Trailer For Blender Open Movie Sintel Ready 182
Posted
by
kdawson
from the showcase dept.
from the showcase dept.
l_i_g_h_s_p_e_e_d writes "The trailer for Sintel is ready. (We discussed the beginnings of this project in 2007.) Sintel is a Blender Open Movie project created using only FLOSS software. 'For the entire creation pipeline in the studio, we will only use free/open source software. We have less than two months now to finish this completely. ... Imagine the tension that's building up here to get everything perfect. For today, we'll celebrate a big step forward.' Download here."
Re:Looking great (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it looks great, kind of. It looks visually impressive, but having seen the trailer I just don't want to see the whole thing. It just gives me a sense of genre, and does not pique my curiosity at all. Manga style characters? Cliched fantasy story? It just gives a sense of being one among thousands of films just like it, except that it's a tech demo for the power of Blender at the same time. Disappointing in an Avatar kind of way.
Re:Looking great (Score:5, Insightful)
There are people who are willing to pay for something that they enjoy, whether it's commercial or free.
I've gotten a lot of pirated stuff over the years but I also buy the movies/music/games/software/etc. that I like and it being freely available makes no difference.
Besides, wouldn't you want to give them the extra incentive to create even more movies?
I Just Wrote an Open Source Book! (Score:3, Insightful)
I wrote it in Open Office, atop Linux, with a stuffed penguin on my desk.
What's it about? you ask.
Does it matter? I said, "It's an Open Source Book!" Aren't you paying attention?
Hey, I know, I'll license it under Creative Commons, how's that? Now it'll be really good!
Re:I Just Wrote an Open Source Book! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, haha, you make joke...
But the mere fact that creative projects were created with open and freely available tools is a good thing, regardless of the quality AT THIS TIME.
What this is demonstrating are possibilities, proof of concepts. When the Mind's Eye or Pixar pushed out shorts they weren't anything spectacular from a story point of view. In fact, they were nothing that couldn't have been told better with real actors. People scoffed then and said similar things. But look at what happened with CGI....
The real story is that the barrier to entry has been lowered. And yes, when you lower the barrier to entry the first folks who use the tools are perhaps not the best storytellers or best writers or best mathematicians. But because the tools are now available to many more, the pool of talent grows. And this means that the products become better. And yes, free tools are not yet at the level of commercial tools, and may never be but the mere fact that free tools exist means that everything gets better (rising tide floats all boats).
Re:Looking great (Score:3, Insightful)
If there charging for the movie, I think they should donate to the software developers, for writing the software to make it possible. On thing about open software is that it can't pay for marketing so the rule, free for those you know, very expensive to everyone else applies.
The Blender Institute is the one creating the film, and it pays for the salarys of a number of our core developers and for our project lead. The films are a way for us to increase the rate of Blender development, prove its capabilities in a high pressure and tight deadline environment, to achieve new development goals, and as a tool for marketing.
Re:Looking great (Score:2, Insightful)
Movies are not seen based upon previews alone.
They overwhelmingly are. You've seen something on TV, or on a prior pre-roll. Your friends have sat next to you in the cinema and said "that looks like it's going to be good, I want to see it!". You have nothing to do one night and you decide to go see a movie, you decide what looked best from the selection of what's out and you go. Or most people do.
Usually by the time they go to buy the ticket, they have heard reviews on tv, read about them in the newspaper, online, etc, have heard from friends that have seen the movie already, etc, etc.
How do you think all their friends are able to tell them about it? How do you think blockbuster opening weekends making tens of millions of dollars happen? People like the previews and the buzz and they take a gamble to be part of the excitement.
I'm just saying that I really can't see this becoming a practical payment method.
And who is proposing it should be? The pre-order in this case was effectively a donation if you valued the project.
I won't even buy PC games until they've been patched to playability.
You must be fun at parties.
Re:Looking great (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it looks great, kind of. It looks visually impressive, but having seen the trailer I just don't want to see the whole thing.
To say you've entirely missed the point in an understatement.
It looks visually impressive
This is entirely the point - which you've completely validated. There is no other point.
The OS community wishes to show off what blender and other OS tools are capable of creating. As far as I know, there are no open source tools which create story lines, genres, or any other meta aspect of the movie. People do that. The purpose is to create a technology demo which shows off the technical capabilities of the tools. The fact you call the trailer, "visually impressive", means they've hit a home run. At the end of the day, unless YOU are making commercials, movies, special effects, or a hobbyist modeler, frankly you're not even the target audience.
To be absolutely clear, the intent of these movie projects isn't so the casual movie goer has something to watch while they chew down some pop corn. The intent is to demo Blender's (and other tools) capabilities to those who do create movies, commercials, and special effects, so that Blender will be used in places you already do chew on pop corn. In short, you just gave them a glowing A+ and didn't even realize.
Fails to impress (Score:2, Insightful)
If the goal of the trailer is to demonstrate the power of open source... it fails. Facial expressions and animations so fluid they compete with late 90s Blizzard cutscenes? Meh. It demonstrates more the power of the uncanny valley. Is that girl trying to be terrified, lost, or innocently seductive in a Japanese sex-doll kind of way? Is that gargoyle thing giving her a "I miss you" look or about to eat her?
After seeing the trailer, I have less than no interest in watching the movie. It screams "copycat" through and through. From the face of some generic woman serving as the backdrop to the font used for the title to the artistic style of the movie to the snowy wanderer to the shaman scene showing off lighting effects to the mystical feeling of some sort of lost warrior on some sort of epic quest with some sort of semi-tribal drumbeats in the background... seriously, that's the best they came up with? It's like they purposely ripped off every cliche in video gaming. Fine if you were making the intro for an indie Diablo clone, perhaps, but as a standalone movie it holds no appeal and only makes open source seem like a poor imitator of outdated tech and themes.
I'm sorry to be so harsh, but really, as something designed to show off open source, its primary message seems to be "we're still playing catchup".
Re:Fails to impress (Score:5, Insightful)
they're not even playing catch up right now. read the summary
The summary has a large number of errors and was written by someone without any affiliation with the project, nor apparently even a clear understanding of the basics of the project. Also while in some aspects we are playing catchup, in others we are pulling ahead of the competition.
There have been some technical issues on the project that are currently being worked on but all 3D animation projects have technical issues throughout production, especially ambitious project.
i don't intend to be rude or belittle others' hard work (harder than i have ever done), but if you really want to make a movie, you don't care about the politicks behind your tools. you simply use the best available, which let you bring your idea/story to life most easily, letting you concentrate on the movie making part.
This isn't about the 'politics', the film is a test project for the tool robustness etc - all Pixar animated shorts you've seen are also tech demos. Animated shorts happen to be a really good way to iron out the bugs in 3D technology improvements. Just as with Pixar animated shorts, the artists take pride in their work and want it to have artistic merit and entertainment value. Our artists have the added motivation of the short film being used as a promotional tool for Blender.
otoh, what these people are doing is essentially a compromise. they want to develop software as well as make a movie. and in my experience compromises in art usually don't work. an artist does not care about anything but his creation.
You've misunderstood the goals. There isn't a compromise because the goal is mostly about the 3D software.
and yes, it is quite sad to see the graphics quality somewhat worse than crysis running with all effects on. i have always been excited by open source sw and cc licensed works of art but at times like these i realize that without lots of financial backing, mainstream movies are just not possible. and that kind of money you won't get if you plan to give away your product for free.
Crysis had a budget about 50-100 times larger than the budget for this film - watching the cutscenes - there is no hair, no cloth simulation, no subsurface scattering effects, almost all of the surfaces including the bodys of the characters are hard surfaces which is trivial to animate, light and render. The body animation is all motion capture and facial capture (and not high quality at that). The texture quality in Crysis is far worse. Your visual acuity appears to be lacking if you think that Crysis has superior visuals or animation skill. Also the Durian project has another 2 months of time left before completion and most of that will be polishing related.
Re:Looking great (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine, I couldn't give two craps about blender, which means they've failed.
LOL...LOL...LOL...
No, that means you're not their target audience. The fact you can't figure that out, especially after it was explicitly pointed out, means YOU HAVE FAILED; epically.
Getting the regular folks interested gets everyone else interested.
LOL...LOL...LOL...
They already have "regular folks" interested. In this case, they are called, "hobbyist". Frankly, they are going about things correctly, regardless of your back-assward way of thinking. They desire to get deeper industry penetration while learning how the tool can be yet further improved. In doing so they garner attention from professionals and those seeking to follow in the foot steps of professionals. That's their target. So far, they are spot on.
They and their fanboys want to take a standoffish screw you attitude,
You're confusing your attitude with theirs. Its called projection. Seriously, look at your post. In what way is improving a product and introducing it to those who would leverage it the most, a "standoffish screw you attitude"? You'll find no one will agree with your position on this, which underscores the "attitude" is entirely of your own making. It simply doesn't exist outside your world.
To summarize your position, anyone who devotes free time to a project, asks nothing in return, who in turn use their effort to further their project in the most sensible means available is expressing a "screw you attitude." This strongly suggests you've missed a pill - or should find some.
Re:Looking great (Score:3, Insightful)
And how do you know I'm not the target audience. Because I don't like it right? Anyone who doesn't like it isn't the target audience. That's why you come across as a dick.
LOL. Dumber than a bag of hammers. Once again you are projecting. You are the one coming off as a dick and projecting this on to others.
The reason its obvious why you are not the target audience is because you so clearly are completely clueless as to why someone would create such content. If you were the target audience, a judgment about its artistic content and therefore damnation of the project would have never occurred. The reason being? If someone were in the target audience, first and foremost, the content would be judged on its technical prowess rather than subjective artistic merit. Furthermore, the fact you still don't understand this most basic and incredibly obvious fact only highlights, bolds, and underscores that not only are you not the target audience but that you're a serious idiot - especially in light of the fact this has all been explained to you several times. The fact we are still having this discussion also brings to light the fact that you can't comprehend the most basic of discussions. And the fact that you can't comprehend is cause for you to project your idiocy onto others further establishes you're an idiot.
Since you wanted to see a dick - here I am. But understand, its only because you've taught us all how to be one by being such an epic dick/idiot. At this point its obvious you're either a completely idiot incapable of understanding anything or a troll. Either way, you're not worth the waste of time for further replies.