People Press

Interview with Ton in Linux User & Developer Magazine

Bart ·


What’s next for Blender

At the moment, we have to focus on the next release of Blender, and there a lot of loose ends from the Elephants Dream project. There are things that were added in the Google Summer of Code project that we have to get into a stable release. I would like to migrate a few more of my responsibilities, as there’s still too much depending on my availability. I’m also the person who likes to organise things and get things done, so I can’t do the next movie project if I’m developing too much.

One of the things we’re going to do after the next release is a complete re-code of the internal event tool system, customisable hot keys, and Python integration with the event system. Then I hope in the Spring, we’ll be ready for the next Open Movie project, which like the first one will be a temporary project in a studio for half a year, or there’s a possibility it will become permanent. An open studio where artists and developers can come over to work on independent cinema, using open and free software. The Mozilla style of corporation could work well for computer graphics, especially because there is a big community of developers, but most importantly because developers could come over for just two weeks or a couple of months to work together on specific areas. They won’t be able to give up their jobs or their lives, but they might be available for a short period. Even though the internet is great, and software developers love to work via the internet because they don’t get disturbed, meeting in person is always much better.

That kind of central hub where people can meet and work on projects together is something I think we really miss. Maybe we can even expand that to other open source projects like games, or video editing. There are a lot of computer graphics open source projects that find it difficult to get into the commercial or professional market. I don’t know why – most of these projects are being organised by technical guys which are happy when the software works, when it compiles, or when they can do cool things. They’re not so interested in going to trade shows or to give talks, to make sure they get reviews in magazines and that kind of stuff. The Blender Foundation is doing that pretty well, because of my commercial background. I don’t mind organising things, setting targets, or having deadlines.

Author Bart
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
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