[QUOTE] But it may be about the death of innovation in the area of 3D animation.[/QUOTE]
Animanium, Character Animation Toolkit, - and look for Modo, ZBrush and Silo to develop very cool animation tools. Also expect great things from Blender. Most innovation is coming from the University researchers or the fast and nimble software, not out of the huge scale animation tools.
[QUOTE]The thing that frightens me is that the two most popular 3D applications will now be under one roof. This could mark the beginning of Autodesk staging a Microsoft-like dominance of the 3D market, and the marginalization of the remaining players.[/QUOTE]
I think it more likely that in three years time the big players are going to be fighting to survive the onslaught of the developements from these smaller DCC tool creators.
LetterRip
Re:How do Maya and Max compare to Blender?
on
Autodesk Acquires Alias
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
[QUOTE]3D Studio Max and Maya have millions of dollars of research and development invested in to them.[/QUOTE]
They do some R&D but mostly they do what everybody else does, wait for PhDs to publish something interesting then integrate it two or three years later.
[QUOTE]Feedback from the game and film industry as to what to add and what to get rid of.. and extremely useful scripting languages (MAXscript and MEL respectively) that allows people/companies to cater the program to their specific needs. "Ok, we need to get Maya to do this specific task that it doesn't do right now." "Ok, we'll write a script to do this for us." Stuff like that is a life saver in production pipelines. Being able to modify the programs so heavily that it's not even recognizable as the out of the box software anymore is extremely useful.[/QUOTE]
Blender has python as a scripting language - python is beloved by animation studios. Better still - Blenders complete source code is available - They can rip out and completely replace a subsystem if they like. In terms of scripting and hard core modification Blender is very comparable.
[QUOTE] It's been a long time since I've played around with Blender... but can it animate fluidly?[/QUOTE]
Yep. The new release in a month or less kicks butt at animating.
[QUOTE]Can it render using the latest and greatest renderers? (RenderMan, MentalRay, Maxwell, Brazil, VRay, etc) [QUOTE]
No integrated rendering with high end renderers at this time. There are preliminary RenderMan exporters but nothing complete.
[QUOTE]Can it do dynamics and simulations?[/QUOTE]
Hard body dynamics - yes (but as with the other systems they aren't integrated to effect each other); Soft Body dynamics (cloth, jello, rubber) - yes, but no self collision so limited application; Fluid dynamics - yes but only for water like fluids - no smoke, no fire - and the fluid currently can't interact with an animated object. Crowd dynamics - they are available but not tied in so that character armatures can be controlled yet so again limited to more simplistic scenarios. All of these limitations are of course known, and will probably be addressed over the next one to two years.
[QUOTE]Does it have complex textruing utilities and abilities?[/QUOTE]
Yes but it is not node based, nor layer based, so not as powerful or flexible and not what those coming from other packages expect.
[QUOTE]Can you set up complex rigging solutions with it?[/QUOTE]
Yep, handles are not very customizable though.
[QUOTE]I'm guessing the answer is no to a lot of those questions. And even if it does do some of that in some fashion or another.. I guarantee that it's not nearly up to the quality the people using Max or Maya would expect.[/QUOTE]
I agree - but it is for very capable for many tasks (character animation, subdivision surface modeling, uv mapping, non photoreal texturing and rendering, simple particle effects). A studio needing photoreal effects should currently look elsewhere. A studio doing TV or character animation will find it quite usable. Within a year or less studios of all sorts should be giving strong consideration to integrating Blender into their existing pipeline. The developer team is aware of Blenders weaknesses and they are being very quickly addressed. All limitations but direct integration with Renderman I think could be eliminated within a year (some are already on the roadmap) and two years tops- and with a bit of funding (two full time developers) could happen much faster.
LetterRip
Re:How do Maya and Max compare to Blender?
on
Autodesk Acquires Alias
·
· Score: 5, Informative
[QUOTE]But my question is: How does the open source Blender [blender3d.org] modeling and animation package compare to Maya and Max for creating content for movies, animations and games. What is it missing, what does it not do as well, what would it need to be able to compete? Is Blender even a worthy substitute for Maya or Max?[/QUOTE]
Depends on the studio, developer costs, and what type of animation you want to do. For high end photoreal Blender isn't there yet (render isn't 'high end' enough). For simulation based particle effects (fire, smoke, complex physics, crowd simulations, certain other fluid effects) Blender doesn't have those capabilities or are extremely limited (no volumetric shaders and no simulation system for smoke and flame, crowd dynamics could come shortly after the next release though). For most other TV quality animation, game animation, and small scale movie cinematics Blender is very much a possible consideration. Blender lacks some modeling tools but has a very solid core for subdivision surface modeling and has the truely neccessary tools (additional tools could improve speed and workflow). With much less than half a year of developer time, it could probably be brought to Silo equivalency for modeling, and with a full developer year could challenge Modo or ZBrush in modeling. With a half a year of dev time on texturing it could likely become ZBrush or Modo equivalent. Animation wise the next release will put it mostly on par with other character animation tools (but will still have a serious short coming in that it doesn't have motion capture capabilities). For game developers I noted above the limitations Blender has - again 6 months of developer time.
So in short it isn't a serious contender today for what major animation studios currently do with Maya or 3dsmax, but with a bit of funding could easily be there within a years time.
[QUOTE]Click here for state of the art open source 3d modelling/rendering in java! Art of Illusion [artofillusion.org][/QUOTE]
No disrespect, but AOI is pretty poor at both modeling and rendering. Blender or Wings3D are the best open source modeling tools. There are a number of open source rendering tools of good quality depending on what you want to do - YafRay, Aqsis, Blenders internal renderer, PovRAY and others I'm sure.
of course you could have meant to emphasize 'in java'.
[QUOTE]Does anyone know how the big 3 modellers compare? (I know a lot of game dev studios use Max and Maya.) Also, what about Blender?[/QUOTE]
Blender has been pretty much only been freelancers and hobbyists thus far. It currently lacks some neccessities for game modeling that are pretty important for widespread game industry adoption - smoothing groups, baking of lighting, mulitple and overlapping UV maps, and tangent space normal maps.
Blenders animating tools on the current release cycle have just caught up to some of the best in the industry going from barely usable to kicking butt in the space of six months.
Over the next six months Blenders render and compositing tools will likely experience a similar revolution.
Also Blender has acquired quite a few 'high end' tools lately - including soft body dynamics (cloth, rubber, etc) fluid dynamics (water type liquids only though), and hard body dynamics (physics based collisions), hair system.
Within a year, expect Blender to be competive with highend tools on most feature sets, and to offer all of the essentials.
[QUOTE]Good luck walking away from that, Mr. Nash... [/QUOTE]
I doubt he is seriously contemplating it, he would be almost sure to be hit by a class action law suit from his investors if he did and would probably lose such a suit.
They can't open source the renderer because they don't own the source to it. Their interface is pretty weak and has very little functionality, they have nothing to really offer that could compete with Blender as far as '3d'.
[QUOTE]I agree. 3D design is very complicated, making it work and work well is expensive, especially work well enough and doesn't waste a professional designer's time with bad user interface practices.[/QUOTE]
Well Blenders interface is difficult, but it is also considered one of the fastest 3D DCC (Digital Content Creation) tools.
[QUOTE]Also, the number of people that benefit from being able to do 3D design is much smaller than the number of people that can benefit from an operating system or office software.[/QUOTE]
The number isn't quite as large but it is still pretty huge. Games, desktop publishing, tv, animation, advertising, design software for achitects, engineers, home design, and general artisitic work all benefit for DCC software.
[QUOTE] I really haven't paid attention, but I really haven't noticed any OSS 3D design software. [/QUOTE]
Blender - blender.org
Modeling, texturing, animating, rendering, also has a game engine, softbody dynamics (cloth, jello) hard body dynamics (physics collisions), and fluid simulation (a branch project but will be in CVS soon). The whole shebang.
Also DAZ 3D isn't even close to design software. It is for posing characters, placing objects, and then rendering of still scenes.
[QUOTE]Plus, that can only happen up to 33 times before everyone telling two new people about it reaches the entire world population... and then who do the people at the bottom of the pyramid tell? These chain letters always shaft the last ones in![/QUOTE]
Ah ha - that ignores the possibility of just emailing the person that emailed you!
Indeed the requirements could be met with a total of three people,
We had some really awesome projects happen (fluid simulation, high quality boolean tools, improved nurbs, 'Verse network integration, animation constraints improvements, and a drawing tool, alas two projects - ODE integration, and a live tutorial didn't happen).
In your view what short comings would open source software such as Blender http://www.blender.org/ and the GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ need to overcome in order to be suitable to become part of the pipeline for developing high end game content as used in WoW?
[QUOTE]Percentage figures like these are going to spell doom for torrents.[/QUOTE]
Legitimate distributors of trailers, demo reels, and animated shorts use bittorrent. I've likely uploaded and downloaded many gigabytes of completely legal bittorrents, for instance the new Blender Siggraph 2005 demo DVD.
[QUOTE]Not only do people work, they also create work. Production. Wealth. The more people you have, the stronger your economy. The problem in the 3rd world is a political one and has to do with corruption unfairly affecting the distribution of wealth. It's not due to "overpopulation" and "undereducation". [/QUOTE]
Overpopulation and lack of adequate education are also problems, as are lack of natural resources.
[QUOTE]The literacy rate where I live is higher than that in the US, which is suprising since our health budget is much less, per capita. Be careful, the US is slipping quite a bit, despite what your politicans tell you.[/QUOTE]
Regarding literacy rate - the US definition may be different from that used in your country. The US literacy rate reported for a number of years refers to 'functional literacy' which is a much higher standard than 'basic literacy'.
You can take the makehuman model and remove edges and verts till it is low poly. The new model (which is of greatly improved quality) is under the MIT license so can be used with proprietary or non proprietary games.
If open office hadn't been open sourced, more effort probably would have gone into gnumeric and abiword and we would be at probably a similar level of functionality and similar level of cross platform capability.
[QUOTE]The "suicidal" part comes in when someone suggests making a feature length film, animated, basically with no money to pay people to come and work for you.[/QUOTE]
Well, they have full funding for 5 full time artists for and 1 full time coder for 6 months. Plus funding of a budget for talent that is not needed for the full time period. Also there will be plenty of volunteer effort from the Blender community (there are a number of talented artists who will likely want to contribute but do not have the time available for 6 months but instead will contribute on an ad hoc basis). In addition there are additional personnel that will be on loan from the art institute on an as needed basis. Also there is funding for digital to film transfer, the DVD printing run, etc.
The film is not feature length, it is an animated short - 15 to 20 minutes.
[QUOTE]You're looking at a group of 10 to 20 dedicated people, spending a great deal of their lives for the next year or two, churning away at scenes, storyboards, models, textures, etc, until finally they come up with something, instead of Pixar's or Dreamwork's thousands of support personel. You're looking at 10 to 20, midrange servers whereas Pixar or Dreamworks has hundreds, possibly thousands of highrange servers in their rendering farms.[/QUOTE]
If rendering time becomes an issue there is a serious distributed rendering project that has been developed for Blender (in beta right now), plus a number of modestly sized renderfarms that would be willing to donate time. (It is fairly fast and easy to check for fraudulent or 'bad' frames) So additional available rendering capacity is available if desired. However this is not a Pixar film - rendering capacity needs are dependent on what you plan to render and what features of the render you plan to use.
[QUOTE]I guess to those in the project, it simply proves the tools are "good enough", and that it can be done, if anyone was suicidal enough to attempt it.[/QUOTE]
Part of it is to prove that the tools are 'good enough' and to show off to the world that they are good enough. Part of it is the fun and the challenge.
Not sure why you think it would be 'suicidal' to attempt it. The modeling tools and uv tools are plenty fast and mature enough right now (not to say that there aren't nicities that could be added, but they are very solid and powerful already). The animation tools should shortly begin a rewrite that will probably be ready by the time the actual character animation begins. Materials, Lighting, and Rendering - Blender could definitely use 'true' 3d mblur, but asside from that lack is a fairly fast and robust renderer.
So, I don't see this as particularly 'suicidal' since the artists and the programmers working on this project are familiar with Blenders strengths and weaknesses, and thus can plan around them (or code and eliminate them).
Slashdot Mirror
[QUOTE] But it may be about the death of innovation in the area of 3D animation.[/QUOTE]
Animanium, Character Animation Toolkit, - and look for Modo, ZBrush and Silo to develop very cool animation tools. Also expect great things from Blender. Most innovation is coming from the University researchers or the fast and nimble software, not out of the huge scale animation tools.
[QUOTE]The thing that frightens me is that the two most popular 3D applications will now be under one roof. This could mark the beginning of Autodesk staging a Microsoft-like dominance of the 3D market, and the marginalization of the remaining players.[/QUOTE]
I think it more likely that in three years time the big players are going to be fighting to survive the onslaught of the developements from these smaller DCC tool creators.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]3D Studio Max and Maya have millions of dollars of research and development invested in to them.[/QUOTE]
They do some R&D but mostly they do what everybody else does, wait for PhDs to publish something interesting then integrate it two or three years later.
[QUOTE]Feedback from the game and film industry as to what to add and what to get rid of.. and extremely useful scripting languages (MAXscript and MEL respectively) that allows people/companies to cater the program to their specific needs. "Ok, we need to get Maya to do this specific task that it doesn't do right now." "Ok, we'll write a script to do this for us." Stuff like that is a life saver in production pipelines. Being able to modify the programs so heavily that it's not even recognizable as the out of the box software anymore is extremely useful.[/QUOTE]
Blender has python as a scripting language - python is beloved by animation studios. Better still - Blenders complete source code is available - They can rip out and completely replace a subsystem if they like. In terms of scripting and hard core modification Blender is very comparable.
[QUOTE]
It's been a long time since I've played around with Blender... but can it animate fluidly?[/QUOTE]
Yep. The new release in a month or less kicks butt at animating.
[QUOTE]Can it render using the latest and greatest renderers? (RenderMan, MentalRay, Maxwell, Brazil, VRay, etc) [QUOTE]
No integrated rendering with high end renderers at this time. There are preliminary RenderMan exporters but nothing complete.
[QUOTE]Can it do dynamics and simulations?[/QUOTE]
Hard body dynamics - yes (but as with the other systems they aren't integrated to effect each other); Soft Body dynamics (cloth, jello, rubber) - yes, but no self collision so limited application; Fluid dynamics - yes but only for water like fluids - no smoke, no fire - and the fluid currently can't interact with an animated object. Crowd dynamics - they are available but not tied in so that character armatures can be controlled yet so again limited to more simplistic scenarios. All of these limitations are of course known, and will probably be addressed over the next one to two years.
[QUOTE]Does it have complex textruing utilities and abilities?[/QUOTE]
Yes but it is not node based, nor layer based, so not as powerful or flexible and not what those coming from other packages expect.
[QUOTE]Can you set up complex rigging solutions with it?[/QUOTE]
Yep, handles are not very customizable though.
[QUOTE]I'm guessing the answer is no to a lot of those questions. And even if it does do some of that in some fashion or another.. I guarantee that it's not nearly up to the quality the people using Max or Maya would expect.[/QUOTE]
I agree - but it is for very capable for many tasks (character animation, subdivision surface modeling, uv mapping, non photoreal texturing and rendering, simple particle effects). A studio needing photoreal effects should currently look elsewhere. A studio doing TV or character animation will find it quite usable. Within a year or less studios of all sorts should be giving strong consideration to integrating Blender into their existing pipeline. The developer team is aware of Blenders weaknesses and they are being very quickly addressed. All limitations but direct integration with Renderman I think could be eliminated within a year (some are already on the roadmap) and two years tops- and with a bit of funding (two full time developers) could happen much faster.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]But my question is: How does the open source Blender [blender3d.org] modeling and animation package compare to Maya and Max for creating content for movies, animations and games. What is it missing, what does it not do as well, what would it need to be able to compete? Is Blender even a worthy substitute for Maya or Max?[/QUOTE]
Depends on the studio, developer costs, and what type of animation you want to do. For high end photoreal Blender isn't there yet (render isn't 'high end' enough). For simulation based particle effects (fire, smoke, complex physics, crowd simulations, certain other fluid effects) Blender doesn't have those capabilities or are extremely limited (no volumetric shaders and no simulation system for smoke and flame, crowd dynamics could come shortly after the next release though). For most other TV quality animation, game animation, and small scale movie cinematics Blender is very much a possible consideration. Blender lacks some modeling tools but has a very solid core for subdivision surface modeling and has the truely neccessary tools (additional tools could improve speed and workflow). With much less than half a year of developer time, it could probably be brought to Silo equivalency for modeling, and with a full developer year could challenge Modo or ZBrush in modeling. With a half a year of dev time on texturing it could likely become ZBrush or Modo equivalent. Animation wise the next release will put it mostly on par with other character animation tools (but will still have a serious short coming in that it doesn't have motion capture capabilities). For game developers I noted above the limitations Blender has - again 6 months of developer time.
So in short it isn't a serious contender today for what major animation studios currently do with Maya or 3dsmax, but with a bit of funding could easily be there within a years time.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]..it would be a good opportunity for Blender to step in and fill the gap. I wonder if it's up to it? [/QUOTE]
Today it definitely isn't. In a year or so of time, it might well be.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Click here for state of the art open source 3d modelling/rendering in java! Art of Illusion [artofillusion.org][/QUOTE]
No disrespect, but AOI is pretty poor at both modeling and rendering. Blender or Wings3D are the best open source modeling tools. There are a number of open source rendering tools of good quality depending on what you want to do - YafRay, Aqsis, Blenders internal renderer, PovRAY and others I'm sure.
of course you could have meant to emphasize 'in java'.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Does anyone know how the big 3 modellers compare? (I know a lot of game dev studios use Max and Maya.) Also, what about Blender?[/QUOTE]
Blender has been pretty much only been freelancers and hobbyists thus far. It currently lacks some neccessities for game modeling that are pretty important for widespread game industry adoption - smoothing groups, baking of lighting, mulitple and overlapping UV maps, and tangent space normal maps.
Blenders animating tools on the current release cycle have just caught up to some of the best in the industry going from barely usable to kicking butt in the space of six months.
Over the next six months Blenders render and compositing tools will likely experience a similar revolution.
Also Blender has acquired quite a few 'high end' tools lately - including soft body dynamics (cloth, rubber, etc) fluid dynamics (water type liquids only though), and hard body dynamics (physics based collisions), hair system.
Within a year, expect Blender to be competive with highend tools on most feature sets, and to offer all of the essentials.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Good luck walking away from that, Mr. Nash... [/QUOTE]
I doubt he is seriously contemplating it, he would be almost sure to be hit by a class action law suit from his investors if he did and would probably lose such a suit.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]3. No one cares that they are going after minors. The US has a criminal courts system for them too.[/QUOTE]
These are civil cases, not criminal. The minors are being sued by a corporation not the government.
LetterRip
My guess is that they will be able to offer ultra targeted ads based on your location and habits.
LetterRip
They can't open source the renderer because they don't own the source to it. Their interface is pretty weak and has very little functionality, they have nothing to really offer that could compete with Blender as far as '3d'.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]I agree. 3D design is very complicated, making it work and work well is expensive, especially work well enough and doesn't waste a professional designer's time with bad user interface practices.[/QUOTE]
Well Blenders interface is difficult, but it is also considered one of the fastest 3D DCC (Digital Content Creation) tools.
[QUOTE]Also, the number of people that benefit from being able to do 3D design is much smaller than the number of people that can benefit from an operating system or office software.[/QUOTE]
The number isn't quite as large but it is still pretty huge. Games, desktop publishing, tv, animation, advertising, design software for achitects, engineers, home design, and general artisitic work all benefit for DCC software.
[QUOTE]
I really haven't paid attention, but I really haven't noticed any OSS 3D design software. [/QUOTE]
Blender - blender.org
Modeling, texturing, animating, rendering, also has a game engine, softbody dynamics (cloth, jello) hard body dynamics (physics collisions), and fluid simulation (a branch project but will be in CVS soon). The whole shebang.
Also DAZ 3D isn't even close to design software. It is for posing characters, placing objects, and then rendering of still scenes.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Plus, that can only happen up to 33 times before everyone telling two new people about it reaches the entire world population... and then who do the people at the bottom of the pyramid tell? These chain letters always shaft the last ones in![/QUOTE]
Ah ha - that ignores the possibility of just emailing the person that emailed you!
Indeed the requirements could be met with a total of three people,
LetterRip
oops forgot to list ffmpeg integration, sorry about that.
LetterRip
Here are SOC projects done for Blender,
m merOfCode2005
http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Su
We had some really awesome projects happen (fluid simulation, high quality boolean tools, improved nurbs, 'Verse network integration, animation constraints improvements, and a drawing tool, alas two projects - ODE integration, and a live tutorial didn't happen).
LetterRip
They could support both extremely badly, thereby complying with the letter of the law, while eliminating the possibility of people using them.
LetterRip
In your view what short comings would open source software such as Blender http://www.blender.org/ and the GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ need to overcome in order to be suitable to become part of the pipeline for developing high end game content as used in WoW?
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Percentage figures like these are going to spell doom for torrents.[/QUOTE]
2 005_DVD.iso.torrent
Legitimate distributors of trailers, demo reels, and animated shorts use bittorrent. I've likely uploaded and downloaded many gigabytes of completely legal bittorrents, for instance the new Blender Siggraph 2005 demo DVD.
http://blender.org/cms/fileadmin/movies/Siggraph_
LetterRip
[QUOTE]Not only do people work, they also create work. Production. Wealth. The more people you have, the stronger your economy. The problem in the 3rd world is a political one and has to do with corruption unfairly affecting the distribution of wealth. It's not due to "overpopulation" and "undereducation". [/QUOTE]
Overpopulation and lack of adequate education are also problems, as are lack of natural resources.
[QUOTE]The literacy rate where I live is higher than that in the US, which is suprising since our health budget is much less, per capita. Be careful, the US is slipping quite a bit, despite what your politicans tell you.[/QUOTE]
Regarding literacy rate - the US definition may be different from that used in your country. The US literacy rate reported for a number of years refers to 'functional literacy' which is a much higher standard than 'basic literacy'.
LetterRip
You can take the makehuman model and remove edges and verts till it is low poly. The new model (which is of greatly improved quality) is under the MIT license so can be used with proprietary or non proprietary games.
LetterRip
Painting, animating, and modeling tools are fun. I'd do a quick demo with Blender http://www.blender3d.com/cms/Home.2.0.html , perhaps do a quicky animation (of your logo or some such), or sculpting using the sculptmesh http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Scu lpMesh (shameless self promotion) plugin.
LetterRip
If open office hadn't been open sourced, more effort probably would have gone into gnumeric and abiword and we would be at probably a similar level of functionality and similar level of cross platform capability.
LetterRip
It would be great if people submit ideas for working on Blender http://www.blender3d.org/
It is advancing at a breakneak pace already and already provides superb functionality, but more coders is always welcome,
LetterRip
[QUOTE]The "suicidal" part comes in when someone suggests making a feature length film, animated, basically with no money to pay people to come and work for you.[/QUOTE]
Well, they have full funding for 5 full time artists for and 1 full time coder for 6 months. Plus funding of a budget for talent that is not needed for the full time period. Also there will be plenty of volunteer effort from the Blender community (there are a number of talented artists who will likely want to contribute but do not have the time available for 6 months but instead will contribute on an ad hoc basis). In addition there are additional personnel that will be on loan from the art institute on an as needed basis. Also there is funding for digital to film transfer, the DVD printing run, etc.
The film is not feature length, it is an animated short - 15 to 20 minutes.
[QUOTE]You're looking at a group of 10 to 20 dedicated people, spending a great deal of their lives for the next year or two, churning away at scenes, storyboards, models, textures, etc, until finally they come up with something, instead of Pixar's or Dreamwork's thousands of support personel. You're looking at 10 to 20, midrange servers whereas Pixar or Dreamworks has hundreds, possibly thousands of highrange servers in their rendering farms.[/QUOTE]
If rendering time becomes an issue there is a serious distributed rendering project that has been developed for Blender (in beta right now), plus a number of modestly sized renderfarms that would be willing to donate time. (It is fairly fast and easy to check for fraudulent or 'bad' frames) So additional available rendering capacity is available if desired. However this is not a Pixar film - rendering capacity needs are dependent on what you plan to render and what features of the render you plan to use.
LetterRip
[QUOTE]I guess to those in the project, it simply proves the tools are "good enough", and that it can be done, if anyone was suicidal enough to attempt it.[/QUOTE]
Part of it is to prove that the tools are 'good enough' and to show off to the world that they are good enough. Part of it is the fun and the challenge.
Not sure why you think it would be 'suicidal' to attempt it. The modeling tools and uv tools are plenty fast and mature enough right now (not to say that there aren't nicities that could be added, but they are very solid and powerful already). The animation tools should shortly begin a rewrite that will probably be ready by the time the actual character animation begins. Materials, Lighting, and Rendering - Blender could definitely use 'true' 3d mblur, but asside from that lack is a fairly fast and robust renderer.
So, I don't see this as particularly 'suicidal' since the artists and the programmers working on this project are familiar with Blenders strengths and weaknesses, and thus can plan around them (or code and eliminate them).
LetterRip
Bah that is what I get for not previewing and posting at 1 in the morning - I of course meant Blender.
LetterRip