The Blender Foundation has announced its release of version 2.53 beta.

Blender is a free, open-source 3D animation and game design package. I’ve taught it in the past in my New Media Projects course, but no student has ever chosen a Blender creation for a term project, and some of my textually-minded English majors have in the past freaked out (to various degrees) when confronted with the interface.  I will probably not include it on the syllabus this fall, in order to make room for other things, but I still love what its suite of tools can do.