 This session, we are happy to introduce Blenderland, the Italian Blender community virtual world. Our speakers today are Dario Galantini, excuse me, and Chinzia Rosso. Dario is the Vice President of the Italia Association of Blender Italia, and Chinzia is a research fellow at the University College Dublin. Welcome all. Let's begin the session. Over to you, Chinzia. Good afternoon to all. I'm Chinzia, and I'm speaking on behalf of Dario Galantini, who is the real expert on Blender here, not me actually. We'd like to thank the organisers, who kindly gave us the great opportunity to speak here in OSCC and promote our new and growing Italian Blender community. We'd also like to thank Michelle Techland, who is hosting us on our server, and also for giving us the opportunity to learn about this world. We're aware to be at the very beginning of our virtual trip, but we are also aware that this is the best opportunity we have to learn as much as possible from all of you. So, let's go start now. Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entire 3D pipeline, modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Originally, the program was developed as an internal application by the Dutch animation studio, NeoGeo, by the lead author, Ton Rosendal, here in the peak. Today, Blender is a very active open source project, and is led by the Blender Foundation. Advanced users employ Blender's API for Python scripting to customize the application and to write specialized tools. Often, these are included in Blender's future releases. Last release was the 2.79 table, or 2.8 as a beta version. Blender is well suited to individuals and small studios who benefit from its unified pipeline to conceive the development process. The Blender Italian Association is born to promote in Italy that software for 3D Blender published by Blender Foundation to acquire and propose explanatory contents on the use of Blender software to relate the Italian professional and non-professional artists who use Blender software or who would like to learn how to use it. Grant some visibility to professionals who are possible and who support the Blender Foundation by the Development Fund system as a gold standard to relate with the Blender Foundation itself where possible through participation and representation at the Blender Conference. The Italian Association has been constituted in 2017. The community is currently exponentially growing. Main objectives are contribution to the Blender Development Fund in order to maintain the software always available, make it as much possible as possible, create new relationships among the users, promote Blender in Italy through school, academy companies, publish the Blender magazine Italia and create new more funding opportunities. The Blender Italian Association is very active on the major social channels, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. To date, on our YouTube channel we can easily find videos from the Italian Blender Conference 2018 and courses from our certified tutors. On the website www.blender.it we have the most recent versions of the courses and tutorials. Thanks to our forum section a lot of help is provided by our users if any help is needed. Every year in the Blender Italian Association meets in a conference free of charge for all those who want to participate. Blender Italian Conference 2018 for Ligno is the most recent one. The topics range from the possibility to replace CAD with Blender in architecture to the Blender used in scenography creation for theater and video games production. All those topics have been covered by the leading experts of Blender on the Italian scene. Francesca Andresciani developments of the training offer experience, Blender and work. Marco Cacciini, Blender in architecture Osvaldo Gervasi, project School Job Alternations from University of Perugia. Cristina Ducci, Blender in the theatrical scenography and physical realisation of the elements of the scenography as the backdrops and the sculptures. Claudio Naviglio, Blender as a complete product and a valid artistic and professional tool. Stefano Del Brocco, Blender Valid Tool for Video Makers. Cristina Ducci, Blender Magazine Italia the Italian magazine dedicated to Blender. Alec Mugnozzo, police, possible users of Python in Blender in both artistic and non-artistic fields. Other initiatives have been carried out by our associates throughout Italy in order to focus the general public attention on the enormous potential of Blender. On the website Blender.it which aims to be the point of communication and training of the Italian Blender community. There are several community projects at the moment such as the Contest, the Forum Itself and Icorti. A new project whose aim is the creation of open movies short films for the Susan Awards and even held every year in Amsterdam in conjunction with the Blender conference. Last but not least, Blender.it also Blender Italian Association which, according to its stages, organized conferences, workshops, courses and much more. Blender.it is a project started in 2019 and forces the initial construction of an island and a city where the members have the right to build up meeting areas, public places and buildings. The most interesting part, however, is the presence of the virtual ad-waters of the association, a virtual building containing meeting areas, classrooms and a leisure hall for seminars. OpenZim was seen as a way to threaten up the spirit of creation in a 3D family environment. Currently, the work can be considered completed at 50% rate and is expected to end at the beginning of the new year. We have completed the ad-waters, Blender.it water plus meeting rooms, the landing, lighthouse plus the gulf, the Blender box as a sandbox and the landscape, the full island. The road and the railway with a proper train linking the landing to the Blender.it water will be completed in the next few days. The goal to be reached is to have a complete platform where to hold online courses and conferences dedicated to the use of Blender. Users can deepen their knowledge of the software and thanks to qualified instructors bring their creations into the virtual world using the land dedicated to Blender box. At the moment, Blenderland is used for training and self-training in the interlop production of scenarios and environments for virtual worlds. Better communications between the members and between anyone who can access in the future Blender box and museum and the exploration of Blender's potential in relation to virtual worlds. One of the objectives will be the opening of this environment to everyone as soon as it will be completed approximately 2019. Soon, the Blender community has been experimenting with OpenSim. Up to now, the project has first seen the following operational steps. Creation of a working group for the design of the island and to date, this working group is composed of Alessandro Bassariello, Dario Galantini, Michello Chioni such as Michelle Techland and Francesco Andresciani. Provide an avatar to all the associates initially as preset template and subsequently as avatar mesh. Creation of procedure of video tutorials explaining the viewer as some members had no experience of using virtual platforms on the right, PUD and creation of procedures and tutorials for importing objects generated with Blender. Blender box development training land for beginners and machine port. Definition of spaces and dimensions. Definition of the training modality. All the association meetings in Blender land which are currently held online. In the future, we will grant guided tours to the public through hybrid routes to schools, public administration and so on. Make it as much visible as possible. Create new relationships among the users. Promote Blender in Italy through school academy companies. Cooperate with other virtual worlds Blender land partners all over the world. Create a market as a social space with the opportunity to sell their creations to all the users. Create offer demand job love space. Create areas for creation and socialization. Create interactions between people for the knowledge generation integrating forums, cookies and so on. Implement innovative technologies such as virtual reality viewers organizing the Italian Blender conference in the virtual world. So thank you for your attention and there is any question. I haven't seen any questions to date but I did see some comments that this is fabulous that they love Blender. Galen's busy patting her Blender. And oh, there is a question. Did you make your slides in Blender? Did you make the slides in Blender? No, but all the figures you see of the land where everything was done in Blender on the land. Excellent. And Amber says, Blender is amazing. I use it every day. I do too. Now I know Marcus does cinematography. He does his video making using Blender. It's amazing. There were a couple of new movies that came out in the last year and they are really amazing. Lots of work behind it. And we had a question from Aller Tree saying, is this open to the public, Blender Land? Sure. Not at the moment. We are just completing the land but it will be soon in 2019 probably. Our plan is to make it free in 2019. Yeah, the program is free. It's totally free in Italy, yes. Wonderful. Yes, and she was asking about the grid. So in 2019 it will be available to the public. Wonderful. Any other questions? Would be cool to use the VR headset in Blender Land, son says. Well, I want to thank you for... It will. Oh, good. Wonderful. Wonderful. How complex is Blender? Blender is fine. It's the same for sure. We are covering with the expert. Go ahead. No, it's just a matter of exercise. I mean, it's a bit complicated at the very beginning but as long as you work on it it really gets easy to use. Okay, we have a question from David Braaghe who says, slightly off topic film and video production, what would be the primary area in which one can integrate Blender and Open Simulator for an animated film project? And this might be a question for Marcus, too. Go right ahead. Did you want to confer with Dario? What they're asking is if you're using Blender for film and video is it possible to make an animated film using OpenSim? The expert here says that as long as Blender is really complete software, it can be used for each step in the video production. Wonderful. Well, thank you. Well, that's the end of our time. If you have additional questions please send them to Dario or to Chinzia directly. And thank you, Dario and Chinzia for a terrific presentation.