Planet Blender

The Ian Report #513 - The Goal For This Week
Ian Hubert's Posts - Project London - 2010-09-30 21:00:00

My goal for this week is a simple one: take the ideas and plans I like, collected from the screening and various brainstorms and put them into the time line, so I can watch the whole thing and see if it works at all.

The goal is simple. Pulling it off is tricky. Even if I have a bit of exposition I want to slide into the film, and have a perfect place for it, making sure it’s in character for someone to say it, and having them say it without it being like, “Hey! Here’s this thing I’m saying!” is proving time and time again to be near impossible.

I just got back from a 6 hour thing with Soren Laulainen where the hardest thing we did was go through and make sure all the voice overs we’re going to record will sound natural. We’d write down what we wanted to get across (“You can save that boys life with your alien powers! But only if you risk going insane and exploding with your alien powers!”), then spend ages trying to make it sound like... not horrible.

Phil Rogan’s always helped quite a bit, taking massive ideas and knocking them down into just a couple basic concepts and lines that can be thrown in really easily. He's really really helped me see the film in depth from the POV of somebody who hasn't been working on it for 4 years.

The biggest thing we’re doing here is just trying to make sure that any confusion the audience feels draws them in to learn more, as opposed to making them feel like they’re failing at audiencing (or we’re failing at storytelling).

Ian Hubert
Writer Director

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Eyelashes as Eye Opener
Blender Minutes - 2010-09-30 20:18:16

After finishing the skin shader one of the last things left to do was to create Ara’s eye lashes.

From my first research on hair it was relatively clear that the eye brows and eye lashes would have to be implemented using textures. I did the brows  already during the development of Ara’s skin shader.

For the lashes I started with polygon meshes attached to each eye lid. Alpha mapped images of the individual lashes were applied via appropriate uv mapping.

It did work, but not really to my liking. Using this technique I created lashes which were essentially 2-dimensional ( aka flat). And not only this, but the roots of each lash hair were in a more or less straight line. This is ok if Ara’s is seen from a distance but gets increasingly annoying in closeups. And said closeups definitely make their appearance  throughout Ara’s Tale.

Karl Nyman (chipmasque) mentioned that he created lashes using 3 different techniques and his favorite was implementing the lashes using a particle hair system. After some discussion about the scaling issue with hair in blender I nonetheless tried the hair approach.

This is the parameter panel for the strand settings for the hair shader. As the input fields for ‘Start’ and ‘End’ suggest, it should be possible to enter values to 1/1000th of a blender unit. As my previous tests showed 1/1000th blender unit was just 2 to 3 times bigger than lashes for Ara’s would have needed.

In a total rush of optimism I tried to input my needed value 0.0004.

And …

SURPRISE

the values are correctly interpreted, ts just the display values which get rounded to the nearest 1/1000th.

This made things different. I setup Ara’s main hair with blender units using the ‘hidden’ scaling feature and what can I say: I just worked. Not only that I worked better than using the pixel based approach, as now the hair is always displayed in the correct width, regardless from how far away the hair is seen. I still use the child simplification technique to lower the rendertime with no ill effect so far.

The only drawback with this method is that you have to memorize somehow the actual values you entered. Because the next time you go he the input field it is reset to the nearest rounded value. Further experiments showed that the input routine accepts and correctly interprets values down to 1/100000th of a blender unit.

This is absolutely cool !

Another topic since my last post were shape keys and their intrinsic behaviour. During a discussion in my wip at blenderartists I realized that a lot of the corrections I made to Ara’s base mesh weren’t visible in the renders. It turned out that my understanding regarding shape keys (morph targets) was wrong.

A big thanks go to kram1032, who suggested to introduce a new shape key which holds all the corrections to the base mesh and is always fully visible. This trick is simple and just works wonderfully.

The image on top shows the current state of Ara with all these new techniques applied. And because its just nice to see here is a link to a Full HD version of that image.

Whats left to do for Ara is texturing the hands and feet, which I already have began. The shader will be simpler than the face skin and I do not expect any surprises here ( now why does that sound odd … )

ps: after seeing sintel ( very impressive: storytelling, cinematography, cg technique; a very satisfying experience)  I am now even more motivated to finish Ara’s Tale.

Sintel now available
Blender to RenderMan - 2010-09-30 19:23:00



 Congrats to the Blender Foundation! I have been awaiting this film for quite some time, even had the chance to chat every now and then with some of the guys. During the course of their production those of us working on "Project Widow" took note of some of the methods the BF had done, in particular Blender-Aid, so in a way Sintel has been a good source of reference and information, even in such cases as the modeling sprint, used some of the models for testing with Renderman. In such case aside from the texture format change was pretty solid export, even from 2.49. Nathan in particular has been a real joy to chat with, spending time in the Aqsis chat room and in one such case showed Paul Gregory and I a video preview of his basic exporter using a rigged Sintel model. Of course there has been a lot of behind the scenes talks between developers about the RenderAPI, something that we have been encouraging for some time now.

I guess it is kind of strange that a few of us have had a small connection to this film, strange but cool at the same time.

Grats guys! I enjoyed it greatly!

http://www.blendernation.com/2010/09/30/sintel-now-available-for-download/

Blender Foundation's Sintel (Open Movie) released!
Renderfarm.fi - 2010-09-30 18:11:20

Although Renderfarm.fi was not used in any way in the making of Sintel, I think that this piece of news is more than worth posting. As it stands, Sintel represents the culmination of over two years of work from the Blender Foundation, and in more ways than one the whole Blender development and user community. Being the third open movie (after Elephant's Dream and Big Buck Bunny) to be produced by the Blender Foundation, Sintel once again manages to set the par on what can be achieved using open source software.

These are exciting days in many ways for all of us volunteers as we're also getting our first open movies actually rendered. Although much smaller in scale when compared to Sintel, productions such as Final Destiny and Materia: The Awakening show that there's a real need for publicly distributed rendering. As every single rendered session and input helps us in taking Renderfarm.fi to a more mature state, the hopes that our volunteer community might some day actually render a frame or two for an open movie production by the Blender Foundation grow. Now until that day comes, let's watch Sintel over and over again ;). Here we go on Youtube:

 

Sintel Now Available For Download!!
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 18:10:36

I won’t waste your time – go get it! If the Sintel server is overloaded, leave your reaction for the Durian team here. Interwebs meltdown in 5….4….3…

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Sintel open movie released!
MiikaHweb blog feed - 2010-09-30 18:09:14

Blender Foundation's latest "open movie" Sintel (project Durian) was released a moment ago. You can download it free-of-charge from Sintel web site or watch it on video streaming service YouTube.com.

This 12-minute short is the third movie from Blender Foundation. It is done using Blender 3D creation suite and other open source applications. One of the main goals of Open Movie projects is to improve Blender as 3D-creation tool. Therefore one can think Sintel as a tech demo of Blender's capabilities.

Finnish Sintel fans who are waiting for subtitles: You can use ones I translated: sintel_finnish.srt.


Here's the YouTube release:

Sintel released for download
Blender3d.org: Latest News - 2010-09-30 18:07:00

The third Blender Foundation Open Movie project has been released for download!

News: Sintel movie is released!!
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2010-09-30 18:05:00



For best quality, download the movie from sintel.org.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Sintel Available Now!
Blender Cookie - 2010-09-30 18:02:18

After many, many months of hard work by the Durian crew Sintel is available online for download now! Rather than blabbering on here and wasting time when you could be watching Sintel just go click HERE to hit up the download page!You may also watch the film via the embedded YouTube version below:

http://blendercookie.com

Sintel Launch Party
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 17:29:47

While we’re all waiting for the release of Sintel, everybody is gathering on the IRC at the Sintel Launch Party. From the Durian blog: We’re working to get this out as soon as possible. Join...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

My Current Blender Defaults and Theme
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2010-09-30 16:39:00

This is the current setup and theme that I'm using with Blender 2.54. Only the default screen layout is themed. I tend to theme things as needed, so it's just a start.



I like the increased contrast and, for me, it's much easier to scan through the properties to find what I need.

To check it out, simply load the bn254_startup.blend file. You can tweak the settings as desired, and then press Ctrl-U to make the setup your new defaults.

Download the blend file.

EDIT: Previous file was an older version. Replaced with latest version that matches the screenshot.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

We are almost there..
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2010-09-30 15:50:21

Do you recall Sintel’s line “Hey.. we are almost done.. shh.. sit still!” from the sneak peek video we posted long ago?

We’re working to get this out as soon as possible.

Join the waiting and after party with the Durian crew!

We’ll be at #blenderdurian on IRC (FreeNode).
You can also join the party via: http://graphicall.org/sintel/

Thank you all community, you’re awesome. Let’s raise the hype!
An extremely excited Durian Team

Sintel on Frontpage of Dutch Newspaper ‘Het Parool’
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 13:50:15

‘Het Parool’, a major Dutch newspaper, is the first to publish a (short) review of Sintel. And even better: it’s featured on the front page! The article is titled ‘Animation...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Rumour: Sintel Release Time
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 12:13:23

I’m hearing rumours that the expected release time for Sintel is 1800 UTC (click here to see what time that is for you). Be warned though: everybody is still hard at work to make it happen, so...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

TV-ad for a finnish game site (Pelikone.fi)
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 08:10:11

Janne Roivainen writes: Hello, a while ago we made a TV-ad for a finnish gamesite called Pelikone (finnish for Game Machine). The ad was done at Kombo, a finnish animation studio. I did the animation...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Packt’s ebook discount offer on 2 Blender books
BlenderNation - 2010-09-30 08:08:59

fiammybe writes: Packt Publishing is doing a special offer on two Blender 2.49 eBooks : “Blender 2.49 scripting” together with “Blender 3D 2.49 Incredible Machines“. You get...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Creating a Bouncing Ball Rig
Blender Cookie - 2010-09-30 02:50:34

Probably one of the first thing all young animators are tasked with is.. “How to animate a ball bouncing”. In this tutorial, I go over creating a basic rig to control the squash and stretch of a sphere as it’s bouncing, and also demonstrate a bounce cycle.Support the site – Download includes:High resolution .mov Video .blend file [...]

http://blendercookie.com