Blender 2.73 was released today, and it contains an awesome new feature that allows you to export Blender Freestyle renders into SVG format that can be further edited in Inkscape.

Blender is a free and open source 3D computer graphics application that is used for a wide range of different things, including 3D modeling and animation. One of the features in blender is a line based nonphotorealistic (NPR) rendering engine that can be used to create lineart-style stills and animations such as this render I created of the GNOME Builder robotic crane:

The new feature that was added to the Blender version 2.73 allows exporting of an SVG from a Freestyle render. This creates the ability to model a 3D object in blender, create a Freestyle render, export it to SVG, and then open it up in Inkscape to edit and tweak it further. Here is a sample frame I rendered of the GNOME Builder crane, after opening it in inkscape and fine-tuning all the paths and strokes, and playing with different colours:

builder-linework