Modeling Sprint – A Stellar Success!
on February 21st, 2010, by Colin LevyWill 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
February 21st, 2010 at 21:49
Thank you so much for trusting the community and not to feel ashamed to ask for help. I still believe you are awesome artists – it’s just time you can’t buy.
February 21st, 2010 at 21:54
Can we still send in models or is this over completely? The sprint was a very short turnaround.
February 21st, 2010 at 21:57
Maybe you should do these sprints more often! It seems like everyone had fun. ^.^
February 21st, 2010 at 21:58
Thank *you* we definatly have to do that again
too much fun
February 21st, 2010 at 22:06
I just finished the broken window, is this okay?
February 21st, 2010 at 22:23
Thanks to you huys, we have been able to see a bit more how the things were going in amsterdam and saw you guys are first of all having fun when working ! That’s good ! keep it up !!
tom.
February 21st, 2010 at 22:36
Is the live feed video going to be available on the dvd?
February 21st, 2010 at 22:48
Just uploaded the broken window to blendswap, check it out!
February 21st, 2010 at 23:04
i think you should do an audio sprint, for crowd scenes, everyone uploads their own conversations, and we could just smuush them together.
February 22nd, 2010 at 00:07
@DrVonTrap
Thats an interesting and very cool idea. It might just work!
February 22nd, 2010 at 00:24
Muchisimas gracias por darle esta oportunidad a la comunidad, eso se ve realmente en la calidad de los trabajos ya que con mucho esmero todos hicimos nuestro pequeño aporte
, espero que se repita algo similar. Lamentablemente no pude sintonizarlos 
Adios!
facuhead.
February 22nd, 2010 at 00:31
Nice, you used my recordings
February 22nd, 2010 at 00:37
Yeah, thanks Thomas!
February 22nd, 2010 at 00:47
No Problem!
February 22nd, 2010 at 01:00
That guys was… amazing!!!
Great initiative to involve the community in the models
imagine that we also built the story and storyboard XD
or vote in live to see what thing stays and who goes (in case of animation sprint jejejeje )
whatever, this was a creative step in the project… and we love it
Greetings
February 22nd, 2010 at 01:02
Question: do I need to upload my model to blenderswap or is just fine with link on the asset page to my own server?
February 22nd, 2010 at 01:31
This was great apart from the fact that we got to know how a studio works .. some of us are just newbies or do this for a hobby so it was nice to even see the pro’s or just how you get things done … I also really liked the sprint … true Open source community collaboration… i am impressed with all the models from the blender’ers … … maybe the next movie could really be OPEN …
February 22nd, 2010 at 02:18
Do you guys recorded the live stream???
February 22nd, 2010 at 02:24
Did you guys record the livestream, or someone, because halfway through Colin answering my question, I had to get off the computer ‘cuase I had people over. I would really like to watch it. Thomas, did you say you recorded it?
February 22nd, 2010 at 03:58
Wow, I really like where the Open Movie concept is heading. Sure, it’s based on the same standard core team working in a studio that all commercial productions use, but having the whole world as your second unit is something they will never have and will surely help open movies to become more and more common in the future.
February 22nd, 2010 at 04:10
Hmm, I kinda wish that the deadline had been posted a little more obviously. I didn’t realize that the sprint was only supposed to be one day long, and I was not able to be online during the sprint. That is why I had signed up early. Well, for the record, my model is coming! So, hopefully you can use it, as it will be up tonight……
February 22nd, 2010 at 05:12
That was a ton of fun. Thanks again Colin
February 22nd, 2010 at 07:26
This is what I call OpenSource !
February 22nd, 2010 at 09:15
We had a great time, we should definitely do this again!
(dsavi or blac_hoel)
February 22nd, 2010 at 09:26
+1 for animation sprint
February 22nd, 2010 at 09:36
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for finally getting the community involved. The free help of many passionate hands is the one advantage open source projects have going to help them compete. I’m glad you’re using it!
Hopefully after the success of this sprint we can have another one that goes for a bit longer (Friday-Sunday?) and with a bit more warning so everyone who’d like to participate knows in advance. There seems to be quite a few really nice models without textures on them at the moment. Maybe it’s time for a texturing sprint? You could supply any standard shaders you already have and ask people who are using a new image to post it on the wiki for others to use, too. Even if you wanted to do all the texturing yourself for consistency, you could at least have people do the uv unwrapping.
Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully we’ll get more chances to help show the world the power of our fully operational battle station! er… 3d application.
February 22nd, 2010 at 09:55
Great stuff.
Can’t wait to see what sort of sprint comes when!
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:49
+1 next model sprint
+1 animation sprint (but should be organized wisely
It was quite awesome. Thanks!
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:01
Hey everyone,
I’m about to retrieve all the models from blendswap. Make sure your model are on Blendswap, we don’t have time to search for them elsewhere.
Thank you so much for the amazing time we had this weekend. It was great
The quality of the models are great from what I saw so far!
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:46
one thing I had difficulty with in 2.5 other than not being able to sculpt because it crashed eveytime I even thatught about using it it crached, was applying the texture.
I managed it once by using the drag and drop after loading the texture but havent got it to work since.
Is there any documentation on how to apply the texture, as far as I’m concerned, you should be able to just import it,
drag it across to the model, that same texture should then also be visable in the UV editor, is this how it should work? if not, why not
February 22nd, 2010 at 13:04
Participating was a great moment, thanks to the durian team !
February 22nd, 2010 at 15:08
Good job everyone who managed to contribute.
Sadly, I could only join it when the sprint was officially over and did not have time to finish my contribution. I actually wanted to do a complete piece (model, sculpt baked to normal map, texture and specular map). May I still submit it when it is done?
February 22nd, 2010 at 15:21
so much talent!!!!!! wow!
and so well co-ordinated and thought of. you guys are making history.
Out of topic:
What do you think about this realistic humanoid modeling system created for use with Blender:
http://www.jpbouza.com.ar/ESP2/descargas/blenrig-3/id/en
Less for its use in Durian but more on a creating such similar system in Blender core?
February 22nd, 2010 at 15:21
so much talent!!!!!! wow!
and so well co-ordinated and thought of. you guys are making history.
Out of topic:
What do you think about this realistic humanoid model rigging system created for use with Blender:
http://www.jpbouza.com.ar/ESP2/descargas/blenrig-3/id/en
Less for its use in Durian but more on a creating such similar system in Blender core?
February 22nd, 2010 at 15:54
Cool stuff this sprint. Perhaps the next one could be about materials and texturing, seeing how half of the contributions are “just” models and there’s still stuff Blenderheads could do to help
February 22nd, 2010 at 16:07
@All – If you missed getting your models to blendswap.com by the end of the weekend, please still submit them.
I’ll try and make a note on checking occasionally but the sooner you get them in the more chance we have of seeing them. If we do unfortunately miss your model, this has been a great kick start to blendswap.com as a community repository so it would be great to keep filling it up either way.
@Lamoot – I’m thinking about it, given the success of the weekend. But we’ll need the time to digest this one, get on with some more work and then re-assess what the best focus for another sprint would be.
February 22nd, 2010 at 16:50
Ben: Make another page for late submissions. That way you won’t have to search for them.
Make it ‘top to bottom’ and every time you harvest the archive draw a line and date it.
When people submit they should add a note art the bottom of the page with a link.
February 22nd, 2010 at 16:51
Wow, amazing responses
February 22nd, 2010 at 16:59
Ben: SO, the late submissions page I mentioned above would be a summary of updates and additions.
Could you also start a blog thread, once a week, about recent submissions? It would be a place where people could collaborate on the models.
Lamoot: I’m guessing that those that submitted models without textures would be grateful for someone continuing the work.
If we had a persistent forum for talking about this, though, I wouldn’t have to make that guess, I could just ask the parties involved.
February 22nd, 2010 at 17:56
be200fx, althought, as Ben said, we will look at blendswap in the next couple days, we must inform you that the weekend was really productive. We now have almost every props we need to fill our scene. I don’t think it would be practical for us to keep an ongoing ‘sprint’ for modelling and check on it every week.
It works better if it’s a one time thing, so people focus their work in a weekend, instead of spreading the time on several weeks.
And as Ben said, we’re thinking about a texture/material sprint. Stay tuned, we do need time to process thing, we have been sorting them for half the day so
February 22nd, 2010 at 18:09
I would love a texture sprint, I joined the sprint quite late on Saturday and was not able to contribute as much as I wanted to
February 22nd, 2010 at 18:11
hahaha popular
February 22nd, 2010 at 18:33
Texture / Material sprint would be quite cool, although I have to say, I think Blender 2.5 needs a little more bug fixing first! I’m sure it’ll all be good. =)
February 22nd, 2010 at 18:55
@durian team
A lot of the models that were made during the sprint are not textured (including some of the models I made). I’m willing (and I’m sure that a lot of the other artists feel the same way.) to keep working on my model to get them finalized with good textures and shaders. If you acounter models that you want in the movie but is missing for example textures I suggest:
a) Contact the artist and see if they’re willing to continue working on the object.
b) Arrange texture sprint (as Ben mentioned) where everybody could take part and finish the models.
If you chose alternative b (which is definitely the most fun one) I think should arrange a list of approved resources where you could find textures that are compatible with the CC 3.0 by license to avoid confusion. Also it would be great if you could publish your library of textures (I guess you have one). And finally we could have a list of wanted (photo)textures in the wiki so people can take their digital cameras and contribute…
2.
February 22nd, 2010 at 19:42
jsguillemette and ben, good to hear you’re considering a possible texturing sprint
and yes, it’s better to first digest the modeling sprint (including the cow 
)
for possible texturing sprint, perhaps some more information would be useful, for example texture size and texture types and whether a model will be in the background or foreground and how detailed it would need to be. Image textures or procedurals? etc. And a light rig so pople provide more or less uniform results.
February 22nd, 2010 at 20:26
I definately think this was a good idea to open the movie up some to the community to participate. Hopefully things are good enough such that this idea can be (and will be) expanded on for future movie projects… allowing more notice (to plan availability) and time (window) to participate. I think there’s some oppotunity for community growth here for the Blender Foundation to facilitate some aggressive animations.
All in all, it was a great way to allow the community “in” with the development team. The Durian Team and Colin are wonderful and it was nice seeing them enjoying their work. Colin was very inspiring!
Thank you all for your efforts.
February 22nd, 2010 at 21:41
Awesome sprint guys!
I had porn open in an other tab but just kept watching the live steam and irc, much better entertainment!
February 23rd, 2010 at 00:36
BTW: Posting the asset list early and being flexible about the deadline were both excellent ideas that would be beneficial if carried over to other sprints, if you have them. I personally would have found it difficult to participate if the work had to be constrained to the official 8-hour window, particularly given time zone differences.
February 23rd, 2010 at 02:26
I liked it very much how you handled the sprint. I think it should stay only one day. It makes things easier to overview and to organize. Also to stay tuned non-stop to help people with their models is nice for a couple hours, but just imagine if this would take two or more days. The fun factor and the intensity would drop after time. And Colin would look tired and stressed over the livestream
It was great that the sprint took place after the community already has seen in what direction the movie will go. I was surprised that many models can find a place in Sintel (my personal opinion).I’m sure they need some editing and twist, but in general there is already a Sintel-Style.
@Blender 2.5.1 Bug list
Many people used Blender 2.5.1 now, so it would be of great help for the developers to report your bugs. Read this:
http://www.blender.org/development/report-a-bug/
February 23rd, 2010 at 02:28
I’m really glad I get to participate in such historic event for Blender community.
February 23rd, 2010 at 19:32
@jsguillemette – sorry this is late but I posted my icicles submission to the Assets page (tmcintosh), hopefully you can grab it… (http://www.blendswap.com/durian/toddmcintosh_nature_icicles/)
February 23rd, 2010 at 21:48
Awesome! I wish I could have come in earlier. Everything was already done when I arrived.
“This was totally fun. Maybe next we’ll do an animation sprint??”
What?!?! I’m there! Will the models/rigs be provided? (I’m guess yes)
-ShaneNewville
February 24th, 2010 at 01:17
Count me in for a texturing sprint, that would be good fun!
February 24th, 2010 at 23:11
I would really like to do this again, i think this sprint was announced pretty late, so I couldn’t show my “modeling-arts”
March 9th, 2010 at 03:29
If Any of you would like to do another sprint go here and read the instructions:
http://sites.google.com/site/ethanharveyproductions/home
follow the “Update Blog” link
Then when your model is finished follow the “Comments” Link
DON’T WORRY! this sprint is more like a relay it goes til’ Next Monday!
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