Planet Blender

The Ian Report #493 - The Grand Illusion
Ian Hubert's Posts - Project London - 2010-04-23 18:02:31

So Saturday got me totally pumped for the future. Some local filmmakers and the sound design team attended a screening at the Grand Illusion Cinema, and it went smashingly. We got some very useful feedback, and I've assembled all the collected input into a list, and just looking it over it's becoming obvious that we're really going to be able to take this film to a new and better level.

The most frequently given suggestion is to shorten the film by 10-15 minutes. I agree; this is a great idea! It's a tricky thing for me to do after seeing the film so many dozen times, which is why folk's advice is really helpful. A few folks at the showing pointed out some key scenes that could be trimmed, and they're absolutely right, so I'm hoping that the process of cutting those down opens my mind to thinking in that direction. I'd much rather have a one hour film that's crazy awesome than the current 100 minute film that may drag at times.

Basically, for every cut line, a few questions have to be asked. What is this line saying? Is it vital to the story; is it said anywhere else? If not, could it be said through other means? Would it still be vital if we cut out that whole plot line? These are some hefty questions to answer, especially since judging the value of a plot element is hard to do in the big scheme of things. Personally, I love it when I realize a dragging plot point is non-vital. BAM! Gone! Blam-O! So often I get stuck thinking, "Can I shorten this? Or give it some pizazz?" without ever asking, "Can I just eliminate it?"

Ross pointed out that we only used titles a few times, so when they popped up it was jarring. Thinking it over, I realized it was true; apart from the opening and closing of the film, we only have one title, "One Week Later", and immediately after it a character repeats that it was a week later in dialogue- BLAM! Gone! Nice clean fade to black instead. Where this is really driven home is that I had just redone that title for the third time a week prior.

So that's that. They say the film is created/written/edited/whatever three times. Once in the script, once on set, and once in the editing room... but I think this is probably gonna be the third or fourth time it's been rethought in post.

I remember seeing the first edit of the film. Oh geez. It'll actually probably be pretty startling for me to go back and see. So many scenes dragging, so much unnecessary exposition.

All that said, we are so close to finally being able to call the edit done. Not as close as I thought prior to last Saturday—but it's also going to be a lot better than I suspected prior to last Saturday as well.

Ian Hubert
Writer Director

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What do you want to learn?
Blender Guru - 2010-04-23 16:15:33

As most of my long term readers will know, my tutorial topics have been fairly wide. I’ve covered everything from modeling car wheels to creating burning buildings. I’ve had a lot of fun making them and they have helped a lot of people, but I’ll be honest with you: I created these tutorials because I wanted to.

I love cars, I love fire and I love ice fishing sheds (kidding).

But up until now I have never asked for your input. Which is stupid.

That’s like driving a bus full of people around without asking them where they want to go. I might get you there eventually, but it’s going to take a long time. So I’ve realized that unless I start asking you questions, it’s going to be a loooong trip.

Today, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I want you to tell me what you want to learn.

So to track your responses better, I’ve put together this simple, survey:

>>What do you want to learn?<<

A quick, painless 4 question survey.

I am currently writing my first commercial product on blender’s compositor called ‘ The Wow Factor’. So this survey will help me find out which topics you are struggling with and what tutorials I should make in the future. Your voice will be heard.

I’ll leave the comment section open for discussion, but please make sure that your tutorial requests are in the survey. Otherwise they will not be tracked.

Announcement: 2010 Blender Training Series
Blender Cookie - 2010-04-23 13:00:57

We are excited to announce we are beginning the process of recording our training series. The pre-order cut-off deadline will be this next Friday 04/30/10 at Midnight -6GMT. If you have already pre-ordered you should have received this announcement already, but if not please let us know as we look to firm up our lists. Wait [...]

http://blendercookie.com

Sintel at the Comicon
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2010-04-23 07:18:21

! – NEW DATE – !
FRIDAY 30 APRIL at 19H00 in the 3DNA Room

I will be invited to talk about Sintel at the Comicon (Naples, Italy) . Many thanks to the organisator, and I hope meet a lot of you there.

Here is the press-release :

Model: Mechanical Turntable
Blender Cookie - 2010-04-23 05:07:56

Everyone likes free stuff, but as artists free stuff can be a real life saver. With this round of free stuff, we are giving away a free mechanical themed turntable, perfect for displaying your model. This is a untextured model save for some simple materials but we thought you might like it. Enjoy! Download includes: Turntable model CG Cookie chain [...]

http://blendercookie.com

Taste Lab
BlenderNation - 2010-04-23 04:00:17

Hi, Chris Burton here back with another little movie.  This one's about a little girl who has to test out soft drinks made by two rival chemists.  All done in 2.5 Alpha 0.

Blender Users Exist in Colorado!
Art + Logic - 2010-04-23 03:50:00


We had 7 people at our first meeting! From as far away as Colorado Springs, with a wide range of interests, skills and experiences (programming, compositing, animation, and education). Thanks to Clay, Tom, Troy, Duncan, Matt and Richard for showing up and sharing their experience.

Acorn
Watch Mike's.... - 2010-04-23 02:59:46

I’ve spent my fair share of time wrestling around with so-called industry standard software, hunting through vast arrays of buttons and windows. Sometimes I’d swear I spent more time looking through windows and buttons, than actually working!

As far as image editing goes, Acorn is a breath of fresh air. Its clean, uncluttered interface frees me to focus on actual work! It gets all the ‘little stuff’ right, too. For instance, when you hit Option while dragging out a window, it increases the res of the image accordingly, and AA-stretches whatever you already have there!

Anyways, its a fraction of the cost of Photoshop. No, it doesn’t have epic, massive menus with thousands of 3rd party filters. But that’s ok – I can actually wrap my mind around Acorn in about 5 minutes, and be productive. Oh, it has a pretty neat API too.

Plus, the creator is a pretty smart, capable guy. He actually responds to bug reports, and fixes them. And as you know, I owe the world to bug-fixers.

Free tutorial about hard surface modeling
Blender 3D Architect - 2010-04-23 02:34:12

When the scope of a visualization Project changes from the building to the creation of something smaller like furniture, we have to change the skill set of modeling tools. One of the modeling techniques I like the most is edge modeling for furniture, because it gives me freedom of choose several types of topology and [...] Related posts:

1. How to control hard edges in architectural modeling? For architectural visualization projects dealing mostly with external views of...
2. Furniture modeling tutorial: Using the Solidify Modifier The new Solidify Modifier added to the Blender 3D 2.50...
3. Four hour length tutorial on how to model a building for 3d interactive visualization Among all the techniques used to create 3d models for...