Blender Foundation to Create Open Movie, Open Game

Eloquence writes "The Blender Foundation, which maintains the open source 3D tool Blender, has announced two new projects, codenamed Peach and Apricot. Project Peach will be a new open source movie, following in the footsteps of last year's Elephants Dream project (which was initially codenamed Orange). Apricot, on the other hand, will use Blender in conjunction with open source 3D framework Crystal Space to create an open game, thereby showcasing both technologies."

Comments

Open Source Movie

[NeoTerra]

Could the plot also be open source? I have a few scripts handy. Except they're not movie scripts. :(

should be good

[joe 155]

Elephant dreams was good, but it was really more of a "here's what we can do" rather than a film. I watched the HD version (which was nice to be able to get) and was really impressed. It wasn't really a film though in the sense of story progression, more of a trailer for the technology. I hope that the new film will be film length. The person whose doing it sounds good though, they won an award for their previous project... hopefully it'll be a good film

Re:should be good

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked 'elephants dream', though I agree it was dense and confusing. Not such a bad thing.

There is a lot of art like this, and it's usually people's first attempts.
They start off with huge complex plots, profound world shaking ideas, and amazing vistas of imagination.

What they don't do is think 'hey, how about we animate a lamp on a desk?'. It takes seasoned professionals to attempt something as ambitious as that. :)

You get the same thing in cinema, drama, music. It's not till you have been doing it for years that you start to see how you can affect people with little movements, expressions and cues, and that you don't have to make everything important and huge.

This will be interesting

[Aranykai]

Can one of these open source movies gain some public eye? Indie films are starting to be recognized, so I think there is a good chance it can be done and receive recognition. As to the game, I wish there was more info available. Too early to judge, but it has promise :)

Re:This will be interesting

[nEoN nOoDlE]

It will gain the public eye if it's any good. It doesn't matter if it's open and people could download the texture libraries - that only interests other artists - it only matters if it's good to watch.

Re:This will be interesting

[Lumpy]

Indie movies have ALWAYS been recognized. Lately the "indie scene" is far less indie and more big studios hiding who they are.

Indie movies do not have a 1.4 million dollar budget like many of the ones listed for this years sundance festival.

Download and watch elephants dream. It is a technical example and not a well written story but it was designed to prove and in essence broadcast a loud STFU to all the maya and lighwave weenies that still proclaim that blender is not a professional tool capable of anything decent.

They produced a pixar quality animation with free stuff that YOU can have in your home. The next project is going to focus on a good storyline and probably get submitted to many festivals.

Re:This will be interesting

[bishiraver]

Doubtful. Last I looked, crystal space was only just achieving what mainstream graphics engines were about 3 years ago. People who are interested in eyecandy will gloss over it, while a minor group of linux users who are gamers as well as sysadmins will cheer and cheer and cheer and.. nobody important will care.

Not to mention, somehow I doubt a game can be crafted with an open-source development model. A game needs some very strong creative forces behind it to keep it cohesive - if a typical OSS app can't even keep their user interface cohesive [ever look at your typical gnome or kde app's config screen?], something tells me it will be difficult for them to keep their: storyline cohesive, user interface cohesive (like I said, most simple desktop apps have a problem with this), game mechanics cohesive and logical, art direction and style cohesive, etc etc etc. Unless it's just TuxRacer 2.0 (maybe make a version named TuxRaver as a DDR clone?)

Considering the typical absurd workflow logic that goes into most OSS apps I've used (beyond your bread-and-water openoffice, etc)...

You will start out as a penguin in the north pole, whereby you will get a letter from your family in new mexico telling you to come quick because your cousin has died during the construction of the great pyramids. You arrive in Sicily only to find that Siberia has been taken over by mutant cyborgs all named 'Bill Gates.' You must travel to antarctica and battle the chair-throwing monster Ballmer in order to gain the GPL of truth, increasing your hit points by 6.02x10^23 while slowing you to a barely managable crawl. Desperately you make your way to florida, where you successfully battle jack thompson in court and gain the Writ of Winnitude. You combine this with your GPL of Destiny (the one you found during the side quest back in new mexico involving the trout and the cliff wren - you did that, didn't you? it's not in any of the docs anywhere, but it's so obvious! - it's NOT the Gpl of Truth - that item is useless) and are magically transported to a land of rainbows and penguins and free software for everyone. Unfortunately, this paradise is shattered by an Ax of Servitude hewn from the yggsadril-apple. It's shiny, but it works good and is simple to use...

Right about here, most people get bored developing the game and it slowly dies, forgotten in the depths of sourceforge. A few people stop by every couple of months and say, "hey.. there's this bug.. is anyone still working on this?" A few people wax nostalgic about the groundbreaking progress they made on the pixel shader they used to put a shine in the main penguin character's eye (but is not used anywhere else). The controls were odd (you used t to go forward, z to turn left, i to turn right, and clicking your mousebuttons realigned your characters eyes with the directions he was looking) and most people who downloaded it wished pain and suffering on the user interface developers, who decided to go with a "Leopard-meets-vista-meets-diabloII motif."

Note: I love open source software, but really.. I can't see it working in game development :) I could see a group of people taking some open source solutions that are released under the LGPL and developing an indie commercial app with it, but you need a solid and non-transitive team to build a good game.

Re:This will be interesting

[Jorrit]

Don't forget that one of the goals of this project is to expand Crystal Space to do what we want to achieve.

As to Open Source not working. We are going to do this with a solid team that will remain for six months in Amsterdam (Blender studios). So while the end result will be Open Source the way to develop it is like any other commercial game (only with less money and a bit more time constraints).

Greetings,

Re:This will be interesting

[Jorrit]

Not sure yet. Our first real meeting on this game will take place at the Crystal Space conference (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Conference2007 ) on 14-15 july in Aachen (Germany). More concrete details will follow from there.

Greetings,

Re:This will be interesting

[aichpvee]

That's funny, as a Maya "weenie" I find Blender to have a weird learning curve but seems like you can do some really nice stuff with it after taking the time to learn how it works. Also the interface actually seems to make a lot of sense in a pretty non-traditional way. I still like Maya better and think it's workflow is a lot nicer. But I'd never say you couldn't do anything decent with Blender and it's definite step up from a 3ds max.

I'll have to argue about the "Pixar quality animation" part, though. There's some seriously weak animation in Elephant's Dream (not all of it, just some) and you won't see that in a Pixar film.

Re:This will be interesting

[Scrameustache]

It will gain the public eye if it's any good. You lovable, naive fool.

Re:This will be interesting

[2short]

I generally agree with everything you said, but it's not really open-source that's the problem there. It's poorly focused development. This is certainly more prevalent in the open-source world, but it's not required. "Battle for Wesnoth", for example, maintains a well focused development effort despite being open-source, and is quite excellent.

Re:This will be interesting

[Adambomb]

It is a technical example and not a well written story but it was designed to prove and in essence broadcast a loud STFU to all the maya and lighwave weenies that still proclaim that blender is not a professional tool capable of anything decent. You fail to meet the second requirement. No need for the weenie label sir!

Re:This will be interesting

[toad3k]

It wasn't funding issues. There was practically no funding. The people who were working on it did each scene in linear order. The progression in quality throughout the film is them getting better at using blender. It is actually pretty interesting seeing how fast they went from beginner to churning out some effects that were pretty decent, all told.

As far as a tech demo, elephant's dream was a massive success. That clip generated an overwhelmingly positive response, increasing blender's profile and triggering developer interest. It is no surprise that they are doing another.

Not the Blender game engine?

[Animats]

It's too bad they're not using Blender's own game engine. Blender has an integrated 3D animation system and game engine.

The trouble with the Blender game engine is that it doesn't scale well. The Blender game engine can be used "without programming", but what that really means is that you have to draw connection diagrams with hundreds or thousands of connections. Then you get to debug the wiring. For a non-trivial game, it's painfully difficult to debug.

It's an occasional fantasy of programmers that wiring visually functional blocks together is easier than programming. Engineers who wire up real hardware know better. That's why we have VHDL.

Fortunately, you can extend the Blender game engine in Python. Unfortunately, it's CPython, which is 60x slower than C. This isn't a hit you can afford in most games.

Re:Not the Blender game engine?

[oftencloudy]

It's an occasional fantasy of programmers that wiring visually functional blocks together is easier than programming.

For more information on this subject see virus creation in Swordfish.

Re:Not the Blender game engine?

[ducomputergeek]

Blender's game engine has been on the way out since it hit Opensource land. If you recall, the first few released after being released Open source excluded the game engine. Blender is now dominated by those of us who use it for CGI/animation and modelling work for videos and fun. Making Blender easy to use with Crystal Space (called crystal blend iirc) has been the project to watch. The idea is to make it simple to create 3D worlds in Blender and then export to Crystal Space as the game engine.

Re:Not the Blender game engine?

[Archwyrm]

Yeah, we real hackers have crazy 3D interfaces and fly through machines and networks in VR. None of this silly GNU/Linux nonsense!

See also: Hackers

Re:name ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is an Open Source movie. The contents, creation files, final products, etc. are all Creative Commons (or maybe Blender Open Content, not exactly sure) licensed, meaning you can use the actual production files for whatever you like, including a whole new movie.

What's not open about that?

Great!

[saibot834]

I liked Elephants Dream very much. BTW: You can download it here as Avi or Quicktime.

blender advancement

[Speare]

If Peach and Apricot follow the progress made in Orange, you will be sure to see a lot of very useful, general purpose improvements in Blender for everyone. The need for specific features in Orange really focused the developers (some of which were Orange team, some of which were in the general development community) on solving specific creative problems. It's the difference between "scratch an idle itch" and "remove a troublesome splinter."

Re:name ?

[Lumpy]

Why??

when you give out the script, and all assets used to make the movie such as t he actors, models, sets, etc... I would definitely call that a open source movie.

Espically when you can take that source and create the movie at home. Or even tweak it so the movie is different in your way.

CS Project Manager Perspective

[Jorrit]

Hi all,

I'm the project manager of Crystal Space. I'm of course very glad that Blender and us will do this project. It is an amazing opportunity to enhance both Blender and Crystal Space to actually make this possible. The plan is to make a really good looking game that can compete (graphics wise) with commercial games. Crystal Space can do a lot already but in some areas we still need some more work (more specifically things related to render2texture like HDR and others). Also for a game like this we need to work on a very good animation system. Having a project like this is of course the best motivation possible.

Another important goal of this project is documentation. As this game is fully open all sources (both code and art) will be made available. And we also plan to release a DVD with a full documentary on the entire creation process. Basically everything will be available (we would release the left-overs of the meals of the participants if we could :-)

And of course the idea is to make a nice and playable game. Six months is not that long but it also doesn't have to stop there. The nice thing about an open game is that it can be extended for a long time to come. Also the game logic will serve as a nice starting point for a new game based on a different setting. So lots of possibilities here.

Needless to say I'm very excited about this project. I think it will be a great thing. Both for us (Crystal Space) as for the Open Source community. If we succeed we will have a commercial quality game but 100% free and open!

Greetings,

Open Source Movie?

[oyenstikker]

What is an Open Source movie?! It comes with a script and blueprints for a set, and I am free to make modifications to them and make my own movie and distribute it, so long as I make my script and blueprints available?

Re:Open Source Movie?

[Speare]

What is an Open Source movie?! It comes with a script and blueprints for a set, and I am free to make modifications to them and make my own movie and distribute it, so long as I make my script and blueprints available?

No, that's more like a GNU movie. With the blender Orange project (aka Elephant's Dream), it came with a script and blueprints for a set, and you're free to make modifications to them and make your own movie and distribute it, but you don't have to make your script and blueprints available. Anyone can build on Elephant's Dream all they want, but it's up to you whether you want people building their own movies on top of your Oyenstikker's Dream movie. The community might appreciate your continued generosity, but the Orange group (aka Blender development and artists) don't deign to tell you what you can do with your creative works, just their own.

Re:name ?

[LetterRip]

"It shouldn't be called an open source movie ... more like a movie developed with open source tools...."

It is open in that it will all be released under a open license (Creative Commons attribution i think?) including all blend files etc. Of course it is also being made with open tools.

LetterRip

Also Essential Blender book

[LetterRip]

Also a quick offtopic - 'Essential Blender' a new book to make it easy to learn Blender is being published by the Blender Foundation and ships tomorrow.

LetterRip

Whats the plot?

[Realistic_Dragon]

I actually liked Elephant's Dream... but it was a bit high brow. A few car crashes/pirate ships would have broadened the appeal of the movie and gained a wider audience, which is the point of a tech demo, no?

Why not Ogre instead of Crystal Space?

[CompSci101]

Ogre3D

It looks like Ogre is at least as fully featured, and has some commercial games being developed on it right now.

By the way, this is a legitimate question -- I'm not a developer using either suite so I'm kind of curious if people out there have used both or if there was some rationale for the choice of one or the other.

C

Re:Why not Ogre instead of Crystal Space?

[Jorrit]

Ogre would have been a perfectly valid choice as well. It is just that we have closer ties with Blender at the moment. We have an excellent blender2crystal project and our connections with Blender developers are very good.

Greetings,

Re:Machinima?

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

You seem to be asking this backwards. Blender is a 3d animation package with a simply game engine thrown in. It is far more suited to doing an animated film then a machinima toolkit on top of a game engine.

The huge difference though is it doesn't include all the models and textures you would find in a game. You can find a lot on the net, but you are not going to get the cohesive art design of a commercial game without a lot more work.

This is one of the goals of their 'Open source' films and games, building up a library of resources you can reuse in your own work.

Maybe Lara Croft will star in it?

[smellsofbikes]

I wonder if they can get Lara to play the lead character. That'll get the public to show up in droves, and I've heard she works inexpensively and has almost infinite patience for redoing scenes.

Movie project

[gr8_phk]

I never saw the last blender movie, but heard the graphics were good and the story was bad. I'd really like to see them take a proven story (public domain like one of Grims fairy tales - poke around Project Gutenberg) and make a movie out of it. If they choose one that Disney has already commercialized that would be even more interesting - and may get some free publicity if they threaten the team.

Re:Movie project

[beyondkaoru]

count of monte cristo. if they could put it in space and make an anime, we could make a 3d rendered version :)

it's not something that would require any trippy visuals, and has a strong story already. they can focus on details, as mentioned in other posts, to convey emotions to the viewer.

well, that'd be my suggestion.

Re:Gameplay Perspective

[Jorrit]

"There's a little matter of physics."

We actually have support for physics using the ODE physics engine.

Greetings,

Re:Funding?

[LetterRip]

Pardon me for asking, but where exactly does th Blender foundation get the funds from to just be able to say 'we'll make a movie and a game this year'? Last time i checked, most (low-key) open source projects were dirt poor. How come this is different with Blender?

The Blender Foundation sells printed high quality versions of its documentation (and commissions new and up to date documentation - ie see the link to Essential Blender earlier); it presells DVD versions of the movie projects; and enough users use it commercially that they can afford and are willing to 'give back' to the foundation. Also the Blender Foundation has support from both commercial and government entities. All of those are possible through both the efforts of Ton (the project lead and chairman of the Blender Foundation); and through the work of volunteers.

LetterRip