Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project

Its been a while since we had a development post and while we’re always busy with blender much of it is work in progress.
Most of my time is spent on physics and bug fixes at the moment but seeing as it was my birthday on Friday, I took some time to work on something more fun . Enjoy!
- Campbell

Update:

• Image editor can be selected in the user preferences ‘File’ section.
• Save as PNG rather then TARGA to workaround reported problem with adobe photoshop not saving alpha.
• Render to an off-screen buffer rather then grabbing the view, removes view text and allows images editing images bigger then the view.
• Added option to capture high resolution images rather then using the viewport size.

Actors Halina Reijn and Thom Hoffman were in a recording studio in Amsterdam and gave their voices to Sintel and The Shaman. For the occasion, Clark Levy turned into SuperColin…

Ali

Will you just look at the number of models posted the past couple days on BlendSwap!  Check it out!


Holy smokes, you guys. I came in Saturday afternoon surprised to find that nearly every single item on the wiki with a name next to it and nearly 200 people logged into IRC!

And things were just getting started! We had a fantastic turnout. Once we started the live stream, the numbers kept climbing. We had over 300 people tuning in at one point, all enthusiastic Blenderheads from literally all over the world hoping to contribute to this open movie project.

Here’s one of the highlights of the day for me:

I had a fantastic time, and a HUGE

THANK YOU!

to everyone who tuned in, helped out, answered questions, organized the wiki, and contributed models! And especially a big hand to mofx from BlendSwap for handling the load of incoming work! Soon we’ll go over the submissions and see where we’re at.

This was totally fun. Maybe next we’ll do an animation sprint??

–Colin

Hi,

It took me some time to catch up on the Durian team, but I am getting there!

Here is a first rough edit and an indication of how the documentary/making of Sintel will look like. Of course much more aspects will be covered (concept art, modelling, animation, production up and downs etc…)  there are still some weeks to go before the end of the project and many more things to film…

Ali

Hello Blender Community!

Are you a Blender user with some modeling chops? Do you have dreams of fame and fortune? Have you been watching Durian from the sidelines wishing you could be more involved? And have you been frustrated that we haven’t given you the opportunity?

WEELLL, Nathan’s here to announce an upcoming event that you won’t want to miss!

We’ll also be sporting a live video feed from the Blender Institute!

In looking over potential blender model sites to use for this it was pretty difficult to chose. There are a few really great options! The Blender Model Repository is a great resource, and certainly has the fullest library of models. What sites do you guys use the most?

To recap:

When: Saturday, February 20th, at 2:00pm GMT+1 (Amsterdam) 1:00pm GMT
Where: At your computer
Why: For eternal glory!

Join the #blenderdurian channel on the FreeNode IRC network. (Refer to Getting Started in Blender IRC if you’re not familiar with irc.)

Visit http://www.blendswap.com/ and register an account to be able to submit. Thanks to mofx for helping us out!

And wait a couple days for us to post the list of models! Thanks to cwebb (not Samuel L. Jackson, actually) for the inspiration.

Later!

–Colin

Over the past few weeks I’ve started doing “Layout” work for Sintel. Layout is the stage where we figure out the basic character blocking (in this case choreography), camera angles and movement, as well as the timing and rhythm of the edit. At this point the sets and environments are also roughed out in low-poly form. The design of the environments greatly influence blocking, as well as composition/shot design.

Much of these decisions have already been sketched out in storyboards, but layout makes the parameters of sequences much more concrete.

Here is what the opening scene currently looks like:

Much is subject to change. (Especially the first shot.) Predub sound by Jan Morgenstern. I welcome your feedback!

–Colin

At the studio we have to be able to maintain and work collaboratively with a large number of files. For those who are interested, I made a little tour of the system we have set up as well as the process within Blender to link in groups from other .blend files.

Word of caution: when working with files that reference other files, be *very* careful with filenames and filepaths! Moving files around or renaming things can result in quite a headache.

–Colin

Edit: Here’s a link to Blender-aid, the content management tool for Blender I mentioned in the video.