For the last weekend of October, the De Balie center in Amsterdam became again, the Blenderhead Central. It was my second time to attend Blender Conference, and I was happy to meet both old friends and fresh comers. This is how #BCon14 looked like on the spot.
As always, the presentations were super interesting and, when there was a full house, the doors remained open, so that people could watch the screen from the hallway. I enjoyed seeing Andrew Peel’s talk about Fluid Designer – an easy tool for creating interior spaces, built on top of Blender. I also learned about the new prediction tracking in the motion tracking tool, demoed by Sebastian Koenig in his Track Match Blend presentation and explained by Sergey Sharybin.
The Gooseberry Project was also present, with current development updates, some very nice concept art and future plans. Hjalti did an entertaining talk regarding animation, Jonathan Williamson had a good workshop on 3D modeling and Andy Goralczk is 3D-printing his own miniature alien world – looking forward to seeing the progress on that! I was also glad to see the advancements in the V-Ray for Blender presented by Andrei Izrantcev, adding one more option to the professionals that use Blender.
Blender Conference is also the moment when they officially present the current progress of all the Blender ecosystem. Franceso and Pablo presented the Blender Network yearly report, we learned about the plans for Cycles from Thomas Dinges, and Ton Roosendaal was there to receive feedback for the Foundation and the Institute. There was also the ‘give me your best shot‘ moment with the development team, and the plans for the Blender ID and the Cloud were laid on the table. They created a new documentation project for Blender, which I’m sure will make life easier for a lot of people.
Ton Roosendaal and the Blender developers, at the AMA session
There were also a couple of moving moments, both featuring Ton. The first one was when he received a gift for his desk: a bug-o-meter. The cube will connect wirelessly to the bug tracking system and will show the number of open bugs in Blender. Smart!
Sergey Sharybin showing the ‘0 bugs’ goal to Ton. Image taken from the official conference video.
The second one was when Ton experienced the divine wrath when mentioning the A…desk name and a piece of ceiling fell on him. Both he and his laptop were unharmed following the incident.
Roaming the hallways was equally interesting. Geek central was the name of the game, and everyone piled up when something cool was shown. I enjoyed catching up with people I know from the community, and meeting new people that create interesting stuff. I was especially glad to hear success stories from the ones that we helped deliver their projects.
BConf hallway gatherings at De Baile
There was of course the official dinner and the unofficial beers, but, as the saying goes, “what happens at Blender Conference…” For those who remained on Monday, a visit at Blender’s Mecca was a good ending for the conference.
Blender Institute Open Doors Day
To conclude, it was a great event, and I’m already looking forward to the next 2015 edition!
For those who want to see the talks from the conference, they are all uploaded on this YouTube playlist:
