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3D Computer Generated Movie From France
An anonymous reader submits a link to this Computer Graphics World article on a French-made film to be released in June. "A film by Xilam, Kaena is a full length feature film, entirely made from Off the shelf software. The previews looks amazing."
Beyond that little insight, judging by the available clips, this movie is looking damn good (albeit remaniscant of old cut scenes from Play Station 1 games like "Legacy of Kain" - just cleaner). While it's premise doesn't appear to be completely original, it is certainly going to be a great piece of fantasy in of itself. It's style of art is also a rather refreshing departure from the main stream stock of CG films, which tend to be rather "cartoony" (not that this is a bad thing, but it is nice to see something new).
It certainly looks cool. The French outshine themselves again. I just hope the fact that it's French doesn't put people off.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
Although new to the 3D feature film scene, Xilam Animation in Paris opted for the road less traveled for Kaena: The Prophecy by choosing a mature style for the characters, environments, and story line. All images ©2003 Xilam Films, StudioCanal, and TVA International IV.
Some things are worth waiting for. And, from the looks of it, the 3D feature film Kaena: The Prophecy is one of them.
Five years in the making, the 90-minute adventure from Xilam Animation in Paris boldly departs from the tried-and-true cartoon-like look of such US blockbusters as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Ice Age, and introduces a unique painterly style to evolve its sophisticated character-driven story. Also impressive is the fact that the digital artists created this feature entirely with commercial software, which forced them to overcome technical challenges by creatively applying the tools at hand, rather than developing specialized code.
Even Kaena's story line deviates significantly from those of its US film cousins. Rather than presenting a humorous children's tale, the movie explores a serious theme directed at teen and adult audiences, although occasionally two worm-like characters offer a dose of comic relief. Kaena unfolds within the fantasy world of a giant tree, known as the Axis, which is inhabited by a tribe of people whose main focus is harvesting the tree's sap, which they then offer to the gods. When the sap begins to dry up, a young woman called Kaena (voiced by Kirsten Dunst) leaves her village to find the root of the problem and a solution. A courageous dreamer, Kaena travels to the forbidden region beneath the clouds. There, she encounters a host of unusual and sometimes hostile creatures, including the Selenites, a race that is also trying to save the tree from impending doom, albeit through the enslavement of others.
"The story is also about the unlikely heroine's journey from childhood to adulthood as she defies authority, traditions, and beliefs in pursuit of her own truths and personal identity--a topic that transcends cultural borders," explains director Chris Delaporte.
In addition to Dunst, a number of other well-known American actors and actresses--including Angelica Houston as queen of the Selenites and Richard Harris as the 600-year-old extraterrestrial Opaz--are likewise lending their voices to the Kaena cast. Because the film is intended for worldwide release, it has been produced in English and will be dubbed in local languages. The production is scheduled to open next month in France, followed by worldwide release this fall. (Xilam was still negotiating a deal for US distribution at press time.)
At first glance, Kaena's overall look and feel is reminiscent of computer games, with its fantastic settings and goal-oriented characters. "The style of the environments will be more familiar to computer game players than moviegoers," contends Delaporte. In fact, he and writer-partner Patrick Daher conceived the project as a game in 1997, pitching it to the newly formed Chaman Productions (Paris), which was focused on producing digital content for games and television.
Impressed by the rich, unusual environments, Chaman's founder chose to expand the project to include a feature film, formerly called Axis, that would be released alongside the game (Computer Graphics World, March 2000, pg. 33). Alas, the ambitious goal of creating a full-length CG film proved too lofty for the start-up. Despite having approximately half the film and game completed, Chaman relinquished control to Xilam, a traditional animation company with expertise in 3D, having developed several computer games and 2D/3D television series. Xilam has since completed the Kaena film and game, with Delaporte still serving as director.
Cinema Roots
"Telling a story for 90 minutes for a film is far more difficult than telling one in a half-hour for television," says Marc Du Pontavice, chairman and CEO of Xilam. "When it comes to cinema, the story alone cannot carry a project like it can in br
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
Using just off-the-shelf stuff, that's really amazing. I wish I could be that good with Bryce =/. It looks like the storyline could be equally amazing, but I'm wondering if there will also be an english release around the same time. It looks that way from the site, but I hope to see this in a theater near me.
- Sherman
It's not that I like the French that much, it's just that you seem to be a member of a certain southern group of people that were dropped as children, the KKK. I know you're just trolling, but don't you have anything better to do than act like a complete ass on the internet? Annonymous Coward indeed.
- Sherman
I think the term is "Freedom film."
Did they fix the problem in the French renderers where the polygons kept surrendering during ray tracing?
Awesome trailer, I'm definately gonna see this one
...like the "made entirely with off-the-shelf software" comment is more of an excuse than a "cool" factor thing. Watching the trailer I find the story interesting, some of the environment pretty, but the characters terribly animated. This is where the off-the-shelf deal comes in. All that says is that they didn't have the dough to deal with motion capture, and it shows in the character movements.
Take THAT, France-bashers. :) This looks really cool.
You are not the customer.
"Le Tron"?
The coolest voice ever.
WHORING, for the plugin impaired.
On linux distros xine plays THIS quite nicely. Just a direct link to the trailer.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
You have obviously not been hanging out witht he same french women as me.
General Sherman speaking ill of the KKK...
Beyatch
It is a sad testament to what Motorola's snail-slow chip hath wrought, that this movie was apparently done on a Wintel machine (judging from the screen shots).
As a long time Mac user, I can only hope the IBM chips save the day. It seems Apple is fading from the graphics scene, and no doubt because of rendering times.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
...but still impressive nonetheless.
:-)
Nice to see creativity from France. This is a nice addition to this upcoming French anime series ("Molly Star Racer").
Check out the trailer, it very neat.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
The trailer (in QT) looks fantastic, as it was pretty jerky in WM. Too bad they have it steaming, otherwise it could be mirrored all over.
The art is fantastic! I look forward to seeing this when it gets here.
Jaques:Where is my cheese?
Lezous:I surrender.
The End
Wow... it does look good... Could this be the first of an electronic renaissance for France? Computers are obviously the next level in art...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
link to the Offical site, movies, about etc..
looks awesome IMO.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if you look under 'The Making Of' section you it is quoted that this movie will require 64000 hr to render. that means this movie wont be ready for another 7 years! :)
Well, pretty much all animation/sfx is founded in "off the shelf software".
Maya, Softimage/XSI, Lightwave...I'm sure all of these packages are on a shelf SOME where...
Of course, when you read about movies that use such software, the fx houses always add "combination of Maya and XSI...with special software written by us". This usually is tacked on because they don't want ordinary people thinking they could do the same thing. They want to keep the apperance of wizardry like the old days.
But the custom software is usually written in Maya script language and such...which is very powerful btw.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Their server is withstanding the initial onslaught, attack, attack!
Isnt there a way to just download the damned trailer?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The limitation is talent. Few people can drive these tools competently.
I've done software for high-end animation. I can run the tools myself, but I can't get the results that the people with real talent can. Watching a good artist running an animation system is striking. They work quite differently from amateurs running these programs. They draw far more than they edit. They're fast. They have a clear picture in their mind of what they want to see on the screen.
There aren't many people like that, which is why most amateur 3D animation sucks.
Get the high-res QT version here
An AC with some brains, he is. I am also from the USA.
Responding to a few posters here: Using off-the-shelf software doesn't really matter. It does tend to be a sign of a relatively new studio though. A few films later and I'm sure their own code will be doing a significant proportion of the work. It'll start at the glue / automation level and gradually work it's way up.
Article: More importantly, I'm quite amazed at the article's neglect of previous animated features. They seem to think that this is the first ever animated movie that's not aimed at children, buying hook-line-and-sinker that animation is only for kids. One wonders if the author never saw the Final Fantasy movie, let alone any one of a trillion Japanese features or Fritz The Cat.
only a few minutes into comments and we have 3 french "freedom" jokes... not suprised... just nauseous
Was it made using Open Source Software ?
I don't look at stuff made with propreitary
software.
The Irony is overwhelming, yes I know.
- Sherman
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...a l'Effect Slashdot, mes amis.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
You are seriously comparing Kaena to Final Fantasy and Spider-Man?! Yes, the animation in Kaena looks, as you put it, "very ghetto" in relation. But I think you need to consider the following.
Spider-Man budget: $139 million
Final Fantasy budget: $137 million
Kaena budget: $27 million
Kaena is also (supposedly) the first European CGI feature. You really shouldn't expect animation perfection in a first release like this.
And, to be honest, a lot of the animation in "Spidey" wasn't that good either...
Finally; why won't the story be the draw? What about Toy Story or Monsters, Inc.? I found the stories for those CGI features (among others) to be quite well done and entertaining. Just because a film is 100% CGI does not mean that it has no story. I'm not saying there will be a great story in Kaena; just that the two factors are unrelated.
dont take this the wrong way, but in the kkk's earlier days it was quite the gentlemans club. only in it's later years did it develop into a racist, hating type deal.
learned that in history.. general ed classes rule.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
I'm surprised that no one posted the imdb link yet. And as someone stated, the voices did sound familiar, both in french and english: Kirsten Dunst, Richard Harris, Anjelica Huston...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did anyone else notice that the evil overlords had British accents, whilst the heroine had an American accent?
Normally I couldn't give a toss, except for the fact that this seems to have become an annoying stereotype. I shit you not, when watching Minority Report I picked the bad guy right from the beginning because of his British accent (the actor was Swedish I know).
In the old days evil characters had Russian accents, now it's British accents.
Why do they do this?
You're starting to sound like George W. Bush.
Next you're going to want to punish those who see pacifism as a valid foreign policy and war as a last resort.
I'm sick and tired of living amongst the high-school politics of the Untied States of Assholes.
ya, stupid french surrender monkeys. they are greedy cowards. "no we won't participate in a war, but we would definatly like to get money because of it."
Natural-Selection Be
I weep for the future. It's twits like you that will be the downfall of your entire culture in none too long.
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I saw you earlier tonight.
La femme Nikita
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
Brotherhood of the wolf.
So what happens next? Does the girl meet up with an bunch of itenerant "circus bugs"? Do they build a giant mechanical bird to try to frighten the villians away? Inquiring minds want to know!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Did anyone else notice this? Kaena would be Flik, and instead of providing food for the grasshoppers they provide sap for the gods.
Also, the Axis itself reminds me alot of Niven's "The Integral Trees" but I am not sure if it is in-ground or floating. I did not pour over the entire site or storyline (too much flash), but I got the impression that the inhabitants are from a crashed ship too.
Not very original if you ask me!
> The only non-technical flaw I could spot was the way the characters > moved. Final Fantasy augmented their hand-animated characters with > tons of motion capture, so maybe using them as the bar is a little too > high... I think the motion capture techniques they used were realy strange, because IMHO the greatest flaw in final fantasy was the lack of inertion. But yes the characters in Kaena are looking like stickman's. Yet the artist have done a great job, their site is cool too. Ignas Mikalajunas
It'll never beat Hamster Havoc
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Pretentious, arrogant, know-it-all asshole.
Did I miss anything? Oh yeah. Where's your movie?
The first European fully CGI feature was made in Spain and called The Living Forest.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Spider-Man budget: $139 million
Final Fantasy budget: $137 million
Kaena budget: $27 million
http://www.pixar.com/shorts/gg/index.html
Gery's Game's character animation looks a lot better than this stuff, and I'm sure it didn't cost too much.
- sigs are for wimps.
3dsmax r5.1 is NOT off the shelf software. You cant go into CompUSA and write out your check for $3,495.00 and walk out with it and its bibles of documentation. The guy dropped a serious chunk of change. If its off the shelf he is using RayDream Studio and JASC Paint Shop Pro!
I just watched the fourth movie clip they made available on the site -- there's a creature that's helping her who has a very warm rich voice... with a slight British accent. Listen to the "if you had the chance, would you leave Axis?" to hear it clearly.
...Whoah, I just looked up his bio to make sure he is, indeed American (confirmed; grew up in NJ and Florida), and it seems his father (a bar-owner) was murdered in '68. His sister was murdered in '75, and 2 half brothers died while scuba-diving in '80. Ouch.
It could be that they're working off the stereotype that the elite (evil or not) speak with British accents. Think also of what's called the "mid-Atlantic" accent (the accent spoken partway between the US and Britain...) taught so carefully to Julliard drama students -- you know how "Frasier Crane" talks? Yup, Kelsey Grammer is a Julliard grad. He's got it down pat.
He also spoke the role of the villainous but brilliant Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
s/haven/having/
I hope the clips are not representative of the final film because it looks stiff and unnatural, and everything has a weird smoothness to it. The God creature in clip 1 is damn cool, but overall the rest looks kind of bland. I'm probably spoiled with the kind of attention to detail and fluidity of Pixar films but these remind me of the CG Barbie movies that my daughter watches from time-to-time, and you can tell that those were made on a relatively low budget and as quickly as possible.
That's not to say I probably won't go see this film. It does look intriguing, but in terms of animation quality, it doesn't appear to be on the same level as many of the CG films to date.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
According to Yahoo! Movies, "this project [Kaena] claims to be the first European CGI feature."
I said 'supposedly' because I figured something had probably come before (despite what the studio may say). Anyway, thanks for the correction.
Fuck Yeah Baby. Keep America White. Kill The French. America for Americans. Let's Kill All Towel Heads, Yips and their Surrender Monkey French Whore Girlfriends.
Pixar films are developed with dozens and dozens of highly-paid, full-time artists and millions of dollars worth of equipment... ...asshole.
I looked at the trailer, and, like a few other people have mentioned here, it's okay but not great. The animation lags behind Pixar and the other big boys, and the plot is pretty generic (and bears an unfortunate similarity to A Bug's Life). But what gets me is that, for what seems to be the umpteenth time, a movie (or t.v. show or book or video or whatever) is anonymously submitted to /., almost certainly by someone involved in the production. If you think about it, considering the zillions of page views daily and the profile of the site (heck, google news uses /. as a source), /. has to be an easy source of free marketing for anyone selling any kind of SF. "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" indeed.
Didn't The Red Balloon come from France?
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
They have british accents because the UK represents all that is evil in the world. Colonialism, cultural uniformity, insecurity, and paranoia. Take a look at any history book and you'll see what I mean. Plus they have to sound cool.
"using motion blur in Pixar's PRman only has a render time hit of 50%"
Additional render time caused by motion blur can vary vastly depending on the settings and what's being rendered. In 3ds max, 2d motion can look quite good (with slower motion and minimal rotations) and add much less than 100% to a render.
Why would people who have played in Maya be able to tell that they're metaballs? Maya has no metaball features whatsoever. Anyways, they didn't use metaballs (and they don't look like metaballs to me at least)- they used RealFlow, a full blown fluids simulation solution.
I bet it sounds much better in French.
...but they kept "surrendering" the project! HA HA HA!!!
(eh... I got karma to burn)
Very old numbers I'd say. I've used Max and Renderman professionally for four years. While prman's motion blur is very nice, it takes significantly longer to render than Max's image motion blur, which is one of the fastest around. It is less accurate but for the majority of shots I've worked on over the years it's not noticable.
Oh, and also "only" a render hit time of 50%? Film-res images can take hours to render a single frame (especially if you are using renderman). Add another 50% to that and you are in deep trouble. The "render hit" as you put it for Max's post image blur is only a few seconds per frame, even if those frames took an hour to render.
You've got it backwards there. Final Fantasy augmented their motion capture with hand animation. Motion capture takes days or weeks of hand cleanup to make useable, and most animators prefer not to use it. Makes sense seeing as they all got into the industry to animate not clean up jittery popping motion capture all day.
LOL!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
PDI, BlueSky and Pixar's films are every bit as formulaic. Buddy banter, rescue subplots and a heart-wrenching song in the middle. The same is true of most of Disney's cel-animated features. What exactly bothers you about the idea that a forthcoming 3D animated feature may also follow the traditional Quest storyline? So what if Kaena's just a poor sap farmer's daughter, bound by destiny to fulfil some prophecy or another... Who isn't? It doesn't do your arguments any good to alternate between criticising technical aspects of Xilam's first feature film and praising Pixar's early shorts in spite of their primitive technology. The simple fact of the matter is that Xilam (and Chaman) have done a very cool thing: they've completed a film that looks to be what FF:TSW should have been, on a fraction of the budget.
With off-the-shelf software, on Windows PCs, no less.
More like pussyfism.
If you're sick of living here, go move to France. Have fun surrendering to the Arabs in a couple years and living under Sharia.
Apart from that, everything looks pretty cool.
Here's the direct link to the trailer in the largest size in Quicktime format.
It played fine on my Gentoo box under both Xine and Mplayer.
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
That attitude looks neurotic to most people. Bands with fancy props can very easily put on a terrible show, and movies with "uptown" (to contrast with "ghetto") effects can be catastrophically unwatchable--I have Final Fantasy in mind, but I'm sure there are others.
This movie looks far less lame. Maybe this is the start of animated features actually having stories that are more than mere afterthoughts. I'm optimistic, because the French have a good record of making movies that feel real and are easy to connect with on a human level. Animated features need that element much more than they need a more advanced motion blur.
"Gery's Game's character animation looks a lot better than this stuff, and I'm sure it didn't cost too much."
:-) that really sucked and this one looks better to me.
Oh come now the hardware and software alone probably cost that much. That was what 1993? Heck maybe the late 90's. And I'll bet they marshalled the whole company to make that single albeit award winning short. Those shorts gave Pixar if I recall correctly a whole lot of street credibility and helped put them on the map. The origional lamp was genious too.
But back to your comparision where you compare an apple to an orange over different seasons of harvest AND compare the very best of one to the infancy of another. Kinda sad and shameful on your part. Also weren't there models and lots of innovation to make the animation as well as they could at the time?
Have you seen a fair representation of the European CG animation out there? For the most part it just is not near the best of the American stuff. Lots of languanges to dub/lipsync for. Lots of different standards for ratings. Really cruddy funding deals over three plus partners all with shoestring budgets where they also must accomodate the previously mentioned market realities. The list goes on but I am tired. Look at traditional animation and claymation and you see much better stuff.
Sure I may not think the story is great from the preview but I have seen the same from Hollywood and was entertained just the same. As long as it is fun it will be worth watching. Cripes remeber Titan AE, you know same bunch that make Farscape
I don't know if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction of not (very probably, also not as much as claimed by the U.S. military) but he certainly has been used by Bush as a Weapon of Mass Distraction.
This can't be a troll, it must be some new kind of art?! *claps* Which school did you attend?
Can anyone please enlighten me to what "off-the-shelf" packages the movie has employed?
Or is there a page where the packages are listed?
I am afraid I do not read French.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Am I the only one getting a Dark Crystal vibe from this? (I consider that a good thing, by the way.)
[n/t]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
this is really irrelevant! mplayer & co. (xine etc.) have been able to handle stuff like this for months now..
no reason to mod ppl whoring up for nothing!
Leon aka The Professional
Huh? Now I love Matrix, but it's obvious that they got large part of the story from Dark City. Hell, Matrix even used some of the leftover sets from the Dark City! Just about the only differences between Matrix and Dark City is that Matrix was action-oriented and it had a huge budget.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
...hmmm, that was insightful. I just hope this keeps up so that /. stops allowing anon posts. I hate those people who post anon. Oh, wait... heheh
I don't know why so many are against the French in that fair, wonderful, free, brave, altruistic country of yours. Perhaps it's pure stupidity, a trait surely not limited to the French or any other nation. Perhaps it's some kind of deep frustration.
This movie is along the lines of animation done in Final fantasy, albeit with a story that could entice more interest in the general population than FF did.
There will be more in this genre, and it definitely holds promise.
>I've seen student demo reels with better character >animation than Kaena's running.
Studio demo reels don't have to turn ut a couple of hours of animation on a very tight deadline. Most of the time you simply have to take something you're not at all happy with and OK it simply so you can get the movie finished before you run out of money.
The artwork of this movie is fantastic, imo, and the general dark tone and characters seem to borrow from many areas of modern science fiction and popular figures.
The Marauder figure and the organic structures and the overall dark scenery borrow heavily from Giger's work, as the producer notes in the biography section of the site.
The story is in an extremely similar vein to a still rendered series done by an Italian guy in the middle 90's on a Mac with Strata Studio and Photoshop and Deck and sold as a multimedia CD which were still popular back then. Sadly, I can't remember the title.
Other influences seem to be taken from Larry Niven's Integral Tree (the tree in the film), a classic comic series about a world of creatures living in the clouds (the Sharken), and I notice that the one detailed shot of the heroine with hair (the wallpaper section) looks very similar to Virgine Ledoyen who starred in the Beach with Di Caprio.
This film will probably not be that much of a hit, as I think it is very difficult to excite mainstream audiences with fantasy SF, but I think it'll be a pointer to things to come, when bigger film houses with bigger budgets start to produce films in a similar vein.
Maybe they can get enough terrorists in syria, iraq, iran and elsewhere to fill the theaters for this movie.
The people involved with the project appear very talented, but... I'm sorry. Some of this looks very ghetto.
As an inexperienced person, I only looked at the design...the sets (if you will), the creatures, etc. I thought they looked amazing. Very evocative. The story seems thin and simplistic, but then: most Hollywood blockbusters are utter tripe anyway.
Since I don't have an eye for modeling (have 3dsmax, the interface has utterly defeated me to this point), I only looked at the other stuff.
Ghetto is not a word that I would have used to describe it.
Amelie!
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
I'm from The Netherlands and although our government was on the side of the US, 95% of our population wasn't. You Americans talk about freedom, but boycot French ware for their OPINION, that is so hypocrit. Land of the free, home of the brave... Come on, the freedom you enjoy has merely become a blur of what it used to be. The US used to be the flagship of freedom in the world, yes Europeans recognize that. But we also recognize that this is no longer the case. Your intelligence agencies monitor everything, NSA, CIA and whatnot scan your e-mails, phonecalls and mobile phone coordinates, you people get visits from FBI when you use encryption higher than 512 bits to safe-guard your privacy. Now that kind of info you don't see on your biased news networks now do you? How dare you despise France when you fail to see the truth about your own country. Your economy is weak right now and still the US uses 25% of the entire world oil production. Reluctant to invest in new technologies like hydrogyn, solar power or nuclear fusion. Your cars are low tech and suck alot of gasoline and don't come close to German car technology, still you all want to drive European cars. You guys come over so hypocrit. You want to know what most Europeans think? Like 95%? They love America, they love it's people, but they really fucking hate your extreme-right wing government. I appreciate you take stance for the Jews, i appreciate the US tries to liberate all sorts of countries. But your motives are foul, lies and deception. You went into Iraq to find nuclear and biological weapons. Now the US weapon inspectors have given up their search, because it simply wasn't there. Then suddenly you switched your motive to free the Iraqi people. That is so low. Instead of admitting your government was wrong, you just switched motives. Which shows that your government motives to attack a country is just a curtian to cloud the true motives. Your true motives? We don't know, you don't even know. Oil?World Domination?Both? Now here's the real catch. China. Your government is peeing it's pants because now they see actually that the communist system is actually showing it's fruits. China is becoming the most powerfull nation in the world and they're communist. They have the fastest growing economy in the world, largest army in the world and are technologically catching up. Auwch...that's gotta hurt, because now your government is going to lose it's nr1 spot as unofficial world leader. What other country has military bases in almost every country in the world? The US has miliatry bases fucking everywhere. Now why would a nation do that? Just for fun? No, that gives them military influence all over the world. World Domination, big guns and bombs is what the US is all about right now. With a 7 trillion dollar dept and defense as your greatest expenses, it looks like your government is growing nervous. You destroyed your own economy to wage war for undisclosed motives. You think you know the truth? You know as much as USSR citizens did back in the cold war, your goverment told you shit. From Europe it looks like your country has become a police state. Oh be so proud, the things you are all so proud already dissapeared 50 or 60 years ago. Once you had a great nation dwelling in true freedom, but what's left is just a mere shadow of itself. A military state trying to spread their ideology with military force and placing military bases all over the world, because they can't hold the pace of China's economy and technological advancement anymore which is growing like nuts. If you can't beat with your economy, you beat em military, that's the philosophy eh? Big guns, bombs, but little brain. And then you dare to talk about France? Offcourse they aren't all clean themselves. But right now, France is doing much better when it comes to true freedom/liberty and economy. Freedom fries....hmmpfff. You really think we Europeans care what you put into your 65% overweighted population? The US has become this big-footed goofy giant which crushes everything where it comes wi
Mental Ray is a product of Mental Images. Softimage licenced it to bundle with soft to provide an alternative to their (lower-quality) renderer. With XSI it is now the only renderer and fully built-in to the program.
Maya now also comes with Mental Ray - and I think it's available for 3D Studio as well.
Mental Ray is a very good renderer, and getting better all the time. However, it does tend to be beaten out by Renderman in some situations because Renderman handles insanely large scene files so well, and therefore can do things like hair, fur and feathers quite a lot better than Mental Ray. Traditionally Mental Ray has also been pretty slow at motion blur compared to Renderman, although it is getting better.
Renderman does work out as a good deal more expensive, though.
In a country of 24 million people.
So, the question should be, "Is it totally unreasonable for France to put it's financial interests against supporting a dictator who slaughters his own people?"
Committee of the Missing
No, it's not. It's very reasonable. After all, it's not Frenchmen who are dying.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Please don't give any moderation points to this guy. His posting is unpatriotic and flamebait. Yes it is.
The environment looks like it fell right outta the Myst games...mostly Riven and Exile.
Anyone else agree?
Take your collectivist "I hold the American people responsible" premise and SHOVE IT. I did not vote for Bush; I've written to my representatives in Congress protesting the actions of the American government, and they do not fucking listen! I refuse to accept responsibility for what a bunch of Uptight Christians (Republicans) and thinly-veiled socialists (Democrats) in Washington D.C. do with the money they stole from me via taxation.
This is so passé... So why not just go fuck yourself, mister USA.
but to expect a government to act in anything but its own self interest is very niave. I am quite sure the US government has somthing similar in mind for the new Iraqi government as well.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'm gonna have to agree. It's a bit ghetto. The metaball liquids, and some of the not so fluid animation, stick out to me. I'd say they'd have to push it even more, begin to stylize everything so the default metaball settings aren't throwing me off. Sure, they had a quarter of the budget that these other CG movies had, but that means you have to innovate in other directions (stylistically, artistically) so - again - us computer animators aren't screaming "quick and dirty" when it hits the screen. I think for some of us that have used this software or software like it, know what looks shitty after night after night of rendering our own mistakes, fighting so goddamned hard just to the the perfect amount of wiggle or motion in a character. We know that the only thing we want to attain is perfection - perfect animation, perfect story, perfect style. This is why we rip into the ghetto look, and why I don't show my demo reel to my mom. After a while it's not about rendering chrome balls and showing it off to your little sister, it's about getting some serious critcism and growing on it. So don't take offense to our crits, it's what 3D artists *must* do, in my opinion.
that is the heart of my point, why do we the US people suddenly take a governments' actions personally.It is irrational, the anti-french sentiment, considering say Turkey or several other countries recent actions. They were only trying to look out for their own economic future, France and Russia HAD a big stake in the oil flowing from Iraq. If we here in the US are going to do that we had better get used to the waves of hatred from the rest of the world as the US government sticks its' nose all over the place.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"Gentlemans' club" and "racist, hating type deal" are not necessarily uncompatible...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Don't say "France" and "the French."
Say "Chirac" and "the French government."
The French military was all for helping out, except for the president getting in the way.
Kaena budget: $27 million
/. might like to see more of (as opposed to the $60milion jay-lo comedy-drama-romance garbage).
/. the movie experiences it craves.
that is not chump change, but what it does say is that off-the-shelf will allow the birth of the small fully animated sci-fi, fantasy works. the kind of fantastic stories that the
Full lenght movies made this way, will liberate would-be-film-makers to tell more SPECIFIC and challenging stories, they will be able to paint more detail and less broad-appeal-brush-strokes.
I will be the first to see this movie when its released, and I hope you all are as well, THESE kinds of projects will be the ones that deliver the
>That fucking statue of liberty you have in New York was made in France. The US just bought it.
....
This is just wrong.
The Statue of liberty was given by the people of France to the people of the United States as a symbol of freedom and democracy, and a recognition of the strong link between the two countries (grounded into the french revolution movement)
The statue was designed by the sculptor Bartholdi and the inside structure was build by Eiffel (the guy from the famous paris tower).
The story is that once the french has given the statue, the US people had to build the pedestal. But money was not there, until Joseph Pulitzer wrote a famous article to raise funds to honour the french present !
3 years later, the US offers a small one to the french as a tribute to the universal liberty.
Now both statue are face to face for ages one in NYC, one in Paris
Let's hope that the "mediacracy" will never manage to separate our peoples.
A movie is not entirely made from software if voices still made by real people. One day it will but not yet.
A few comments. (I worked on this project for a while.)
First, this project was indeed initiated by a French production company, but it quickly became an "international" project, with large investments by Canadian and Japanese companies. I think all the actual animation work was done in Canada.
However, the creative work was done by a couple of very talented French people - all the initial character designes and the rest.
The film was then "shot" in English - lip movements were made for the English voices, and the French version looks, to the French, like a dubbed version, the way any American animated film looks.
While there are some weaknesses in animation, it is unique, and diverges from the average blockbuster animated film.
Isn't this a ripoff from a comic book????
Can't remember then name at the moment......
Only read it once, 5 a 10 years ago....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Breathless.
French movies are all absolute artsy-fartsy pretentious crapolaOh sorry, my mistake, by 'good movie' you obviously meant something that people with room-tempearture IQs find entertaining. I'm sure the French make some of those too, but we don't get to see them on the 'shipping coal to Newcastle' principle.
La Haine
First off, the US was not in a position to help until we did. As it was, they took terrible losses in the landings.
Secondly, no we did not want to occupy and destroy them after the war! One thing you foreigners just don't seem to get about us: we would NEVER tolerate a foreign occupation. The very idea of it is so abhorant to us that we really do a miserable job of living up to our responsabilities as the only superpower left because we asuume that EVERYONE feels the same way! Our greatest desire is to get the heck home and away from all the junk that is required when you are occupying a foreign country. Because of this, we did not invade and take out Iraq in the first gulph war. Because of this, we might also make a great mistake and leave Afghanistan and Iraq before they are ready to go through the pain and effort necessary to build a lasting and free governament for themselves.
To make matters worse, our supposed "allies" in France have _again_ decided to stab us in the back by not supporting our efforts. This has happened time and time again in my lifetime, and I (along with lots of people I know) have had enough! I will no longer (knowingly) buy any French products and neither will any vendors I contract with! The first thing I am going to do is NOT buy the latest version of Mandrake. I am also NOT going to recommend it to anyone. There are other vendors out there and I have a choice!
I want a public apology and I want it now. You were supposed to be our friends, but you betrayed us, now feel our wrath.
Don't forget his trusty sidekick News Rabbit.
Oh please! No government involved in any way, shape or form in the Iraq conflict gives a rat's arse about the Iraqi people.
Your government doesn't care about how many iraqis die - why should it? They can't vote. And they are openly hostile to the US.
Why doesn't the US intervene in dictatorships in countries without oil? What about the dictatorships that are loyal to the US? Why isn't the US waiving the flag for democracy there?
Where did Sadamm's weapons come from? Hint, hint, your pal uncle sam.
I don't have anything against the US for wanting to be an empire - just be honest about it for goodness sake.
In 2001 The living forest was released from Spain, being the first CG movie in Europe. And it did quite well.
David
"Where did Sadamm's weapons come from? Hint, hint, your pal uncle sam."
Wow, the US sold Sadamm Russian tanks, German bunkers, French Intelligence, Chinese weapons and communication gear?
And I must say, the AK-47 is a fine American weapon, no matter what anyone else says.
"Your government doesn't care about how many Iraqis die - why should it?"
Ever read a history book? Read up on "The Berlin Airlift".
"Why doesn't the US intervene in dictatorships in countries without oil? What about the dictatorships that are loyal to the US? Why isn't the US waiving the flag for democracy there?"
Hey, you're right. What the US should start doing right now is invade every country that isn't a successful democracy. Wow, thanks for the suggestion! (And soon the legendary N Korean oil wells will be under the US's control!)
Anyway, if the US really didn't give a damn about the Iraqis, then it would of been very easy to take the French route. Leave Sadaam in power while earning lucrative oil contracts.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Eh? Sorry, the French military is joined at the hip with politics. Even if they got to help out, they would be hobbled by government leaders telling them what they can and cannot do. Until they became useless.
The US learned that lesson in Viet Nam.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
hi,and thanks for your support.actually the movie
has been made for $13M only...hope you'll like it.
tom (fx lead on Kaena the prophecy)
No one has yet mentioned the game. The people who initiated the Kaena project came from the video game world, and a simultaneous game and film release was the idea from almost the beginning. I don't know what current plans are for the game -- I do think one version of the game was about ready some time back.
Someone in the initial production company, Chaman, was a neighbor of mine, and I've been waiting to see this film for years now. The current production company Xilam took over the project when Chaman couldn't raise the money to finish the project. The modeling and animation was mostly finished, it was time to start rendering bigtime.
Other notes: A good part of the work on this film was carried out in Canada. The english voices were selected and recorded years ago. The new production company changed the French cast which has dubbed the French version. The english version should premier sometime this fall, but I don't know if plans are finalized yet.
No, I really mean it: FUCK FRANCE!!!!