Planet Blender

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.


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.

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!

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

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)

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