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Trailer For Blender Open Movie Sintel Ready 182

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."
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Trailer For Blender Open Movie Sintel Ready

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  • Downolad? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 16, 2010 @03:58AM (#32225974)

    Quickly, Downolad! To the Up-mobile!

    • h264 v Theora (Score:3, Interesting)

      by La Gris ( 531858 )

      1080p Trailer:
      Ogg Theora 43M
      Mp4 H.264 15M

      • I am not going to weigh in on this argument because afaik the open movie project isn't about whether H.264 or Theora is better, but I do feel it's worth pointing out that for a fair comparison you need to know the data spent for equal quality, and I don't think you know that here.

        • The huge size difference here is really the first thing that intuitively comes to mind. It may have good unlisted technical reasons, and it may be possible to reach the good weighted educated true argumentation about it.
          By the way, the first impression will stick for the vast majority. Considering myself a tech aware and open to more in-depth knowledge does not help much here.
          As a show for open source computer graphics, video editing and Creative Commons, the codec/size issue here is a real show stopper.
          I f

        • for a fair comparison you need to know the data spent for equal quality, and I don't think you know that here

          This comparison [s2000.ws] shows that Xvid, x264 at H.264 Baseline Profile, and Theora are all fairly close, but x264 Main Profile needs about half the data for a given quality.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by BikeHelmet ( 1437881 )

            My own subjective tests for H.264 match that comparison. With tons of quality settings enabled, 256kbit H.264 seems to roughly match 640kbit theora for perceived quality.

            But with all those settings turned on, I just barely get 30fps encoding on a 3.5ghz Phenom II X4.

      • They simply used the maximum quality for Theora, that's like encoding a JPEG with quality 100. Nobody does that. Shooting for the same size or a bit more that H.264 would have resulted in indistinguishable quality difference. Don't take my word for it, try (starting from the lossless source, obviously).
    • Torrent's up (OGV, 1080/720/480p) [thepiratebay.org]

      (Dunno if it's such a good idea to seed from my little lappie at home, though)

    • Quickly, Downolad! To the Up-mobile! We must get to the bottom of Lepto-man's strange plans. He may be on top for now, but he won't charm this city forever.

  • Looking great (Score:5, Informative)

    by LingNoi ( 1066278 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @03:59AM (#32225976)

    I've been following this movie for a while now and wish them the best of luck. It's not too late to buy a copy of the movie and every purchase they make allows them to work longer on the movie.

    • Re:Looking great (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @04:46AM (#32226168) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • by Eil ( 82413 )

        Unlike Hollywood movies, this one is open source, so you can go jump in and make it better...

        http://durian.blender.org/get-involved/ [blender.org]

        • by MrHanky ( 141717 )

          Yes, the same way that I can re-write Emacs to be vim. Then again, I could just use vim, or write my own editor from scratch.

          • Yes, the same way that I can re-write Emacs to be vim. Then again, I could just use vim, or write my own editor from scratch.

            Then again, you can just use Viper mode in emacs which already supports a huge chunk of vim features and bindings. Aside from that, you've missed the point. The fact is, you CAN re-write emacs to be vim. The fact YOU don't want to, but would rather just complain, well, says enough doesn't it...

            • by MrHanky ( 141717 )

              x -- Point.

              o -- You.

              I can't just jump in and re-write the script at this time. It would be like re-writing Emacs, a fairly robust and stable software package, into something which it was never meant to be. On the other hand, I can either (as a consumer) watch one of the numerous films that I actually enjoy or (as a creator) write a script of my own and try to get others to collaborate.

              It's all well and good that it's "open source" when its fundamental vision is one I just find trite and boring. If it's only

              • LOL.

                Thanks for proving my original point. And interestingly enough, you misspelled, "You", in your diagram. It is spelled, "MrHanky". I'm sure the humor will also be lost on you; especially as to why its so obvious.

      • by selven ( 1556643 )

        And Avatar has a to-date gross revenue of $2.71 billion dollars [boxofficemojo.com]. So if this turns out to be open source Avatar, there will be lots of people going to watch it.

      • Re:Looking great (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @08:57AM (#32227158)

        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.

        • by crossmr ( 957846 )

          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

          • You want to do a tech demo, make it, and shop it out to companies. putting it out in the public means you open yourself to the public market.

            The open film and game projects by the Blender Foundation/Institute each have different technical and artistic targets. The funders of these projects are primarily existing users of Blender and public institutions such as art institutes. The artists are interested in more robust and powerful features to help them get their work done. They are also interested in attractive visuals to help them to promote Blender to other artists and to those interested in becoming 3D artists.

            No one involved in the project

          • Didn't we already do that with that pretentious snore fest, elephants dream?

            Could you scream to the world any louder just how completely clueless you are? LOL! Seriously! With your logic, there is never a need to ever produce more than one tech demo, regardless of how much technology has changed or improved. Not to mention, the fact that you've missed what is completely obvious, twice now, underscores how completely out of touch you are; especially after it was already explained to you.

        • by tepples ( 727027 )

          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.

          The advantage of a free movie is that the copyright owner won't sue fans who make derivative works. But there are almost no notable feature-length free movies from the talkie era (1928-), apart from a few pre-1964 films whose copyright owners didn't pay the copyright maintenance fee that was required at the time. So what's the free alternative to a major motion picture?

          • That's an indirect benefit. The focus is to use the tools, learn where they fall short, and most importantly, show others in industry such free tools are available which are capable for producing capable results. That of course, doesn't diminish the significance of your point.

    • 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!

      • by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @06:35AM (#32226546) Homepage

        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).

        • by ZosX ( 517789 )

          I disagree. I think the barrier to entry is getting higher and higher with every multi-hundred million dollar upgrade pixar makes every time. You could always render stuff and make movies with lesser resources. There are a number of commercial products out there that will accomplish this task. They are not overly expensive either. Sure blender is free, but I've seen better rendering from commercial products to be honest. What was that short film that was recently making the rounds in the internet with the c

          • Can you post a link to this camera guy and bubbles video? I don't recall seeing it and having a hard time finding it via google.
            • by ZosX ( 517789 )

              Oooh...it was really great. Hang on I'll look.

              Fuck all if I can't remember what it was called....

              I wanted to see that again, so I'll look some more and check back here if I ever find it again, I promise.

        • When the Mind's Eye or Pixar pushed out shorts they weren't anything spectacular from a story point

          The stories maybe were a little weak, but the one thing they did excel at was bringing their characters to life, i.e. making endearing characters. (Not making sure the movements are realistic, etc.).

          I'm sure this has everything to do with getting the right kind of people to use blender, but I've tried a million times to use that damn program and it's interface just baffles the f^ck out of me. And I'm someone t

          • I'm sure this has everything to do with getting the right kind of people to use blender, but I've tried a million times to use that damn program and it's interface just baffles the f^ck out of me. And I'm someone that uses Maya, Lightwave and a host of other 3D apps.

            Give the release that comes out around Siggraph a try. You can set your navigation presets to Maya and other 3D apps, and the default layout is more similar to other 3D applications. Also a lot of inconsistencies have been eliminated within Blender.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Xtifr ( 1323 )

        "It's an Open Source Book!" Aren't you paying attention?

        Yes, an "open source" book made with "open source" tools was a pretty significant event when it first happened, back in the nineteen-eighties! Now it's routine, and free/libre/open-source books (mostly technical manuals, but with a few works of fiction) are common enough that the fact that they're open is not particularly notable, but that wouldn't have happened without the pioneering efforts of the people who first set out to achieve that goal.

        There's even a vague analogy between what happened with Blende

      • Since you didn't read the post you're replying to here it is again.

        I've been following this movie for a while now and wish them the best of luck. It's not too late to buy a copy of the movie and every purchase they make allows them to work longer on the movie.

        No where did I say "Yeah! open == awesome" or anything similar? oh that's right, I didn't at all.

        So tell me this. What the fuck are you talking about?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Daengbo ( 523424 )

      If you like following Blender Open Movies, then you should know about The Morevna Project [morevnaproject.org], a traditional animation project which uses Synfig in addition to Blender. It's a sci-fi (or is that SyFy?) version of a Russian fairy tale. It's much longer than the Blender movies, and is intended to be a real story, not a tech demo. Download preview video [archive.org]. YouTube version [youtube.com]

  • As long as I don't have to eat them...

    They are an acquired taste, I know. In Ipoh last month my son bought an ice cream and asked for mango flavour. He took one bite and uncharacteristically offered it to me. So I took a taste and realised his mistake. Apparently they were out of mango...

  • Not peach or apricot (Score:5, Informative)

    by bencoder ( 1197139 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @05:12AM (#32226252)

    (We discussed the beginnings of this project in 2007.)

    Well, that is incorrect. You've linked to an article about Peach [bigbuckbunny.org] and Apricot [yofrankie.org] projects, both of which were completed.

    This is a seperate, 4th project, Durian [blender.org] (Orange [elephantsdream.org] being the first)

  • Article doesn't mention if it's intended as a theatrical release or bit torrent release

    • It's Creative Commons licensed, so you can download it from their server or one of the mirrors, torrent it or play it in your home theater.

      It'll only be a 5-8 minute short movie, so don't expect a feature film, or something..

    • Article doesn't mention if it's intended as a theatrical release or bit torrent release

      It is a short animated film of roughly 11 minutes. It will be screened in a number of theaters and can be purchased on DVD, but you likely won't be able to purchase a ticket to go see it at theaters except at film festivals.

  • I found myself comparing this to "Final fantasy: the spirit within" of some 9 years ago, and at first was a bit disappointed, but then I realized that the movie didn't go for realism, and makes up a lot with some interesting animation. IMHO.

  • by LetterRip ( 30937 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @06:58AM (#32226622)

    If you are interested in supporting this project you can preorder the DVD which will come with the complete 3D, texture, and assets to make the film under CC Attribution 3.0 - http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=120 [blender3d.org]

    Like all Blender Institute open movie projects, these help to drive forward Blenders capabilities and put them to the test in a production environment.

    Some of the major improvements that have happened for this project are things like increasing how many millions of polygons our sculpting tools can handle (45 million on decent hardware); another major upgrade to our animation tools; improving our rendering quality; improvements in simulation quality; and of course numerous interface upgrades.

    • by six11 ( 579 )

      Thanks. I'm particularly interested in all the other stuff on the DVDs:

      • The movie (approx 6-8 min) in best DVD quality widescreen format (disks in both NTSC and PAL)
      • The HD version of the movie (.avi and/or .mov)
      • A special disk with a lot of video tutorials by the artists and developers
      • All .blend files, models, textures, and so on... the material used to create the movie.
      • The original script, breakdown, storyboards
      • Documentation and other tutorials by the team members about all technical aspects the movie; like how to re-use assets, animate characters, or add new shots.
      • And of course all the extras we can not predict yet, like commentary tracks, a making-of documentary, outtakes, and so on.

      btw that order page doesn't mention the name of the film, so at first I thought I was in the wrong spot.

  • Whatever happened to Machinima [wikipedia.org]? I figured by now viral machinima movies would routinely sweep the Net, a plugin for it would run on most browsers, more kids would watch its movies than watch TV, people would routinely whip up new clips like email, live video would be ported into it automatically.

    But it's still totally fringe, practically unheard of. If they'd called it "mechanime", would it have caught on more by now?

    • Whatever happened to Machinima? I figured by now viral machinima movies would routinely sweep the Net, a plugin for it would run on most browsers, more kids would watch its movies than watch TV, people would routinely whip up new clips like email, live video would be ported into it automatically.

      But it's still totally fringe, practically unheard of. If they'd called it "mechanime", would it have caught on more by now?

      The tools for doing machinima are still quite poor. The interfaces for controlling characters, acting, and setting up scenes are clumsy and time consuming. Until the tools become worthwhile it probably won't catch on beyond the novelty level.

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Nice! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Lode ( 1290856 ) on Sunday May 16, 2010 @09:04AM (#32227192)

    And it seems this movie will contain a lot more dialog than the first FLOSS movie (where the only conversation was: "emo." "EMO!" "emo?").

  • All the best to them, but god-damned that looks like some generic pap right there. "Gate-keepers"? Never heard that one before! A spaulder on a single shoulder? Original! It seems rather obvious that there's no decent F/OSS script creator :-P
  • So much negativity in this discussion! I thought the trailer looked really great. Well done to the people who are working on this project. I look forward to seeing the finished production. Thank you for your efforts.

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