Planet Blender v2 beta4 - 'Turning Pages'

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Non-Blender: VFX Inspiration
BlenderNation - 2012-02-02 18:00:25

A detailed look into the special effects of some recent Hollywood movies. Andy writes: VFX work from recent Hollywood movies showing the use of VFX and 3D in shot breakdowns. (Non-Blender) Intended...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
Mobile Game Update: Eat Sheep
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-02 16:59:07

Mobile Game Development Update

It has been almost a month since we announced our first internal mobile project called “Eat Sheep“. Though there is still a bit of work left on the game, I wanted to take this time to share some of the recent updates on production! So let me stop talking and get to the goods.

Monster Animations are in full swing!

Life is being created in this monsters by the talented Beorn Leonard. We had such a good time working with Beorn on his Animation Series, that we asked him to hang out with us a bit longer. Beorn is adding some of his skill set he picked up from working on Sintel and Happy Feet 2 into these hug-able little monsters. Check out the very “Work in progress” Animations below of the Melvin Monster and Sheep animations.

Art updates:

Creating assets for this game has been a bit of fun and a challenge. One thing we constantly have to keep reminding ourselves is the “players view”. Meaning model to the camera. You can see some of these assets could use a few more polys from the views we are presenting, keep in mind the player is going to viewing them from an 85 degree downward angle. Most assets will render smaller then quarter on screen.

Engineering:

Teeth have been magnetized, sheep have been polarized and Melvin’s ready to eat! In addition to setting the little monster up with a new pair of chompers, the engineering team has worked on setting up some more intuitive behind-the-scenes controls and making database connections. They’ve also made sure that the monsters’ memories now last longer than a single session, and are beginning work on having monsters from all over the world share their wool income figures so they can do some number crunching. The developers also continued their seemingly never ending seach-and-destroy mission on bugs, diligently squashing them wherever they go.

Concept/Art

The art side has been focusing less on conception and more on user interface, menus, and buttons. Right now we are working toward playing a full run-through so on the art side I’m working on the main screen, level select screen, win/loss screen, and the actual in-game hud.
Here are the drafts so far of the main screen and level select screen below ↓

…But somehow another monster sneaked his way into the Eat Sheep World.

Meet Phillip.

He comes with a face full of cute and a full tutorial on creating him using Melvin’s base as a foundation. View the tutorial.

Newsletter

To stay up to date with the latest Eat Sheep updates Like us on the Eat Sheep Facebook page or subscribe to the Newsletter. Thank you again for the support!

Subscribe to our mailing list
Stuff Blender Users Say
Blender Guru - 2012-02-02 16:10:00

I decided to have a bit of fun this week by jumping on the popular “S**t Girls say” meme bandwagon and creating a blender equivalent.

There’s really no point to this other than to have a laugh. Enjoy!

What parts can you relate to?

If you liked this post you may also like:
Tutorial: an Old Well
BlenderNation - 2012-02-02 14:00:30

As part of his ‘environment series’ of tutorials, Alex Telford jumps into modeling an old well. Alex writes: Bear in mind that this is NOT a beginner series, I will assume you already...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
Development Targets
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-02-02 10:50:56

As you all know, Mango is not only meant to create an awesome short film, but also a way to focus and improve Blender development. We already have great new tools, but for a real open source VFX pipeline we need a lot more!

Here are the main categories for development targets we like to work on the next 6 months (in random order):
1. Camera and motion tracking
2. Photo-realistic rendering – Cycles
3. Compositing
4. Masking
5. Green screen keying
6. Color pipeline and Grading tools
7. Fire/smoke/volumetrics & explosions
8. Fix the Blender deps-graph
9. Asset management / Library linking
How far we can bring everything is quite unknown as usual, typically the deadline stress will take over at some moment – forcing developers to just work on what’s essential – and not on what’s nice to have or had been planned. Getting more sponsors and donations will definitely help though! :)

Below is per category notes that have been gathered by me during the VFX roundtable at Blender Conference 2011, and in discussions with other artists like Francois Tarlier, Troy Sobotka, Francesco Paglia, Bartek Skorupa and many others, and some of my own favorites.
I have to warn you. This post is looong. :)

Camera and Motion Tracking

Even though the tracker is aleady totally usable, including object tracking and auto-refinement, there can be some improvements too.
One major feature that we are waiting for to be included is planar tracking. Some of you might know Mocha, a planar tracker widely used in the industry, with which you can do fast and easy masking, digital makeup, patching etc. In a lot of situations you don’t really need a full-fledged 3d track just to manipulate certain areas of your footage. All you need is a tracker that can take into account rotation, translation and scale of the tracked feature in 2d space, for example in order to generate a mask that automatically follows the movements and transformations of the side of a car as it drives by.

Keir Mierle has something in the works that would allow such workflows. Obviously that would be tremendously helpful for masking and rotoscoping as well.

Another thing that will be important for tracking in Mango is the use of survey data. That means that the user can take measurements on set, for example the size of objects, the distance of features, the height of the camera etc., and feed these informations into the solver. That way not only the solution can be improved, but you can also constrain the solutions to certain requirements. Most likely in a production like Mango there are different shots of the same scene, with the same set, but from different cameara angles. As a matchmover you have to make sure that the different cameras adjust to that scene so that you can easily use the same 3d data for it. Being able to set certain known constraints for the solution can make that process much easier.

There are a few other things I would like to see in the tracker, but these are mainly smaller things like marker influence control and usability improvements like visual track-quality feedback and marker management that can probably be sorted out in a few minutes of some coders free time. Yes, Sergey, that’s you! :)

Photo-realistic rendering – Cycles

Just as important as tracking of course is rendering. The plan is to fully harness the insane Global Illumination rendering power of Brecht’s render-miracle Cycles. With that in our toolset we can create and destroy Amsterdam as photorealistic as it can get.
Still there are some things we need.

For example we need a way efficiently create and use HDR light maps, not only for realistic lighting, but also for correct environment reflections.
Another thing that will have to be solved is noise.
Even though Cycles is already incredibly fast there is always room for improvements.

Besides the pure render-performance one thing that is critical for Mango are good render-passes. Not only the passes that are needed to re-combine the image from the separate render elements, but to extract render data that we need to composite the rendering on top of the footage.
Two of the most common passes for that are lamp-shadows and ambient occlusion. Despite not being really physically accurate, they provide a fast an easy way to integrate objects into the live action plate. Often just the contact shadow together with the rendered object and a little bit of color grading is enough to create the illusion of the object being part of the footage.

So that’s the quick’n dirty way of doing it. But Brecht already suggested that he might find ways to do it much more elegant, by extracting the possible light and shadow contribution of cycles lightpaths to the live action scene. Personally I have no idea how he will do that, but it sounds awesome! Maybe by even using the footage, camera-mapped to textures, thereby being 100% realistic? In any case, I am looking forward to things to come!

In addition to the passes it should be possible to have the movieclip playing back in the viewport, while at the same time having the cycles render-preview running, ideally with a live shadow-pass being calculated. Think of it! Realtime photorealistic viewport compositing!
:)

Compositing

Creating a VFX film cannot be done without a decent compositor. The current compositor is quite nice, but far from being suited for a task like this. Too slow, too cumbersome. Luckily Jeroen Bakker has been working hard to improve the performance dramatically. His development branch of Blender, the so called tile branch, provides an impressive speed bump over the current node-editor. And it will get even better when OpenCL-Compositing is up and running.

So the speed issue seems to be in good hands.

But something we really need as well is a good cache system. Being able to see the VFX in realtime is critical for compositing. Having to render out sequences manually would be super-tedious. That’s why we need a way to easily cache and/or pre-render sequences and composite outputs.

Even 2.49 had a button to cache composite outputs to RAM.

So a RAM-preview would be nice. But in the case that memory is limited it would be nice to have a system to easily render out preview sequences of a given frame range. I guess that can rather easily be built on top of the proxy system we have for the movie clip editor and VSE. There just has to be a transparent, reasonable and automatic (yet controllable) way to deal with these proxies and make them accessible for preview and/or editing.

How exactly that could look like can probably be figured out best in the Blender Institute, where developers and artist, sitting next to each other, can communicate much better. That way there is also a good chance to improve the overall usability of the compositor, for example ways to maintain tidier node-setups with frames, trays, groups, re-routing, snap-to-grid, auto-align, node-rotation or whatever else we can think of, improve the interaction with one or more viewer-outputs or make color sampling better. Well, we’ll see what the next months will bring.

Something that is very common in other compositing applications is the easy placement of footage of different sizes in the composition. In Blender we currently have to use 3d planes with shadeless material for that, going through a render-layer. This will be improved by Jeroen’s new compositor, where it will be possible to move footage around freely on the compositing canvas, ideally with the option to be driven by tracking markers. Together with moving around footages on the canvas we also need an easy way of controlling the timing of these footages. Maybe by making use of the NLA or VSE? That will also make it possible to easily use pre-recorded footage of muzzle-flash, explosions, fire etc, because running a whole simulation for this stuff every time would be tedious and not very efficient.

Masking

Related to compositing and also one of the most important features for any VFX-work is the ability to do quick and efficient masking. The current system of 3d curves on different render-layers with different objectIDs has to be replaced with something more accessible.

There is quite a lot of work to be done, and workflows have to be tested how to make a userfriendly, managable, efficient UI for masks.
Blender’s mask system should allow quick and rough masking for color grading as well as detailed, animated and even tracked rotoscoping without the hassle of going through a render-layer. There are some good ideas to make masks and mask-editing available in various places, not only in the Compositor but also in the Image Editor, Movie Clip Editor and Video Sequence Editor. Masking should be as accessible, dynamic and powerful as possible. Being a VFX shortfilm Mango will most likely be a masking orgy!

Luckily Sergey Sharybin is already on that task, supported by Pete Larabell, who also coded the Double Edge Mask.

Sergey has created a wiki development page that sums up the top level design for what is planned: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Nazg-gul/MaskEditor. And if you remember how fast and awesome the camera tracking module has been coded by him, you can be sure that masking in Blender will be great!

Green Screen Keying

Keying has to be improved, that’s for sure. The channel-key is pretty nice already, but the other keyers can go right into the trashcan. Color-Key and Chroma-Key are just plain unusable for any serious keying. But since Mango will be filmed mostly in front of greenscreen, with certainly different lighting conditions, different camera settings etc. it must be possible to exactly pick the keying color, not rely exclusively on the pure green channel. What and how this will be achieved is a bit unsure still, but Pete Larabell, who also works on masking, will look into that.

Color pipeline and grading tools

The whole color pipeline will be improved. When dealing with footages from different cameras, different formats, different color spaces it is important to be able to pick the correct color-space. Blender might not always automatically pick the right one, so it would be good if the user can set the exact color space right inside the image input node. This is going to be adressed in the development of the new compositor.

But not only the color pipeline, also the color correction tools need some love.

Currently all values of the color grading nodes are hidden behind the color fields. Especially if it is just subtle changes you always have to click on that color field in order to see if the value has been changed. It would be nice to have more precise controls over these values. Color Correcting in Blender is currently a rather fuzzy business. A lot of controls can just be used by eyeballing the result, without being able to enter exact values, like for example the curve-points of RGB-curves or color-ramp.

Especially for a VFX movie like Mango we really need a better way of dealing with that.

The UI changes for that can be best adressed during production.

Fire/smoke/volumetrics & explosions

Doing Mango without a good amount of kick-ass destructions, dust, debris and detonations is probably not an option.
Blender does have nice smoke, particles and rigid-bodies, but so far these simulations mostly work best in a secure test-environment and are not interacting with each other. Controlling these effects can sometimes be a nerve-wrecking and tedious experience. Lukas Toenne is doing great work for the node-particles which should make much more things possible than what we can do with particles now. But to make smoke, fire, simulations and explosions really communicate and influence each other in an animated complex FX shot a lot more work has to be done!
Also the the setup of these effects can be streamlined. Fracture shards setup for example is still a bit clunky. We need to find a way to easily control and tweak all the different parameters. This might also be a good time to finally move rigid-body-simulation from Game-Engine into Blender and make it a modifier!

Fix the Blender deps-graph

Here’s a potential huge project … which has as (dis)advantage that it’s possible to sort-of work around it still. Ton has written a kick-off document for this in wiki:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Depsgraph_2012

which gave still a lot of questions, like on level of fine-graining or ways to use non-Object dependencies (images, nodes, etc). At this moment the outcome is still undefined, it depends on a substantial time investment by experienced Blender devs… who are all busy!

Asset Management

In huge projects like this it would be nice to have some kind of asset mangement system. Not only for models, object and textures, but also for footage. Being able to interactively search your project library, manage links and groups, and easily browse your whole library without having to dive through gazillions of folders would be super cool to have.

Andrea Weickert (elubie) is already working on that.

But especially if you’re dealing with lots of different footages, proxies, clips and sequences you need some kind of tool that helps you to keep the overview. One idea from the VFX roundtable at last year’s Blender Conference is to make use of the Sequence Editor. After recording the shots will be converted to OpenEXR sequences. But not every frame will be used, usually there will be just smaller parts that make it into the final cut. Deleting all unused frames would not be very smart, but since we are dealing with 4k copying all frames to a new directory is also not really an option. So the idea is to create and define the movieclips in the sequencer, so that we have some kind of visual feedback which part of the shot is used in the clip-editor. It would also allow to easily add shots together, add supporting helper frames for the tracker and a lot more. The more I think of it the more I like the idea…

But this needs more thought and might be out of scope for the developement.

You see, there is a LOT of work to be done! You can contribute and support the development either by getting one of the pre-sale DVDs, by donating or by helping us as a coder and get some of that stuff done! Help us to create a modern, open source, node-based, full 3d compositing and VFX pipeline!
Versus -Short Film
BlenderNation - 2012-02-02 10:00:32

Character animation is a bit stiff, but I think the overall look of this video is great! Rajiv writes: My very first short film modeled and animated completely on Blender 2.6. Hope you enjoy..Video...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
FormaCD N°36 : Blender 2.5-2.6 Volume 1 (French)
BlenderNation - 2012-02-02 06:50:37

FormaCD released volume 1 of their Blender training material in the French language. This first volume teaches all the basics needed to make your first steps in 3D with Blender. Five more DVDs are...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
Animators Wanted - "Pose Sculpt" Alpha Testing
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-02-01 22:02:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been busily working on developing a set of new tools aimed at improving the ways that we can pose our rigs. Today I can finally announce that Pose Sculpting is now finally here and ready for an initial round of alpha testing out in the field!

Pose Sculpting Demo 1 from Joshua Leung on Vimeo.

So, calling for alpha testers, and importantly, feedback!

Read more »
Stickman Tutorial
Morevna Project - 2012-02-01 17:52:04

For a long time people asked for the tutorial explaining how to use Stickman Template and finally I have come up with something that might be called a tutorial. In fact those videos were recorded in different time (you might notice the differences in interface elements), but watching everything in sequence should give you the whole picture. Big thanks to Anna Orlova for translation and subtitling.

Part 1 – Setting up

In this part I will explain the purpose of using stickman and show how to prepare everything for tracing.

Download Part 1 (ogv, 25 Mb)

Part 2 – Tracing

The main tracing procedure is explained here. Notice that the version of Synfig Studio used in this screencast is very old – you can see different icons and even Russian interface elements. I hope that will not distract you. ^_^

Download Part 2 (ogv, 9 Mb)

Part 3 – Compositing tricks

Here I will show some composition tricks that will help you in the tracing process.

Download Part 3 (ogv, 15 Mb)

Part 4 – Shadows

Final part of the series is about tracing shadows.

Download Part 4 (ogv, 43 Mb)

That’s it. I hope you haven’t tired of my mumbling. Enjoy! ^__^
Character Modeling: Creating a Cartoon-Style Groundhog – Part 04
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-01 14:00:22

Hello and welcome to part 4 of the this character modeling tutorial series for Blender 2.6!

This character modeling tutorial series is on modeling a cartoon, ground hog character in Blender 2.6. In this tutorial David Ward takes you through the complete process of creating a cartoon character model, including all the steps, hotkeys, tools and more. A few topics and tools covered include: box modeling, mesh editing, proportional editing tool, mirror modifier, extrude, particle fur, and much more.

What is covered

In part 04 of this character modeling tutorial for Blender 2.61, we finish the rigging for the ground hog by using the Rigify add-on, including making a few custom adjustments to the generated rig. After rigging we move on to create a small turn-around scene to pose the ground hog character on.

Here is a preview of the final result from this section of our cartoon, groundhog character modeling tutorial series:
Target Backpacks Designed & Visualized with Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-02-01 10:00:24

Jaka Benedik has a great story to share about his design work for a well-known backpack brand. Jaka Benedik writes: I would like to share one year of my profesional experience using Blender with the community. If you feel that … Continue reading →
Why Bmesh is an Upgrade
BlenderNation - 2012-02-01 06:00:39

This infographic by XRG does a great job at explaining some of the differences between quad modeling and the upcoming new Bmesh module. Here it is in full size: What are YOU most excited about?

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
Carve Library for new Boolean Operation soon in Trunk
BlenderNation - 2012-01-31 18:00:23

All product designers and architects will love this one. The new Carve library finally is making its way into trunk and bringing to us much faster boolean operations. Now interactive cut section animation and non-destructive modeling are doable in Blender. … Continue reading →
NI mate enters open beta / “The Kinected Bunny”
BlenderNation - 2012-01-31 14:00:17

NI Mate imports Kinect motion capture data in real-time into 3D apps. Blender is the first application that it supports! Julius Tuomisto writes: Mine and Janne “jahka” Karhu’s two-man startup Delicode (a part of Studio Lumikuu co-op) just released NI … Continue reading →
Developer Meeting Notes, January 29, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-01-31 10:00:27

Blender 2.62 release is still planned for 2.5 weeks from now, FFmpeg gets an update and new render passes for Cycles are being looked in to. Ton Roosendaal writes: Here’s the notes from today’s IRC meeting: 1) Blender 2.62 planning … Continue reading →
Four Complete Basic Animation Rigs By CGCookie at Blend Swap
BlenderNation - 2012-01-31 06:00:34

CGCookie uploaded 4 complete basic animations rigs to Blend Swap free of charge for you to download and learn from under the CC-BY license model. These are the animation rigs used in the first 2...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]
Steampunk Alien Space Ship – Turntable
BlenderNation - 2012-01-30 18:00:36

By Greg Zaal. Greg writes: 42 hand painted texture masks later and the exterior is finally done :) Well, I do still need to adjust the landing gear by adding some pistons and things, but for now I’d say it’s … Continue reading →
Sortie de mon premier livre sur Blender chez Pearson !
CoyHot's World - 2012-01-30 14:51:00

Il serait en fait plus correct d’utiliser le terme "notre" premier livre, puisque pour une fois je ne suis pas tout seul sur l'affaire. Même si j'ai agi sur cet ouvrage en tant que coordinateur auprès des différent intervenants, j'ai également écris une introduction sur le logiciel libre, le premier atelier dédié à la découverte de Blender via la création d'un générique et pour finir le dernier atelier qui consiste à crasher un vaisseau sur le sol via le système de particules. Vous me connaissez, dès que je peux détruire un truc (virtuellement parlant bien sur) ... je ne me prive pas :o)

Les publications en Français sur Blender se faisant déjà rares, nous avons essayé de faire un ouvrage mixte, répondant à différents types d'attente. Le concept de base est de montrer la pluridisciplinarité de Blender, pouvant aussi bien être utilisé pour la production audiovisuelle, l'architecture, la sculpture numérique, la bande dessinée, et encore bien d'autres choses encore.

Les différents intervenants de cette ouvrage viennent par conséquent d'horizons très différents et utilisent Blender dans des domaines tout aussi divers. J'ai donc eu la joie de travailler pour cette aventure avec, par ordre alphabétique :

- Blendman : Graphiste, créateur de jeu vidéo et auteur de BD

- Matthieu Dupont de Dinechin (Alias Viralata) : Architecte spécialisé dans les constructions écologiques

- Pascal Gabus (Alias Kiopaa) : Spécialiste de l'animation de personnage

- Victor Malherbe (Alias Pixelvore) : Ingénieur spécialiste pour cette ouvrage du rendu de la peau humaine

- Max Maurel (Alias Blackschmoll) : Sculpteur talentueux en charge de l'utilisation du Sculpt Mode de Blender

Si je me permet de préciser les surnoms des intervenants, c'est parce que la totalité des auteurs sont des membres actifs de la communauté du Blender Clan, sur lequel vous pourrez également suivre les réactions des lecteurs, sur ce topic

Le site de l'éditeur Pearson dédié à notre livre permet également de télécharger les fichiers Blender relatifs à chaque chapitre. Un bon moyen de se faire une idée du contenu ... ;o)

Cliquez ici pour accéder à la page en question

Je finirai cette petite présentation avec quelques-unes des belles images résultantes des différents ateliers, ainsi qu'avec un Timelaspe préparé par Max, concernant la première partie de son atelier dédié à la sculpture sous Blender !

Pour le Timelapse de Max, c'est par ici !

Voilà, j'espère que ce livre pourra répondre aux attentes du plus grand nombre et qu'il permettra aux débutants comme aux utilisateurs plus expérimentés d'apprendre des choses sur notre logiciel favori !

Je conclurai sur le fait que ce fût pour moi un réel plaisir de travailler avec des intervenants aussi talentueux que mes co-auteurs. Même si la masse de travail fût somme toute assez importante pour accoucher d'un tel ouvrage, je pense que le résultat est à la hauteur de ce que fût nos ambitions.

Merci à tous !
Introduction to Compositing in Blender – round 2
Blender Cookie - 2012-01-30 14:00:34

Hello and welcome to this Compositing in Blender 2.6 Tutorial Series!

In this compositing in Blender tutorial series we give you an introduction for using the compositing nodes. This series will take you through all the basics of using and understanding the node system for compositing in Blender. After this series you should have a thorough understanding of compositing basics; including Render Layers, available nodes, blending modes, and much, much more. You will also learn how to do color adjustments, tweak curves, composite multiple images, and even adjust the lighting and color of your complete scene.

What You’ll Learn in this Tutorial

In part 02 of this compositing tutorial series we follow up what we learned in the part 01 of this compositing tutorial series by introducing more nodes and explaining in more detail how compositing works in general. One of the key focus points is understanding the basic math behind blending modes so that you know which mode to use for the result you are trying to achieve.

What’s up next?

In part 03 of this compositing tutorial series we will be looking adjusting the colors, lighting and shading of a car render.
Tutorial : Growing IvyGen Animation in Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-01-30 14:00:31

After we posted Nikhil Dhoka’s growing ivy animation, he received many requests for a tutorial on this technique. Here it is! Nikhil Dhoka writes: Since some users asked for tutorial.. So, finally here it is, A quick tutorial for the … Continue reading →
Escape
BlenderNation - 2012-01-30 10:00:20

By Stephan Fleischer. Stephan writes: I was a little depressed because of not seeing any progress in my work and felt like being buried under tons of mud and dirt… So I sat down in front of my computer, launched Blender … Continue reading →
Blender Beginner Tips 3 – Mirror, Array, and Curve Modifiers
Blender Journey - 2012-01-30 08:58:24

Blender Beginner Tips 3 – Mirror, Array, and Curve Modifiers from david on Vimeo. A little tutorial on how to use the mirror, array, and curve modifiers. After explaining the modifiers I use the example of making a Japanese door to illustrate how they can be used in modeling. Hope you enjoy!
Tutorial: Creating a Reusable Light Box
BlenderNation - 2012-01-30 08:13:57

For everybody who is new to Blender and product rendering Alex Telford released a small tutorial which in a very compressed format highlights a best practice approach for modeling a scene and setting up lights with Blender Internal. As a renderer he … Continue reading →
Blender Beginner Tips 2 – Selection Methods and Reference images
Blender Journey - 2012-01-29 21:51:38

Blender Beginner Tips 2 – Selecting Methods and Reference Images from david on Vimeo. This is part 2 of my series on Blender beginner tips. The tutorial is on different selection methods in Blender as well as how to add reference images. Hopefully it helps some of you other beginners out there!
Pixar and Greenbutton reveal RenderMan On Demand
Blender to RenderMan - 2012-01-29 18:15:00

In 2010 Pixar had demonstrated RenderMan running on MicroSoft's Azure platform, as reported here http://www.blendertorenderman.org/2010/11/pixar-and-microsoft-cloud-rendering.html, however back then it was only a demo. As of Jan 19, this has become a real working service thanks to GreenButton, Pixar's RenderMan On Demand is now live and ready for all your rendering glory, for a price of course. To be fair .70 cents a core hour is really cheap, of course this is based off of third party information, mileage may vary.

So it looks like cloud services are becoming more and more common for the 3D industry, while there has been renderfarms that existed before in the sense of a traditional farm, the difference is that GreenButton is a cloud based service. The advantage of using cloud service rather than an in house farm is that there is no initial huge investment in hardware, you only pay for the use of other's hardware. The obvious reason for an in house renderfarm is that it is tailored to the studio, you have complete priority over jobs and it looks pretty impressive to the outside world. Smaller studios lack huge pockets though, so cloud rendering is far more valuable and attractive than investing that same amount of money on a few servers.

There is another method for us to render out frames without tying up our computers for hours or days on end; distributed computing. Distributed computing is also a way for Blender artists to make use of a renderfarm without having to spend a serious amount of money, in fact with Renderfarm.fi this is possible for free. Much of the well known distributed computing projects like SETI@Home are based off the BOINC platform, this is a distributed server-client system that has connected millions of computers worldwide all for the name of science. Why not take advantage of the same system for rendering and that is exactly what Renderfarm.fi does, it enables Blender users access to a large number of rendering nodes for free while also providing your computer as a rendering node for someone else's project.

This is a service that is based off of BURP, the technological framework for using BOINC as a distributed renderfarm, written by Janus Bager Kristensen. BURP started several years ago and works closely with Renderfarm.fi yet the two are completely different entities.

The question I have is, why not start something like this for Aqsis, or Pixie? Renderfarm.fi has done a very good job of marketing themselves and in all reality they do not even handle the actual rendering, that is taken care of by us BOINC users. In theory this kind of service could be started for Aqsis as well. Can Aqsis and Pixie be added to Renderfarm.fi, or even have a new website devoted to this? Can open source Renderman be turned into a cloud rendering technology? I believe it can, however I am not the most talented programmer in the world, so personally I would be a horrible choice for a developer. I have been looking at the code, not to mention that there has been some talk over forums with the BURP and Renderfarm.fi guys about supporting other external rendering software, it looks very possible to get Aqsis at the very least. The wall is of course the development of supporting this, as Blender changes these guys have to make changes in their own software, keep up BURP and Renderfarm.fi support and then fix things when it breaks, so this does cut into time and energy into other render engines. Not to mention the server itself needs to be pretty beefy, funding for the static IP and cost of hosting this, unless someone out there is willing to donate this. Would there even be enough interest to work on such a project? This obviously needs to be a project outside of BURP and Renderfarm.fi but in communication with so that if this works and tests well, then maybe it can be added to the Renderfarm.fi service.

The reason for this post is primarily because I used to be one of the biggest nay sayers against community based distributed rendering, claiming that too many technical factors outweigh the benefits but in the past year I have come to realize that maybe 5 or 10 years ago this was true, now it appears that this no longer is the case. When I first heard of BURP many years ago I thought that it was a neat project but would probably not work out in the end and look at how wrong I was about that, not only has this evolved into one of the only community based distributed render farms on the planet but has allowed every single Blender artist access to it, for free. That is an amazing feat and probably one of the greatest additions to the Blender community period, hence the reason this website has their logo graphic on the sidebar, these guys are awesome!
January production update
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-01-29 17:17:57

Nothing exciting to mention really, but I know unexciting news on progress is also welcome :)

Past month’s first half went to getting an application for the Netherlands Film Fund ready. With help from David Revoy (artwork for Mango script presentation) Anja (budget spreadsheets) and Rob (Sintel + Institute report) I delivered two booklets with about 150 pages of content to the Fund 2 weeks ago. (see image). Film Fund budget would be *very* welcome to lift up the quality of our filming work. Fingers crossed!

The time schedule is still same as well. Starting February 18th Ian Hubert and David Revoy will work here for two weeks on a final storyboard for the film. They then present that to the team on March 3, then they’re all here (apart from Jeremy who arrives 2 weeks later). Idea for the kick-off in the first week of March (3-8) is to make a short film together. Complete from start to finish in 5 days. Will be a great exercise together to figure out what we can do, and what Blender can do even! :)

In the past weeks I’ve also done paperwork for contracting, been contacting potential sponsors and studios, booked flights for everyone to Amsterdam, visited apartments where they can live, checked on where to get good bicycles. Also had a meeting with DP Joris Kerbosch, I’ve already booked in several experienced VFX supervisors as consultants, contacted camera sponsors (want Red epic!), visited greenscreen studio, checked on locations for filming (incl old factories).

The actual filming is still depending on a lot of variables. Current estimate is to rather do it a bit later than too early. Instead of ’2nd half april’ it more is ‘mid may’ now. Final decisions on this will be done with Ian & Joris here, in about 3 weeks.

So; there’s a lot in the pipeline, as soon as there’s tangible news I’ll post it here immediate. Expect more updates here from other team members, and of course from Ian and David when they’re storyboarding. (Ian asked “can i change the script still?” Yeah, sure! Not for long!)

Laters,

-Ton-
Weekly progress
Morevna Project - 2012-01-29 15:03:54

This week we have continued with applying new battlefield concept to the demo shots. We have made it till the shot 35, which was reworked in the 3D fashion.

Shot 35

Agian, Nikolay Mamashev end up with some amazing pieces of animation (as usual based on Eeonora’s drafts). Here’s one of them.

And when it all comes together it looks so yummy!

Shot 32

At the same time Vyacheslav Yastrebcev is working on adding details to the new battlefield concept.

Shot 01

That’s all news for the past week. Stay tuned, because we have prepared a few tasty things for the next few days!
Blender Beginner Tips 2 – Selecting Methods and Reference images
Blender Journey - 2012-01-29 12:23:07

Blender Beginner Tips 2 – Selecting Methods and Reference Images from david on Vimeo. This is part 2 of my series on Blender beginner tips. The tutorial is on different selection methods in Blender as well as how to add reference images. Hopefully it helps some of you other beginners out there!
It's all in the clouds
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-01-29 11:29:00

Dunno if it's just me,but I reckon that some of these cloud formations (from the nor'west arch that formed the other day) look a lot like some of those "san-shui" paintings. (Note: I've tweaked the colours in this shot to resemble those a bit more)

Read more »
Process to Go – Episode 19
processdiary.com - 2012-01-28 18:29:01

Hopefully the second-last episode of this particular process! Deadline is looming, but I’m in a good place. I’ve been making loads of progress with the style of the piece. I asked some advice of Steve Ogden, who made some suggestion on the artwork for page one:

I took on board alot of his advice, but didn’t exactly go down this road. i pressed on to colouring page 2:

I used the “black-spotting” technique in the acrobatics sequence and the last panel, and began to play with some particle effects, but I wasn’t completely satisfied. It didn’t make me go “WOW”. So i tinkered with it again:

The final panel there is the benchmark, now. As Steve put it in his email:

YES! Yes, absolutely – best page I have ever seen you do. It’s artistic, it’s stylistic, it’s good great contrast and color. Lots of style there. Here’s the hard part – you can now NEVER do less than this. This is your new floor. From here, you build your rep as an artist.

Thanks so much, Steve for your advice. For those who don’t know, Steve is rebooting Moon Town. Check out some of the spectacular art which he’s producing, showcasing the new look.

The feedback has been critical in achieving these results. I am continuing to colour, as my own deadline is February 6th. The overall book is coming together, too. Derrick Utz is creating all the necessary pages to give the book an integrated feel. We’ve still got to work out the order of the stories, and get the bio art to all the artists to fill in their details, and we have a brilliant idea to solve the problem of the missing 8th artist which I’m sure you’ll like, but I’d be curious to hear your feedback on our plan.

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_ep19.mp3)