 Good evening, everybody. Thanks for coming here. It's very nice to be here. I will be introducing a very new academic diploma in a French university. It's a special diploma because it's a 100% Blender diploma. It's a national one, so it's a big thing. Of course, when I say 100%, maybe it's not exactly 100%. I had to lie a little bit in order to get on the stage, but don't call security. I think we have enough. We have enough Blender in this diploma. And so it's a new diploma. So we begin only in September. We have three months of experience, but already a lot of projects. I will be talking about all these. And it's in public university, so it's free. It's $5. And it's for everyone. So it's very Blenderly already. Just take your time. Okay, so I guess nobody knows me. I'm Nikos in the Blender community. In the real world, I am Nikola Priotakis. And nobody knows me because I'm absent. I'm not in Blender Artists, for example, since a long, long time. All the time I took to prepare this presentation, actually. It took two years at least. Okay, we have a nice diploma. It's a brand new diploma. It's all Blender. But it was a long, long road to get here today. So let's step back in the time. In April 2016, at that time, it's not long ago, but at that time, this degree was not existing yet. And we are in my university, it's very close to Paris. Let's say it's in Paris. It's, you know, walking distance from Paris. Let's say. No, it's a seven-hour walk. And it's not safe, so don't do it. And it's always sunny. It's a wonderful country. And that's the students we had at that time. So it's a last-year student. And as you can see, they are still smiling because they don't know what will happen in a few slides. And it was a big adventure. They were happy. Foolish. And these guys were studying in a very generalistic graphic design degree, let's say. And they are studying everything, from video editing to photography, digital painting, sorry, drawing, well, almost everything. And at the end of the year for them, it's very easy to find a job. And for me, it's the most important thing is that at the end of the year, they can easily find a job. That's my responsibility. But that I care a lot. But, you know, statistics. No, actually, it's important because if they don't, the region who pays for this training, this degree, can shut down the diploma. So it's quite important. There is a lot of pressure here. So they are doing everything, but the problem is, in this diploma, there is a little part of Blender. Very little. Only 24 hours, which makes four days of class. So, you know, it's not really enough to do anything. And that's what I wanted to do. I was dreaming about a full-time Blender degree and a degree where we can do all the fun stuff, game design, CG animation, visual effects. And these things is what we all want to do. That's the very sexy part of this job. The problem is, in France, at least, it's very hard to find a job in this area. It's overcrowded. And actually, most of this stuff is now done in some other countries for some reasons. And it's good for these countries. But here in France, we don't have a lot of job opportunities. So this is no way to go for me. But one day, I receive a phone call. And it's real. It's not storytelling bullshit or anything. It really happened. I receive a phone call. And it was a lady. And that's how I met your mother. Sorry for that joke. That was the best I had. But that won't happen again. And the lady is in charge of a heart exhibition center. And this art exhibition center is inside an old A.B. You know, A.B.? Maybe my pronunciation is a little bit hazardous. I don't know. But an old A.B. Anyway. And she asked if my students were able to rebuild a 3D model of this A.B. that has been constructed in the 12th century. It's an old Gothic style. But who has been destructed during the French revolution to take the stones, actually, and build houses for the people. It's not all bad. But the problem is, I told you, my students had only 24 hours of blender, four days of full-time 3D courses. And so far, they didn't know anything about 3D. Nothing. And the class was the week after. So I didn't have a lot of time to prepare if I said yes. But I'm very weak and I said yes. And then the lady was so happy. Oh, that's fantastic. And I will book a theater and invite a lot of people for a big presentation event. And I was like, what? But, well, I'm a giver. And then she said some interesting facts about the A.B. We have only few documents about it. We have this picture, which is wrong, actually. And we have this blueprint and some scientific papers, because there has been some excavations, excavations that you can see here. That's what is left of the A.B. And, for example, there was a big church. Wait. There is a button here. Yeah. And there's a big church here. Very high, very big and beautiful. And the only thing that remained from this church is this pillar. And it's this thing here. So the job was not well. Anyway, I said yes. And we begin to walk. So, you know, it's all stuff. No pressure. Okay. And the first day begins. But before that, before the first day, maybe I will give you some advice. Maybe if you want to teach Blender one day, I will give you two advices that I learned from my parrot. And it's business and needy. Not nudity, needy. Business because, as you can see, the parrot is happy if he has something to chew on, if he's busy chewing on something. And then he's happy and forget that he's a prisoner. And the second thing is that I actually don't feed the parrot until he begs for food. I mean, he can't talk. So if he don't ask food, I don't want to waste and I don't feed him. And then he's starving. But eventually he died one week after I had it. But my point is not there. My point is I need to beg for it. Why? We will see how it applies to students. First, I give them something to chew on. And that was the obey, the big construction. And they are busy looking at the blueprints. They are busy reading scientific papers and trying to do something that looks like, okay. And meanwhile, they don't realize that they actually are learning Blender, learning 3D and learning how to think like scientists. But they just don't realize, they don't have time to realize that. So for me the job is very easy. It's a natural process. The second thing is I don't teach Blender until they beg me to. And they had a lot of pressure because of all the events going on. So they were really in need of learning how to do stuff. And I don't like to arrive in a class and say, okay, today we are going to do 3D, turn on your computer. And then I have to struggle during four hours because they are not interested. But no, they don't have a choice. And the thing is I can be the worst teacher ever. I don't care because this needs me so much. So that's a good trick for everybody. So the first day of Blender, we arrived at this point. Actually, we discovered Blender and how it works, what is 3D and well, we did some extrusions. And they were quite happy. Of course, it's a little bit crappy but for a beginning it's good. And the second day, they begin to split the work and work on several buildings, okay, three students from here, three students from there. And two students were walking on the doors and windows. And at the end of the day, well, they had something that begins to look like a church in the air bay. And at this point we knew that we will have a big success. That is the third day and all the things begins to, you know, being put together. And all the measures we did were okay, mostly. And oh, okay. It's really a good beginning. And so we took time to read the scientific papers about the air bay and make some corrections and modifications accordingly. And the first day we had this. So I did some colors and having some renders, some animations. But that was only the front parts. So there was no pressure. So finally we were quite happy. They were quite happy. I was still worried because we had to face the scientifics. We had to face the archaeologists and the journalists and everybody that will attend to the events. But we did a demonstration. We showed what we did. And actually the thing went quite well. And a lot of questions were popped by the scientists and archaeologists. And because we had this ground knowledge about what we were talking about, we had a nice and fruitful conversation with them. And I was so afraid to be crucified. But no, they were very happy. And after the champagne and everything, they all come to see us and offer partnerships and a lot of contacts and a lot of projects. And okay, if you're not French, you don't know what it means. But it's huge. It's huge. Here we have the ministry of the culture that proposed us a project. After this, there is nobody. Just the president. And we have the Louvre and everything. So wow, we were so happy. And finally we had the answer. We had the answer about the questions how to create a blender diploma that actually leads to job opportunities. And the answer was the double expertise. So this is what everybody wants and everybody see on the picture. And this is what you get when you open the box. We know the deal. And in fact, when someone wants to hire a 3D graphist, most of the time, he wants this and he gets this. But this is not bad. This is you, me, and everybody. We are all good at blender. We know how to do stuff. But what the client wants is someone that is able to understand his field, to understand his problematics, the issues, the constraints. If it's a scientist, well, he wants somebody that is not a scientist, obviously, but understand, understand and know how to turn a complex scientific discourse into something that is simple and understandable by everybody. So that's the double expertise. So here it is. I'm good at blender. Me too. But I also specialize into something. And that's what we want our students to be able to say. So what did we put into this degree? Well, a nice layer of scientific culture and archeology. So they had the ground level, the ground background of scientific, you know, academic things. And they know what they are talking about. And then we have this, you know, academic things. And they know what they are talking about. And then we have this big layer of 3D. And some other important stuff. Academic drawing, of course. And also didactics. Didactics is a way for them to take something complex and turn it into something simple. And that's what we do in the 3D layer. So all the good stuff that we all like. We have the modeling, the material creation, animation, all these in three levels. And we have also some digital painting, photogrammetry, post production. And we are so happy, you know, to spend all our day on blender. And that's the dream team. All the teachers that we have. And thanks to the blender network, I was able to hire some great personality. And this team is like a sample of our community. They are all different, very international. And different background, different experiences. And, well, it's very nice. It's very nice to work with all of the people that are involved in this. And it's very nice to work with all of these teachers. I have to say that none of them are teachers, actually. They are all professionals. And I wanted that because, well, I've been a teacher, a blender teacher for a long time. I know when someone asked me to do a class, a new class with students that I don't know, I tend to, well, do the same class and the same class and the same class every time. Not because I'm lazy, but yeah. And we have to create some courses that are focused on our projects. We have to link the two layers. So we have Patrick, you may know him for his sculptures. And William, we told who is here today. And we have Leo Paul with a cartoonist. Actually, he doesn't know a shit about blender, but he loves it. And so he's giving some drawing, academic drawing courses. And we have Paul and me. And just let's step inside the class and see how it works because it's always fun. This is a sculpture class with Patrick. So all the students, they have their computers and a graphic, what do you call it? Graphic tablet, yes. And a mouse. And the computer. And the computer. And the computer. And that's it. They have blender and we are happy. But there's also video conference classes. Because, as I said, the team is international and we have a teacher that is in the United States. And we told, he's coming from Poland. And they are not here at the university with us. They are doing the class by video conference. At first, it's a mess. Because we don't know, we are trying to invent a protocol to do something. And now it's quite smooth. I think it works very well and students love it. Especially because it's all in English. And you know, for French students, it's a big step. That's what we told. Can you do a voiceover? I don't have a sound. So actually, this is what the students can see in the class. We have a big screen and an old web camera here. And on their computer, they have the screen of the teacher. So it's quite a good way to work, I think. It works well. And so this is the first year and we had to pick up three projects. One big project that links all the courses and two other projects that students by team will work on during the whole year. And I will introduce this sexy project. That's the first one. And here we have Cyril. And Cyril is one of our students. And he didn't know yet this project. Stay here. Don't be afraid. Yes, Jeunaville is a Roman site that has been excavated for several years. And archaeologists have found 3,500 blocks like this. All broken. And they ask us if we can scan them and then re-put them together like a huge puzzle. So it's wonderful. But it's huge. Sorry? The second project, maybe you know outside the King's Palace. And there is a group of scientists, engineers that are developing kind of application that will scan the blueprint, the original blueprint of the construction of Versailles. And they will scan it and turn it into a 3D model. And well, obviously the 3D model is not pretty. And well, they need us to make it look like the actual Versailles. They want us to do something like that. It's a picture. And then the last project. Five minutes? Okay. So five minutes to speak about this wonderful project. This is the palace of Saint-Germain-Orlais. It's also a royal palace. Maybe you know Louis 40. Well, I don't know him either. He's died a long time ago. But he has been baptized here. Inside this castle there is a beautiful little chapel. And the Ministry of Culture asked us to do the 3D model of the chapel inside and outside for scientific purpose, which means that the level of precision has to be under the centimeter. This is two students pretending to walk just for the picture. And that's the reference picture they took. We have hundreds of them. And as you can see, well, it's gothic style. So there are a lot of sculptures and they are all different. It's a huge walk. So this is them actually walking. Actually walking also. And be ready for disturbing picture. All right. But it's okay. This statue is like nine meters up on the sailing. So nobody will see that. And as a conclusion, I'd like to say three things. First, why Blender? Well, obvious answer in front of this audience. But this is my educator's point of view. First, it's Libre software. It's open source. And you know the deal when you have commercial software. It's no change, no gain with a new kind of license that you have to renew every year. And so I wanted to get rid of all this and take the licensing out of the public system. At least in my department. So I go for the Libre. And also for me, there is no more professional package, 3D package than Blender. Because of its expandability. You need a feature where you just can code it. You want to ask someone to code it for you. And really it's a package that can mold itself on your workflow. That's very important. It's not like some other software that will tell you how to work. The coders or the UI guy will tell you now we change the version. You have to work like this. This way, this way. And Blender is versatile. You can do whatever you want and work the way you want. And also, of course, for me, it's important, Blender offers job opportunities. You download Blender, it takes two minutes, and then, well, it's jobs in the box. And then why not? There is people that say, oh yeah, but in the companies now they work on Maya, on 3ds Max or Lightwave or anything. Why Blender? And just why not? I mean, what we are teaching here is not Blender. We are teaching the fundamentals of 3D, and I don't want students to be tied to a software, because for them it will be very difficult to find something. So you work on 3D and then you adapt yourself. That's the spirit of work, I think. Okay, so we have this super crazy degree. There is one thing I didn't tell you is that students actually get paid to attend to the classes. In fact, there are half time in an institution or company working with a real contract, and the other half, they are in the class. So they have a salary, so it's really cool for them. And it's a national diploma and we have great projects. They have a real experience professionally speaking, and the most important is the specialization. Of course, we get to work on Blender every day. For those who want to make a living out of Blender, if there is only one thing to remember or just to consider is the extra layer of specialization that I was talking about, that's so important nowadays. Well, thank you very much.