NeoGeo

NeoGeo was a Dutch 3D animation studio founded by Ton Roosendaal Ton RoosendaalTon Roosendaal is a Dutch art director and self-taught software developer and the creator of the free and open-source 3D creation software Blender. He began writing Blender in late 1993 at NeoGeo, the animation studio he founded, and in 2002 founded the non-profit Blender Foundation, which used crowdfunding to release Blender as open source under the GNU GPL; he then served for many years as the foundation’s chairman and as Blender CEO, and from January 1, 2026, became chairman of the foundation’s Supervisory Board.Open the full entry in the late 1980s; the free and open-source 3D software Blender began as its in-house tool.

Contents6 sections

Key facts

1988–1989Founding

Ton Roosendaal dropped out of his industrial design studies to start the 3D animation studio. Its founding year is given as both 1989 and 1988, the latter account describing Roosendaal as a co-founder; another account says he started it with a handful of friends. The studio was initially based in Roosendaal’s attic. It is unrelated to the video game console of the same name, which appeared a year later.⁠[1][2][3][1][1]

1992–1997The Eindhoven Years and Growth

NeoGeo grew rapidly, becoming the largest 3D animation studio in the Netherlands and one of the leading animation houses in Europe. Its productions for large corporate clients such as Philips won European Corporate Video Awards in 1993 and 1995. From 1992 to 1997, the studio’s office was in Eindhoven.⁠[1][2][2][4]

At the studio, Roosendaal was responsible for both art direction and internal software development. NeoGeo initially used its own in-house 3D software, Traces; the studio also made a 3D game called The Lost Ride.⁠[2][3][3]

January 2, 1994Blender Is Born at NeoGeo

Roosendaal concluded that NeoGeo’s existing in-house 3D tools were too old and cumbersome to maintain and decided to rewrite them from scratch. On January 2, 1994, he wrote the first source files titled “Blender”, a date still regarded as Blender’s official birthday. Blender was originally planned as an in-house application for NeoGeo and grew out of the studio’s series of pre-existing tools, including a ray tracer written for the Amiga; Blender 1.0 was launched in January 1995. It took 15 months from the first files to software ready for production use as an in-house tool at NeoGeo.⁠[2][1][1][1][4]

January 1998Releasing Blender Publicly

As Blender matured, Roosendaal came to see it as a tool that artists outside the studio could also use. In January 1998, NeoGeo released the SGI version of Blender, followed in April of that year by Linux and FreeBSD versions; the software could be downloaded from NeoGeo’s FTP site.⁠[2][3][3][3]

1998Partial Takeover and the Not a Number Spin-Off

In mid-1998, part of NeoGeo’s business was taken over by another company, Alatis. After NeoGeo closed, Roosendaal and his partner Frank van Beek founded Not a Number (NaN) in June 1998 as a NeoGeo spin-off dedicated to developing and marketing Blender.⁠[3][1][5][2]