sweet! I"m a cautiously optimistic blender fan. I've never actually used it for anything, but I have a peek at the status every now and again. It's really becoming a great tool, and can't wait for the next year or two.
The only thing that bothered me was the foliage of the tree - it was like it couldn't make its mind up whether it was leaves, or fur, or some freaky combination of the two. Also, the lack of any blood during the combat during the first fight scene was a bit disappointing, but obviously a creative decision as opposed to a technical limitation.
I wonder how this has been received by the more general Blender user communities.
I'm all for community projects like this. The animation was nice to watch and the voice work was good, but it seemed needlessly dramatic and sad. I'm not sure what the point was to it all really.
Looked awesome, Some epic stuff. Wish they'd reconsidered doing a film about pre teen girls fighting grown men, bit tough to suspend disbelief.:poly122:
I was pleasantly surprised by the story on this. I had been looking forward to it for a while for technical reasons, but the story was really good, and I was surprised by how well it drew me right in. That said, I agree with fletch
You cut to the bone with you radical truths Dan :P
TBH, i was a little disappointed with the final film and though there were many awesome shots and some nice VFX, there was also some places that could have been done better (The hair on the old man in the tent for example.)
Artistically, very very good, found the story to be bordering on the ludicrous though. Seems like it was badly planned. Doesn't compare to BBB, and I don't know how it cost as much as it did... Ah well, still a massive achievement for the crew.
I really feel like they overscoped unfortunately. I think originally they were shooting for 6-7 minutes, and a lot of the stuff they added to get it to 11ish minutes was really unnecessary. those resources could have been used to polish and tighten everything up.
I thought some of the animation looked a bit gummy and would've liked more dust/particles during the action sequences, but in general found it a quality production. Congrats to the teams involved, hope to see more stuff like this made using Blender in the future.
I'm going to see it more of a representation of how the durian team have grown artisticly individually, and their way of using it as PR for blender, rather than it being a representation of what blender is capable of.
but yes, fuck depressing, and the music was just spot on, way beyond the soundtracks in big obese bunny and elephants typical 90's cg script dream.
. Somehow with all the hype I expected it to be longer. Though having worked on a CG short back in college I can tell a tremendous amount of work and effort went into Sintel.
I think I would have been more excited had the Durian project been a game rather than a CG short film. That way Blender's game engine and related parts would have seen a nice development focus.
That said I really like how Blender's development is progressing. I hope they can get a stable bug free 2.6 out soon and integrate all those nice GSOC projects and especially Bmesh into the trunk.
As far seeing the art from the inside, I know how much work went into this, the rendering solutions look great, and there is a lot of eye candy to be seen in such a short film. Awesome!!!
However, looking from the outside im a bit disappointed.
some of the animations, and some of the camera movements were funky.
A good example would be around the five minute mark, the larger dragon swoops in, grabs scales, and then knocks over a pillar with the other leg, it all looks unprofessional.
With the destruction of the pillar, the lack of smaller particles, smaller pieces, and the odd weight conveyed by the interaction between the dragon and pillar seems to be off.
The dragon flies away awkwardly and the lighting solution at that time looks bad.
the animation of the girl running up to the ledge to catch scales seems a bit crap as well.
its almost as if that was the first piece the team worked on?
or maybe more inexperienced artists were assigned this piece.
Most of my irks are the odd story and odd animation bits.
I suppose the story had to be powerful and also be compressed into 15 min, and that would explain that fault, but the animation in most scenes look really off to me.
although, granted again, this was a small team with a non-mainstream development tool,
but other shorts made exclusively by Blender have looked much better.
Big Buck Bunny was made like, two years ago?
and it has much better animations, camera control, and rendering, at least the team used the strengths of blender at that time to make it look as good as possible.
Its not that I dislike blender, its just the movie this time around didnt move me as a viewer, (sorry guys :P )
and it didnt impress me as an artist. I think the team could have done better,
the production team, not blender.
There is an interview with Ton about the movie here http://www.blenderguru.com/interview-with-ton-roosendaal/
It does sound like they had some issues over reaching the experience level of the first group of artists brought in to work on the project.
It's only been out for less than 2 weeks and it's already snuck past the 1.5 million view mark on youtube (far better than either of the other Blender movies). People seem to have responded very well to the story for the most part. To me that's a little bit humbling actually. Though we are professionals, enthusiasts, students, or what have you, it's easy to lose track of what people actually care about in a film or movie. Perhaps I'm the only one to whom this occurs, but I can get so caught up in making something look good (or in this case, the critique), that I can sometimes lose track of what's really important.
The contents of the pre-sale DVD have been announced, and two preview tutorials have been released. All told, if you buy the DVD, there's about 28GB of data on 4 disks for you, including tutorials, a documentary, and all production files. I think the big advantage of this is that it should help people get acclimatized to Blender in a production environment. If you don't want to purchase the DVD, I believe all the production files will be released under a CC license soon enough.
Replies
I can just see Andy shouting "See? See? I told you it was a 'real' 3D application!"
I've been waiting for this feature ever since I started 3d!!
I wonder how this has been received by the more general Blender user communities.
Blender keeps on getting more and more impressive
Love the little baby dragons
Wow, okay then, I guess it looked pretty awesome.
http://www.sintel.org/
I was pleasantly surprised by the story on this. I had been looking forward to it for a while for technical reasons, but the story was really good, and I was surprised by how well it drew me right in. That said, I agree with fletch
What me? never :P
Lies. You know you die a little inside every time somebody mocks Blender.
TBH, i was a little disappointed with the final film and though there were many awesome shots and some nice VFX, there was also some places that could have been done better (The hair on the old man in the tent for example.)
the facial expressions are very nice imho
*
:blank::blank::blank::blank:;___;
I think I would have been more excited had the Durian project been a game rather than a CG short film. That way Blender's game engine and related parts would have seen a nice development focus.
That said I really like how Blender's development is progressing. I hope they can get a stable bug free 2.6 out soon and integrate all those nice GSOC projects and especially Bmesh into the trunk.
However, looking from the outside im a bit disappointed.
some of the animations, and some of the camera movements were funky.
A good example would be around the five minute mark, the larger dragon swoops in, grabs scales, and then knocks over a pillar with the other leg, it all looks unprofessional.
With the destruction of the pillar, the lack of smaller particles, smaller pieces, and the odd weight conveyed by the interaction between the dragon and pillar seems to be off.
The dragon flies away awkwardly and the lighting solution at that time looks bad.
the animation of the girl running up to the ledge to catch scales seems a bit crap as well.
its almost as if that was the first piece the team worked on?
or maybe more inexperienced artists were assigned this piece.
Most of my irks are the odd story and odd animation bits.
I suppose the story had to be powerful and also be compressed into 15 min, and that would explain that fault, but the animation in most scenes look really off to me.
although, granted again, this was a small team with a non-mainstream development tool,
but other shorts made exclusively by Blender have looked much better.
Big Buck Bunny was made like, two years ago?
and it has much better animations, camera control, and rendering, at least the team used the strengths of blender at that time to make it look as good as possible.
Its not that I dislike blender, its just the movie this time around didnt move me as a viewer, (sorry guys :P )
and it didnt impress me as an artist. I think the team could have done better,
the production team, not blender.
It does sound like they had some issues over reaching the experience level of the first group of artists brought in to work on the project.
Just a thought.
Original post: http://www.sintel.org/news/dvd-masters-sent-to-printer/
DVD 1: NTSC (4 GB)
DVD 2: PAL (8 GB)
DVD 3: Extras (8 GB)
DVD 4: Data (8 GB)
Preview tutorials:
Face rigging: [ame="
Rendering and compositing setup: [ame="
[ame="