The Blender Conference is, as you know, the biggest Blender-related event, and probably the only place where Blenderheads from all over the world come together every year. It’s also the place to learn first-hand about what’s coming next to Blender software and see who did what using Blender—there’s no shortage of ideas there, trust me. And finally, for me it’s also a good place to catch up with friends, and to meet some of the people I’ve only talked to by emails and tweets. Because of that, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Read how this year’s #BCon15 went, after the 2014 highlights and the sparkling 2013 moments.
When I got to Amsterdam, there was a very nice welcome in the train station. A real piano was placed in the hallway, and a virtuoso traveler was playing it for the delight of all other passengers.
I took that as a good sign, listened for a few good minutes, and then made my way to the hotel. As it turned out, the weather was unusually nice this year, so for once I didn’t get soaked walking the Amsterdam streets. Not sure if it had to do anything with the piano, but who knows?
DAY ONE
When I got to De Balie, the conference was just starting, with Ton presenting the ‘state of the nation’ speech. Then Gleb Alexandrov gave up a few of his tricks about creating very lifelike lighting in Blender. If you are interested in improving the lighting setup in your scenes, you should check out his site, and his presentation.
During the break, Andy – true to his tradition of creating real-life things – was wearing a hand-made paper Suzanne in the hallways.
A bit later, Sean Kennedy showed us what a compositor’s day to day is when working for film and TV. There’s the glamour part (which most people talk about), and there’s the ‘gruntwork’, which doesn’t get a very big share of the spotlight, but it’s an essential part of a production. Watch his talk to learn a few tricks and node setups.
After that, Ton presented the grand plan of all-open production pipeline that includes Blender 2.8, and what will be new in that release. There is a TL;DR version here, but you should look at the presentation too if you have the time.
The first day of talks was closed by Hjalti with his (as always) great presentation about the art of animation. Give the man a hand!
DAY TWO
On Saturday Beorn and Sarah opened the day by talking about Glass Half, the Foundation’s newest NPR production (hint: if you’re doing NPR, check out those shaders!). If you didn’t see it, take a few minutes and watch it, Beorn and Sarah put together quite a nice world.
Just before the lunch break, Sebastian and Simeon talked about VR done in Blender. Awesome work, long render times too ; )
After the break, Olivier presented part of the magic he’s using Blender for, with holographic projections and motion mapping. The display cases he made are really awesome, and his Lego cube with smartphone-powered holo display amazed the blenderheads all through the conference.
This was also the day with most talks from people involved in Blender’s development. Sergey, Thomas, Bastien, Francesco and Pablo presented various aspects of the Blender and ecosystem progress and future plans.
Then there was the distinct (in a good way) presence and talk by Mathilde from Tata Motors. And just before the end Wybren presented his awesome Grove plugin for trees – best one I’ve seen to date. Next followed the open stage – if you weren’t there, you missed some nice socks from HappySocks. Won’t disclose anything else about that. And then there was the Suzanne Awards ceremony, when everybody got to see the winners in the three categories.
DAY THREE
Sunday was again opened by a Foundation movie talk—Cosmos Laundromat. Pretty much the entire team was on the stage and I still didn’t get where to buy a washing machine like that. Will keep looking : )
After that Zacharias made an update about Repto108, the movie he’s been developing for some time. Then Daniel talked about Alike, and Bartek showed some cool work on commercials at the same time. Following that, I did some catching up and got just in time to see the Blender Developer AMA – interesting as usual. Funny how the starting picture in this talk always looks like some people think of an execution squad. I wonder why…
And then it was beer o’clock.
The AgenZasBrothers have made a speed interview with some of the participants (watch out for 0:25) and edited it in the most touching way. This Q&A sprint should really become a BlenderConference tradition!
