Like any good interface a certain amount of customizable features are presented to the user. You are able to split any view panel in Blender to use it for any purpose. Customizing Blender is easy and practical. If you simply right click on a border of a view port you are able to split that current port and change it to other interface windows (Button window, NLA editor, script editor..etc).

If you do not like the default color scheme you are able to alter any interface items color by accessing the hidden pull down preferences window. The pull down menu also has most of the other preferences you will want to adjust such as switching your rotation style from trackball to turntable.

The modeling tools

Blender has a nice set of tools for subdivision surface modeling (also for hard surface modeling) that can be accessed by the use of keyboard shortcuts. The interface itself has the tools but generally it is easier to access the feature you need quickly with a stroke of a key. For instance, the W key brings up the 'special' tool menu which contains various tools including Subdivide, Smooth, Flip Normals, Merge, Bevel...etc. One of the tools I would like to make special mention of is the Knife tool. In Blender you are presented with 3 options when using the knife tool in edge mode. First is 'Exact Line' which pretty self explanitory in that it will just cut a line in your mesh folowing the curve of your line cut sketch. Second is the 'Midpoint' mode where it will try to keep the polygons you cut all quads. Here's a quick video of this cut mode in action

http://team.subdivisionmodeling.com/pnoland/movies/blender/knife_midpoints.mov

You can see that the results are not always perfect but when used properly this makes for a handy feature for quickly cutting edges for wrinkles in skin and clothing. The third option is 'multicut' which will take one single cut sketch and multiply it by how ever many times you need it to. This feature is also handy for things like forehead wrinkles. Blender also has all the standard tools you would come to expect from a modeling application such as Extrude and Bevel which act as any other application would. Blender has basic loop selection found in many other programs. It works in edge and face mode as you would normally expect. Over all the tools for subdivision modeling in Blender are very easy to manage and are powerful. This tool set should suit the most advanced modelers and beginners alike.

The Bottom Line  If you are interested in 3d modeling, rendering, and or animation but are on a budget then this is the application for you. Currently in this version you have the power to create scenes that would rival any of the other 3d application on the market, it's all up to you the artist. For rendering, the Blender internal renderer is fast enough for most scenes and even includes ambient occlusion. If you are needing global illumination rendering then you will want to take advantage of the Yafray render engine which Blender fully supports directly from the Blender interface! LINKS CGFocus Blender Forum http://www.cgfocus.com Blender Foundation's main page- http://www.blender3d.com Yafray render engine- http://www.yafray.org Blender community forum- http://www.elysiun.com