For the last few years, the Blender Foundation has been partly financed by subsidies from the European Union. The subsidy rounds are called 'Framework Programmes', and the deadline for project proposals for the seventh Framework Programme is nearing. Ton Roosendaal sent in the following article in search of ideas and assistance for this next round.
Hi,
The European Union has 54 billion euros (thats over 70 billion dollars) for research/development projects available. Verse for example has received such a grant in 2003. Now, do we want this money again, and how?
I do have some insight now in this subsidy bizz, and I'm extremely reluctant in accepting a role for another EU project. An exception could be if we can define such a project to be 100% Blender related, or 100% "free and open source 3D creation tool" based. Lead by the Blender Foundation, for example.
The conditions to get accepted are varied, but the 'consortium' model might work best:
- Form a consortium, consisting of at minimum 3 legal entities in 2 EU countries
- Other consortium partners can be outside of EU too (limited list of countries, but Australia, USA and Argentina are allowed)
- Make a research/development plan for 3-4 years.
Financial compensations are based on a load of variables, but to summarize;
- Universities can get 100% of costs funded
- Companies 50% (but some direct costs 100%)
Now I'm well aware of the dangers of accepting money and committing to long term plans. Dangers are for example:
- Accepting responsibility for work you don't believe in anymore
- Accepting work on topics you find out is useless
- Losing involvement/commitment from user communities
- Accept enormous administration overheads
- Yes, money corrupts in general!
On the other hand, I know the dangers and we only now (deadline May 8) have the opportunity, a next EU subsidy round might be in 4-5 years. What could work is:
- Define a flexible and feasible project for where Blender should be in 2012
- Find the natural partners for this; i.e. universities, institutes, companies or studios that already contribute to Blender development
- Find a way for how these contributors don't (have to) make up Blender itself, but participate within the blender.org community projects as equal members.
This can also enable or support a series of (or permantently established) "Orange" projects. Content driven projects to make animation movies (or games).
OK, enough dreaming! I think we need first two things;
- Who is interested to *work* on such plans (not only interested to get money!).
- Can we write a 2012 Blender design without blocking innovation or alienating our user/development community?
-Ton-
More information:
59 Comments
The Mayans talked about the age of revealing in 2012.
Who knew they were talking about Blender all this time!
Great news indeed! I contacted my faculty yesterday to see if my university is interested in participating in such a project. We currently use Blender as the official tool in our Digital Media course (dumped Maya ;-) ), so maybe there will be a positive response. We'll see :-)
I am interested in working on such plans.
I run a little vfx studio an we use Blender (besides commercial tools) for feature film vfx production.
Maybe it is possible to create a real competitive open source vfx production pipeline until 2012 ?
Mppic,
it would be excellent to have a number of universties for a animation consortium.
Other possible consortiums are for architecture consortium; scientific visualization; and robotics.
Those interested please contact myself ( LetterRip At gmail dot com ) or Ton (ton at blender dot org ) or email bf-committers, bf-committers might be best.
LetterRip
I am not an expert to this things - but make a plan till 2012 ?
I think in computer buisiness that is like make a plan from Roman Empire till french revolution - isn´t it ?
Means this boosting blender with help of the EU or does it mean to much limitation ?
I am intrested to see the reactions of the community.
.. i know that was not a helpfull post - only a comment by my sponsored by my stomach ;)
Well... since we're talking about dreaming...
This 5-6 years are enough for a feature-film production... =)
i would like to work, im looking for a job using blender here in my local place, but working world wide is also a very nice thing.
I think what would greatly benefit the Blender community (developer and user alike) is if Blender get more promotion in universities (lots of lab still consider Maya or 3DSmax as a paragon of CG...)
Students in art and motion picture wouldn't spit on a great CG software that is free...
Students learning informatic would acquire skills by working on/studying Blender code... (developers could do lectures and seminar in universities)
Labs could use Blender as an experimental sand box to develop new stuffs... Some of these could be implemented later on...
Blender could benefit of many thing :
- Technological breakthrough (CG research labs)
- Open and innovative brains (students) because a professional working with professional package has little to no reason to make the switch to Blender.
- Universities are great place to make big conventions with a lot of people ! Lots of huge empty space during weekend and vacations.
- Fame ( blenderheads will never admit that they love being the center of attention :p)
On the other hand, universities would get :
- A great tool
- Open source code they can use to teach and learn
- Fame ( academics will never admit that they love being the center of attention :p)
Would be great if Blender took such a dimension in european universities. :)
Hey,
I am following the Blender project since the beginning and I see great potential not only in animated film creation but also game development. As I am a sound designer by profession I would like to see Blender developing as a central tool for film creation and postproduction, including audio postproduction. (This includes cutting, adding effects, working on several channels of course, mixing and mastering - all put together using the already residing technology and new ones for audio processing)
I see ways for integrating FELXIBLE 3D-Audio production for the first time in industry. If you want to know more, please drop me a mail. Up to now, audio post production of film material is a long and painful process but with Blender we could use the 3d-abilities to provide the audio professional an intuitive way to add 3d-placed audio in movement, reacting on environment audio properties (including muffling, material reflection indicies and so on).
I do not overlook the overall possibilities of Blender, I am concentrating on my area of profession but I am willed to participate in a new Blender project.
Best Regards,
Carsten
I agree with Carsten to the fact that Blender could really turn into a real creativity blender of stuff, and since I'm studying sound engineering over here his propositions are of interest to me as well.
Good !this will improved blender in many area of ground production and hign quallity blendering,but don't expect
other 3d sorfware companies will complete will blender
right now mayas developer,investors,and those greety
baster are trying to dereroaded blender futures by offerring
discounts on their products.
I still find Blender that easy to model and textures and animate this is the best 3d sorfware I ever come across.
LOLO
I think it would be intresting to get Blender between Maya, 3Ds Max, Lightwave and all those very commercial 3D application with 1 difference, it would be totally free.
As loads of differen commercial companies have tried to get the patent law into EU like we know about USA and it has been rejected, I think we have the mission to show exactly what opensource can do.
Why not start a Blender research lab, where things like some advanced fluids systems are being developed, new and faster render methodes, maybe totally new features which could get commercial companies intrested to actually use it in there own applications or just make some sort of cooperation. Like Maya was intrested in Blender's Fluids, well go for it >:)
And what about a company that produces CG movies in Europe with only opensource applications and besides that, it also looks from a different side what could be improved, added towards opensource things? And where exactly do we have a big CG company like Pixar in Europe? well we can do it now before someone else does.
Maybe we could also cooperate with loads of different opensource project and organise 1 big project, who knows and produce a big opensource cg movie pipeline production or something. :D
Also everyone and I think as well Ton is curious what Blender 3.0 will contain and would be, and I think this is also a great opportunity to have that as an another goal. Blender 3.0 in 2012 with totally rewritten code for optimal speed and perfect for a cg movie production pipeline including loads of different function to actually produce a cg movie.
I remember that someone on BConf 06 was talking about Blender speedup, well we have enough time to actually give blender a speed boost, and make it run 10 times faster as he told on the conference.
So in short terms:
- opensource cg movie production pipeline
- blender 3.0 rewrite, speedy, optimized for real cg movie production and newer openGL
- blender research lab, discover new technics, features, and make commercial guys intrested in those features.
- once a year, Europian opensource CG Conference ( whoow sounds awesome )
- blender education, where we aim to produce books, support service, lessons and loads more for use in school, universities and maybe game creation which is really popular and expanding in The Netherlands right now.
in a user point of view a "EU open studio" based on blender could pump the european 3d animation, im portuguese, and here we just dont have the money to produce a full 3d animation movie, so i think that a integrated development/prodution studio financed by the EU can make a huge diference to the 3d secene in europe.
why not asoociate all open source sofware for make a bog film,by exemple jahashka,blender gimp nd more
...Hy...
"Yes, money corrupts in general!"
Very wise words...
So university but also research. Can't walk close to some EU project? Vrml was born as a EU project...
There should be a "free part" in the organization, so if in 5 years world will change will be possible to follow the wind...
The most important thing lacking from Blender is COMPLETE support (i.e. including skinned meshes/armatures) for either Collada or FBX formats. Without that, Blender can't interoperate in an animation workflow; all the character animation data is trapped in Blender. This is OK if you're only using Blender for cinematic output, but if you want to use Blender character anim in a game engine (i.e. Unity) or import your work into Maya/3DS, you're SOL. This is of such critical importance, and I don't know why there's not more urgency to fix it - there's apparently only one guy working on this (http://colladablender.illusoft.com/animation.html), and progress is sloooowww....
Hopefully we don't have to wait till 2012!
Thats great news that Blender might possibly be securing more money for much needed features, possibly. But I'd just like to add the EU is an evil creation, taking power away from individual countries. Its all laced with secret society nonsense about ruling the world as one large world order. I mean look at even the EU symbol you've added in this article, its a circle of pentagrams! Highly linked with the Illumanti and Occult, they are moving towards the NAU too (North American Union of Canada, US and Mexico). Go look it up. Oh and sorry for being so off-topic but I felt it was important -_-.
@polytropoi
I am 100% with you! If Blender wants to stand in a row with Maya, 3DS-Max or Softimage, it must become better integrated into a typical commercial workflow. This should be seen as a main aspect bo be realized with the help of the EU project.
That's an excellent point matos!
I think, that we could push european cg/movie/games production by having a rentable studio with small prices/or for free that offers several services such as rentable Blender stations or a full featured studio with the possbility for externals to come in and work there on their projects, project managment, professionals for the support, ongoing development of features that come up in the community and during productions.
@others: good points too!
I think, that these topics are indeed part of the future planning as the Blender project can play its cards by total integration into piplelines for film and games creation. As I am working in the games industry for a couple of years now, I've seen many atempts to pipeline integration and I can say that Blender has great chances to become a big player because of its architecture.
How about something - a long term project - that's interactive in nature? We know blender's modeling system is great, and we know that the character animation tools give us potentially everything we could need to produce what ever we want. I think the problem, the hurdle, is the output. I wish Mental Ray was integrated...but that's just it. I think Blender is a lot of things but it's also like a 3D Flash. If you disregard the current norm of the GI style, all kinds of glorious things could come out of blender's rendering system. But that's not my point. I'm just saying that it looks like an emphasis with Universities is not animation, but interactive animation.
As said before, one such project could be feature length CG film during which Blender would be developed according to the needs and requirements of that project. These things usually require university research about how to solve and implement production related problems.
So:
0. Find a very, very good producer/manager.
1. Form a loose network of CG research labs around Europe.
2. Start a production company/studio with the aim of doing feature film, also start technical division for developing Blender and coordinating/implementing research done in previously mentioned labs.
3. Get some talented, professional scriptwriters, designers, illustrators and whatever to design and write film, preferably good one instead of amateurish one. However story quality is not that important in features. Most feature animations ever done are utter crap (Ugly duckling and me was so horribly I hid my face).
4. Gather and hire blenderheads to work at the studio and do the actual film. Note that this work can too be distributed to schools, labs and such around Europe. Directors of animation can cut out bad scenes and give back constructive criticism.
Net result:
- New CG research gets done and funded by real-life production needs (this may result in commercial success too)
- New film gets done and lots of students get exposed to production methods, each in their own field (cg research, animation etc)
- Blender gets developed on the side of full-scale production, resulting in better Blender
- Blender gets proved in feature production pipeline
- Lots of people even outside of actual production get exposed to Blender because of resulting media interest
This project would then contribute to:
a) European research in CG and related fields
b) European film profession in both student and pro levels
c) Best free 3d tool (enabling more and more people to work in different levels of content creation)
How much each of these improve depends on the project.
I'm studying animation direction and such project sounds very promising. It also sounds dangerous.
Sounds great and I see a lot of enthousiasm!
Orange 2 project - or even Plumiferos support by Universities and other organizations?
Instead raising more money, also "raise" more developpers?
It would be great if we could borrow all the developers of Open Office, and other, and other CG application developers too for 6 months :-)
Dreaming of +1000 developers working on Blender for 6 months.... something like grid computing, but then with genius developer brains :-D
....alright, just dreaming, but still it sounds cool: a 'human developer grid'.
Hi,
I hereby offer my help for this project.
Besides all issues mentioned above, I'm thinking of a completely different markets as well.
The health market, as part of a therapy, e.g. I realize this could sound odd and I have no idea if the health care is interested (I will do some investigation).
So, this short brainwave is only pointed to the usage of Blender for certain groups in the community and the documentation and tutorials will be important players.
Doing some more brainwaving you can think of many more groups of users beside the universities, schools, artists (to be), etc.
There could be a valuable roll for Blender in the community, beside the technical aspects.
Most people only use the computer for internet, email, msn, some PS and (easy) games.
Being able to create the simpelest 3D picture or animation will bring them to a new level in the virtual world and that is what the EU would like to achieve.
So, hopefully this point of view will be part of the project
Ton, i believe one very promising field would be the 3d-CAD-area, in which there are only few and really bad applications. In my uninformed opinion, Blender has the potential of supporting real cad, but there is much work that has to be done. Somewhere outside, there is already someone who started implementing basic cad-thingies like measurement etc., wouldn't it stand a reason to expand on that field?
With that migration, we would cross the boundaries of art and go over to engineering, so it's a big step, but i think it's worth it.
Having noted that, i myself probably won't be able to work or volunteer, sorry. Much of luck, though
I think Carsten's sound design idea is brilliant. It's distinctive enough to be real R&D, it's non-trivial, and builds on features already in Blender.
two things
The European Union is not a devil organisation. It has been established after WW2 with a view to peace. This organisation is good because it helps the poorest countries of the union to get to a higher economic level (one example of that is Ireland maybe). The fact that this union is there also fosters exchanges between people of the different countries (for example, as a french schoolboy I went to germany). The countries in the European Union are european in essence I believe : they have a common history and we can't tell that they have "this very european culture" (see in Asia, they have a different culture, in South America, north america...). Culture is in big : common history, religion(s), manners....
then
Blender could be turned into a sdk just like eclipse -> eclipse sdk. So blender could be used for different applications more easily. For example, now if you want to plays with moleculas, you either have to launch blender and then launch a python script, or you have to download a modified version of blender that does it builtin.
For example, with Eclipse, one can develop for any language as long as some modules have been downloaded for that... The same way in blender, if it can transformed in two clicks by activating module for example :
- a module for architecture (activates NGONS, gives nice icons in a panel somewhere for easy modifications....)
- a module for animation (brings lots of tools that I don't know at hand)
- a module for vectorial drawing...
...
you see what i mean.
make blender modular.
Jonathan
Carsten's sound design idea would indeed be a great feature, but would also require a lot of work in the audio department of Blender..... Imagine that you could "attach" a sound object to an animated moving mesh in 3D space. True 3D 5.1 or even 7.1 sound could be created...
I want to be the odd one out and advocate equal development stress for realtime graphics coming from Blender.
+ Propper GLSL shaders in the viewport
+ Real-time reflectance and refractions as shown off by eskil at BConf '06
+ a revived web plugin
+ More GUI widgets, like these light widgets I mocked up, or for rigid body constraints to look like the pretty armature constraints
And something really ambitious... which might actually require such help from the powers of money...
+ cooperation between fluid sim, rigid body sim, and softbody sim. (Maybe something like Real Flow where all simulations are calculated like fluid particles - ie, a rigid body is a single particle.)
Wim, you're talking out of my mind! (hope I say this right, I am german)
It's exactly what the core feature would be - the reason to choose Blender for postproduction. Even if you would have shot a real scenery you could just open up Blender, build a mckup of the current set and define the audio values like absorption and reflection indicies. You do not need to open up a sequencer like ProTools or Sequioa, you just do all your needed work in Blender.
Well, I could create a document about the idea and share it with you guys.
I personally found that distributed blending research work would help in spreading Blender good news around the world.. I found the verse project really ambitious and interesting, and realized that bringing together the concepts exposed at blenderartists and the python integration could lead to a sexy professional solution.
I've been working for several year as a J2EE developer, and I am convinced there's some potential in mixing those technos, to provide a free farming framework. I'm strongly thinking in starting such a work, and being paid for that would really be Great!
Ok,
i just come to mail an "old" boss of my "learning-job" at the Media Lab of Fine Art Faculty in Barcelona University, two years past, speaking him about this subject.
If i receive some positive response, i hope we can also collaborate.
Raimon
Some time ago I have been wondering how well it would be possible at the moment to create a virtual world using holography. At that time I was thinking about Blender. My idea was that the data of a Blender 3D model are to be used to position lens systems of lasers. Those lasers would then build up a holographic scene. I am not talking here about those small holograms which one could place on the wall. I am talking about life size holography. In this way a 3D virtual world could be created,
I read about the CAVE project who uses projections on walls to create virtual reality. Blender has been used if I am right there but I have not checked the results. Using holography instead of wall projections would make it possible also to act in the open air. Moreover, one could walk around and amidst the virtual reality, no physical boundaries imposed by walls. Maybe some degree of interactivity could be achieved by the Blender game engine.
At that time it was just thinking in the wild, letting my imagination go wherever it wanted to. Reading this news item triggered it again. Maybe it is an interesting and feasible idea for an EU project? If so, I would be very much interested in getting involved.
my 2 cents
- Make Blender modular (brilliant idea,jonathan) like plug-ins or add-ons (Architecture, games, Sound, Movie,...)
BETTER MERGE of blender and Verse. (btw. why was the Verse Integration in CVS but no more in RC2???)
(verse is also sponsored by the EU 6th framework afaik)
and alongside with that: A RENDERFARM
As it is a longterm thing, don't bother ourselves with feature requests: use the net.
- Distributed modelling (Verse)
- Dstributed rendering (BURP)
- Distributed Meetings (in 3D-Space-IRC, sorry have no example, you know what i mean)
(and some fine, standardized ex-/Importers (the most difficult part as $-Software change their file-formats as they like))
/ende
rubi
I think a long term research project is a good opportunity to launch a large scale optimization of blender code. Right now development is oriented toward getting new features essentials to a CG software, which is great of course, but it is like in real commercial companies, optimization is never done because there is always something new to add.
There are many things I think would be essential not only to make blender a greater tool but also a greater experiment in open source sommunity based development:
- optimized core feature , because that's great in itself and once done it bring stability for further development.
- improved python API ... with something to make easier student development projects ...
- open source studio, which would work on both film and game development, and that could organize community based productions!
- 3D sound and sound mixing would be much appreciated by EU commities. I know a lot of small companies in france that works on this field, accoustic is a european speciality. There are little or no opensource software in this field.
- more CAO and engineering capabilities, to gives students and professionnals a good free tool to do basic engineering work. I am phd student and that point is really a pain in the ...
@Serge Gielkens
Well, it might be out of topic, but even if Im very enthusiastic around the future of Blender, there is a huge technologic step between 3D behind a computer screen, and an actual 3D display using Holography.
3D Virtual reality like featured in the cave project is very far from life size holography.
I have studied a lot of various 3D display technologies, and Making a big 3D scene in a room is far from being possible using present laser technologies. Also, the bigger is the volume in which we want to display the scene, the more power you'll need for the lasers, and the whole thing will be very quickly dangerous for the viewer.
Also, making images in a clean air volume is not possibles.
Holography is based on waves interferences,and they can only be seen in a smoky volume. So, the biger is the volume, the higher is the light decay inside the volume, so displaying a good image in a big volume is still not possible... And so on...
Some dreams remain dreams for a while!
This said, Blender is not a dream. I should say that it is not ONLY a dream. It has been Ton's dream, and now it's a reality for each of us.
For what I've seen in the three past years, since I discovered Blender, I'm sure that Blender's future will be great. I'm confindent in Ton's decisions, and I'm sure that Blender will keep the rails and will have a first row place in the 3D world.
I've no skill at all for coding and few for organisation, so I don't really feel myself useful in the adventure, but I've a complete trust in the Blender Team!
I understand that Being dependent of a big organisation like EU and getting some money would allow to work on projects of wider importance , on the other side being totally free and keeping the projects on a lower level with more independence freedom and control could be safer.
It is not an easy choice, and I've no real idea of the needs of the foundation.
Though, I'm sure of one thing which has been demonstrated in the past: The community will always support Blender if the situation would need it.
Blender has survived in the early days
of its open existence with less users, when it was a smaller tool. So I have no doubt that it could be helped again by users donations if necessary, and even more users that ever.
Philippe.
...mmm... a lot of interesting ideas!
Sounds like Blender has to be an operating system more than a "program" :))
Audio, Cad, vectorial, virtual reality machine controller, verse server, chat...
I agree with ...all...!
Hey, wait... where is the browser?
one idea could be to take the open source codes and modify the prog such a way, that when you start it, only just a shell or main program runs, just like the music creator program jeskola buzz...
where you can load up your different so called "machines" and "effects" to create music....so the patter editor and a sample editor is built in, you can load all kind of sound creating-modifying "gear" into it, that way you can maximise your productivity and your programs memory consumption....i want that in blender to....i want to be able to load up automaticaly just the polygon tools (basic meshes, editing tools for polys, everything what has to do with polys), and the material editor....that way blender would be for me like 500 kbyte or so... :) very fast to start, and very fast to restart....the main thing is that im not really using the whole program...sound editor, ipo curves, text editor, uv editor,game engine, i could go on...but we could import or enable the other stuffs as well from inside the prog, or just scan for a dll plugin for example the sculpt plugin....which would contain everything what has to do with multires, sculpting, etc.....would be nice to see what else people would code for blender....like for compositing: one dll would load up a whole program inside blender...everything what has to do with compositing...well, we could use more at the same time just like now...but would be nice to switch some of them off sometimes to get faster startups.....whoa....thats too crazy idea for 2012 :)
Hello all,
I've just completed a University Visual Art Degree and created my two final projects in Blender. Unfortunately I was the only one there, so most of my Blender technical learning came from reading posts on BlenderArtists.org and studying my copy of the Elephants Dream DVDs. The Uni I went to was decked out with many copies of Max (that weren't all being used most of the time) and a suite or two of Maya, which they were having a truckload of problems upgrading every 6 months, let alone trying to re-write the course as Alias re-wrote the code. On top of all that, students would either have to fork out hundreds of dollars for a copy of Maya that would render without a watermark or "find" a copy somewhere to work at home, and the student copy of Max I ordered part way through my course took a total of 4 months to get to me... Needless to say, I think Blender in Universities and even High Schools is a great avenue to explore, even if it isn't the only avenue. My cousins also go to a High (Secondary) School where they have Blender installed on the computers, but I'm not entirely sure many of them know how to use it.
As a graduate in Australia with bupkis coding experience, I'm not sure how practical I can be right now in helping, but there's my personally-experienced-view on the education side of things with Blender. Also, I support the two notions of making the animation and other components more compatible with other existing 3D software as it will make it more acceptable to at least add on to an established studio's arsenal. Fully fledged Blender vfx/animation studio the scale of Pixar also makes me consider moving to Europe...
I do agree with the pitfalls of a long term contract as far as anything computers go though, perhaps it would be worth drafting two similar plans - one for 2012 with EU funding, one scaled down with current estimated volunteer base and account for some smaller sized grants like what happened with Elephants Dream. The money could do a lot, but the community seems to have come a long way before the grant as well. For example, once I find my feet a bit in the CG world, I wouldnt mind doing a bit of Blender teaching at that local High school, whereas the EU grant would provide a large scale opportunity to promote/integrate Blender throughout large institutions throughout Europe. Both helpful for Blender and the community, but on different scales.
Long post, but definately a worthwhile subject to ramble about!
Ben.
From Aztec to EU IS where this should be, that is why we are here...that may sound off but trust me, it isn't. The future is full of things that in 'there day' seemed unlikely and is why it has come to past. Think about it, an Italian on a Spanish ship is how the the 'New Wold' was 'found', or so it is told. If that time was ours it would seem impossible but today it is called history.
Bart, Ton lets make some history! If anyone let alone a power like what you are talking about is willing to give Blender a chance I for one am ready to help in anyway that you feel I should. History is full of people that no one; for the most part, can recall who have accomplished much being apart of us all like the men and women that made the Pyramids. Outside from a Mason or two few know the names of of those builders today but all or most at lest know of the Pyramids.
Now maybe all this is unimportant in the end, but the year 12 is important to me for it is the year that I was born and also the end of the Aztec calender and this proposal. For me it sounds like history in the making and I would love to be part of it. Imagine a world tomorrow at the hands or minds for that matter, of us all with little more than software! If it was possible would you make it?
Never say no to the possiblity of success, never be afraid of failure. Anything else has always been know as half-stepping. 54 billion Euros! 70 billion dollars! Negotiation is the term as I see it! Where do we start!!
For all the reasons for not doing this; and they are sound, who of us would forgive anyone of us for not trying to make the most of this opportunity. For me it would be unforgivable. I would rather die trying than be known as never trying at all.
Please let us know who from blender is in charge. We can help with the plan and with Universities support and medical education (health is always a good buzzword). We have credentials that will be of value. Reply privately please.
Ovidiu,
you need to leave an email address that is publicly viewable to be contacted privately. As noted above you can contact ton or myself - Ton is the 'one in charge'. My email is 'LetterRip AT gmail dot com'
Tom M.
LetterRip
this is a big opportunity for the blender community to see this piece of software to leap in the future ... "yes money corrupts", but at this time I think this could help Blender to go far ahead of all other "classical" 3D software...
I already use blender as a realtime 3D engine for interractive art installation, 3DCG art, and even as realtime sound and video compositor (I've even got a project with a TV studio for using it as realtime virtual background) .... with some development in the verse part and in the 3D engine part, it could bring to life realy good multi-user 3D spaces and experiences.
I really see the future of blender NOT in the classical ways, this opens new path for digital art in very different forms....
@Roubal
You are right; at the moment life size holography is out of reach. I just like to think top-down: first developing ideas, then come down to earth to see what is realistic. In that way I avoid hampering the imagination. Maybe a proof of concept is feasible. Use Blender to create small holograms. It would be nice to model behind the screen, hit enter and then see that basic holographic cube appear on the desk, would not it?
theres another intresting subject... education.
we have maya official courses, max, xsi etc... i believe blender need something like that, somekind of official course that can give a official degree, in a more ambitious way, blender should be the official 3d learning tool in universitys and so on, i allways find stupid the use of expensive software to teach 3d cause most of the time ppl will use piracy to practice and eventually to make real work, its almost like the microsoft office versus open office situation , if you start to use ms office u will use it for ever(im talking about average users) even with no license for it, blender should become a way to decrease the piracy amoung 3d users.
just my 2 (a bit off topic) cents
I just saw a tv programm where Crysis (Far Cry) were cited that they plan to go into architecture because their gameenige(!) is of so hight quality. Incredible what they showed there. They also have contacts to simulator makers (car, plane) and to compynies making military equipment...
I still belive that realtime graphic will be the most important thing in the next years, to bad that I was too early in this field I guess.... I saw 2 companies getting down ;-)
Carsten (W)
Well Carsten,
let's see what contracts they will make. I think, that other engines are way better suited for the simulation market and if you look at the page I will state, you will see what's the difference between the engine technology of Crytek and the one on the page. It takes a lot of knowledge in that sector to become a partner for companies creating military simulations. (Look at http://www.esimgames.com) This is not only a matter of landscape and light&weather visualization. But they will tell the world what they can do I think. :)
BUT, I agree with you - realtime graphics are quite important but they form their own sector in the market. I don't think, that we will see realitme graphics in movies. It will take some more years until the quality might be good enough for that. But movies can be THE biggest reason for using Blender.
But we do and will see realtime graphics on the games market (obviously ;) and in vizualisation (for instance in architecture) - Blender could become a player here as well. We have to look at the tools of CAD apps and think of how to implement this in Blender. Maybe Blender should be modularized as already stated before by myselfhimself.
In my mind Blender is suited for film creation and game creation. Beside that there could be an architecture vizualisation module.
There has to be decided whether to implement a game engine into Blender or to interface industry standard engines by Blender. An internal engine has to provide A LOT of features and you cannot create one for all purposes - means, if you create and engine for a first person shooter, it cannot be used for a military tactical simulation - that's a fact that might not be one anymore in a couple of years but right now and in the next 5 years it's hard to believe that one could create such an engine.
For now I think, it's important to bring Blender towards industry standard and beyond (by implementing more features like the ones I and others brought up). Maybe we can plan it so that - by making it modular - Blender could serve es a tool for different game purposes. (like I stated above FPS vs. simulation)
At the moment there are a lot of companies making money with realtime graphics. The reason for a decicion for Blender could be the cost factor which is possible by a participation in the project by the EU. If Blender could provide tools like a game engine, it would fill more and more holes in the toolchain of a pipeline for games or film creation.
I can be reached at laribum(at)gmail(dot)com.
Hi, may be I am slightly off topic, no REALY off topic. but that makes me think of an illustration I have made using Blender. It was for the bulgarian weekly newspaper "Capital". It was just before Bulgaria enter the European community. You can see it here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boris_hartmann/167584358/
By the way, all the images on this site are blender made.
Many thanx to all the Blender team!
Yours Boris Hartmann
This is a great opportunity to tap into some interesting fields: new forms of interaction (eye-tracking, multi-touch-sensitive displays, voice, data-gloves etc.) and collaboration (starting with verse). In short: Expand the ways in which DCC is being developed. Expansion in terms of using effectively as much of the body as possible on the one hand, and finally breaking the "one-artist-one-scene-at-a-time" paradigm on the other hand.
This of course goes far beyond the scope of a single application, but is the logical next step. The Wii controller, the "new" iPhone input technology and more and more collaboration software (starting with multiple-user text editors, MS groove etc) clearly shows where the industry is heading. Making all content creation a more natural experience together with other people (where desired) is in my eyes the future. Preparing blender for it - and possibly shaping it through innovative ideas - sound like the ideal place to put effort and money.
This of course weakens the "danger" not to meet goals like "we'll make blender fully DirectX 15 compatible" or "we'll have all tools the others have, plus 10 more". R&D is exciting, because you have a direction, but also a lot of creative freedom. I say - take the chance, go for it!
Hey Bart,
I´m teaching Blender Basics to pupils from 12-14 yrs old, for almost three years now. During an eight weeks-course I teach 24 pupils for 90 minutes per week to get comfy in the Blender environment. Nothing fancy, just basics. I use your Building a castle tutorials, which I translated into Dutch, also Gus´s modelling and animation. Pupils are eager and extremely fast learning. If there is anything i can do in this area, let me know.
Joop
Hello,
I see you are talking about how to make Blender a better professional tool but let me introduce another idea.
I'm a Computer Science teacher at a High School in Peru, South America. For several years (about 6-7) I have been teaching Blender in Graphic Design courses or workshops.
I think Blender is a great tool but its 'look' is too complex for beginner teenagers. I use to start with another simpler software as anim8or (Windows only) to teach 3d modeling techniques but this tool is not ideal either.
Furthermore after deal with anima8or I have to re train my students to jump to Blender. Sadly not everybody is so patient for this (sometimes) long process.
I would like to have a 'Starter' or 'K12' Edition of Blender for schools where 'less is more'. I think it would make Blender a better teaching tool.
Anyway, Blender is great. Thanks to all of you who make Blender possible.
Daniel
Joop, i think you should have left your email as well =) and ontopic: this is very interesting news indeed!
@Carsten
Your sound idea really sounds fantastic to my ear. I am not a sounddesigner, but I just imagine the possibilities for creating sound inside of Blender animations. I am thinking of virtual microphones like virtual cameras, which would record sound during the render process. This recordings could be the input for a surround system. It could be done with nodes and maybe there is even a way to integrate max/msp/jitter.
I also like the 3D-CAD idea from Omar Abo-Namous. It is quite different from the sound-idea Carsten wrote about.
Personally I would like two differnet Blender suites:
- 3D-CAD for architects, ingeneering, science, visualization, ... AND
- 3D-Animation with better sound features for films, commercials, ...
@carlinhos:
Yeah very nice! That could be quite interesting. Rendering audio while rendering gfx! Neat! :)
Using nodes for adding effects to sounds is also a very interesting idea. There is ne sequencer at the moment that works object based and that's Samplitude. (in future there will be Tracktion3). All other applications work with a classical mixer aproach using channel strips where you can alter sound like adding dynamics and effects or send to buses and aux's.
Blender could become a new object based sound creation tool that renders audio snychronized to gfx motion. In some games you already see (or hear ;) these effects - just have a look at ArmedAssault where they use audio occlusion and muffling in dependence to the listener-sound object-vector and geometry inbetween.
Well, I am currently evaluating this kind of technology for my company and I am willed to provide more infos and concepts for Blender.
One additional thought: Just think of running Blender as a VST or AU-Plugin in your favourite sequencer for managin 3D-sound placement and dsp-management for your film production. (just one possible way to go)
why ton think about the 54 commentary?
Hello, anyone have the URL to official page /statement about this donation od 140.000 ?
I know that this comment is probably not going to be read by many (if any) people now seeing as the last one was posted almost a full month ago but just to voice my opinion:
I think that if the Blender Foundation decides to go for the money it SHOULD be spent on technological advances although the hologram idea above is a bit too futuristic probably - however, an interesting idea could be to advance rendering technology in some way - then Blender's renderer would benifit as well and could potentially lead the way for other renderers (not neccesarily only open source ones) instead of following in their footsteps which is what it appears to be doing at the moment. Photorealistic rendering for instance nowadays is getting old and is based mainly on old technologies like raytracing and global illumination etc although many attempts have been made to speed up the process and to produce better results - but I think that the underlying architecture could be improved on maybe with a more up-to-date technology in the same sort of league as global illumination was a few years ago when it was first invented. A project could be created with the following goals:
1) To Increase realism of rendering by investigating newly discovered subtleties of light transport etc... (in fact - some things have been around for ages that are still not included in renderers - even einstein predicted light distortion around gravitational feids for instance which has since been proved)
2) To increase interactivity between the rendering process and the user creeating a better pipeline for workflow (at the moment you basically have to keep rerendering scenes - this could be improved!).
3) To increase the speed of photorealistic rendering and so pave the way for proper realtime photorealistic rendering on graphics hardware.
4) To make high end rendering and cutting edge technologies accesible to the everyday user and not just to scientific communities - and for free!
I'm not sure how animation could work with point 2 there - but my guess is that there would either have to be the option of running a separate renderer for animations or that some interactivity could be automated requiring the user to only be around for the more important parts of the pipeline such as post production etc...
Unfortunately, I can't voulunteer out any time to help as at the moment I am a busy college student - although if such a plan were to go forward and get widespread reasearch in universities etc I could probably help my local university in some way and perhaps become a leader of research in this field in future when I finish college.
Anyway - whatever the Blender Foundation decides to do, I hope it will be good for the whole community - but I also hope that if a suitable project cannot be thought of, they will have the good sense not to grope for money or anything else that is beyond their reach in the circumstances although I'm sure something suitable COULD be thought of if time is spent on the matter - and especially, technological advances could be a good way to make history, after all, Jim Blinn didn't get famous for nothing!!
-epat. :)
yes, a lot of great ideas!
becauce of the dangers, sorry, my english is not that good..i am not shure what would differ to the last financed round.
i think the main thing is, that blender should keep indepented in its main development.
blender is so quick in its development, so we dont need to hurry.
maybe its not that good if there are to much dependencies and it grews to big.
i trust ton, he will raise the blenchmark:)
blend on
I always believed in Blender, always will always have.
Since 2004 I´ve been working with and earning money with Blender. I´ve introduced
Blender to the big (doubting) companies for years, ending up with results that earn them
money every time, and eventually made them believe in Blender too.
I think most of the credits should go to the coders behind Blender, they are the
ones to make it work in the end anyway.
I´ve been delivering work to Tuborg, Carlsberg, Dong Energy, Post-Denmark, Hugo-Boss and numerous others for years using Blender to visualize the products of tomorrow. And yes...while being hard work, it has brought home tomorrows dinner and todays breakfast.
I remembered the early days of Blender when I was personally ridiculed for using Blender in my works
rather than 3Dstudio max and Maya by my fellow artists, I was ridiculed for years and years, but always
knew that they just where "fanboys" and didn´t have the capability of looking at the works from a serious point of view rather than "fanboyism" since they "knew! I used Blender for my work, but that never stopped me in any way.
Open Source software where they way forward, and the money and my lunch proved it. While I may not be rich, It did bring breakfast on the table and the customers where satisfied with the end results every time. My peers are not laughing any more.
4 years ago, Blender usage in Denmark where 1 percent.
Today it is 20 percent. We´re getting there.