When Flow won its best Animation Oscar in 2025, director Gints Zilbalodis' predicted that Blender, the free animation software used to make the movie, would revolutionise filmmaking, allowing young creatives to make exciting films with limited resources.
We've already seen signs of that happening with movies like Backrooms, which began as a Blender animation, but the hurdles of time, resources and a steep learning curve remain. Until now, Blender Studio, the Blender Foundation's production arm, has been helping by developing short open movies, for which it shares documentation and project files so users can learn from the process.
