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Looking back on 2006

  Published by Bart on December 31st, 2006 in 3D News

final.jpgIt was a busy year for everyone who is involved with Blender in one way or another. The Blender Foundation been extremely busy with finishing Elephants Dream, organising the Siggraph Open Source Pavilion and the Blender Conference. But that's not all: the community has also really gained speed this year. More websites, tutorials and books have appeared than ever before.

Let's look back at some what we think were the major events this year.

Best wishes everyone, and see you next year!

Elephants Dream

The release of the world's first Open Source movie had a significant impact on Blender. Not only did it propel Blender's development beyond anything we have seen before, but it also placed Blender in the spotlight of the press and of 3D professionals.

While it was a fantastic work of art, there was also some criticism: its dark storyline requires multiple viewings to be fully understood and during the movie you can see the improvement of the skills of the artists. Still, this was the first movie project of this team and they had to discover their way through it as they went. To me, it seemed that professionals recognized this and their reviews were, for the most part, extremely positive.

At this moment the Blender Foundation is researching their options for a new 'Orange' project, hopefully on a more permanent basis.

Siggraph 2006: the Open Source Pavilion

For the first time since Not a Number went bankrupt, Blender had its own booth at Siggraph. It drew more attention than many commercial booths and put Open Source, but Blender in particular, firmly on the map for many 3d professionals. The booth featured continuous live workshops by leading Blender artists. A particular highlight was a visit by mr. Jim Blinn himself!

BlenderNation was present as well and prepared daily video reports of the event:

We recorded the following live tutorials:

Also, be sure to check out the Siggraph 2006 Blender Demo Reel. For a full list of all our Siggraph related articles, check out our Siggraph news category.

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18 Responses to “Looking back on 2006”  

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  1. 1 Cubedude04 Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 8:42 am

    It was a great year for blender

    It was the first year i started using it actually =D

    I believe i started about February

    I also found blender nation which i check every day

    Thankyou for providing updates, Tutorials and interesting news every day.

  2. 2 filipp Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 9:24 am

    Good job everyone!
    Happy New Year!

  3. 3 shul Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 9:31 am

    Great summary :-) Lot's have been done..

    I wonder what is planned for 2007..

    Happy new year

  4. 4 AniCator Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 9:37 am

    Blender is doing great. The game engine is getting improved. The renderer get's new features. Blender now also has a sculpting tool.
    Blender is really doing great!

    I'll have to wait 24-9=15 +/- 15 hours before it's new year here.
    Gtg to church.

    Have a happy new year!

  5. 5 Johan Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Bart and the other contributors of Blendernation, thanks for the effort in writing new and interesting things about Blender. Wish you all a happy and inspirational new year !! See you in 2007.

  6. 6 zooley Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 10:38 am

    Great year.
    Thanx for this wonderful (blender) community. Thanx also for BlenderNation (which i check every day).
    Happy New Year all of you.

  7. 7 Chris Stones Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 10:47 am

    Who did the music for the Siggraph 2006 Blender Demo Reel. If I could find out I would ask permission to use the music in a movie of mine. Anyway, I appreciate everything blender and the good blender folk have done. Blender his helping to make my dreams come true. Thanks you everyone and thank you blender nation for keeping me in the loop. face loop that is.

  8. 8 Bart Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 10:49 am

    @Chris: that music was composed by Jan Morgenstern (who also did the music and sound for Elephants Dream). You can contact him here: http://www.wavemage.com/contact-en.html

  9. 9 ZoltanPL Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 12:43 pm

    Right, good job. I think Blender is now a little bright star (and it's grow up all the time) - Blender Power!!!! hihihih Happy New Year!!!

  10. 10 r3615 Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    Great resumé of a busy year for Blender enthustiasts…
    Let's enjoy the New Year's Eve, The future is bright !
    Wishing the best for 2007 to the whole BlenderNation !!!

  11. 11 Brian Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    Its been a great year. You forgot to mention the excellent new editors you added this year! ;) *Cheers all* Lets have another good year.

  12. 12 Bart Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 3:01 pm

    Indeed I did! Gosh…

    Hooray for all our editors!

  13. 13 PlantPerson Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 4:18 pm

    You forgot to mention the Bullet physics engine and upcoming OGRE integration! ;)

  14. 14 Jasper Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 5:58 pm

    Happy New Year !

    My good plans for 2007 are:
    More working with Blender.(2006 was a lazy year for me and Blender kept on develloping; and i was standing still !)
    Stop making meself crazy by wanting to make moving animation, but concentrate on the design and make nice rendering of one frame.

    Best wishes to the blender community; respect to all the developers!

    @Cubedude04
    Februari is a good time to start with Blender!
    I looked back to my first Gingerbreadman (gus) in my old blend files.
    And it was from 9 march 2005; So it must be around februari that I had really started with Blender.

  15. 15 Joeri Edit Link Dec 31st, 2006 at 10:32 pm

    Happy newyear blendernation!

  16. 16 Bmud Edit Link Jan 1st, 2007 at 1:48 am

    Hip hip hoooray for Blender Nation. Thanks so much for posting every day. Thanks to all the people that helped at the Blender conference this year and the amazing quality of the video taken there. Thanks to all of YOU that commented on this post. I never feel like I'm alone when I run blender.exe in an empty room

  17. 17 Chris E Edit Link Jan 3rd, 2007 at 11:20 am

    i second that last statement.
    it's been 3 years since i first downloaded blender and I finally know how 2 use it now!!

    i've been thinking, maybe Blender could establish a new world order. . .

  18. 18 Tynach Edit Link Jan 7th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    Hmm… Blender World Domination…

    I say Ton should take over the world and force all the 3DS Max users to use Blender.

    "Time for 'Reprogramming class!'"

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