Planet Blender

FBC VBC 2012
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-05-13 21:43:04

Live action sequences were shot on my Canon T2i. All 3D elements were rendered in Blender cycles/internal and composited in After Effects.

Director's cut coming eventually...

Cast: Matthew Francis Pye and Christian Guth

Tags: Blender, After Effects, aviation, adventure, FBC and trapecode particular

Process to Go: Pandeia – Episode 06
processdiary.com - 2012-05-13 10:24:43

Loads of updates today!

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_PanE06.mp3)

I’m getting right into marketing this month, leading up to my tabling at Supanova in June.  As I focus on putting my work in front of potential buyers instead of just peers, the great news is that some peers often relay info they get on their networks. @TimMcEwen67 retweeted a callout from a new Australian youtube channel dedicated to all things comicbook, and I replied with links. They really liked my work and got me into King’s Comics last Tuesday night to talk about Pandeia. Check out Kapow! on youtube. The producer is the brains behind Good Game which airs on Australia’s ABC2. Kapow is for comics what Good Game is for gaming. The interview segment is below:

If you’re into comics and like what they do, don’t forget to like them on Facebook!

I also networked on Free Comicbook Day, making friends with some artists I’d long been fans of: Jozef Szekeres and Julie Ditrich of Black Mermaid Productions. Keep an eye out for their title, Hyfus and Tilliweed which will be available later this year.

Speaking of FCBD, I also released a FCBD edition of Humm. I thought the audience which frequents this blog and the pandeia site would have amassed less than 100 downloads but to date the eBook has been downloaded over 400 times! I’ll be submitting a podcast to 365 DoA (which I’ve appeared on before) on May 24th all about generation ships in sci-fi, with a plug for the In Space anthology.

I’ve finally figured out how to list free items on the eStore, so if you haven’t clicked on the link above already, go there now, register an account (only name, email, DOB and country necessary) and you’ll be able to download it straight away!

Finally, issue 3 and 4 are being written. I’ve been holding production meetings with myself when I drive Sophia to babysitting. The recordings are chock-full of spoilers, so they won’t be released anytime soon, but I thought I’d keep them for posterity and as a future release once all is revealed. Talking it out really helps figure out story points: who goes where; what are their intentions; who’s after what, etc. Often I catch myself out and have to backtrack and revise a story-point. I talk out design decisions, and figure out layouts for future sketching.

Chances are I’ll only just be uploading pages some time mid-June, but they should be on a pretty good schedule. The story is solid, and we’ll be getting right into the meat & potatoes. Exciting!

UPDATE: A really nice review appeared on Aedre’s Firefly’s blog Thanks very much, Ms Rowe! I’m so glad you like the story so far. Peeps: check out her comic when you visit that link!

Ara’s Song – The Recording Session
Blender Minutes - 2012-05-13 10:06:34

This weekend we managed to do the recording with Julia for Ara’s Song.

Thanks to my friend Michael Raich, who generously offered his small multimedia room for this purpose.

The whole recording took about 2 hours for the 1 minute song.

The image above show Julia and me discussing some rhythmically demanding parts.

I have now about 10 full takes of this song and will clean it up a bit before putting it forward to Mikkel and Phil for further processing

What I have now to do is the still missing lip syncing for Ara’s Song. After this I will power up the render machine for a (hopefully) last time for this movie.

Noise
thisroomthatikeep - 2012-05-13 05:44:00

FMX 2012
DingTo - 2012-05-12 16:27:34

Hey everyone,

this week (8-11 May 2012) I was at the FMX conference, the 17th Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Transmedia in Stuttgart. It was a great conference again and I want to share some information and images of the event. Andy Goralczyk and I also held a Blender workshop there of which I will report as well of course!

On the first day at FMX, I watched two great presentations, starting with a presentation by Daniel McCoy, Pixar about “La Luna”. La Luna is a new short film by Pixar, which will be screened before their upcoming feature “Brave”. The film is about 7 minutes long and I liked it a lot. After the screening he talked about the creation process, storyboards, texrturing and showed some funny behind the scenes video about the dialogue recordings. The language in La Luna is Gibberish which makes it even more funny.

The second presentation I saw that day, was about The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The guys from “Platige Image” talked about some technical challenges while producing the cinematic introduction.

During the week, there were some more great presentations, for example by Unexpected, who showcased some of their latest commercial spots and Crytek talked about “The Long Road to Film/Game Convergence”.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Dylan Sisson from Pixar again (I met him at FMX 2009 already). He showed the latest Renderman developments. It was also very interesting when he said, that although the machines are becoming faster and faster, render time always stays the same. Recently they re-rendered the first Toy Story movie, 1 frame took 5 hours in 1995, today it only took 1 minute. They re-submitted the render job to the farm, because they thought something must be wrong.

One of the most interesting presentations (artistically) was by Mario Janelle and Alex McDowell. They showcased “Upside Down” – Worldbuilding for Independent Cinema. Upside Down is a feature film which will be in cinema this year. Definitely on my “Must see in cinema” list for this year!

For the technically interested people, Upside Down used the Arnold Renderer to render the VFX. And that brings me to my favourite technical presentation, held by Marcos Fajardo, Solid Angle. For those of you who don’t know, Arnold is a pathtracer and basically the fastest one available.

Marcos showcased some of their latest improvements and some commercials done with the Arnold engine. One commercial I really laughed a lot is “The Bear“. Check it out!

Arnold is a very impressive Renderer and very fast. Arnold and Cycles have a lot in common. Michael Heberlein, Filmakademie demoed Arnold in Softimage. It has Light Paths as well, it uses OpenImageIO and both are pathtracers. Basically the same technology, but Arnold is a lot faster, highly optimized. But it’s amazing to see this technology being used in more and more professional productions.

I talked a bit with Marcos after his presentation, he was aware of Brecht and myself even (and Cycles) and he was very friendly. I wish him and his company a lot of success!

On Thursday Andy and I had our presentation “Blender Inside Out” in Raum Karlsruhe (11.00 – 12.00 am). The room was full, about 150 people listened to our Blender presentation. In the first part I talked a bit about what Blender is and what features we have at the moment. I also stressed the rapid development and gave an overview of things to come in the next few weeks. If you want to check my part of the presentation, here are the slides (ThomasDinges-FMX2012.pdf). Andy demoed Blender by using a character from his Stop Motion film “OMEGA” from which he showed an excerpts too. The audience had a lot of questions at the end and it was great to see so many people at the talk. Thanks!! Also thanks to Ton Roosendaal and FMX who made it possible for us to do this presentation!

After the presentation we went to the Trade Floor where we demoed Blender and especially Cycles on one of the awesome fast workstations by CADnetwork. Huge thanks to them for allowing us to demo Blender at their booth!

On Thursday evening all speakers of FMX were invited to a Speakers Dinner at Hotel Maritim in Stuttgart, it was a nice opportunity, I talked with some great people from studios and universities.

On Friday, I played an awesome Augmented Reality game, done by students of Filmakademie. They used…guess what, right…the Blender game engine!They used it because they searched for a good game engine for Linux which is capable of a video input stream without issues. You can check it out on the internet: http://total-ar.com/

FMX 2012 was amazing, I met a lot of interesting people and I had great conversations. The VFX industry is moving for sure and Blender is becoming more and more popular and gets attention. See you next year again, at FMX 2013!

Interesting Sunset
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-05-12 12:41:00

Here is a sunset from earlier this week, just before the weather started to change to cold, cloudy, and rain. These cloud formations were quite dramatic (and were even more dramatic from a few other vantage points on the way home).

Blender 2.63a update release
Blender - 2012-05-12 12:37:00

Thanks to 100s of bugreports we've done over a 100 fixes in just 2 weeks; enough to deserve a...

POLL - Should Up/Down Arrows be changed back to Jumping 10 Frames
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-05-12 11:20:00

Last week I posted a poll on Blenderartists, but it seems to have been somewhat forgotten. So, just to give it a little bump, a little link-dumping is in order today I think...

See the thread here:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?254152-POLL-Should-Up-Down-ArrowKeys-go-back-to-Jump-10-Frames(Poll-closes-18-May)

The day after
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-12 08:57:51

Half of it is random stuff from the sets. Don’t worry, we rescued the more exciting props like Sebastian’s trackers and Jeremy’s gun! We’ll enjoy a couple of slower days here during weekend, monday kickoff of the 2nd half of Mango: make the vfx :)

News from the Tube project
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2012-05-12 05:39:57

Join +Bassam Kurdali Saturday at High Noon in a Google hangout to chat about the Tube production (May 12 at 12pm EST)

Alexandre Prokoudine published a great, funny interview with Bassam and me over at Libre Graphics World: Tube Open Movie Founders on Art, War and Blender

LGM Talk about the Tools of Tube: Libre Graphics Meeting is a great conference well attended by developers of free/open source software–all the programs we use in the making of Tube. Since we weren’t able to be at the meeting in Vienna this year, we prepared a short remote talk for the group. It’s mainly about some of the tools we’ve written as part of the Tube Open Movie production, and we thought it would be nice to share!

Summer internship applications are open until the email deadline of Thursday May 17, at 5pm (EDT).

In the 3 days left on Tube’s Kickstarter campaign, can we reach full production funding?! You can help by getting the word out to your people, and we’ll finish in a massive success — thanks for your support!

blender curve experiments - spiral
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-05-12 05:24:36

for this part of my blender curve experiments I used a build modifier and an array modifier to make some spirals
grow and join each other

local-guru.net/blog/2012/5/12/blender-curve-experiments---spirals

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, curve and 3d

Creating an Island Environment in Blender 2.6 – part 03
Blender Cookie - 2012-05-11 13:00:40

Hello and welcome to this Blender tutorial series on creating an island environment in Blender 2.6!

In this three-part tutorial series by David Ward you will be taken through the complete process of creating a tropical, island environment in Blender 2.6. With David’s guidance you will go from a barren landscape to the lush, final result that you see below in just about three hours.

What you’ll learn:

Through this tutorial you will learn how to use the ANT Landscape Generator add-on to create the landscape, how to use the OceanSim modifier, how to make easy trees and vegetation with alpha-mapped textures, how to populate your vegetation with particle systems, and you will learn how to create easy procedural rocks with a displacement texture and modifier. You will also be taken through the steps needed to composite the final render together, including add depth to the horizon, adding the clouds background and much more.

What a week!
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-05-11 10:26:00

It's Friday at last! What a week it's been!

The carpark outside the department after dark. Today was the second time in as many weeks that I've been busy working till after dark on a Friday. It's interesting how things that seem so familiar during daytime take on this whole other character after dark. Pity though that I've only had been carrying crappy-cam on the days that I happen to end up getting to see this stuff.

Read more »

blender curve experiments - following a path
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-05-11 04:43:28

in this part of my blender curve experiments I made the camera follow a curve

local-guru.net/blog/2012/5/11/blender-curve-experiments---following-a-path

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, curve and 3d

Time Lapse – Day 4
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-10 20:52:21

Last day of filming. On location at the bridge, moved a couple of times from inside cars to under tarp shade thingys. Playing back at 3fps this time to show it off a little more (plus we were sillier with it because it was in our faces!)

Filmed with my trusty GoPro taking a photo each minute. Played at 3fps.

Filming day 4, Ton’s gallery
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-10 19:40:42

It’s over! It’s been a blast! Amazing! I’ll be writing production experience reports later, here’s the (probably randomized) list of snapshots from my phone!

Free Blender Workshop in Paris this Saturday
BlenderNation - 2012-05-10 13:51:52

Francois “CoyHot” Grassard will be creating this scene during a 2.5 hour session in Paris this Saturday. He needs 30 signups though to ensure that the event can happen! Francois writes:...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Perfect filming weather sofar!
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-10 11:46:03

Day started wet, but as predicted it got dry around 11. We film for 3 hours until lunch 14h. Then some rain might fall, rest of day is good again.

Mango set streaming day 4. On location!
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-10 09:14:23

There might be some issues during the streaming, in that case we will update this page. Please spread the news as it is not always possible to peek at the backstage of a movie :)

Becoming a Better Artist (or person)
Reyn's Blog - 2012-05-10 04:38:00

I was very inspired by Andrew Price's latest blog post (http://www.blenderguru.com/6-tips-for-becoming-a-better-artist) and decided to share my thoughts on this topic too. Here are my own takes on the tips to becoming a better artist (or at least a better person): Start with the basics. I usually receive emails from fellow artists (beginners and professionals alike) regarding tips and

modifier animation
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-05-10 04:13:10

animating some modifiers in blender

local-guru.net/blog/2012/5/10/animated-blender-modifier

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, 3d and modifier

Days Go By
Reyn's Blog - 2012-05-10 02:02:00

(click to enlarge) "The great thought, the great concern, the great anxiety of men is to restrict, as much as possible, the limits of their own responsibility." -Giosué Borsi Created with: Blender 2.63 Rendered with: Cycles BlenderArtists thread: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?254553-Days-Go-By Some work in progress images: (click to enlarge) (click to enlarge)

Cryptocephalus
BlenderNation - 2012-05-09 22:00:23

By Gabich. Gabich writes: Here is my finished project, a little bug. Rendered with Indigo (40 minutes for the first render, 10 ~ 15 minutes for each others and 35 for the last). Link BlenderArtists...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Filming day 3, Ton’s gallery
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-09 20:44:00

Today we had the scenes with Derek de Lint and Sergio Hasselbaink. Great actors to work with! We also had to decide whether or not to film outside tomorrow… and decided to take the risk :) It might rain all day, but the predictions give enough dry periods to do have all shots filmed.

That also wraped up the studio days of filming today. In just a little over an hour the studio was empty again. Ian was watching footage in the meantime and enjoying tremendously what a really (*really*) great job the light & camera team has done. Shots might at first appear a bit overlit bright and flat, but that’s just to get the full range… playing with color sliders reveals new worlds in the pictures. Amazing :) We’ll come back to the work of the crew here later. Just for now, kudos for Joris Kerbosch & Eugene Sprik & their teams!

(Not to forget: also kudos to Pablo Londono Sarria’s costumes and Sanne Kiwitz’ make-up. Sergio’s looks today was flabbergasting!)

Time Lapse – Day 3
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-09 19:31:14

Last one with the green. I’ll try and work something out for shooting a time lapse tomorrow at the bridge, but i need to plug into power to go for longer than 2-3 hours so it may not happen :(

Filmed with my trusty GoPro taking a photo every minute for the whole day. Played back at 12fps.

A Procedure for Digitizing using your PCNC Mill and Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-05-09 18:00:08

This article explains how to digitize a surface using a CNC mill, effectively turning it into a 3D scanner. AndyG writes: This lesson progresses through the basic steps required for digitizing a part on the Tormach PCNC 770. CNC Digitizing … Continue reading →

IBL Toolkit – beta release
Dalai Felinto - 2012-05-09 16:42:27

I’m writing an addon to help with scene reconstruction and lighting with IBL files. It also works as a handy workflow to expand panoramas with rendered elements.

It’s still in its Beta version and I’m evaluating it in production only now, so things will likely change.

However if you want to take a first glance at it you will need:

•  Recent Blender (after 2.63a)
• Readme
• Download (import as addon)

Some screens:

Note: my goal is to use arluxrender as the final renderer, but all the modelling and editing is to be done inside Blender.

The original teaser with old screenshots can be found here: http://www.dalaifelinto.com/?p=377

For further discussions you can visit the Blender Artists forum thread as well.

If you do some real testing with it, please let me know your thoughts.

Dalai

Project developed with Aldo Zang at the Visgraf lab

Diario AS – Real Madrid Mugs
BlenderNation - 2012-05-09 14:45:46

By Juan Carlos Mostaza. Juan writes: It was a commercial made for Diario AS in order to promote the Real Madrid Football Club Mugs. The production company was LaCatedral Animation Studio located in...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Creating an Island Environment in Blender 2.6 – part 02
Blender Cookie - 2012-05-09 13:00:54

Hello and welcome to this Blender tutorial series on creating an island environment in Blender 2.6!

In this three-part tutorial series by David Ward you will be taken through the complete process of creating a tropical, island environment in Blender 2.6. With David’s guidance you will go from a barren landscape to the lush, final result that you see below in just about three hours.

What you’ll learn:

Through this tutorial you will learn how to use the ANT Landscape Generator add-on to create the landscape, how to use the OceanSim modifier, how to make easy trees and vegetation with alpha-mapped textures, how to populate your vegetation with particle systems, and you will learn how to create easy procedural rocks with a displacement texture and modifier. You will also be taken through the steps needed to composite the final render together, including add depth to the horizon, adding the clouds background and much more.

spooky wood
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-05-09 06:40:08

a spooky wood lighted only by ambient occlusion

local-guru.net/blog/2012/5/9/spooky-wood

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, particles and ambient occlusion

My tips for drawing eyes…
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-05-09 04:36:09

Nope, sorry… I got nothing. Wait, yes I do. Don’t let me do it, I have discovered I am rather bad at it. Go watch TimVon Rueden’s tutorials on Concept Cookie, he on the other hand is very good at it. Tim does an awesome job showing how he creates concept art. I have really [...]

6 Tips on Becoming a Better Artist
Blender Guru| High Quality Blender Tutorials - 2012-05-09 03:34:42

If I had a dollar for every time I received an email from someone asking me for tips on how to improve their work, I’d have almost enough to purchase 3ds Max and be out of here for good! (kidding! sort of)

But as repetitive as this question is, and as much as I hate answering it, I understand why people ask it. As with anything, when you’re learning something new, there are multiple routes to “mastery” and some of them are quicker than others. So it makes sense to choose the quickest route.

Now whilst I don’t consider myself an expert, I do have a few tips that I learned through the last 8 years that may save you some time (and pain).

So here we go, 6 tips on becoming a better artist…

1. Do something that scares you

No I’m not talking about asking a girl out to dinner (although that’s probably not a bad idea), I’m talking about starting a project that you know is beyond your capabilities. Does the thought of modelling a human head fill you with fear? Good, then do it! By challenging yourself with new topics, you’ll force yourself to learn. Because believe it or not, learning won’t happen by itself. So make sure you’re proactive about choosing something that you know is over your head.

I learned more in the 3 months it took to create this scene than I did in the 4 years of fooling around I did previous to it. When you have an end goal in mind, you always find a way to achieve it.

2. Read books like your career depends on it

…because it does. And not just blender books either. If you’re serious about your career as an artist (and I’d like to assume you are), then you need to expand your knowledge to as many avenues of design theory as possible. This is so that you actually understand the “why” behind what you do, as opposed to just getting some inspiration online and copying it.

Some great books to start with are the Universal Principles of Design, Digital Lighting and Rendering and these 5 videos (yeah it’s not a book, but it still contains invaluable knowledge).

3. Don’t depend on tutorials

I bet you never expected to read that on a tutorial website! It sounds counter-intuitive to my business (and it probably is) but tutorials won’t get you far if you don’t know the “why” behind your actions. If I say to place a lamp at a 45 degree angle from the camera, you won’t know why to do that, you’ll just know how to do that. And that’s why limiting yourself to just tutorials is dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? Well let’s say you land a freelance job in the future creating an advertisement for McFlurrys. If you’d been depending on tutorials all the time, you’d be gutted to find out that there are in fact no McFlurry tutorials and you’d have to figure it out for yourself. If you aren’t used to this, then it will surely come as a shock to you. So lose the training wheels every now and then and throw yourself in the deep end. Further reading: Tutorial Culture vs Two Goldfish.

4. Brick walls are gonna happen

If you haven’t experienced it already, there will come a time during your learning process, where you will become absolutely stumped. You’ll hit a snag in your project that stops all productivity and stops you from moving forward. And despite your best efforts, you just can’t figure it out. You’ll feel like throwing in the towel and abandoning the project for something easier.

But it’s at this point that the men are separated from the boys (or the artists from the hobbyists). You won’t make it into the choice gallery without pushing through a few “brick walls”. And you certainly won’t get a job at Pixar (which seems to be everyone’s dream) without pulling a few all-nighters to finish what you started. So if you want to be a successful artist, don’t give up so easily. To quote Randy Pausch: “The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.”

5. Figure out who you really want to be

When I landed my first freelance job I was beyond excited. I couldn’t believe I was going to work on a real TV commercial! But I quickly realized that taking orders from a “boss” sucked all the live and joy out of what I previously loved. It was an awful realisation. “What do I do now?” I thought. I’d worked for years, perfecting my portfolio to an acceptable level for freelancing, and when I finally got there I realized I hated it! Thankfully I was able to sit down and work out how to make business out of doing what I love (this site), without sacrificing my standards.

So make sure you’re crystal clear about what is that you love, and then aim for a career that provides that. And how do you know what you’ll love if you’ve never experienced it? Well head over to the General Discussion forum and read stories from industry professionals who’ve worked in the thick of it. A good thread to start with is The Unofficial Truth about Working in the Industry. That’ll give you enough perspective to hone in on your goal and start creating art that will help you get there.

 6. Go easy on the “inspiration”

Ever wonder why so many designers and artists seem to be recycling the same old styles and trends over and over again? The answer may seem obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway: They all copied each other. “Well duh, that’s obvious Andrew”. Yeah? Well if copying is frowned up, then why do so many artists seek inspiration online? You may think that inspiration is just “fueling your own creativity”, but whether you realise it or not, the things you look at will influence your artwork. Don’t believe me? In 2009 I created what I thought was a totally original scene:

I didn’t copy any existing work and I sketched it by hand first. How could I go wrong ? Well several months after I made it, the movie Up came out. And as anyone who’s seen film can recall, there is a scene where the old guy walks to the top of a hill under a tree. “That’s weird” I thought. “I created my artwork before the movie came out, and yet my image looks nearly the same.” But then it dawned on me… several months prior to creating the artwork I stumbled upon this blog post by the storyboard artist who worked on Up, which included this image:

Oops. I thought I was creating something totally original, and without realizing it, I had drawn upon an image I’d seen long ago and didn’t even realize it. Scary.

Now let me add a small disclaimer: Inspiration is not bad. In fact most of the masterpieces around today were inspired by works before it. But the 3d industry is small, and closely knit. If you accidentally copy the look and feel of someone else’s artwork, you stand a good chance at getting called out for it (I’ve seen it happen multiple times and it isn’t pretty). Having to explain why your art looks familiar to the job interviewer is not something you’ll enjoy.

What tips do you have for becoming a better artist? Leave it in the comments below!

Bits and Pieces …
Blender Minutes - 2012-05-08 19:39:34

While waiting for the sound and music work to continue, I use the time to work on various things to have ready for the release.

One of these tasks is to create 3D printable models of Ara and the dragon. The title image of this post shows the current state of these models. Note that this is still a render. I have yet to optimize the models to minimize the cost. The final statues will be carefully hand painted.

To keep within a manageable price range, the statues are now 7cm (Ara) and 10cm (dragon) in height. Not very big, but as the volume increases by the power of 3, so does the price

These statues will be part of a special ‘thank you’ package, which each of the team will receive.

Once the movie is released, I will see if enough interest is there, to produce a bonus package with a DVD, the statues and a full movie poster which could be purchased directly from me.

Another task that is ahead of me, is to produce a Making-Of video, covering the whole process of creation of this short from the very beginnings to its final release. This is not an in depth tutorial but more of an overview of the evolution of Ara’s Tale.

My plan is also to rent a cinema hall for a real movie premiere here in Innsbruck. If this works out, I plan to show the movie and the Making-Of on the big screen . Lets hope the financing works out for this …

And last but not least I finally find time again to invest more time in my love for photography. My photographic handling is a bit rusted now, but I really enjoy this and are combining this with my mountain bike trips, although carrying those extra 9+ kg up the treks is quite a challenge …

As a diversion from the tons of Ara’s Tale images, see here for some impressions from my recent trips:

Time Lapse – Day 2
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-08 18:18:20

Day two!!!!

Filmed with my trusty GoPro taking a photo every minute for the whole day. Played back at 12fps.

(easter egg on the last frame!)

Keyframes finished, plans for the future
Morevna Project - 2012-05-08 17:56:36

OK, I’m back from LGM and happy to announce that we have all keyframes for the Demo finished!

Yes, that’s it, the hardest phase is over! *clap* *clap* *clap*  ^___^

Some statistics: In 62 days Nikolay made 154 keyframe images. It took 343 workhours for him and 184 workhours from my side (I was doing basic drafts and corrections – more on that here – plus administrative work).

You can find all results on the wiki.

Our fundraising campaign is failed, but we’ve raised $641 out of $2200 – and it’s not a plain zero, you know. ^_^ I’ve repaid all full promised amount to Nikolay by adding my personal funds so we have this phase closed in all means. Now it’s good time to ask a question

What’s next?

The current status of the project is that we have no enough funds to proceed with the next phase (Vectorization and Tweening). Yes, the campaign is failed. But. It’s not an amount of money what is valuable for us, but the people who really care about the project. The campaign shown that there ARE such people. And we just can’t disappoint their expectations. So what we want to do is to stick with planned schedule and try to release the Demo in November by “no-matter-what”.

Right now we want to take some break to have a breath and charge our batteries. In May we plan to dedicate our time for doing some commercial animation projects to get a basic funds for the next stage. Maybe we will run fundraising for the next phase as well, I’m not sure about that yet, but it’s clear that we need to have some basic amount to cover the expenses. In terms of creative demands, the “Vectorization and Tweening” phase is less hard than the “Keyframes drawing”, but it requires more work and resources. Well, it’s hard to explain such things… ^_^”  Ideally, as we will depend much on Synfig Studio on this phase, I also would like  to have one developer seat sponsored as well. *waves to Carlos*

So, we’re at recharging. Please don’t be surprised if we will be a little bit silent this month.  If everything turn out well, we will get back at full throttle to the Morevna Project in 9th of June. So, stay tuned, don’t bore to us! And thank you to all who supported us during the last two months! We love you! Cheers!

Filming day 2, Ton’s gallery
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-08 17:46:52

And here’s the pictures of today’s shoot. We enjoyed working with the actors tremendously! Lotsof kudos to Derek de Lint, Rogier Schippers and Jody Bhe! (Sorry, the gallery is unsorted, the silly plugin refuses to work with me :)

Honey Bee
BlenderNation - 2012-05-08 14:00:57

By Gholm. Gholm writes: A textured, furred and renderable honey bee with a macro setup and procedural background Link Honey Bee (Blend Swap)

Bodon
BlenderNation - 2012-05-08 10:00:51

By renderviana. renderviana writes: Render made in tribute to LuccasBode, a friend of the people of Blender Brasil, that died in this year. Link BlenderArtists Thread

Filming Day 1, Ton’s Gallery
Mango - Open Movie project - 2012-05-08 07:32:12

Here’s my photographic impression of the first day filming, starting with breakfast at 7.30 until the last shot at 17.45.

The Mind
BlenderNation - 2012-05-08 06:00:40

By Yain Vieyra. Production files are available on Blend Swap.