The first batch of Blender Conference videos has been published. More will be added when postprocessing is complete. A big thanks to Kaveh Bazargan for processing & hosting the vids!
Blender Conference videos online
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
Autodesk internal discussion about Softimage
Do you want to know how Autodesk made the decision to buy Softimage? A secret video was recorded during an internal meeting, and it reveals how they made the decision!
Elephants Dream: Alternate Soundtrack
Daniele Carli has taken his own approach to the open source project ‘Elephants Dream’, by redesigning the soundtrack/sfx and posting it on his site. Its a good demonstration of yet another interesting way to use an open source film like Elephants Dream.
The 2008 Blender Conference Animation Festival and Suzanne Awards outcome.
This year’s Animation Festival rocked! Organiser Dolf (Macouno) reports.
Autodesk Acquires Softimage
“SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Oct. 23, 2008 — Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) and Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Autodesk to acquire substantially all of the assets of Avid’s Softimage business unit for approximately $35 million.” (full press release)
Suite Noire by Matray
Matray , who created “Meischeid” has created a new animation. Suite Noire, an opening for French TV show, that unfortunately, was never aired because the client didn’t think it was appropriate.
Introducing the BlenderNation Community Store
Both Blender and the Blender community have been advancing at an incredible pace over the last two years – there is more and more activity and the users are rapidly becoming more professional. Being editors of BlenderNation we’re in front-row seat watching an amazing journey!
As a result, more commercial products and services are appearing. In a article which I wrote over 2,5 years ago I was already putting forward my belief that these commercial endeavors are a GOOD thing for Blender (and for Open Source in general) – they give more credibility to the project by providing much-needed documentation, training, support, access to developers and artists.
Still, how do you sell your product or service to a community? So far, getting a post on BlenderNation was the best thing you could hope for – most people will sell really well for a few days but then the effect falls off and you’re back in the dark. There had to be a better way.
Geoffrey Bantle (aka) Briggs
I have been actively working on Blender’s code base since 2006. My initial contributions were in providing more advanced selection and modification tools for the mesh modeler such as edge collapse, path select, loop to-region and region to loop among others. Since then I have primarily been involved in the research and development of a new mesh modeler for Blender that addresses the shortcomings of the current system.
Additionally I have been responsible for the maintenance and development of the OpenFlight import and export scripts included with Blender. To complement the enhanced level of functionality now present in these scripts I have also created several applications and utilities for editing FLT data such as palettes, LOD and DOF nodes, sub faces and external references directly inside of Blender.
Contact: [email protected]
Campbell Barton (aka) Ideasman42
I Started out as a technical artist in 2003 and became involved in blender development to improve my own workflow by adding tools, fixing bugs and developing an exporter to develop an efficient Blender pipeline for large scenes.
Since then I have worked on a number of commercial simulation projects and more recently the peach open movie project “Big Buck Bunny” in Amsterdam as a technical director and developed the game logic for Apricot open game “YoFrankie”.
Key features I have worked on include writing Autodesk FBX export, Wavefront OBJ import/export, BVH Motion capture import, X3D & VRML importers, Fly Mode, Lightmap UVPack, Smart Projections, box packing for uv unwrap.
I have also helped maintain the python api 3ds,lightwave import/export merged UV/Face select into editmode, improved Blender’s linked library system, refactored the game engine’s joystick support and made various additions to Blender’s view navigation and video sequencer.
I’m interested in helping people use blender for specific workflows to meet their needs.
Contact: [email protected]
BCONF 2008: Livestream
The Blender Conference 2008 has kicked off. Here’s the live stream (VLC link)!
Update: Kaveh wrote “I am broadcasting a second feed of just the screen, which is more readable. It is here: http://www.river-valley.tv. It is experimental but seems to be working. In addition, we’ll be uploading higher resolution recordings as the postprocessing is done.”
