French publishing giant Ubisoft has announced it is joining the Blender Development Fund as a corporate gold member.

The publisher is not only backing online support for Blender developers but will also be using it for Ubisoft Animation Studio productions, a department of Film and Television. Developers will also be assigned to contribute to the foundation's open-source projects.

Blender is a free to use open-source 3D creation suite with a full range of tools enabling artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games. It recently received backing from Epic Games to the tune of $1.2 million grant as part of the Epic MegaGrant fund.

The money will go towards professionalising the Blender development initiative.

“Blender was for us an obvious choice,” said Ubisoft Animation head of production Pierrot Jacquet.

“Its strong and engaged community paired up with the vision carried by the Blender Foundation makes it one of the most creative DCC of the market.”

Blender founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal added: “Good news keeps coming. It’s such a miracle to witness the industry jumping on board with us.

"I’ve always admired Ubisoft as one of the leading games and media producers in the world. I look forward to work with them and help them finding their ways as a contributor to our open source projects on blender.org.“

This story was originally published on PCGamesInsider.biz.