Ton Roosendaal keynote at Blender Conference 2022: transcript

Key points

• Roosendaal says doctors declared him fully clean after his hospital stay three years earlier.
• He frames the metaverse as the possible next 3D internet and says Blender should help keep it open and independent from big corporations.
• He announces the Blender Lab, a small group to work on Blender's future, including AR, VR, online collaboration and AI tools that serve artists.
• He presents the freedom to create: open source, access to creative resources and knowledge, and access to markets, plus Blender Apps for standalone applications.
• He says Blender Studio will stay small and drop the feature film, citing the Tencent Animation shutdown and the problems of industrial pipelines.
• He announces a managed extensions platform with pre-approved add-ons, which must be GPL, to be run with the community.

Chapters

1. 0:27Welcome, 20 years of open source, health update
2. 1:29Pandemic, war, energy crisis and climate
3. 3:18The metaverse and who should build it
4. 6:32Announcing the Blender Lab and AI
5. 8:53The freedom to create and Blender Apps
6. 11:48Blender Studio, Tencent Animation and Hollywood
7. 17:19Open source freedom and add-ons platform

Full transcript

0:27So welcome, everyone. Welcome to the Blender Conference 2022. And we are celebrating that 20 years ago, here in Amsterdam, Blender became open source. So happy birthday to Blender. And I want to start the presentation with good news, because I'm still there.

0:57Yeah! So this talk is not going to end with a sad ending or whatever. The doctors declared me fully clean, I don't have to worry. And I'm as healthy as an old man like me can be. So, don't worry, don't worry. Now for my story, I do want to take you back three years.

1:29Because that was the previous Blender conference. And at the Blender conference, I was making a funny joke, to say, I'm going to resign for my duties in Blender in five years, right? And that was a little bit challenging fate, because it wasn't four months later, or I was in hospital, balancing on the edge of life and death. Luckily, my own prospects quickly went better, but then, you know what happened, I got out of the hospital and the world was empty, it was like being in a zombie movie, being the only survival.

2:11So I think people probably remember this famous cartoon, so we all thought, ah, this whole COVID thing will go away, it's a little thing, right? But it was quite a big thing. And it was almost three years later, it's still a thing. Luckily, it's going away, that's why we can do this event. And I think everybody was like, yeah, finally we can do things again. Were it not that somebody in the Kremlin decided to invade an innocent country and play war games with everyone.

2:46So that's a big threat. What's happening after that? We have an energy crisis. Oh, no, this is going to be a big thing for the coming years. And we didn't forget about our good old friend, climate science. So this is the biggest threat for mankind that will cause a massive biodiversity collapse. So all doom and gloom, right? But I can tell you, there's even one more thing worse for mankind.

3:18Oh, my God. The Metaverse, right? We all know the hype, and on one hand, you could see it as this horrible nightmare, right? What we know from the Matrix movies, where people will be connected with neural links directly to the internet, and the big corporations are going to control our bodies and our thoughts and everything so that we make sure that we are fully absorbed in some kind of universe that doesn't really exist.

3:57But that's the nightmare version, probably the wet dream of Mark Zuckerberg and other friends, but I hope this is not going to happen. And the other more neutral way to look at it is that this is the new next internet. The internet will become 3D, or more 3D, and we probably will start browsing and experiencing the internet with 3D engines. So that's a great technology challenge. And you can see that the whole industry is jumping on it.

4:28And they all, of course, promising that they will make it open. It's open source and open standards. standards, and if you look, all those companies who are promising to make sure that there will be public standards, they will all be open and friendly and accessible for everyone. So then I think, so where are the people here, right? I was last summer at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, and there were events about the metaphors, We saw those big corporations making big stories about what they are going to do.

5:04And one of the organizers, I met him afterwards, I asked him, why wasn't Blender invited, right? Why were we not there? And he said, oh my God, we forgot probably. And I said, well, even when you would have invited me, I would have declined. I don't think I belong there. Blender is still super small, and I don't think I can make any difference there, right? All of those companies, the corporations, they're all working with billions of dollars of budgets, they are developing things and making a pie and slicing it up and making sure that everybody can make a lot of money. That's not where I can contribute things to.

5:47But there is an issue that we have to tackle, because who do you really trust to make the next Internet? Is that Meta? Is it Google? Or Amazon? Or is it Apple? Or do we trust Elon Musk to do all of this? So a lot of people lost trust in big corporations to be able to act in the best interest of people. So now, if there would be one organization that has this massive community of creative people who do 3D and who have no shareholders and no ownership and they have no money-making aspirations, who would that be?

6:32So that's the thing I think we should step in as Splendor. And I would like to announce a new initiative, and it's called... The Blender Lab, which is a group of people who will be working on the future of Blender. So something that only has to work in like five years. I want to have five or ten of the best brains that we can find to see the future. And we have to make sure that we have things like AR and VR technology, that we can do networking, that we connect people, that we know how to share and how to collaborate online.

7:09And not only that, because something is looming behind the metaphors, right? And what do you think? Ah, the AIs, the evil AIs. I mean, in Seagraph there were speakers claiming that the AIs are going to make the metaphors, right? Really, for real, they believed it, they're training it. You know that AIs are being trained to use Blender geometry nodes, right?

7:41Can you even imagine where that's going if the AI starts using Blender? I don't want to know, right? But it is a thing, so what we have to make sure as Blender community, within our mission and the Blender philosophy, we have to make sure that AIs are going to be the tools that work for us, for the artists, that we have control over this, that we have access to it, that is all free and openly available. I even think that I have an idea for how to make the metaverse.

8:15And many people don't know yet, but I think I know. And the way how to make it is by not wanting to make it, right? And just do nice things for people. And the nice things, it means, of course, you have the tools, but you should be able to connect to the web, and you should be able to share your work, you should be able to collaborate, And you should be able to have a fair living, access to the markets, to make sure that you, as an artist, are in control of your life.

8:53Go back two years ago, I was out of hospital, we were still in lockdown, so I had a lot of time to think, and I wanted to make sure that what I feel is my legacy, and the ideas I have that these are being absorbed and transported to more people. So what is it that I find important for Blender that I want other people to understand? And that's why the slogan started, the freedom to create. For me, it means a lot, especially because it goes back to the three core freedoms that you can define.

9:28Of course, the first one is open source, the freedom to deploy production. Software, the core principle of the free software movement, that you have access to the sources and that you can make new versions. It also means that you should have access to apply creative resources. Not only assets, but also production knowledge. Because with only the software, it doesn't mean that you can make things. You have to make sure that you know how to make things and that you have the libraries and the data available to do that.

9:58And the third thing I want to work on is the access to markets. People should be able to have access to selling films or games or artwork and should not be locked up in platforms or systems where they are being restricted. So access to markets is one of the things we are working on and we are going to announce, Maybe it has been announced, because yesterday I wasn't much online to see it, is what we call the Blender Apps.

10:35What is Blender Apps? Well, it's not something really new, but we call it something new. Because, simply said, it's just the wrapping up of the Blender 2.8 project. In Blender 2.8, we try to make sure that Python... It's controlling the UI and the way how Blender is working. And by finishing that completely, you can actually make blend files with some configuration sets around it and create your own complete new application.

11:07For example, the Monkey Blender, right? And the only thing the thing will do is to drag and drop items and colors. but a blender app can be a video player or a reviewing tool or a little tool for 3d printing companies to test if a model is working it can be experiences that you want to share with other people you put it online you share it you can give it to clients because clients want to have 3d visualizations of their buildings or products on trade shows or in presentations all of that That is going to be possible with Blender with a single export and a lot of scripting around it maybe.

11:48Then you make an application that is fully Blender compatible. More information you will be able to find on the code block soon. I've also been rethinking the role of the Blender Studio. Because most people might not know, but we have a Blender Institute and a Blender Studio in the same building, at the Blender Headquarters. And I really love it that we have the creative people and the technical people working together on challenging each other. And within the studio, we had still a project to make a big film, a big feature film, and work with the industry, Hollywood, on getting it funded.

12:29But at that time, I thought, maybe you can still make money or fund the Blender project by doing commercial work for the film, where we use an open source pipeline and then make a film for the market. This didn't really happen. And also, it wasn't really needed because Blender, since 2019, took off like magically. We have the whole industry coming on board already. So the feature film became more of a burden. So I decided that we found a production company who took over the rights.

13:03They are now further developing it. And they might be looking for Blender Studios who will do it. We might support them a little bit, but we're not going to make it ourselves. In the past... Here, we also worked on Sprite Fright, an amazing short film. It was the biggest project we ever did. We were also trying to make a production pipeline for things. Also, that made me think a bit. But the thing that was most affecting me last year was the demise of Tencent Animation.

13:34That's this big studio, 300-400 people, all working on Blender. They delivered a fantastic TV series. And basically, the day they were ready, Netflix pulled the plug. and said well great job right and let's move on so you see that Hollywood and the big industry they have more and more treating artists as disposable material it's not something I really like right I also don't like it but they say yeah then there is not ready for us because we need things to fit in pipelines right well this is pipeline so this is how pipelines work pipelines means it's industrial that means we divide the task in all kinds of small items in a way that you can scale it up you don't make a pipeline for artists to give them creative control or to make them become happier or more productive you make them for the people who pay the bills to make sure that you can efficiently as possible write in 50 animators put them to work for a year and then fire all of them

14:40I'm sure I need to have a movie. Working on those pipelines is also always working for the past, never working for the future. So the Blender mission, one of the things we always said is what we want to do is to enable individuals and small teams to create world-class turn-in computer graphics and art and movies and games. And that's what the focus is again for the studio. And the studio is small, eight to ten people, and we are going to keep working and empowering them to make amazing and big things, and then they will build and share all of the knowledge for how to make things.

15:20One of the things you can see tonight is a sneak peek of the latest short film they are working on in Eevee. Processed. So, I have a little message. So, dear Hollywood, I love you, right? You are fantastic, and you've always been the greatest inspiration for me for things. I think we also share the passion for 3D and for the whole medium that we are working on.

15:55And it's even that the mission statement for Blender, you could say, is get the best 3D technology in the hands of artists at open source and make amazing things with it, right? That's exactly what you guys also do in Hollywood, except for the open source part, of course. So, I love to work with you, right? You are welcome to contribute to our mission. But what I don't want is to work for you, right? Because, be honest, right, if you look at the whole market, the computer graphics users in the world, you are the tiny little top of the pyramid, and you are amazing, you have the best people, the best technology, you have billions of dollars to spend on things, but really, are you waiting for me, or are you waiting for us here to help you or to rescue you?

16:46I don't think so. It's not even needed, because, hello, Autodesk, Foundry, Adobe, that's where your market is. So if you help the 30,000, 40,000 people in Hollywood, then we, Blender, can take care of the rest. It's a good deal? Thank you very much. So I'd like to end with the first freedom. This is the core of OpenShorts.

17:19Every year I hammer on this. What does it mean, right? what does it mean to have options. Free software and you have access to the code that you can make changes and share it with others. Key freedoms of how Blender is built. Whether you agree on it or not, it's just the agreement of why we are together. And for add-ons, it's the same, right? It's the same thing, it's part of Blender. We designed the API for Blender to be an extensible thing. So if you extend Blender with functionality, You basically are using Blender functionality, but they have to be GPL too.

17:55And I found out in the past years that this got a little bit muddy and murky, right? If people say, yeah, if something doesn't work in Blender, you have to buy an add-on. I don't like that. I know the commercial add-on people are great and they deserve every freedom to sell their products but we also should take the responsibility as blender project to say yes but we also have our own platform similar to mozilla for example as an adoms extension group so we will work with the community and with some staff from the blender institute to manage an extensions platform where pre-approved high quality adoms are available for everyone and we will work together with the Blender market and other platforms to make sure that there is no conflict and that we have a nice balanced situation between what the commercial world and what the free software world.

18:53So you can check on code.blender.org to read more about this. And that's it. Hey.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Keynote - Blender Conference 2022.webm by Blender Foundation , Ton Roosendaal (2022-10-27), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.