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Creative Commons Video Challenges Hollywood's Best
Supercharged_Z06 writes "A short film entitled Sintel was released by the Blender Foundation under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (YouTube link). It was created by an international team of artists working collaboratively using a free, open source piece of 3D rendering software called Blender. No Hollywood studio was involved in its making. Pretty remarkable what can be generated these days with open source software and some dedicated, creative talent. If a short film of this quality can be produced without Hollywood right now, imagine what will appear a few more years down the road."
Holy crap!
Is this really that different from Elephants Dream?
Troopers.mov didn't save Star Wars.
Oh wait, that's covered already. Checking it out now.
Or not. Idiots. I've got Big Buck Bunny downloaded, though. I hope it's good.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Will it Blend?
Is this legal? I thought the MPAA cartel automatically owns the copyright to everything. These pirates should pay some sort of fine for attempting to subvert our capitalist democracy. Maybe send them to gitmo.
And this film is different from the dozens of award winning independent films produced outside of Hollywood every year how? Hollywood has a monopoly on "dedicated, creative talent" these days or something? Thats news to me, most of the stuff they make is crap IMO. Kudos on making it with open source software, double kudos for licensing it under CC but otherwise its nothing special.
You minimize the ways in which it is different with your hard to take seriously "kudos". I can share Blender Foundation movies with everyone I wish. I don't recall being able to share copies of Hollywood movies or most independently made movies without risking litigation. When the Blender Foundation makes their movies they improve Blender and show off its capabilities to inspire others to use the program. Few Hollywood movies have that result for FLOSS. The Blender Foundation raises its money from us, the viewing public, who is inspired to buy their stuff because they treat us so well. There is no such similar inspiration for Hollywood movies or independent features; I'd like to contribute to more documentary filmmakers but movie makers that let me share the work (even verbatim and non-commercially) have set the bar high enough where I can quickly exclude the vast majority from receiving a donation from me. On the other hand, I'll be ready to buy a credit or a gold sponsorship for the next Blender Foundation movie depending only on my personal finances. Blender Foundation has developed a reputation for helping our community in significant ways. These are big efforts in themselves and should be sufficient to answer your question.
Digital Citizen
A short film entitled Sintel was released by the Blender Foundation under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (YouTube link). It was created by an international team of artists working collaboratively using a free, open source piece of 3D rendering software called Blender. No Hollywood studio was involved in its making. Pretty remarkable what can be generated these days with open source software and some dedicated, creative talent. If a short film of this quality can be produced without Hollywood right now, imagine what will appear a few more years down the road.
So which trends are we supposed to extrapolate out a few years?
Dedicated, creative talent?
Free and open source software?
Sorry, I just don't get the point of this. International, collaborating teams of dedicated, creative people can do amazing things with their bare hands, but I'm not dreaming of a bare hands movement taking over the world. Am I looking at this from the wrong direction? Is the story about amazing free software that brings non-dedicated, non-creative people
to par with creative professionals using their own tools of the trade? No, because that would be a lie.
Some talented people did something interesting with some easily accessible tools. Great job guys and gals, seriously, but I'm not thanking the software. /. headline writing hippies.
I'm not imagining a world where access to free tools is locking up boundless potential, sorry. Keep on dreaming,
That was very well done.
Pretty remarkable what can be generated these days with open source software and some dedicated, creative talent.
Yes, yes... but what can be generated with open source software WITHOUT any dedicated, creative talent? Isn't that the more important question here? Creative people can produce works of genius with no technology to speak of, so who cares about that. ;-P
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
They are.. they.. they make me hate them.
Well, you don't need to dream, it has already happened.
Ever heard of this "internet" thingie? A "bare hands movement" is what keeps it moving
Ethan Anderson. I helped make this happen :D
I own and operate a movie theatre. I wonder if these folks have considered making a 35mm version of their short for theatres to play before the main features.
It would be a way to gain a lot more exposure and publicity than they will get otherwise.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The question here is that talent alone cannot create anything without the right tools. Artists shouldn't have to sell their souls to buy their supplies.
Van Gogh had to make his own paint because he was so poor he couldn't afford to buy it. Blender is Van Gogh's paint.
It started off a bit cheesy - way too many Hollywood clichés - but it was pretty good in the end. And the graphics are pretty stunning - easily on par with Hollywood.
Well done guys!
I'm not really seeing what's so extraordinary about this or how it's connected to "open source" outside of some tortured link with Blender.
Using MPAA's tactics to minimize the creative output of actual professionals seems like a dumb argument which amounts to "see, they can do it without major financial backing." When it comes to entertainment out in the real world, it so happens that most artists just aren't willing to donate their free time for some illusory cause.
The article title is your standard linkbait bullshit. "Challenges Hollywood's Best"? Hardly.
In some circles, there is the joke that everyone has an unpublished novel in their dresser drawer. (That's probably how it feels to a literary agent at a party.)
Given the way technology is going, the software and hardware to do a full cgi movie will be on everyones desk within about ten years or so. That is sure to lead to ...
Everyone has an undistributed movie in their dresser drawer. ;-)
People have been making movies without help from Hollywood for years.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Okay, so they used Blender for the 3d rendering.
But what software did they use for the editing the video sequences? What software did they use for the music composition? Did they edit the script in OpenOffice? Did they manage the project using OpenProj?
...art with entertainment. Art is about passion, entertainment is about money.
They're going to be distributing not just the movie, but everything you need to re-create the movie (or a derivative work). The movie itself is only 14 minutes long, but the full distribution takes 4 DVDs! All under a CC license. Hard to see how you could call this anything but an open source movie!
it so happens that most artists just aren't willing to donate their free time for some illusory cause.
Funny, that's what they used to say about programmers! And, of course, no musician has ever put on, say, a benefit concert for charity. Everyone knows that true artists are motivated entirely by money and nothing else.
If a short film of this quality can be produced without Hollywood right now, imagine what will appear a few more years down the road.
Not much better. Blender is a great tool, the people show talent too. But what they lack is budget. That is what will drive that last mile from making a movie with Toy Story 1 graphics to the "I can't believe it's not real life" style of current Hollywood movies. You'll need lots more people, lots more time, and lots more hardware. The basic premise of budget is why the majority of open source projects (and by that I include small apps too) get to the point where it's only just good enough to meet requirements and then no further. This doesn't apply to programmers who have corporate backing to keep working on the code or to people who's lives have been consumed by the desire to contribute.
For the majority of people without funding "good enough" becomes the end of the project. Sure there may be a handful of dedicated people who make a project their life, but for the vast majority who don't get paid they write the app until it works, and then lose the motivation to go further. Others will commit simple changes or may even take over the project but this is not something that will work with a movie that requires full dedication from start to perfection. Otherwise you'll end up with a movie which in the worst case looks like the latest Hollywood blockbuster, but is 5 years behind time, has a development team who is completely fed up and want to get on with their lives and a story that is incoherent.
Someone hire these guys.
If they were trying to say "this is the future of movies" they failed. It looked like a game trailer.
Star Wreck - In the Pirkinning was WAY better.
If a short film of this quality can be produced without Hollywood right now, imagine what will appear a few more years down the road.
Nothing. Hollywood doesn't fit into this equation. Hollywood deals with talent and business, not software. Hollywood already uses a great deal of FOSS, and I doubt this movie will change a future audience's experience at all.
Kudos to them nonetheless, it's a fun few minutes of flick.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
I want the chicks to be free!! Damn, I'll pay for the movies if I get the chicks for free !! I mean, really, how many movies can be made when no one pays for anything? So the hoes keep telling me!!
... wonderful. Scenaristically dumb. Still have to work on that skill in order to being a concurrent to known studios.
I also wonder:
- we got the large view of the city;
- we got the running-on-the-ground-with-camera effect;
- we got the oldering of the face;
- but we didn't see any mass moving mob scene. Is Blender able to manage such scenes?
No offense to the people involved -- certainly it looks great and it's entertaining. But I've seen countless "short films" like this one that were produced "without Hollywood." Usually they're referred to as "cutscenes."
Breakfast served all day!
And the twain shall never meet? GREAT art can't also be entertaining? One can't be passionate about creating a work for entertainment?
Doctors, police, and even vile capitalist manufacturers can't be passionate about what they're doing? And an artist, being the passionate sort that he is, cannot want to receive some money, or even great bushels of it, both so that he can spend as much of his time creating that which he's impassioned, and so that he can enjoy the fruits of success the same as any other professional? I'm sorry, but most great artists will only be greater if they're making money at their chosen undertaking, rather then diluting their energy having to do "something else", and treating their art as a hobby, to be done only after the bills are paid by some other job that takes up most of their day and energy. And not every form of art lends itself well to "performances". Should those who have to sell recordings, or books, or anything else that can easily be copied not get some return on the time and risk they took to produce the work?
There are some artists, probably even some good or great artists, that may have to do just this to support their work. Some will continue to do it regardless, and some, even some who may be great, may give up their art because the day to day demands of their money grubbing life take up too much of their time. Or relegate their art to a very low priority. I think great artists, artists who take themselves seriously, also want to be recompensed for their art. Man writers, for instance, don't consider themselves "real" writers until they're published. Many don't consider themselves real writers until they can support themselves while writing.
well, that's not a "premiere", Elephant Dream was already all all "open" movie :)
Hollywood will buy up the talent to keep them from producing anything worthwhile, so that the typical "Hollywood" movies can keep the mainstream public's attention.
Barton Fink, et al..
Don't b*tch if you signed. Nobody held a gun to your head. You can always walk, and take what's yours with you. If you spent your own coin (as you claim you did), then you were stupid to sign.
Amateur. NOBODY obeys a C&D.
Also, the "corporate lawyer" story is also BS. If you fell for it, you deserve to fail.
I don't like tragedies.
I especially hate well-done ones.
Don't forget about Killer Bean Forever by Jeff Lews. Made entire movie himself. No Hollywood. http://www.redferret.net/?p=9573
If a short film can be made using open source tools like this now, just imagine what will happen a few years from now...?
Nothing. More short films, made with open source software will be made. It'll be just like Linux on the desktop as a common thing.
Going nowhere.
The problem is with the details. Footprints aren't being made in the snow, snow isn't really being moved around much considering it's all fresh powder. The camera is angled to hide the fact that the environment is not changing dynamically with the action.
It's not hard to make high polygon count, pretty, things relative to the rest of what it takes for a solid piece of animation. The challenge is making a bunch of polygons interact in a believable way.
The professionals spend a lot of time making the environment deform in real time in response to the action.
You can't just shake the camera. The ground needs to deform when big giant things are crashing around on it.
Blender, or the animators, have a long way to go to catch up and Pixar isn't standing still.
Work Safe Porn
Why did they choose such an apparently non-standard resolution for the high quality version? Wouldn't 1920x (1080p) have made more sense (especially since the next size down is WAY lower than 1920- it is 1280x (720p))? I suppose it doesn't matter for many systems, but mplayer barfs on it:
"Source image dimensions are too high: 2048x872 (maximum is 2046x2046)" "FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver."
And vlc complains that it can't hardware accelerate video of that size (because they made it 2 pixels too wide!) Regardless, it plays surprising fine.
Why didn't they use 1080p, 720p, and maybe a 576pal/480ntsc version?
I don't understand their choice of sizes.
Be seeing you...
There are a few things I expect from a movie. Sadly, Hollywood does not provide them.
Other things I would like:
Basically, I don't care a bit about the latest special effects and celebrities. I don't care what kind of TV commercials they have. I would much rather spend $30 on a simple film that meets my needs than $2 on some over budget eye candy that doesn't. Furthermore, I am not effected by fancy advertising. I likely couldn't even name one single movie currently in theaters, but I can name at least three that have little to no advertising. As for distribution, I can burn my own CD. Basically, the only cost there is that of hosting the torrent (and the initial seeding). I'm probably a minority, but I think there are enough of us out there to present a market for cheap films.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
Perhaps feature wise they are close but having
used both, it is clear that Photoshop’s interface
well not perfect, is vastly more thought out and
user friendlily than Gimp’s.
Comparing Gimp to Photoshop is like comparing
Sintel to Pixar’s Ratatouille. Yes, Sintel shows
promise, but it in no way challenges Hollywood’s
best.
On Gimp:
If you want Gimp to gain ground, why does it still
feel like it is aimed at code-heads? I do not like
compiling my own programs and like apps to
install easily with a good simple installer or by
drag and drop. I do not wish to hunt around for
open source libraries which, for some reason,
are not included but are needed to run.
Why is there not a user-friendly mac build that
installs easily and uses a native mac UI?
If http://www.pixelmator.com/ can do it, why
not gimp?
It’s all well and good that it can open PSDs
(whose file format I hear is a bit of a nightmare),
but can it work with smart objects?
Can I use it to open and edit Camera Raw files
as a professional and not feel limited by the
technology?
I know photoshop is not perfect. In fact I am
finding less and less reasons to upgrade. But
I am sorry, Gimp is just not usable for me yet.
- Joel
It sucked because they didn't have an decent story to tell. The story was just bad. Did some computer geeks write the script? It sure seems like it.
The animation was ok, it aint exactly Pixar but serviceable. The visuals wasn't what made this film bad, it was the lame story.
As a demo of what this open-source CGI software can do, i guess it works. As a film to be watched for its own merits, I'm sorry but it phails miserably. I've seen episodes of Gumby more entertaining than this.
So you like fantasy films about the unbelievable, the supernatural, genocide, murder, homophobia, misogyny, magic - hollywood gives you that but not necessarily in one film.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The cost of this film per minute was €30,000. For modern short films, that's a massive amount. And it's not even including the work that was donated for free.
Films produced using Maya and 3DS and Softimage are produced at the same quality for much less money, even when you include the cost of the software licences. And for TV series or movie projects, the cost differences are likely to become even worse (Blender will become even more expensive in comparison).
Any producers who actually do the math are likely to stick with proprietary solutions.
gimp lacks 16bit (and more) color support.
that's why cinepaint was created for professional work years ago.
unfortunately cinepaint lacks some tools and features that make work easier in photoshop (and gimp)...
Neither did Photoshop, but somehow "real professionals" used it just the same without 16/32-bit colours. Which, by the way, GIMP DOES support.
Yes, that's right, real professionals working real professional jobs with real professional output didn't have 16 bit colour. Yet somehow this means that GIMP can't be for real professionals.
The market you're in (fundamental christian) is sufficiently small that there will never be a big budget for a movie targeted at people like you.
Profanity is a major part of common communication these days that to not use it would make movies simply unbelievable. Unless of course you're trying to make some puritan film which uses other words instead of profanity, meaning the same in context but people are too naive to realize. However profanity for shock value is simply boring and annoys me, but profanity for a reason whether it be fear/anger or simply the way the people talk in a given situation/culture then it's totally acceptable and I don't see why anyone could fault it?
Not sure how many biblically sound movies are made but a few tv movies seem to head heavily towards the godloving region and with the amount of money some of the televangelists have I'd be surprised if they didn't have a bunch of movies you could try.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
I've never ever compiled a single version of GIMP. Maybe you've been looking at the wrong place? Of course you can get the source code for GIMP to compile it yourself; that's the wohle point of Open Source/Free Software. However, there's no need to do so. Ready to install binaries (for Windows even with installer) are available.
Maybe because using the native Mac UI would basically mean a complete rewrite of the UI code, and that's just not worth it for them?
From the web page I gather that Pixelmator is a pure Mac program. Of course, if you only target the Mac, it's easy (actually even the easiest option) to support the native Mac UI. Gimp is a multiplatform application, and it should be obvious that you cannot use the native Mac UI on Windows or Linux. So the option is to either write 3 completely separate UIs to be native on every OS (or maybe even 4 UIs to please both KDE and Gnome users on Linux :-)), or simply stick to one UI which runs on all targeted platforms. Also note that implementing several UIs reduces the time which can be spend on actual features.
WTF are smart objects?
GIMP manipulates images, not feelings :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"No profanity, immorality
No liberal agenda
Biblically sound message and subject matter"
I'll bet movie night at your gaff is blast huh?
o.O
Their fulltime team was around 12 people. Consider a salary of 2,000 euros per person, for a full year (the length of the production), this goes to 288,000 euros just in salaries. They had to move people to Nederlands, pay for the space of the blender foundation, voice actors, film print, Dolby editing and license, etc. When you start to consider real costs then 400,000 euros is not much for a 19 minute movie.
Proprietary or not, the cost of the license here is the minimum part, You pay a Maya license with a couple of artist's salary, the most expensive part is actually the salaries.
The point Blender Foundation want to make is that Blender is suitable to make real life projects. And nobody can neglect it.
Here we have a textbook example of flamebait, somehow modded as insightful, following a comment that should be modded interesting if not left alone. Christians are easy pickings around here, what with all the groupthink.
You do realize that sometimes people are just talking about things incidentally, and not trying to convert you or get into the same old stupid arguments that are constantly rehashed here, yeah? If I were to mention that I use Blender on a MacBook and it runs well, is it time to trot out some tired rant based on the Reality Distortion Field, the Apple Tax, and the Walled Garden?
Eh, fuck it. You're still a bunch of sheeple, evidenced by how quickly you turn to animosity instead of just leaving others be unless they give you cause to do otherwise.
There are two things I expect from a good movie, which to date Hollywood has done a great job providing: tits.
Minor details like plot, story, consistency, etc. are of comparatively little importance as long as a movie has tits!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This movie was done entirely with open source software, with a budget bellow the million dollar mark.
http://www.plumiferos.com/
I have thus given up. I have concluded that those who claim some kind of "missing professional features" are just tools that have been duped into shelling out major dollars for an image editor; with capabilities that they could have gotten for free.
Most people are tools.
Don't speak if you don't know what you're saying. Otherwise be prepared for consequences. This is a life lesson. If you say "biblically sound" you should know that implies genocide, slaughter, homophobia, fear, and demonization. These are cornerstones of the faith that leads to real world cultural problems. I'm not checking the real world at the door just because I'm participating on a virtual message board. Quite the opposite. I read and chime in because I like to feel somehow involved in the world. I expect and prefer anybody to check me on anything I say. I think it results in a healthier community.
Profanity is rare for me. Amoung the people I spend time with, most use none at all, though I have some acquaintances who slip on ocassion. Most of the clerks at the stores don't either. In fact, slashdot is the only exposure that I have to profanity on a regular basis.
As for televangelists, you would have a hard time finding one that is biblically sound. I'm not sure that I even know of any who are.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
To be honest the majority of televangelists etc seem to just be greedy and full of *insertanotherword.
With the technology becoming easier than I'm guessing we'll see some real/in the flesh biblical stories come to life on the screen, I'd like to see what the original bible's tales were about and not anything that's been translated 50 times with various errors.
It'll be interesting to see media students work from these new tech's, hollywood won't be king for long.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
It's not aimed at code-heads. It's aimed at Linux users, whose systems have proper installers that handle this for you. This is largely just because it's Linux users that create it.
Your other points, I agree with :)