I finished my graduate thesis film a while back (August 2009) and just posted it online for a limited time. I have a blog that documents the development of the project from beginning to end. Blender was a pivotal tool that was used for all the asset development, and rigid body simulations. The rigging and animation was done in Maya to accommodate the motion capture pipeline. The film was rendered with mental ray.
I’d like to invite the blender community to check it out: WE THE DIVIDED.
Thanks.
Hey First Post! Thank you! I loved it! I so jumped at your reveal.This is definitely going to be shown around.
(ps-your picture start circles should be round - because they are oval, they actually show you are using the wrong lens)
The first minute looks good, but the download speed is horrible slow…
Now I am waiting to download…
Good to see you use Blender with other 3d softwares.
is any abiliti to give direct link to film (to flash file or maybe youtube link)becourse it’s terrible to see it with this speed?
Hi. The film is in a flash format. The source file is around 315mb. I’ll look at posting a faster viewing option (more compression) later today. Perhaps a youtube version…
PapaSmurf: The countdown leader is squished because I used a countdown clip with a 16:9 ratio and scaled it to fit my 2.35 widescreen ratio.
how about just uploading a small version, say 640x272? (same aspect ratio)
the first 15 seconds look good 
From the 15 seconds I’ve seen so far it looks great. Except for the grass texture… Way to easy to see the tiling!
It looks so promising! I would love to see more than five seconds past the countdown. Even with the smaller one, I still want to watch the higher resolution one. A direct download or something would be nice.
The problems with the streaming are unfortunate. If you are willing to wait, the film should download eventually into a temp directory on your system. I’ll look into a divx option.
I decided to let the flash video buffer completely. It says it is fully buffered, yet the video stopped and restarted about half way through. Very cool though!
One thing I noticed was a lot of sounds from Half Life 2. How does that work? Did you need to contact Valve at all, or are people just allowed to use those sounds?
This is really good. 5 star effort.
I have a small crit, that is of personal opinion. This does not reflect the opinion of the whole experience. The mocap of people standing is always annoying. Exaggerating swaying around for no reason at all. Reminded me of Gears of War. The strength of the sound varies. Sometimes it’s loud sometimes it’s very quiet.
Again, great work.
Finally finished watching. Great short. The only parts that detracted from the film were some of the mocap, a few of the textures, and most of the voice acting. Other than that it was one of my favorite short animations.
this is some great work! i like the camera angles and sepia theme. the sound is great too, it helps a lot with the cinematic effects.
Regarding the sound: The sound effects came from all over the place. The film is a non-commercial academic effort. It’s something to put on a demo reel to demonstrate my focus on camera & layout. Regarding the stereo mix in the online versions…it’s not the greatest because it was mathematically down mixed from a 5.1 surround sound mix. So, it was originally mixed 5.1…and then the mixer just did an export to stereo…and things turned kind of muddy. Oh well. It is what it is.
My thanks to those who volunteered a kind remark. This project was a solid learning experience, and I hope to raise my game on the next short film - which happens to be a silent film (although there will be music), and is currently in production.
outstanding!
Congratulations for your short.
If you say you focused on camera and layout I must say you have succeeded. What stood out for me was the cinematography and storytelling.
You did a really great job, even more so as its being a one man show.
One thing that was very cool where the cars. The seat goes outside the car. It’s very comfy. I never seen a design like that. Was it your design or did you see that somewhere?
Holy Crow…as a mere “hobbyist” …this is exceptional…loved every long awaited (so slow download…the 1280…) minute …I would only hope that WE THE PEOPLE don’t allow things to get that bad before we stand up…but if it does YOU were THERE…or do you feel it has…either way …well done
Thanks again to everyone who took time to watch and comment.
BigBad: The car design was born out of necessity. The motion capture volume at school was/is very small and I couldn’t get the look of getting into a car to feel right (miming the action of opening the door, getting in, closing the door). The solution was just to have myself sit down in a regular chair and have the design of the car fit accordingly. Also I wanted the action to be fluid and it seemed like a slick way to get out of a car.