I am rather new to Blender. Been using it for about a year and a half. I was wondering how hard it would be to make an animated film about 30-45 minutes long. It wouldn’t have to be perfect. Also how hard would it be to do the mouth of the characters. How long would it take two guys to do this?
Making an imperfect 30 to 45 minute long film would be hard. Very hard. It would take you years.
Seriously: some animators have made decent 10 to 11 minute films over the course of a couple of semesters, while studying graphics and animation. So, you’re looking at the dedication of a serious college student studying and working for a degree, and call it maybe 8 to 10 semesters worth of work. If you squeeze three semesters into a calendar year, you’re looking at three years for a half hour to 45 minute film.
If you’ve been using Blender for 18 months and still consider yourself somewhat new at it, look to longer time frames.
Lip synch (moving the mouth along with the dialog sound track) isn’t any more (or less) difficult than modeling or rigging or texturing or lighting or animating. It’s just another thing to learn, and then do. It starts out hard and gets easier with practice.
Welcome to BlenderArtists. We’ll give you all the help we can with learning how Blender works. :eyebrowlift:
Just looking at the raw animation, assuming you already have rigged characters, the typical number thrown around is ~100 frames / week for one professional animator.
That’s about 20-30 seconds of animation a week.
That’s for “high quality” animation (realistic body movement / facial expression),etc. The lower the quality of animation, obviously the less time is required.
Add to that, time for building the character rigs, any buildings / sets, effects, lighting, rendering …etc, It all adds up.
If you go over to Cgtalk’s finished animation section, you’ll see very high quality stuff, that usually takes 3-4 people 6-12 months to produce a 5-6 minute effort.
Now you get the idea why a “Pixar” feature length can take 4 years and employ 500+ people (there are over 1,000 people listed in the credits for “The Incredibles”) !
Mike
View / buy/download Elephant’s Dream, research the blog, and extrapolate for yourself. Buy the Peach DVD and when it comes, view the blog (which logs who was working on it for how long) and you’ll have data point #2
Doing a sequel to either of those will save you at least 1/2 the time.
Here’s a few benchmarks from a dedicated amateur’s standpoint:
My first actual animated short, Halo Genesis 1 – 4 months, 100 seconds.
2 Unreal 2004 machinima shorts – 5 months, 166 seconds total
First Blender short, Monster Movie – 2 months, 80 sec (a fair part of which is title graphics)
Skunky Beer: A Blender camera-matchmove/live action/CGI composite test: about 1 month, 8 seconds (!!)
And I pretty much know what I’m doing. Usually ;).
Start with VERY short tests, the sort of things you see posted in a lot of forums. Each test can be a learning experience towards making something more complete. Learn the tool and craft of making a 3D animated movie. You can’t learn it while in the middle of an actual movie project. Have fun and definitely never start something that you’re not sure if you know how to complete.
Slow down…what’s the rush?
BTW, search Amazon for the following book and buy it as soon as you can (seriously, don’t even think twice about it):
Inspired 3D Short Film Production
It’s absolutely one of the best books that covers just about every facet of creating a 3D animated short. There are tons of great imagery and it reads very well. There may be other great books out there but this one is definitely on a very short list. I own it and am more than happy with it.
My Blender Movies
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5864723441469612271
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1688324515100159992
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7268143788854497080
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4385277847019886658
Yeah I work for an animation team and trust me two guys would be looking at 3 to 6 years depending on how technical you get. I work with a group of 391 people who have been using blender since the very begging and it takes us about 2+ years to get a one hour movie. Take in to consideration the landscape, the shots you want to get, plus any other little things you don’t think about until you start and before you know it a year has passed by and all you’ve got is about 7 minuets of somewhat good animation. I’d recommend working with more people.
On the other hand, have you got anything better to do in your spare time? :eyebrowlift:
.
Thank GOD I am not bad. I and my wife to critisize and give her sound.
I’m not saying were bad it just takes alot of time. I’m head of the character development and planning and it takes a long time with all that goes in to it.
It depends on what the out comes is like
Ok then…how about a 6-7 minute learning movie like an elephants dream. It would just be me and my friend.(He is the only guy I know who can model) Ii wouldn’t be a problem getting people to design things or to do voice acting. Like I said I somewhat new to blender (1.5 years) how long would it take?
All right, already. We give up. Here’s the straight dope: That 6 or 7 minute film would take the two of you eight months, two weeks, and five days. Assuming your voice talent doesn’t get larengitis. I’m sorry fellas, he forced it out of me…
Ok then…how about a 6-7 minute learning movie like an elephants dream. It would just be me and my friend.(He is the only guy I know who can model) Ii wouldn’t be a problem getting people to design things or to do voice acting. Like I said I somewhat new to blender (1.5 years) how long would it take?
probably 6 months to a year considering that ED had 8 people working on it. obviously the simpler the sets and characters are the faster it can be made.
I am not a poticulay good animator, it took me almost a week full time to make this animation. obviously the more expiriance you have, the faster you are. I forget how long the character and set took to make, but it was in the order of months on and off.
start by writing a script and macking animatics.
And by that time I will have my Magic Movie button, so he might as well wait.
what are you guys talking about, it’d take 2 weeks, tops.
and in 2 weeks, it’ll be another 2.
Seriously though, it if can be really crappy, I think you could do it in 2 months if you didn’t have school or work and put time into it every single day, like 8 hrs a day. It really depends on what you are animating, the types of actions, realism, proper weight, contact and interaction, etc. I once animated 2 minutes in two hours, about two weeks into using blender. It is crappy as hell, but it made me laugh.
The only way to know is to do it. If you think you can do it, then you can and you will, you just have to be hard-headed and stubborn enough to just do it, no matter what anyone else says, even if you fail, you’ll have learned from it, I say do it, and set hard goals and meet or exceed them every day or week, but you have to set goals, have a script, storyboard and a plan. All these people telling you that you can’t do it have to drive you to work harder, don’t do it for them, do it for you.
This bad boy took me just under a year.
I’d been using Blender about a year and a half before I started on it. My biggest problem was that I couldn’t find the “Make-it-for-me” button, and I’d quit for a couple of weeks whenever that happened.
Also, I was scared to weight-paint, UV, create my own particle effects, and rigs. So to say I cheated would be much to generous.
I’ve been working on a new version for over a year now, and since I’m scared to use shape keys, the frakking shoulder is killing me.
UM!I wanted to do a 10min movie too but first I work alone but this isn’t a problem,the problem id the school,second the time render.For making a long movie I think u must have a special compute that renders every thing and several people for the scenography,modeling,animation,lighting,general idea a lot and a lot of little thingyz that are important
PS.:Sorry of my bad english
i liked animated movies very much …these are few links…
http://whoa-cool.net/animation/,http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/moviefinder/html/100years/voting_results/animated.html