This reference manual covers the fundamental general concepts behind the software, the interface, each editor, every operator, asset, and property in detail. You can print and download every chapter, and navigate the documentation through the workspaces, breadcrumbs, and chapter sidebars and footers.
This project is developed by artists, for artists for free.
This is a complete suite to create artistic content, offering you the full 3D art pipeline to create game graphics art, pre-rendered movies and images and more.
This is a feature complete 3D authoring software. This includes all steps of any animation or rendering pipeline.
Bforartists is fully compatible with Blender files, hotkeys, extensions, themes and addons. Every feature that works in Blender should also work in Bforartists. Also, every release is always up to date with the newest Blender version based on the present and future Main Trunk of Blender. The toolset and architecture is essentially the same.
Where this differs the most is the interface and the the user experience: with priority set to a mouse first user experience, visual indicators, accessible usability, and quality of life assets and tools right out of the box.
Anyone who wants to be creative at home, at work, as a hobbyist, an independent artist, freelance artists, as an artists in the production pipeline, as artists in the art industry, and everyone who also wants to get creative with 3D.
... you would like to use Blender but come from other software like Houdini, Maya, 3DSMax, Cinema4D, Substance Designer, Softimage, trueSpace, Adobe After Effects and others.
With Bforartists you can feel more at home with the full Blender feature set - through an additional interface paradigm that gives you a visual, discoverable and accessible user experience.
If you like to see where to click, prefer to use tool shelves over hotkeys, or want some great default settings and assets from the first download, this is for you.
If you do come from Blender, this version has all features (plus some extra goodies) and ships with the default Blender hotkeys. You can also migrate your Blender settings to Bforartists and also back-port some settings to Blender if necessary.
Meaning that every section and chapter explains the available areas, tools, operators, properties, interface elements and general concepts explaining what it is, how to use it, and why.
The documentation does not contain tutorials or quick start guides. But if you'd like to get started this way, we do provide some quick start guides here. This manual does not explain workflows on how to create artwork but focuses on how to use the tools to make artwork.
If you’d like to learn the creative fundamentals, there are numerous courses and tutorials for Blender from the community which will translate to Bforartists workflows seamlessly.
This manual has been currently updated to 11th of November, 2025 for Bforartists 5.0.0
Each section of the documentation is from a top down structure - from higher level concepts to detailed concepts. You can discover each section in the next chapter which will cover how to use the documentation
