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Blender Conference Reporting

23

bconf2007.jpgToday is the first day of the Blender Conference 2007. Unfortunately I'll only be able to attend on Saturday so for today and Sunday we'll turn to YOU, the audience for our report on the event.

As the entire event will be taped, broadcast live and published on the blender.org website, we're only looking for short impressions of each presentation: 3-5 lines of text, if possible with a picture. We're also looking for some general impressions of the day, the venue and the crowd.

If you want to report on a specific presentation, leave a comment and I'll add your name to the list below. When you're done, send your material to bart @ this site and we'll combine all the entries into one extensive report.

Thanks, and happy conferencing!

Day coverage (full program):

  • Welcome and keynote - not covered yet
  • Plumiferos - not covered yet
  • Case study: Blending games at Playsign - not covered yet
  • Hands-on masterclass rigging and character animation - not covered yet
  • Blender as a Design Tool (about generative design systems) - not covered yet
  • Perception concepts in User Interface design - not covered yet
  • Enrico shows work he did in the past years! - not covered yet
  • Peach development and advances in Blender's rendering system - not covered yet
  • Workshop: Blender's Game Engine as a Live 3D Simulator for External Programs - not covered yet
  • Artist's Showcase - not covered yet
  • Animation festival - not covered yet
  • General impression - not covered yet

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

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 Head of Community at Sketchfab.

23 Comments

  1. Is that the blender conference poster, it is really really nice, constructivistic, simple and a touch of 3d. Would be really nice on a white background.

    I'm looking forward to the reports and movies from the conference....

  2. Other places to follow the conf: on freenode IRC #blenderchat, where Hox_bconf and possible other attendees will try to give you input into conversations, and talk about what's happening.

  3. I wish I could be there but I'm only 13 and Amsterdam is a long way away from
    the U.S. ;) Thank you to the people that are video-taping though! It will be almost
    like being there!

  4. If people wonder why the stream is doing weird stuff: that's my fault, it's the first time I do this kind of stuff, also I have to cut the stream before and after recording. So in between sessions it'll be a bit flakey... sorry about that :)

  5. @Bart: I ll post a few comments on the presentations I saw once back at home, with a azerty keyboard and not a damn qwerty ;-) you can count on it... it should be around one third of the presentations, perhaps one half, not sure... do you prefer them by e-mail or in the comments within the posts?

    any case, attending the conference is quite interesting, even if I had troubles with understanding all accents, all picthes of voice, all speeds of speach... and now that I start to understand almost everyone, it s almost time to leave! but I learned many interesting things while there... I ll certainly come back next year!

    well Peach project presentation should start within a very few minutes so I should go! :D

  6. I attended the friday conference only but well worth it even just for the day-
    Particular highlights for me were Tons opening presentation with a bit of history and talk of the future also.
    Great plumiferos presentation with some fab insights and the talk on Blender as a Design Tool whilst mainly directed towards architects was also a worthwhile talk to be in on.

  7. Welcome and Keynote:
    In his traditional welcome to the Blender Conference attendees, Ton Roosendaal first introduced the new De Zwijger conference place. He then made a quick overview of what are, as far as of today, the main components of the Blender universe.
    -The Blender Fondation: mainly to be considered as a bank account, necessary for fundings, and for legal issues (copyrights, branding, etc.) in order to protect Blender
    -The Blender institute: commercial bizz, production of open movies and/or open games, training center, etc. This is where money is made, and sent on the Blender Fondation accounts
    -The Blender community: it is where Blender is developped and used, and where decisions are made about Blender's future.

    Plumiferos:
    Claudio Andaur ("malefico") gave us a very interesting overview of the Plumiferos project, from the production stage and through the various aspects of a CG featuree film. A lot of insight on the work pipelines has been showed, along with a lot of examples images and/or video movies, a lot of them being outstanding. Then he pointed out the difficulties encountered while making the movies (mainly white/black spots on rendering being vector blurred, and wrong collisions using the softbodies; Ton promised to address the first, while the Cloth plugin might solve the second) and offered help to solve any potential issues.

    Hands-on masterclass rigging and character animation
    A very interesting master-class given by Nathan Vegdahl and Claudio Andaur. At first, Nathan gave us some usage advice on rigging (universal rigs vs specific rigs, smart use of controlers to ease the work of animators, etc.) and showed us how easy it could be to pose-to-pose animate a rabbit into jumping when the right controlers are set. On his side, Claudio showed us how convenient it could be to use Bone Heat weighting for animating facial expressions.

    I have a few photographies for each of these three subjects. I'll send them directly to Bart once back at home this evening.

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