For many Blender (well-suited to create a 3D configurator) fans November s a joy despite the moderate weather, because at this time the annual Blender conference takes place in Amsterdam. It is the moment of the year when friends meet again to learn about the new things that have happened in the world of Blender and to be together with a number of interesting people in the evening.

This year was noc exception. The three-day weekend began on Friday as usual in the Amsterdam city centre near De Balie with keynote speaker Ton Rosendaal. Daniel Lara then reports on the new Hero movie, which was created with the new Grease Pencil feature in Blender 2.8.

After lunch, Greb Alexandrov gave us an insight into the distribution of forms in pictorial composition as part of his artistic process. In another room, Chris McFall demonstrated a rigging method for a challenging marine life project. Both lectures contained interesting topics that most 3D designers might encounter in the course of their careers. How can you improve the attractiveness of a scene and work with unconventional shapes and movements?

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The afternoon continued with Hjalti, who talked about updating the classical animation principles to better adapt them to today`s 3D animation methods. This was followed by the stream with the making-of for the film “Cinderella the Cat”.

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The next two presentations that followed were the Metaballs revival with Alexander Mitzkus und Sean Kennedy`s latest edition of the Gruntwork in VFX series. Alexander gave examples of what can be achieved with the Underdog feature.

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Sean mentioned some of the work he has done in recent television series and films and the places where Blender has been used in a series of shots to deliver quick results. In Sean`s presentations, viewers always get their money`s worth because you can see some of the tricks of a highly skilled professional that you can`t see on the big screen.

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The evening ends with the presentation of the Suzanne Awards. Then there was dinner, followed by the traditional search for a place to seat more than 20 people at one table.

On Saturday, Rainer Trummer presented the lifelike renderings Kiska had created for KTM and reported on some of the challenges you faced in creating these renderings. Dr. Sybren A. Strüvel followed with a nice introduction to Blender Python scripting for artists. Pretty useful if you`re just starting out on scripting for your projects.

The lectures continued with an interesting process of reconstruction of accident dynamics with Blender, presented by Dominic Agoro-Ombaka. In another room, Pablo Lopez Soriano shared some of the animation techniques that he uses regularly in his work.

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After lunch, the conference continued with a sculpting workshop by Zacharias Reinhardt, followed by a series of lectures on the use of Blender in education.

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In the evening Ton talked about the development of Blender 2.8, followed by the presentations on lighting and the presentation of the Suzanne Awards. The Blender 2.8 presentation summed up very nicely the state of development and where it all goes if you missed the regular contributions on this topic. The light lectures brought with them the usual heterogeneous and interesting cast of presenters.

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The last day began as usual with a lecture about a film “Agent 327 – Operation Barbershop” from the Institure. Francesco, Hjalti and Andy talked about pretty much all areas of production, from scene composition to animation style to rendering.

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There were  a few more interesting case studies about the use of Blender for longer films, VR work and for the games industry. Thomas Beck had a slot for the presentation of the new things coming into Eevee.

In the afternoon Jonathan Williamson opened the discussion about business in the Blender ecosystem. The discussion has raised some valid points and it is interesting to observe what challenges and opportunities there are in this space.

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And of course there was the Developer AMA slot, one of the few precious moments where we can interact directly with the Blender development team to take a look behind the scenes. Another interesting moment was Stefan Werner`s presentation about the work they do in Blender. One of the topics he discussed was render time improvements achieved by integrating Intel`s Embree Engine into Blender.

The conference ended in the evening with a short speech by Ton.

For some visitors who had stayed until Monday, the Institute`s open doors awaited with coffee.

Closing thoughts.

The Blender Conference has evolved a lot since the first event. Today the conference is considered a mature event with renowned guests.

This year`s event ray smoothly on all levels – from the timing of the presentations to the publication of the videos on the Internet. The only problem was that some of the presentations were very crowded and it was difficult to see the presentations on an external screen. We hope that the organizers will get this littler problem under control quickly and look forward to next year.