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Blender Debuts Fourth Open Source Movie: Tears of Steel
An anonymous reader writes "On September 26th the Blender Foundation released their fourth open source short movie called Tears of Steel. This time around, Blender, the fantastic open source 3d modeling/animation/shading/rendering package, was used to mix 3D digital content with live action (PDF). The short was produced using only open source software and the team did an outstanding job."
And thanks to George Lucas for supporting the project. His vision made it possible.
Not entirely open source software! Main Sponsors: NVIDIA
I bet you they used the NVIDIA binary drivers!
I liked Sintel too. I wonder if more movies will be made like this in the future.
As a filmmaker and a graphics artist these days, I like Blender and its idea behind it, I really do. This is a copy of what I wrote on my blog about all that: The CGI on this movie still looks like VFX animation and not realistic. It looks fake. Camera tracking is good, modelling seems ok, but lighting and animation aren’t. There are no shadows to talk about, everything it’s too HDR-ish. If that’s what Blender can do in 2012, then color me unimpressed. That’s no Hollywood-worthy CGI. And let’s not forget that this movie was produced by the Blender guys themselves, with hand-picked Blender artists.
Unfortunately, that quality is not even good enough for TV anymore. Sure, there have been worse VFX on TV than what Blender can do, for example the re-imagined version of “V”, but thing is, there have been better ones too. Back in 2010, Stargate:Universe had some amazing VFX in some episodes, more realistic than anything I’ve seen on TV, before or after. An even more important point for TV is the time it takes to do things with the app (since their deadlines are extremely strict). Blender is not that easy to use, Maya can do better, faster.
That doesn't mean that Blender is useless. It’s not. You can’t beat its price and features in the advertising sector (which doesn't require extreme realism, it mostly needs some animation tricks), schools (for obvious reasons), or as a hobbyist artist. Blender can also prove to be a life-saver for indie filmmakers who primarily have the time to deal with Blender (rather than the money to buy other packages). So if *I* was doing an indie short movie, I would use Blender, because it's good-enough for what I would need to do, and I have indefinite time on my hands. So it’s got its uses in the world. It’s just that I don’t see it being able to compete for Hollywood movies and serious TV shows.
Loved it! Man, those graphics are stunning. I never would have thought Blender would turn into this all those years ago.
I enjoyed watching. I like the stuff coming out of Blender. I just wish I could find a 3d artist who wanted to do a virtual world with me. I wrote code for an action MMORPG engine over 7 years, but no artist ever wanted to sign on to do 3d models. Ah, I can always revisit it in the future.
God spoke to me
I don't know if there is some sort of TOP SECRET BURN BEFORE READING link to a pdf (or other download) for the current version but there are several things about Blender i would like to know how to do.
Oh and if you respond with JFGI or anything that is not a current (2.63 )DOWNLOAD of a TEXT then i will assume you are also sending me a large sum of money via email
1 in UV painting how do you setup a model with an existing texture for UV paint??
2 for that matter how do you link a texture to a material (to use for UV paint)
3 is there a way to simplify a mesh without ripping the mesh apart?? (ie remove 30% of the verts and have the surfaces reclosed)
of course if you are a blender wizard i have a few fairly simple things i need for the MakeHuman project (not looking for an exclusive and yes i will credit you for the work).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Now I've seen it, what's it about?
AccountKiller
"Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License". link
"The film itself -- as well as original footage and all the studio files -- will be released as free and open content; the Creative Commons Attribution license". link
AccountKiller
Ah...the feeling is mutual when it comes to post titles that stopped being funny a decade ago.
This movie is hit and miss. The bottom line for the Blender Foundation is to get people talking about Blender. Nobody really expected their underdog 3d program to be able to produce amazing visual effects. The more of these movies they produce, the more people will be talking about Blender.
However, what they could stand to produce are movies that tell a more compelling story. Is it visually compelling? Sure, but Tears of Steel leaves the audience with all sort of questions about what is happening, who the characters are, what is at stake....and we haven't a clue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well.
For the first time ever, the computer-generated part is more believable than the human-acted part.
So therefore this kind of thing will make it into the next big movie...with real actors.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Not being one for cussing and memes, I just watched the shit out of a fucking well made movie! I tried to be criticial of the CGI, but as a casual movie watcher I found the effects more than good enough to easily get caught up in the story. If the goal was to make software capable of tightly integrated special effects, I say well done. And people are already working to make it better? Get outta here you vector render wizards, I already have enough trouble telling fake photos from their pixels.
"The CGI on this movie still looks like VFX animation and not realistic. It looks fake. Camera tracking is good, modelling seems ok, but lighting and animation aren't."
Maybe a movie with such a ridiculous plot isn't meant to be realistic? Unrequited love brings the world to ruin but in the end love still saves the day. Really?
Take a look at the mango juice the black sniper sips. It should have been easy enough to turn the carton in something that resembles a real world brand instead it looks like a generic stage prop simply labeled MANGO, the project code name. Look also at the retro pixelated font used for the text output on the computer terminals. If this were a realistic movie set in a future where virtual reality has become a reality, you'd expect something at least as crystal as Apple's vaunted retina display. There's also that large button that turns red and displays "ERROR!!!" when something goes wrong, a sure sign that this is comic sci-fi.
So yes the stylistic look appears to be deliberate. You can see examples of such CGI unrealism mostly in fantasy movies like Lord of the Rings, but Tears of Steel isn't exactly straight-up hard sci-fi.
I liked the part where they made the boy rerun various lines to see if the outcome of the discussion would be different. And they had previous attempts listed on a chalkboard. Who hasn't sometimes played around with the idea of trying various permutations and seeing how the future shapes.
By the way the bots kind of reminded me of Alyx's "dog" in Half-Life 2.
I was very excited to see this come out & watched it within hours of release. Unfortunately, the very first scene has some of the worst acting/directing I've ever seen. Sure they're teenage actors and this is really a technology demo, not a film for the masses, but it wouldn't have taken much to get this small part right. As soon as I saw that 15 second section I nearly shut if off. I'm glad I didn't because the tech stuff was very interesting, but only to geeks.
While you can argue for hours over what the film does and doesn't get right, it simply is not on the same level as Big Buck Bunny. Everyone I show that to loves it, kids and adults alike, and it gives me the opportunity to talk about open source principles to people who would never know this sort of thing exists.
I would never be able to show this film to people and get that effect because it is in fact just like many Hollywood movies: good effects, but awful writing, directing and acting. It looks like something made by geeks with too much spare time while Big Buck Bunny looks like an old time Disney or Looney Tunes short film: funny and thoughtful with perfect timing.
I'm very sorry to say that this film is a showcase of people's stereotype of geeks.
Personally, I think they did not do a fine job on this film. Nothing wrong with the effects, but even the best effects cannot save a bad story.
Sintel, on the other hand, had a great story.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'll excuse them for the acting. It may not be Hollywood quality, but it was good enough.
I will not excuse them for the plot. It was a complete failure. They've shown in the past that they can do better, therefore they should have done better this time as well.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
My favorite is still the bunny one.
Have seen all of the films from blender so far. This one is their best. The human guys in the background were acting less than the robots.
~ Best man at your service.
Blender is anything but easy to get into. For the complete neophyte, what are the best sources of documentation in order to learn how to learn it without getting frustrated?
Note, I'm not talking about a series of "this is Button XYZ, and here's what it does by itself", but rather "here is a practical end-goal, and these are the steps you must follow in order to achieve said goal".