Mapping Pipelines:
Lessons from Three
Open Source Studios
Swann Martinez & Rémy Sohier on what the Paneurama project found
when it looked inside three studios that run on Blender — and how different
they turned out to be despite sharing the same tools.
"This presentation invites the Blender community to help expand this collective mapping effort and foster a culture of transparency and collaboration."
There is a particular kind of knowledge that almost never gets shared in the creative technology industry: how studios actually work. Not which tools they use — that information circulates freely — but how data moves through a production, how decisions get made about infrastructure, how open-source principles translate into day-to-day operational choices. Studios guard this information, sometimes for competitive reasons, more often simply because sharing it requires effort with no obvious return.
The Paneurama project is an attempt to change that. Led by researchers Swann Martinez and Rémy Sohier, it involves structured interviews with production studios that have placed Blender and open-source tools at the centre of their workflows, followed by detailed mapping of their pipelines — dataflows, toolchains, IT infrastructure — into comparable visual formats. This talk at Blender Conference 2025 presents findings from the first three studios to participate, all based in France, all committed to open-source principles, and all significantly different from each other in how they operate.
The Three Studios
Cube Creative
A larger studio with a substantial Blender-based pipeline, known for animated series production. Their infrastructure reflects the challenges of coordinating large teams around shared assets and render farm management.
Autour de Minuit
A production company focused on short-form and experimental animation. Their pipeline prioritises flexibility and creative iteration over the standardisation that larger productions require.
Normaal
A smaller studio with a strongly open-source oriented toolchain. Their approach to IT infrastructure and data management offers a useful reference point for independent studios considering a full open-source transition.
What the Talk Covers
- Pipeline mapping methodology The Paneurama project developed a structured interview format and visual mapping system that allows different studios' pipelines to be compared directly. The talk explains how this methodology works and why standardised mapping is harder than it sounds — studios describe their workflows differently, use the same terms for different things, and often have informal processes that don't appear in any documentation.
- Dataflow differences despite shared tools All three studios use Blender as a primary tool. Their dataflows nevertheless differ significantly — in how assets are versioned, how scenes are assembled, how render outputs are organised and delivered. The comparative maps make these differences visible in a way that individual case studies cannot.
- Toolchain choices beyond Blender No studio runs on a single application. The talk documents what each studio uses alongside Blender — for asset management, render management, compositing, collaboration — and how these tools connect. The variation here is as informative as the commonalities.
- IT infrastructure in open-source studios Running a production on open-source tools has infrastructure implications that are rarely discussed publicly. Server configuration, network storage, render node management, backup strategies — the talk covers how each studio approaches these questions and where their solutions diverge.
- How open can an open-source studio really be? The central tension the talk explores is between open-source principles and practical production reality. Studios that believe in openness still have clients, contracts and competitive pressures. The findings reveal where transparency is genuinely practised and where it runs into limits — which turns out to be a more interesting result than simple advocacy for either position.
- Expanding the mapping effort The talk closes with an invitation to the Blender community to participate in extending the Paneurama dataset. More studios, more countries, more production types would make the comparative maps significantly more useful. The methodology is designed to be replicable by anyone willing to do the interview work.
Why Pipeline Transparency Matters
Most knowledge about production pipelines travels through personal networks — people who worked at a studio, know someone who did, or attended a talk where a technical director shared more than usual. This means the knowledge concentrates in the same places the industry already concentrates: large studios in major markets with the resources to send people to conferences.
The Paneurama project is working against that tendency. By making pipeline maps public and comparable, it creates a resource that smaller studios, independent artists and researchers can actually use — not as a template to copy, but as a reference point for understanding what choices exist and what their trade-offs look like in practice. For anyone building or rethinking a Blender-based production workflow, this talk is one of the more useful things to come out of BCON25.
About the Speakers
Swann Martinez and Rémy Sohier are the researchers behind the Paneurama project, which investigates pipeline structures and open-source practices in animation and visual effects studios. Their work sits at the intersection of production research and open-source advocacy, with a focus on making practical pipeline knowledge more accessible to the broader community. The BCON25 presentation was the project's first public presentation of comparative findings.
About Blender Conference 2025
Blender Conference is the annual gathering of the Blender community, held in Amsterdam. All sessions are recorded and released under Creative Commons licensing through the Blender Foundation's PeerTube instance at video.blender.org. More information about BCON25 at conference.blender.org/2025.
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