From ton at blender.org Sat Jul 15 22:55:06 2006 From: ton at blender.org (Ton Roosendaal) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 22:55:06 +0200 Subject: [Bf-marketing] Press release Message-ID: <1a28c2d8830c2db48cf6d579d306ae9a@blender.org> Hi, Dunno who's reading this now, but please feedback? -Ton- ------------------------------- July 15, 2006 For Immediate Release Blender 2.42, the "Orange" version released. After the character animation upgrade of the past release, this final "Orange" release focuses mainly on the render pipeline. The blender.org team has been very busy meeting the imaging requirements for the Elephants Dream movie and this has resulted in a big boost of development. Especially the design of a tight integrated multi-layer multi-pass HDR renderer with the new Compositing system has proven to be crucial for a productive studio environment. An artist can setup complex shots consisting of many scenes, which each should render multiple layers and passes, define how the compositing should happen, and still have everything bundled in a single compact Blender file to hand over to a render farm to execute with a single command. The compositing system also supports a novel approach for vector-based motion blur, which reconstructs the final image (using depth values) into a 3d model - one polygon per pixel - and by deforming the 3d model with per pixel motion vectors it can accumulate efficiently good looking motion blur effects. The shortlist of 2.42 features: - A completely rewritten render pipeline, which now is rendering in full HDR, tile-based and threaded, supporting advanced preview renders, layer-rendering and pass render, with a tight integration to the compositor. - Added a Node based Materials editing for creating advanced shaders. The Node Shader editor allows to use both traditional Materials, as to construct more low level shader effects. New built-in shaders include anisotropic and fresnel. - The new HDR Compositor allows powerful imaging manipulations, using still frames or animation input, or directly hooking up with intermediate results of the rendering pipeline. Support for cropped previews allow for near-realtime editing of movie sized frames with dozens of compositing nodes. - Support for industry standard exchange format like OpenEXR, Cineon, DPX and Collada. - The already topnotch LSCM (UV) unwrapper was further expanded to ABF++, which means unwrapping is now more automatic with less stretching, interactively updated while editing. A minimize stretch tool was added for local adjustments. - The Game Engine was greatly expanded, and now makes full use of the new Bullet physics library. - The Blender Video Sequence editor now allows to edit unlimited amounts of images and videos, became full HDR images aware, and - for Linux only now - supports FFMPEG with a large range of codecs for audio and video. - Hundreds of bugs were mercyless hunted and killed. The official release logs, with images and examples, can be found here: http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender_2_42.727.0.html The main download page with all versions: http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender.31.0.html Note: Artists from the Elephants Dream team will demonstrate the 2.42 release on the Siggraph Convention, on sunday in theatre room 213, and for three days in the Open Source Pavilion on the trade show. Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation ton at blender.org http://www.blender.org From rolandh at reed-witting.com Mon Jul 17 13:39:46 2006 From: rolandh at reed-witting.com (Roland Hess) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 07:39:46 -0400 Subject: [Bf-marketing] Re: Press release In-Reply-To: <20060716100014.6C29C1C14E6@bserve2.blender.org> References: <20060716100014.6C29C1C14E6@bserve2.blender.org> Message-ID: <076A2270-11AE-41AA-AABB-F995C8C47D44@reed-witting.com> Looks good. Hits all the points. I did some grammar cleanups for standard English, if you want them... July 15, 2006 For Immediate Release Blender 2.42, the "Orange" version released. After the character animation upgrade of the past release, this final "Orange" release focuses mainly on the render pipeline. The blender.org team put an enormous amount of time into meeting the imaging requirements for the Elephants Dream movie, resulting in a big boost in development. The new design of a tightly integrated multi-layer multi-pass High Dynamic Range (HDR) renderer coupled with the new compositing system has filled a crucial need for a productive studio environment. An artist (or team) can set up complex shots consisting of many scenes, each of which will render in multiple layers and passes, define how the compositing should happen, and still have everything bundled in a single compact Blender file that can be handed over to a render farm to execute with a single command. The compositing system also uses a novel approach for vector-based motion blur, which reconstructs the final image, using depth values from the new render pipeline, into an actual 3d model in which each image pixel is represented by a polygon. This 3d model is then deformed using per pixel motion vectors (also from the new render pipeline) and the results are accumulated into a final motion blurred image. The whole process is amazingly fast and generates high quality results. The short list of 2.42 features: - A completely rewritten render pipeline, now in full HDR, tile-based and threaded, supporting advanced preview renders, layer and pass rendering, tightly integrated with the compositor. - Added a Node-based Materials editor for creating advanced shaders. The Node Shader editor allows artists to use both traditional Blender Materials as well was lower level shader effects. New built-in shaders include anisotropic and fresnel. - The new HDR Compositor allows powerful image manipulation. It uses still images or pre-rendered animation as input, or can be hooked directly into the intermediate results of the rendering pipeline for significantly better precision and control. Support for cropped previews allows for near-realtime editing of movie sized frames even with dozens of compositing nodes. - Support for industry standard exchange formats like OpenEXR, Cineon, DPX and Collada. - The already top notch LSCM (UV) unwrapper was further expanded to ABF++, which means that unwrapping automation is even better, with less stretching, and updates interactively while editing. A minimize stretch tool was added for local adjustments. - The Game Engine was greatly expanded, and now makes full use of the new Bullet physics library. - The Blender Video Sequence editor now artists allows to edit unlimited amounts of images and video, became fully HDR aware, and - for Linux only at the moment - supports FFMPEG with a large range of codecs for audio and video. - Hundreds of bugs were mercilessly hunted and killed. The official release logs, with images and examples, can be found here: http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender_2_42.727.0.html The main download page with all versions: http://www.blender.org/cms/Blender.31.0.html Note: Artists from the Elephants Dream team will demonstrate the 2.42 release at the Siggraph Convention, on Sunday in theatre room 213, and for three days in the Open Source Pavilion on the trade show. Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation Roland Hess IT Manager/Digital Prepress Reed & Witting Company Pittsburgh, PA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From letterrip at gmail.com Sun Jul 30 10:48:00 2006 From: letterrip at gmail.com (Tom M) Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:48:00 -0800 Subject: [Bf-marketing] media kit for siggraph? Message-ID: <584fe5640607300148w4dd476e4r31f599fb800aeb1b@mail.gmail.com> Do we have a media kit that can be handed out at siggraph? It would need to contain 1) print and web resolution versions of the logos - probably eps and png formats 2) print and web resolution photos that they can use - ie nice artwork, and screenshots of features that might interest their audience (both the cool new stuff that is being demoed - the sculpting, blender people fight, and stuff from recent releases) 3) copies of recent press releases and the release notes from the recent versions of blender, and possibly copies of articles written about blender 4) possibly lists of 'professional contacts' they can contact for quotes we should also get the same information for the other groups that will share the booth... also did blender foundation get a id scanner (scans the bar codes of the attendee ids and provides all of the contact information)? if not you'll want stuff at hand to copy down peoples contact information. From ton at blender.org Sun Jul 30 22:16:47 2006 From: ton at blender.org (Ton Roosendaal) Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:16:47 +0200 Subject: [Bf-marketing] media kit for siggraph? In-Reply-To: <584fe5640607300148w4dd476e4r31f599fb800aeb1b@mail.gmail.com> References: <584fe5640607300148w4dd476e4r31f599fb800aeb1b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <63063817-A6D1-45E8-924F-C9E1372C059A@blender.org> Hi, Unfortunately I don't have time for this (yet). Although we can printout stuff there. We don't have an id scanner, I hate these things :) I'll be the person to talk bizz with people personal anyway, collect bizzcards, and give each person a personal follow up 1-2 weeks after the show. -Ton- On Jul 30, 2006, at 10:48 AM, Tom M wrote: > Do we have a media kit that can be handed out at siggraph? > > It would need to contain > > 1) print and web resolution versions of the logos - probably eps > and png formats > 2) print and web resolution photos that they can use - ie nice > artwork, and screenshots of features that might interest their > audience (both the cool new stuff that is being demoed - the > sculpting, blender people fight, and stuff from recent releases) > 3) copies of recent press releases and the release notes from the > recent versions of blender, and possibly copies of articles written > about blender > 4) possibly lists of 'professional contacts' they can contact for > quotes > > we should also get the same information for the other groups that will > share the booth... > > also did blender foundation get a id scanner (scans the bar codes of > the attendee ids and provides all of the contact information)? if not > you'll want stuff at hand to copy down peoples contact information. > _______________________________________________ > Bf-marketing mailing list > Bf-marketing at blender.org > http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-marketing > > From letterrip at gmail.com Sun Jul 30 22:41:45 2006 From: letterrip at gmail.com (Tom M) Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 12:41:45 -0800 Subject: [Bf-marketing] media kit for siggraph? In-Reply-To: <63063817-A6D1-45E8-924F-C9E1372C059A@blender.org> References: <584fe5640607300148w4dd476e4r31f599fb800aeb1b@mail.gmail.com> <63063817-A6D1-45E8-924F-C9E1372C059A@blender.org> Message-ID: <584fe5640607301341h155f1d6bj7cdf800fb0ba992e@mail.gmail.com> On 7/30/06, Ton Roosendaal wrote: > Hi, > > Unfortunately I don't have time for this (yet). Although we can > printout stuff there. I was thinking that a temporary kit could be assembled from the site by those who can't attend. Only thing that couldn't be done would be the contact list and the logo (although I'm sure there are additional photos and shots that would be good to have). > We don't have an id scanner, I hate these things :) I hate em too :) However we found about half of people don't bring business cards since they expect you to have a scanner. Also the printout is nice to make notes on the back of. Although I suppose a notebook would work just as good. > I'll be the person to talk bizz with people personal anyway, collect > bizzcards, and give each person a personal follow up 1-2 weeks after > the show. Okay, sounds good, although I hope you have far more high quality contacts than will make that easily feasible :) LetterRip