Siggraph 2006: Eugene’s Exhibition Retrospective

The Open Source Pavilion was astounding.  Inkscape, GIMP, Jahshaka, Gnome, Uni-Verse, Aqsis, and Blender, all standing on the same red carpet of booth 1527.  The booth was manned and visited by the greatest people one can meet, so that alone was worth the trip.  Being located right in front of one of the main entrances I was truly amazed at the volume of people that were at the booth with interest in one or all of the applications that were being showcased.  And there was continued presence of people coming to the demos presented on the big screen.  We had a 9 seat “theater” for the demos and there was also usually a crowd just outside of the booth’s perimeter watching intently.  All the demos were great but let me tell you about four.

1. One demo that stands out to me was when Andy (@ndy) was going to do the same modeling demo he had done throughout the exhibition (going over all the tools Blender has), but instead decided to not speak at all, and just freestyle a model from scratch using Blender’s modeling tools.  Within 20 minutes he had created a beautifully modeled organic alien face that kept those attending the demo absolutely riveted.  Everyone was quietly watching and their eyes never left the screen.  Of course, all the demos caused that response thanks to all the presenters knowing their material and showing that Blender is professional grade.
2. Bobby Parker (Sh0rtWave) gave demos on Aqsis (an Open Source implementation of the Renderman standard) and using it with Blender.  The functionality that Sh0rtWave has built is unbelievable and when the Blender to Renderman script he has devised is released it will be an amazing addition to your workflow.
3. Groo showed off the fluid simulation a few times which was always a crowd pleaser. For the final demo he added some demo videos from Mike Pan (mpan3) which you should definitely take a look at.  Mike also has some of the sims in .blend form as well.  Also, Bart and Groo discovered that you can animate a fluid inflow to either leave the domain or scale it to nothingness to turn-off the inflow at a specific frame.
4. The Uni-Verse team had several demo slots and Eskil always delivered a great performance.  If you haven’t learned about Verse already, now is the time.  At Siggraph, the Verse team was visited by companies both large a small, and given Verse’s unique abilities it certainly drew a wide array of people to the Open Source booth.

Almost the entirety of the 3D applications attending Siggraph had demos and computers set up, but we had the most machines and most staff (from what I counted) for the explicit purpose of individually walking anyone through any of Blender’s features that was interested or walked by.  The highlight for me was meeting Blender users from all around the world, and all over the forums, and even some that used to use Blender but haven’t seen it lately – suffice to say, they were impressed.  Even after three days, I still needed to call some people by their BA names, luckily I didn’t have that problem with some (ahem – Bob Holcomb (aka bob_holcomb)).  Those attending Siggraph that visited the booth were always impressed with all the applications, and my favorite response to the most asked question “What operating system is Blender for,” was invariably “All.”  Though in retrospect I could have used Marlon Brando’s response from the “The Wild One” question “What are you rebelling against?” to which Brando replied “What’ve you got?”

I thought our presence at the exhibition was also refreshing for Siggraph because we weren’t trying to sell anything.  The booth crew showed what the applications could do and how great they were not because we were being paid or would get a commission, but because we love it.  And I think that was the biggest difference between us and “the rest.”