RenderCon 2026, BlenderCon Highlights, SUBMERGE & Motion Plus Design

5 min readSep 25, 2025

These past two weeks have been filled with announcements, press coverage, and events like shaping what’s next for creators everywhere.

Here’s your full recap of everything making waves right now:

RenderCon 2026: Mark Your Calendars

Creators, innovators, and visionaries across art, technology, and media get ready. After a successful inaugural year, RenderCon 2026 returns April 16th & 17th.

Mark the dates on your calendar and stay tuned for more details.

Save the Date | Rendercon 2026

Save the date for Rendercon 2026.

renderfoundation.com

Blender Conference 2025

At this year’s Blender Conference (BCON25), Render Network founder Jules Urbach unveiled the beta launch of OTOY.ai — a new platform bringing 700+ AI models, optimized to run on consumer GPUs for low-cost, high-scale compute on Render Network.

Watch Jules’ full talk here:

This marks a major step forward for accessible AI compute, building toward a future where artists, researchers, and creators can harness state-of-the-art AI models directly on decentralized infrastructure.

BCON Talk Spotlight #1 — Raphael Rau

Raphael Rau’s #BCON25 talk titled “Path Tracing Through Acrylic: A Photorealism Journey on Render Network” is online and showcases how he tackled a one-week deadline to create a high-end keyboard animation in Blender, relying on the Render Network to cut render times from 11 days on a single GPU down to hours across decentralized nodes:

“Thanks where thanks is due to the Render Network because that enabled me to do all this in one week. We were still at the deadline and my workstation was used the whole time for shading, so I couldn’t use it for rendering at the same time.” — Raphael Rau

Watch it here:

BCON Talk Spotlight #2 — Mike Hodgetts

Another great session to check out is “Revolutionizing Virtual Production Car Process with Blender,” Starting at 16:41, Mike Hodgetts’ shares why his team chose Octane & Render Network.

“One of the benefits of using Octane is it also opened us up to the Render Network… It’s a powerful cloud-based render solution that’s cut some of our render times on a full 1 minute 12K plate from days down to hours.” -Mike Hodgetts

Watch here:

12 Immersive Worlds: SUBMERGE at Artechouse NYC

SUBMERGE: Beyond the Render has transformed Chelsea Market’s Artechouse digital art exhibit space into an 18K immersive art experience open until December 14th.

Powered by Render Network, the exhibition showcases the work of 16 leading digital artists, each crafting a unique world that blurs the lines between storytelling, technology, and scale.

The exhibition has already captured press attention, including a recent feature by Secret NYC, a cultural outlet with 2.1M+ Instagram followers.

For a full breakdown, catch this week’s Spaces recap covering Media Day + the invite-only cocktail reception with influencers, artists, and friends:

Tickets available here:

Motion Plus Design in Seoul — This Saturday

This Saturday (Sept 27th) Motion Plus Design is bringing the world’s top motion graphic artists together in Seoul.

A gathering to see how the world’s top motion designers are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Tickets are on sale now:

Render Network Hardware Upgrades

There are two updates to the Render Network’s decentralized GPU infrastructure:

Support for NVIDIA 50-Series Blackwell GPUs (including RTX 5090s)
New 32GB minimum VRAM option for Tier 2 jobs

Here’s why it matters…

Renders are now powered by the most advanced GPU generation available
Complex, memory-intensive projects (film VFX, large simulations, photoreal environments) are easier to handle with higher VRAM capacity
No changes to workflow. Simply submit your render and the network automatically allocates jobs to upgraded nodes.

Availability:

50-Series GPU support: now live across decentralized nodes
32GB VRAM option: now available for Tier 2 jobs

This marks a major step forward in scaling rendering performance for artists, studios, and creators everywhere.

Emmy-Winning White Rabbit adapted into an immersive experience for SUBMERGE

History was made this year when White Rabbit became the first Web3 project to win an Emmy.

The interactive anime series, led by Maciej Kuciara and Emily Yang, won Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media Programming at the 2025 Emmys.

Now, White Rabbit has been adapted into an 18K immersive experience at Artechouse, powered by Render Network, and open to the public until December 14th.

Community Spotlight: Reynante Martinez

3D artist Reynante Martinez continues to push the boundaries of Blender-powered cinematic design.

His latest project, New Chapter, showcases a breathtaking interior, from early WIP stages to final render, brought to life with Blender, Cycles, EmberGen, DaVinci Resolve, and the Render Network.

Cinematic Interiors Created in 3D Using Blender & DaVinci Resolve

Reynante Martinez showed a fascinating comparison of the WIP and the final version.

80.lv

September’s Render Royale — Now Closed

Yesterday, September 25th, marked the final day to submit work for this month’s Render Royale contest.

Judges Annibale Siconolofi, Amrit Pal Singh, Matt Milstead, and Jess Wiseman will now review submissions and select winners across Octane, Redshift, and Blender. Stay tuned — winners will be announced soon.

🏆 Winners will:

Receive a share of 5,250 USDC
Gain opportunities to showcase their work globally at Render Network exhibitions and events

Look out for next month’s Render Royale theme on Monday’s Spaces on X with Sunny Osahn.

Learn more about the contest here:

Render Network Foundation

Advancing the Next Generation of Rendering and AI Technology. We are a not-for-profit dedicated to maintaining the core…