, though most of that is written for people who already know their way around a computer. My own initial experiences with Blender were halting and frustrating, until I found James Chronsiter's excellent Blender Basics, 2nd Ed. Some of the exercises in that book won't be very relevant to what I'm hoping to teach in this course, but it's still the best, most careful introduction I've seen. Blender is updated on a regular basis, so already some of the screen captures don't match up with what you'll see in the program, but we'll make do.

Blender is free, and available for a wide variety of computer systems.

There are plenty of Blender tutorials out there, if your'e looking for more intense instruction in a specific area.