Planet Blender

Kickoff Workshop: Day 2
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 18:02:17

BAM!

So we filmed the script this morning. The current edit is looking pretty darn similar to the animatic from yesterday (with a few minor exceptions). Everybody was awesome! This is a pretty incredible team.

Destruction simulations, amazing robot texturing, 3d motion tracking, editing, great animation, and insane bug fixing abound! The film has really taken shape- but tomorrow the CG shots should really start looking closer to finalized! Also! Getting audio locked down!

If this is where we’re at by the end of the 2nd day, with any luck we’re going to be able to do all the polishing we need!

Developer meeting
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 17:32:55

Yesterday I sat down with Brecht and Sergey to go over the main development topics, checking if we’re still on track and still have the big picture in mind. Because of the current workshop week we didn’t go over issues extensively with the artists, for that we’ll have plenty of time later. Here’s a short summary of what we discussed.

• Motion tracker: is in good shape already, a new solver is underway to test. No bottlenecks.
• Cycles render: will be seriously used. Brech is unsure how fast it’ll be in our production setup. We will do GPU and CPU (farm) comparision tests. Missing features are known topics (like shadow & id passes). He’ll also check volume render. Antialiasing and sampling (FSA) is an issue. A more detailed Cycles review we’ll do in 1-2 weeks here with the team.
• We will need light probes or environment mapping (and stitching). Worth to investigate is efficient methods to extract light conditions from footage. Sergey loves to dive into this.
• 3D viewport: Brecht will check on overlay methods to enhance selection/active info, especially in rendered display.
• Compositor project: some nodes – required by tracking – will need porting to opencl still. Might become a bottleneck.
• Green Screen Keying: we will investigate best practices and state-of-the-art articles on this. My suggestion is to connect keying (mask extraction) to the clip-editor, using markers and tracking info and temporal filter options etc. Jeroen Bakker and Pete Larabell  are interested to help too.
• Depsgraph: we’ll try to focus on solving the crucial failures. Like the ‘dependency cycle conflict’ for piston cases and essential driver updates. As a bonus – when there’s time – we can try multi-threaded anim updating. The “proxy armature” also will have to get attention.
• Getting Alembic to work would rock too… it would allow to combine a lot of real-time characters in a shot for animators and shade/lighters.
• Color pipeline: the confused code for alpha and color spaces will have to become stable and useful (also on UI side, to clearly communicate things). OpenColorIO needs to be investigated still by the team.
• Asset managing: continue work with Andrea Weikert on it (or gsoc student?) or help out ourselves.

We’ll keep you posted, next week we can do an artists’ version of the above :)

Model Download: Chair
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 17:30:58

By Julio Pires.

Quick update
Tinker Code - 2012-03-06 17:14:11

Hi all!!!! This is a very short and quick update! I’m currently on Cuba, without any kind of connectivity , but I keep working offline and making progress, taking advantage of the concentration that provides the isolation, and also some deserved relaxation with my family. With God’s help and friend’s help I hope soon been [...]

Phil Willis talk animation & Happy Feet 2
processdiary.com - 2012-03-06 16:00:54

Phil Willis is a Sydney-based animator. I met Phil a few years back at drinks for local industry folks. At the time, I was trying to get into freelancing, and Phil was trying to escape his IT job. Several years on, and things have changed for the better. I still can’t believe people pay me to do motion graphics, and Phil finished 18 months of Animation Mentor, and recently worked on Happy Feet 2.

He writes for www.Ozanimate.com, which features Australian animators and has his own blog at www.AnimationIdeas.com

Phil is currently juggling being a new dad with a number of personal creative projects.  To learn more about Phil and his work, you can visit his website: www.PhilWillis.com.au

Download audio file (Phil_Willis.mp3)

Having fun during the kickoff workshop
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 14:56:15

The Kickoff Workshop is a lot of fun!

We did the filming today, and it turns out the team is made out of awesome actors!

Little tour through the institute:
Team is working, Sergey is fixing bugs.

2D in Blender 2.6 – Tutorial (Part 2)
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 14:22:30

Ian Ball goes on to explain his 2D animation technique, and shows how to create animations like the one above. This time: bending! Ian writes: Ok, so now we’ve got some images on planes we want to animate them. We … Continue reading →

Livro: The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics
Blender Total - 2012-03-06 12:37:09

Foi lançado recentemente mais um guia para quem quer iniciar no nosso querido software, escrito por John M Blain, o livro vem com a intenção de simplificar o aprendizado do mundo gráfico e fornecer instruções aprofundadas sobre os fundamentos e ferramentas do Blender, incluindo animação. O autor inicia com uma explicação detalhada a respeito da interface [...]

Meet your Oracle – Scientific Visualization
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 12:00:20

A Blender Game engine project by Dalai Felinto. Dalai Felinto writes: The AAAS is an international scientific conference, that concentrates scientists from all over the world. Blender clearly...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Blender Institute Filmstudio
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 11:12:22

Bought this morning 4×500 watts halogens, and borrowed a huge theater light from the neighbours. Right now I hear screams coming from the studio, probably they’re filming ;)

Image Layers in Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 10:00:06

Fabio Russo is working on an image layers feature. Fabio writes: I started to develop features for images to create layers in Blender, as in PS and Gimp!!A first implementation was done by KWK (Konrad Kleine)  for Gsoc2010. Link Image … Continue reading →

Thanks, GMA News!
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-06 07:03:00

Thank you so much to GMA News via Rose-an Jessica Dioquino for the news article and feature. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/249598/pinoyabroad/self-taught-graphic-artist-in-la-union-wins-intl-award I'm very very honored and humbled. -Reyn

DVI Cable
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 06:00:28

By LeoMiyashita. LeoMiyashita writes: This is my first post. DVI Cable Rendered by Cycles Link DVI Cable (BlenderArtists)

Sick Little Bunny phone skin design
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-06 01:57:55

I’ve been adding a few images to the society6 art site over the past few days. I found a few nice images I did a while ago, on an external hard drive I’ve been using for backups. This bunny phone skin design for example is a couple of years old, though I only completed it last year.

One of the fun parts of the whole process – apart from the idea that somebody may one day actually buy an image – is seeing my art on a phone skin or laptop case. It makes it look kind of like it has already been used in making the product, even though of course I’m aware the merchandise is only produced on demand.

I particularly like ‘Sick Little Bunny’ because, despite his messed up teeth, his bilious colour, his big fat belly, and his squint, he’s still kind of cute. I have quite a large selection of these creatures and characters I’ve designed over the years, including space weasels, elephants, robots and aliens, and I’ll probably take a little time each night to upload one or two to society6, and get a kick out of seeing them on a mobile phone skin.

This isn’t detracting from my novel too much either. I managed to write 2,500 words tonight, though the writing kept me up later into the night than I probably intended. I’m getting quite excited about the book, as it gets closer and closer to being completed. I’ll have to think seriously about getting the cover illustration finished, because I’m hoping I may well need it soon.