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Elephants Dream Creator Talks to Wikinews
An anonymous reader writes "Three days after the Internet release of the free content 3D short Elephants Dream, Wikinews exchanged e-mails with Ton Roosendaal about the reaction to the film, open source filmmaking, and the changes to Blender that resulted from the production."
The movie sounded like a feature film - it wasn't. It was a very thought-provoking piece, however. I've got to say the graphics were impressive.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
For those who didn't see it the first link here are the movies again, hope you enjoy it
http://orange.blender.org/
LetterRip
to remember never to post mirrors to 400meg or 800meg files when they think they're going to get slashdotted. those servers that were mirroring the video were litteraly hammered to the point of non-recognition. Even the edu server they had was trailing less than 10KB/sec.
HD Trailers
Here's some more information about the background of this project:
s -first-open-movie-released/
http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-world
Cheers,
Bart
I was at the premiere in Amsterdam and had a chat with some of the creators at one time or the other. Allthough we all grieve a little over the jerky anims one should keep in mind the following:
1) The timeschedule for a project like this was extremly tight. Remember they didn't have *anything* when they started. Not even a basic plot!
2) They had less experience in film project management than a guy that doesn't do blender all day but watches 'making of's'. Bassam (the director) said that he learned a storyboard and animatics are really important but it's important to move on fast from there on. I could've told him that right away. Then again I don't know a tenth of what Bassam knows about Blender.
3) They got stuck in the middle and took the time for experimenting and redoing animatics, which they, sadly, didn't have. Final anim started to late. Even the extra month they added in the end wasn't enough to give them room to breathe.
4) They didn't prerecord. Very big mistake. One guy said "There was so much emotion in the voices we had to redo some anims". Would've you thunk? Actors can act. It's what they do for a living. *ALLWAYS* prerecord unless you've got an acting director who has the skill to railroad the actors into the anim stance. And even then it's still better to prerecord.
5) Blender was extended with features they needed while they where requesting them *without* having a reference to other packages. All these guys are the elite when it comes to blender. IIRC none of them has any notable experience with any other package. Matt likes to toy around with ZBrush but Andy, for instance, is a 100% Blender guy. Watching him Blendering gives you a good reason why. When he's doing a little doodling in a break at the blender conference there's allways a bunch of people crowded around his workstation looking over his shoulder with amazement. It's absolutely fascinating just to watch this guy work. Then again, whith a feature list beforehand the parallel development of Blender would've gone quicker and features would've even been there before they where requested.
6) The jerky anims are paid of with awesome details that you usually don't notice at first viewing. In fact, one could say that the '2nd unit shots' are the actuall piece of art in this. That fits the lack of experience the Orange team had with larger productions. Bassams mechanical characters just plain rock. That's a fact.
7) AFAIK they where rendering in production which took away some time. Usually you outsource that or another dept. does it. I don't think they used renderplanet, which, if not, they should have.
8) All OSS Tools. Thats the single largest obstacle. The OSS tools are impressive, but OSS NLE and Compositing is just plain no match at all for, let's say, Apple Shake or Digital Fusion.
9) The benefits of compositing only became aware at the beginning of the project and key personell didn't have enough playing time to try things out, imho.
All in all I have to say that I am extremely impressed with the results. As for the semi-finished anims: As it is entirely open, there is no one at all stopping us from reanimating the entire move. The strange background of the story offers countless oportunities to extend the original and the fact that the riggs will be published gives pure animators a chance to show off their skills. Everyone can say: If you don't like it, redo it. A true OSS project indeed. Once again the Blender Community has shown true spirit. Ton and Team Orange rul3Z0Rz!.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Out of curiosity, have you ever created anything with Blender? I'm not trying to troll or flamebait, I'm genuinely curious.
I have created with Blender, although it was many years ago (c. '99-00). At first I hated the GUI. I ranted and raved on the Blender forum. Then I quit wasting time venting about how things weren't 'standard' (by which I, and many others, meant, 'Not the same as apps in the Windows world') and started learning how the GUI actually worked. After some time climbing the fairly steep learning curve, I realized that the GUI was actually laid out fairly logically...if you worked the 'Blender way(tm)(c)(r).' If you wanted to work the 3DSMax or Maya way, you were SOL. But, maximizing productivity with one of the closed-source, Windows-based apps requires climbing a fairly steep learning curve, as well.
In my opinion, that is what Mr. Roosendaal is getting at with his statement. In the Windows world, the learning curve associated with becoming productive with Maya and Houdini (and 3DSMax, etc.) is celebrated as proof of their quality and worth. On the other hand, the learning curve associated with Blender, although really no more steep than that of the closed-source alternatives, is descried as proof of it's lack of quality; lack of 'readiness for the commercial world.'
Is Ton a fscking blowhard? I dunno. He seems to have created a fairly complex piece of software that allows the user to accomplish a certain set of tasks (once they've grown accustomed to the GUI and workflow). That's more than I've done, how about you?
-- .sig available; 50-yr mortgage, interest only payments!
This
It's derived from the dutch way of humorously finding a quick end to a childrens bedtime story quickly. Roughly "... and then came a Elefant streched his snoot and blew the whole story away." The original title (can't remember) had the word 'dream' in it and after Ton told the team the story of the typical ending with the elefant they quickly all agreed on "elefants dream". There was a little discussion wether it would be "elefant's dream" or "elefants dream". Being educated europeans they agreed on the gramatically more plausible version without the apostrophe. These discussions took place on the many Amsterdam downtown 'dinner outs' the Team had during the production.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca