Blender just released their fourth short film called “Tears of Steel”. It’s a 12 minute sci-fi short that has an enormous amount of visual effects.

The film was done by Blender Foundation on a limited budget, with a small crew, using the open source software Blender. When taken that into account the film is visually stunning. The film looks like it was done at a high end visual effects house.

Tears of Steel is proof that you don’t need expensive equipment to make a good film these days. With the right amount of knowledge and elbow grease you can produce high end work.

The last three previous short film of Blender Foundation has been mainly animation, so “Tears of Steel” is showcasing how mature the software has become in the visual effects arena.

Currently, Blender works on the Mac, PC, Linux, and FreeBSD. The software can model, shade, animate, render, composite, and do interactive 3D. I haven’t used it for a production, but I did play around with it since it’s free to download and it is a powerful piece of software.

Also, it has an enormous community base, which always helps when your starting out.

Take a look at the video below.
[video_embed id=”R6MlUcmOul8″ site=”youtube”]

If your interested you download Blender here: http://www.blender.org/