18 years of Blender open source projects [video] | Hacker News Reader

18 years of Blender open source projects [video]

fosdem.org

148 pointsdoener13 comments

It's always interesting to look at the group behind the pieces of content I've watched at least once a week for basically my entire career.

For the unfamiliar, Blender videos are a staple in the video dev community and certainly the most common insider reference you'll hear. I'd go out on a limb and say anyone that's ever worked on any part of the video stack will almost certainly understand references to Big Buck Bunny, Tears of Steel, etc. For example, the first Demuxed (a conference around video engineering) t-shirt was a reference to Tears of Steel and I've had strangers stop me to comment on it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o2wg5wyl3jhxool/t-shirt.png?dl=0

Big Buck Bunny seems to also get a ton of mileage as a demo for 4K displays. I'm pretty sure I've seen it at Costco a few times.

Because its visually vibrant, less boring than panning over flowers and waterfalls and most importantly, freely licensed.

Back in 2009, I made a super high bitrate (70 Mbps) version of Big Buck Bunny. It was super popular with the Network Attached Storage crowd.

Here's a segment.

http://www.w6rz.net/bbb24p_00.ts

Although I appreciate the work of these folks, they seriously need to get themselves a conference speaker: I could not understand anything of what he was saying (candid feedback, please don't misunderstand).

Ton (the speaker) has such a wonderful energy that maybe doesn't come off in this talk. I went to his Blender community session at SIGGRAPH last year, where he announced he wanted to go around the room and have people say their name and why they're interested in Blender before the talk started.

I assumed he was joking because the room was packed, there was over a hundred people in there. Yet he went for it, even going so far as to rip the tape holding down the microphone chord to reach all the people in the back. It took us over half an hour (of an hour long session) to get to everyone, but he explained that it had always been a tradition to do this, starting way back when less than a dozen people would be at a session like this. It was really inspiring seeing his commitment to hear from each and every single person in that room and actually get to know why they were here and what they were expecting out of Blender. I could tell this was a really awesome community, and it made it really easy to talk to everyone around me.

It was one of my favorite conference sessions.

Yeah. I was in the auditorium and could understand maybe one in four words. The acoustics there seem to be bad as well, so maybe the recording is better enough to make the guy understandable.

The video seems quite good, there's some clipping at the start but I have no trouble understanding what he's saying. He does seem to have a bit of a lisp (or maybe it's the accent), but nothing that I would notice if it weren't pointed out here.

EDIT: Oh I just noticed your sibling comment, disregard.

PS I am happy to report that I can understand ~90% of the words in the video. Enough to not lose the thread.

Weird - I've never had a problem understanding Ton (in fact he's one of the more entertaining conference speakers I've heard). Maybe I've just listened to too many FOSS talks with Dutch devs :P

He’s the Dutch founder of Blender.

I am not a native English speaker and am having severe issues understanding what Van der Smut is saying. Was it something about an unfortunate schmelting accident? Schmoke and a pancake? Cigarette and a flapjack? Cigar and a waffle? Pipe and a crepe? Bong and a blintz? No? Then there ish no pleeshing you.

edit: very sorry, ... I know I'm horrible, and this is bang out of order but I can't stop laughing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LlPU6KenjU

> CRACKLE CAN YOU HEAR ME!?

Yes... I can't now thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com