How to Install Blender 3D on Ubuntu 18.04

The Blender 3D application is a popular, free and open-source toolset for creating and editing 3D computer graphics. These include high-definition animated films, visual effects, 3D models, and interactive 3D applications such as video games.

This article describes how to install and launch the Blender application on your Ubuntu through:

  • The Official Blender website (UI based installation)
  • The Ubuntu Software Manager (UI based installation)
  • Through Snap, and through PPA repository (command-line based installation)

We have run the commands and procedures mentioned in this article on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS system.

Method 1: From the official Blender website

The official Blender website provides downloadable tar.bz2 files for the latest stable and beta versions of Blender, on the following link:

https://www.blender.org/download/

Download Blender from blender.org

Click on the Download Blender link or select a specific version from the “Windows, macOS, and other versions” link. You can also be more adventurous and try a beta version if one is available on this website.

Choose Blender 3D version

When you have selected a Blender version by clicking on it, the following dialog will appear:

Save file on local disk

Select the Save File option and click OK in order to download the tar.bz2 file on your system. The file is around 135 MB and might take some time to download, depending on your Internet speed.

Next, open the location where you have saved the file; it is mostly your Downloads folder by default.

Extract the archive file

Right-click on the Blender tar.bz2 file and select Extract Here from the options. When the files are extracted into a folder by the same name, open the folder and try to locate the “blender” executable file.

Run Blender 3D

Right-click the ‘blender’ file and then select Run from the options. This will open the Blender application as follows:

Blender 2.7.9

Every time you want to access/launch the application, you can run the Blender file from the same location.

If you ever want to remove the application from your system, installed through this method, you can simply delete the folder you extracted from the tar.gz2 file.

Method 2: Install Blender 3D through Ubuntu Software Manager

For a person who does not want to open the Command Line much, installing software present in the Ubuntu repository through the UI is very simple. On your Ubuntu desktop Activities toolbar, click the Ubuntu Software icon.

Open the software manager

In the following view, click on the search icon and enter Blender in the search bar. The search results will list the Blender entries as follows:

Search for Blender

All these releases are from different developers. You can click on any entry to see who the developer is. We will prefer the one available on the Snap store.

Click the Blender package that suits your requirements, from the search results. The following dialog will appear:

Click on Blender in the software list

Click the Install button to begin the installation process. The following authentication dialog will display for you to provide your authentication details as only an authorized user can install software on Ubuntu.

Authenticate yourself as admin user

Enter your password and click the Authenticate button. After that, the installation process will begin, displaying a progress bar as follows.

Installing Blender 3D

Blender will then be installed to your system and you will get the following message after a successful installation:

Launch Blender

Through the above dialog, you can choose to directly launch Blender and even Remove it immediately for whatever reason.

Launch Blender

You can launch Blender through the UI any time you want by entering relevant keywords in the Ubuntu Dash or access it directly from the Applications list.

Search for Blender on dash

Remove Blender

You can uninstall Blender through the Ubuntu Software manager by first searching for it through the Search button and then clicking the Remove button from the following view:

Uninstalling Blender

A dialog will ask you if you are sure about removing the software from your system. Please enter the Remove button to uninstall Blender. An authentication dialog will display for you to provide the authentication details for a sudo user as only an authorized user can install software on Ubuntu. Enter your password and click the Authenticate button. After that, the uninstall process will begin, removing Blender from your system.

Method 3: Install Blender on the command line

Open your Ubuntu command line, the Terminal, either through the Dash or by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut. You can then install Blender either through the Snap store or through the Thomas Schiex PPA repository.

Install Blender with Snap

If you do not have the Snap utility installed on your system, you can install it by running the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install snapd xdg-open-snapd

The system will ask you for your password as only an authorized user can add, update, remove and configure software on Ubuntu.

Then enter the following command in order to install Blender through Snap:

$ sudo snap install blender --classic

Install Blender Classic

This will install the latest version of Blender available in the Snap store.

In case you want to remove Blender installed through this method, you can do so through the following command:

$ sudo snap remove blender

Install Blender through the Thomas Schiex PPA repository

Open the Terminal and enter the following command to add the Thomas Schiex repository to your Ubuntu.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

This repository keeps the latest available and the most reliable version of Blender.

Install Blender from PPA

Then enter the following command in order to update your system’s software repository index with that of the Internet so that you can install the latest release of the software.

$ sudo apt-get update

Update package lists

Now enter the following apt-get command in order to install the latest Blender version:

$ sudo apt-get install blender

Install Blender

The system will prompt you with a Y/n to confirm the beginning of the installation procedure. Enter Y and then hit Enter. The installation process will begin and might take some time depending on your Internet speed. Blender then will be installed on your system.

Remove Package

In order to uninstall Blender from your system, enter the following command as sudo:

$ sudo apt-get remove blender

Remove Blender Package

The system will prompt you with a Y/n option in order to begin the uninstall procedure. Please enter Y and hit Enter to begin. Blender will then be removed from your system.

If you wish to remove the Thomas Schiex PPA repository from your system, you can do so by opening the Software & Updates utility from your Ubuntu Dash.

Remove PPA repository

Select the required PPA that you want to remove and then click the Remove button.

Please choose any one of the methods that suits you from the ones we have presented in this article. You can then reliably work with this toolset to create and edit animated films, visual effects, 3D models, video games and much more.