Planet Blender

The Producer’s Report #103 - One VFX Shot Remains!
Phil McCoy's Posts - Project London - 2010-02-13 22:00:00

The image of The Goose above, is from the collection of shots that Ian brought to todays management meeting. Among the many shots completed were a wonderful sequence of "holographic" vids that have been composited into the Nebraska Higgins interrogation scenes. There is also a fabulous scene with John Fantasia (Chicago) and Andy Evans (Nicola) where all the command center screens are taken over by a huge burst of "potential" in the climactic end moments of the film. We believed that we would be able to announce the completion of our VFX list today, but there is still one shot left to do. So next week...

We are also fast at work on Ian's revision to the first act of the film. He is working today with Justin Faylona (sound engineer) to record V.O. tracks for the new animated scenes. We'll have more news about that soon!

---

Status of Visual Effects (VFX) Shots:

• Number remaining: 1 (We thought we were gonna be done today. But we’re not.)
  
• Number in progress: 1 Number completed: 621 (BTW, Ian did 30+ hologram display shots this week that aren’t even on the list. Wow.)
  
• Percentage remaining: 0.2% Wow! That is the lowest percentage ever!
  
• Total VFX: 650 (a bunch were completed before we started tracking them)
  

Doom: “Shatner jumping out of the Olympic Torch” (calculated by Ian)

Projected date for completion of all VFX:

• 20 February 2010, 9:47AM (based on projected time estimates of all tasks)
  
• 20 February 2010, 9:24AM (based on spreadsheet items completed per week) Interesting how the projections are all lining up now. Pretty cool.

This week’s recommendations:

• Ian: "Live Life Like You’re Gonna Die"
  
• Jen: “Real Gone” by Sheryl Crow. In honor of my niece, “Boo’s” second birthday.
  
• Nate: "Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. Melancholy and sublime.
  
• Phil: "Born of Hope" a Lord of the Rings fan film worthy of your attention.

Cheers,

Phil McCoy, Executive Producer
on behalf of Nathan McCoy (left), also Executive Producer and Phil McCoy (right)

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Tutorial Links Fixed and Many New Blender Tutorials!
Montage Studio - 2010-02-13 20:16:16

Hello everyone!

It recently came to my attention that all of the links to my CG Cookie tutorials were no longer correct due to the move to Blender Cookie. All of the links have now been fixed and are active once more!

I would also like to draw your attention to http://blendercookie.com where I have many, many new tutorials that I have not gotten around to posting here. You will find tutorials on everything from modeling a car to a topology overview of the human head and much more. If you have liked my previous tutorials here on Montage Studio then I think you will like a lot of the new ones. So far I have published over 30 tutorials with Blender Cookie and so you can obviously see that many of them are missing from here.

Enjoy!

Happenings
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2010-02-13 19:53:05

For some the calendar is based on the sun; for some, the moon. For we of the Tube project, the calendar is loosely tethered to the inscrutable workings of the Hampshire College academic year. Hosted as we are by its Computer Graphics Incubator Space, the project has fallen under the influence of local rhythms. In the crunch to get ready for the ambitious schedule on which we embark with the start of this new term, the blog has fallen a bit quiet — so there is a backlog of cool developments to relate!

Tube is in part an experiment in distributed collaboration, with a team spread all over the globe, but we also have a great and growing cluster of people collected at the “drome”. Look out for numerous additions to the ‘team’ page, including several satisfying adjustments to the chromosomal divide. We have also been very pleased to welcome Jarred de Beer back from South Africa for a second stint, upgraded from Intern 3D Generalist to Senior Vice Volunteer. And in more good news, yesterday his travel papers came through, so Pablo Lizardo joins us next week from Argentina!

Before things really heat up around here, Bassam and I took a little holiday to visit family in the UAE. On the way back, a long layover in Amsterdam allowed us to drop in at the Blender Institute where the Durian open movie is underway.

Ton kindly made us coffee and invited us to Durian’s morning meeting. They are hard into the grind, and we wish our brave compadres all the best with their fantastical enterprise!

Updates about the exciting progress of our own work will follow soon, stay tuned.

Procedural São Paulo
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2010-02-13 15:10:40

Animation made with Blender and the Suicidator City Engine arnaud.ile.nc/​sce/​tutorial.php rendered with yafaray.org
datdatdat.org/​procedural-sao-paulo

Cast: Studio Datdatdat

Tags: generative, animation, 3d, blender, blender3d, yafaray, morning, evening, urban, city, metropolis and Sao Paulo

Jimmy
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2010-02-13 09:17:52

Made this last night and edited it up with sound tonight. Got fed up of all the unfinished "test" Blender renders sitting around and wanted to do something I could finish quickly.

FreeSound.org sounds:
By sandyrb: ORGAN-BRASS END IN G 001.wav (freesound.org/​samplesViewSingle.php?id=85894)
By mdsp: LiveCut_light_switch2.mp3 (freesound.org/​samplesViewSingle.php?id=3220)
By HerbertBoland: MouthPop.wav (freesound.org/​samplesViewSingle.php?id=33369)
By Razzvio: Tibetan Chant reversed.wav (freesound.org/​samplesViewSingle.php?id=79648)
By ERH: wind.wav (freesound.org/​samplesViewSingle.php?id=34338)

Cast: Nick Howes

Tags: blender, 2d and animation

Report: Blender Workshop in Kerala, India
BlenderNation - 2010-02-13 08:15:20

Milad Thaha reports on a Blender workshop in Kerala, India. Milad Thaha wrote: Me [Milad] and my pal Jishnu conducted the first ever complete Blender Workshop in Kerala, India, during a FOSS event known as FOSSMEET which is annually conducted by the National Institute of Technology, Calicut from the 5th to the 7th of February 2010. FOSSMEET [...]

The cost of Ubuntu's Success
goplexian.com - 2010-02-13 00:06:00

My father has a saying that "success is like a meat grinder, lots of different meat goes in, but it all comes out looking and tasting the same". Its a pretty jaded view, but time they say is the greatest teacher and hes almost as old as dirt now so who knows maybe he's got something.

There is no doubt Ubuntu is the most successful Linux desktop on the market today, and while technically they aren't actually on the market I wouldn't be surprised if that was their next step, after all Redhat which is on the market has been doing quite well and is by far the leading Linux distribution when it comes to servers and enterprise.

Yet Ubuntu's success, like all success, has come at a cost and just like a choice cut of meat thrown into the grinder it seems they have mixed themselves with their competitors to a degree that it is becoming more and more difficult to tell them apart.

Some of you who read this might think I'm being a little over the top, but lets look at a few things.

Did you know that Microsoft makes and contributes to open source software, and so does Apple? Guess what, Ubuntu now makes a closed source product called Ubuntu-One, and they've even said they are working on a Windows version. Ubuntu still far out weighs their proprietary competitors when it comes to open-source, but it is a lot less true today that it was a few years ago, things are changing and the differences are beginning to blur.

You may have heard that Ubuntu decided to switch their default browser search tool from Google over to Yahoo after Yahoo offered to cut them a check, but what you may not have realized is that Yahoo uses Microsoft Bing as their back-end search tool.

I never thought I'd see the day when a Linux distribution would be serving Microsoft search results by default, even though it is through the thinly veiled disguise of Yahoo.

Does Ubuntu not know that Microsoft is their competitor and would like nothing better than to destroy them?

Does Ubuntu not know that Microsoft search has been shown to favor itself over its competitors?

Did they forget that Google is Linux powered?

Just because advertising for your competitor makes you some money in the short term doesn't make it a smart business move in the long run.

I really wish I knew what was happening over at Canonical, and while these compromises in themselves aren't earth shattering they do raise questions about whats coming next, and it seems that I'm not the only one raising doubts regarding Ubuntu's future, and if as I speculate a public offering may be in their future will they have the strength to remain true to their ideals and obligations to the community at that time given that already they seem to be making compromises.

The cost of Ubuntu's Success
goplexian.com - 2010-02-13 00:06:00

My father has a saying that "success is like a meat grinder, lots of different meat goes in, but it all comes out looking and tasting the same". Its a pretty jaded view, but time they say is the greatest teacher and hes almost as old as dirt now so who knows maybe he's got something. There is no doubt Ubuntu is the most successful Linux desktop on the market today, and while technically they aren't actually on the market I wouldn't be surprised if that was their next step, after all...