Let's make a storyboard package for Blender, I will pay you 200$!!

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#1

Hi guys!

I have to warn you, I’m really excited about this:

After spending a lot of time trying to find an affordable 3d stroyboard program, I came to realize that Blender has everything a storyboard artist really needs. I am working on a short movie at the moment that has a few very complicated shots. I would like to pre-compose them in blender to see where I should put the camera and actors in these scenes in order to make everything easy for post production.

For this, all I need is the blender characters! I need to have pre-made blender human character with working IK-rigging. Now this is the best part: Things do not really have to be perfect at all, as long as it looks good enough for me to show my producers. I would simply like to have low poly, semi realistic human figures that represent my characters in some recognizable way. I think you get the point!

I will pay 200$ for this package!! Here’s what I need:

1 x male, 80 years old
1 x male, 50 years old
1 x male, 20 years old
1 x male, 12 years old
1 x male, 5 years old

1 x female, 80 years old
1 x female, 50 years old
1 x female, 20 years old
1 x female, 12 years old
1 x female, 5 years old

I would like these models to have some sort of basic clothing on, so no nudity please :slight_smile: If it’s easy, maybe you can make the clothes on a separate layer if I ever need to undress the models (doubt that but just in case) :smiley:

Now I would like to remind you that these don’t necessarily have to be individually or very accurately created models! Just copy paste and change the important parts or something like that. I even suggest you simply create them in Makehuman or Poser and simply do the rigging in Blender. It’s the rigging/IK part that is important for me, as that is the part I don’t have enought time to learn right now.

The best part is yet to come!! Even though I pay for these models to be created for my project, I want them to be open source after that! So not only will you be making a favour for me, but the whole indy movie making crowd that is out there! This would be the first freely available open source 3d storyboard package and I’m pretty sure it will rock the boat for many indie pre-productions! Just imagine the possibilities of creating very complex scenes in a few minutes and even testing out the camera moves in real time! I’m so excited about this I jumping out of my pants! :smiley:

So guys, last time it was 50 bucks for the hood shirt model (which was paid to an artist in here), now it’s 200$ for something that will really benefit many many indy (and professional) movie makers! It doesn’t have to be perfect in the beginning! Because it’s public for all, others can develope the models further once they are released! Come on guys, let’s to this! The only thing you need to know how to do decently is IK!

Tell me if you are interested by posting in this thread! If there is interest from many, I will look at your previous work to decide who might be best for the job. Also collaborations are possible (then you split the cash). The money will be paid via Paypal.

One more thing: The DEADLINE :smiley: I’m sorry but I am the most anxious guy in the world about this, and my shoot day is getting closer. So this has to be finnished by next friday. That’s less than one week. BUT YOU CAN DO IT! I’t doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as it works. I don’t care about small deformations ect. as long as it doesn’t look too horrible :slight_smile:

Sorry about the rant, I’m just really really excited! Let me know if YOU are interested!

Thanks!

#2

$200 for 10 characters in less than a week?

I’m really excited!!!

I CAN DO IT!

and hey, they don’t have to be any good!

Sorry, it’s just so hard to curb my enthusiasm…

#3

Are you sure you haven’t already spent those 200$ on illegal substances?

#4

Hey what’s up guys, give him a change… I was thinking in doing something like this (give some money to developers to make some tools for me and then make them freely available), so, what’s the problem on this, if the offer is real you should be happy for things like this to happend to blender’s comunity.

#5

You know for those specs, to be done in one week i’d charge about $800. 10 characters, all rigged not an easy task for one week.

Ofcourse it can be done, but for $200, no.

#6

Look, can’t you basically make the rig for one character and then copy paste it to the another? The differences between the characters don’t have to be great. Just give the woman some breasts and a longer hair :smiley: If you only make small changes like that then can’t you basically use the same rig? Of course I’m hoping for a bit more effort, but I’ll take what I can get.

#7

Come on man, how long does it take to create the basic meshes in say Makehuman? Propably between 1-3 hours maximum. After that just insert the bones and make it IK. After that just copy paste and some scaling. That’s basically what I’m asking for. I don’t think it will take an experineced blenderhead more than 2 days to finnish. I do not need anything close to photorealism, just some figures to mark the places of the actors in the scene. It would be nice if some basic facial expressions could be animated, but even that is not compulsory. I will wait for a few days for people to offer up for this and then choose the best one (if there is more than one that is interested).

I know 200$ dollars is not a very large sum of money (though for a student like me it does make a difference). That’s not the point of this. I really believe this can be something truly valuable for the movie makers around the world. And I really do believe that someone in this community can easily pull this of, without even breaking a sweat.

#8

There is an old discussion on paying for a professional-made, rigged human asset on the FreeGameDev forum (I mentioned this thread there just now.)

What license would that pack have? I suggest a mix of GPL2/3 and CC-BY-SA 3.0 (Tri-licensed) so all open game and media projects can use it. If you make the right license decision, I can imagine that others (including me) would add money to the pool.

Alternatively just make it cc0/publicdomain.

I’m skeptic about the possible success of this plan because of the 1 week limit.

Also, there is this site, http://opengameart.org/ which will hopefully will become the super-duper freely licensed game content publishing site. You can add a request for art if you want. Be warned though, I think your request text here is not horrible, but it is not well-structured: the story of how you got this idea and the actual request are mixed in the same sentences at times.

EDIT:

http://is.gd/AfEQ , especially this

#9

Thanks for your reply!

About the license: I don’t really know much about how those work, but if it’s up to me, make it free for everything and for everyone at all times, just like Blender is.

About the time limit: Ok it seems now reading your replies that it might not be possible for me to get this done on time for my shoot. If that is the case, then of course it can’t be helped and this storyboard-pack will be a great thing for movie makers anyway. The 200$ offer is valid only until next friday -after the shoot, if no-one has done this, I will finally learn rigging myself and create the characters out of Makehuman models.

I still would like to remind everyone that things do not have to look great! As long as you can tell who the character is and move him in some basic body positions then it will work just great. Come on guys, you have seen storyboards for movies before! Sometimes it’s just stick-figures! It does not have to be detailed at all! And we can always improve it later right if it is open to everyone.

#10

I can see that you guys don’t share my enthusiasm about this thing :smiley:

Are there no movie people here who would see the benefits of 3d-storyboarding? :slight_smile:

Maybe I made a mistake when I introduced money in to this (the root of all evil). That was only because I would like to jump start this thing. It’s not like I’m getting any money out of this thing, I just seriously feel like this kind of open source thing should exist and that’s why I’m ready to pay for somebodys effort to give everyone who is interested in storyboarding a great new free tool.

Could you guys tell me what part is the hardest in my request so I can better understand why there is no interest?

-The basic meshes can be made in MakeHuman in a few hours. A few days ago I made 5 different age/size/sex human models in about 30 minutes and imported them in to blender as collada files.

-Now the rigging part I really do not know enough about, but I know there are free, open source, ready made rigs available. I also believe many artists in here have pre-made rigs for human characters already because of previous projects. Is it hard to copy paste them in to the MakeHuman models? I do not know, but could someone explain it?

I would also like to point out, that the rigging, weight-painting ect doesn’t have to anywhere near perfect. It would be enough to be able to do some very very basic gestures like standing, sitting and moving arms. The storyboards made with a pen and some paper are very basic indeed, the important thing is simply to get the basic idea of the shot. Small deformations won’t matter at all.

-Is the hard part maybe the Inverse Kinetics? If so, I can live without that, even though I think it would make the posing part faster for the characters.

So please shed some light on this issue, what do you think is the hardest/most time cosuming part about this?

Thank you!

#11

About the license: I don’t really know much about how those work, but if it’s up to me, make it free for everything and for everyone at all times, just like Blender is.
Here are some ideas on how to license your stuff to make it free. One is Creative Commons:
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses

You could also release it as GPL2 or GPL3 or Public Domain, google can tell you more about these licenses.

Could you guys tell me what part is the hardest in my request so I can better understand why there is no interest?
I’d say it’s in your approach, where you expect a lot can be done for little money in a very short amount of time, it doesn’t make the whole thing sound serious. You were also unclear about the quality and specifications of the models this also sounds a bit questionable. Then there is also the question: if you are looking for makehuman quality models, why not make them yourself since that’s super-easy.

In addition, most of the stuff you’d like to have you can make yourself. You already have the models so you are already half way there. What’s left to be done is rigging. Here are some useful links to get started with that:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation

Blender also has some options for automatic weight painting, which you can read about here, so that’s another problem almost off your list of needed things.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Animation/Armatures/Mesh_Skin_Weighting

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/skinning/

All in all, you’ll profit from learning these things yourself, newly acquired knowledge about rigging stuff as well as save 200$ :wink:

#12

Thanks, I think Public domain might be the best option. I don’t want to reserve any rights at all, I want to make a free for all thing, just like Blender is.

About me expecting a lot for little money: I don’t want to make the money the point of this. I’m pretty sure this will eventually be done anyway for the great joy of movie makers. I see 3d-storyboarding as something totally revolutionary for movie pre-planning, and I would love to see blender in the top of this development. The money is offered only because of the tight schedule. Are you guys only interested in money? Is nobody interested in the honour of starting something that might be considered as a revolutionary improvement for movie pre-production?

About the specifications: What part is unclear? Does it help if I define the job as rigging MakeHuman models so that they can be posed in the most basic ways?

About why don’t I make the makehuman models: I have made many of them and it really is super easy. It’s the rigging part I don’t have time to learn about before the shoot.

Are you guys worried about me not paying the money? That is not a concern, just ask the guy I paid for in a previous thread I started. I’m really a nice guy, I will not give you trouble if you make the effort. The last guy posted still pictures for me before I paid him and sent the actual file after the payment was complete. We can do the same thing this time too if you don’t trust me about the money.

Trust me I’m very eager in learning this stuff, but I simply don’t have the time before the shootout.

One more question that hasn’t been answered yet:
What exactly is the most difficult/time consuming part of this request?

Anyway, based on the responses here it looks like I will simply have to buy Storyboard Artist 3D for 600$. That is not a problem, but it’s a shame since that solution won’t benefit the Blender community in any way.

The offer is still valid though. Anyone who wants to have a go is welcome to post in this thread!

#13

Widescreen, save your money and time. Why don’t you use one of the freely available fully rigged characters like Mancandy.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=131079&highlight=biped+rig
This rig is included on the ‘Learn Character Animation’ DVD.

Just scale the whole model and rig to give yourself different size models.

Richard

#14

Thank for that tip, it looks like something I might very well use if nobody in here is up for the challenge!

#15

Add a zero to the end of that and we’ll talk.

#16

I personally don’t see 3D Storyboarding as revolutionary. I think with pencil and paper you quickly see what works and doesn’t work. If this is for 3D animation you’d have to go back through and replace the generic models with your own, so it would take more time. If you want to do it in Blender I think the best way would be to have different drawn figures and just put texture them to a plane.

#17

I agree, 3D storyboarding isn’t revolutionary at all.
With all the time taken talking about this in this discussion he could have completed a conventional storyboard. If you want it 3D, just use existing freely available assets or something like poser/daz studio.

If its so urgent, stop talking about it here and get on with it.

Richard

#18

Because it isn’t as simply as “insert make human model” “insert IK bone” “copy and paste”.

You may be pretty excited about this, but to the people who actaully know how much hard work goes into this kind of thing won’t be so excited.

I’m not tyring to shoot you down, i’m just being realistic.

Why don’t you use one of the free rigs available, just have above the character “Old man, male lead” etc, that’ll be easy to understand and it means you can keep that $200 for something else, perhaps models from turbosquid for use later on during post-production, or perhaps camera tracking software.

Honestly, it’s not worth the time and money for yourself to have these models made and it’s not enough money for some one to produce them.

#19

Hmm, I’ll do it for you

Most of my finished projects are just rendering tests but I have some exprience with rigging

Here is some work, although not related that much =/

Videos

Sculpting thing

#20

I agree with previous comments tht 3D storyboarding is not revolutionary in any ways. This have been done over and over yet. I worked on an animated film project 3-4 years ago and I was a proponent of hand drawn storyborads, the traditional way. But I got convinced to go the 3D storyboard route because all the assets and characters were already built and rigged and it was supposed to be “real easy”. Well, it wasn’t.

Even though the 3D animation application that was used for that project was really well suited for character animation, the layers of technicalities I had to deal with, even with everything “all ready”, made the process of finding the right poses, with the right inter-character and character-decor interaction, with the right lighting, with the right camera POV, with the right composition, really much more difficult than just sketching with a pencil. By the time I got a decent frame to add to the storyboard, I could have made 4 or 5 drawings.

But it is not only a question of quantity of frames. Having to deal with the layers of tools that are required to setup a 3D frame, kind of disconnects the imagination from the storytelling aspect of it and focusses on the technical aspect of getting something out. Very bad IMO. Very, very bad idea. It compleately breaks the creative flow. In the end, all the storyboard frames I created in this manner, all of them, were unsatisfactory and turned out being a meagre compromise between the envisioned frame and the state I could achieve in a reasonable timeframe.

My conclusion so far is that no 3D storyboard application can beat pencil in the right hands. And if the right hands are not available, then puting a 3D storyboard application in the wrong hands will not be able to help the situation in any ways.

Concerning your question about why so little interest. This 3D storyboard Blender application is your project. Everybody here have a more or less well defined pet project of their own with Blender. Why would anyone deviate from their own pet project to work for a whole week (in reality, given your spect, it would require way more than that) on on someone else’s project? It would require an incentive way higher than 200$ for that. It is not like people are sitting around, reading BlenderArtists threads, waiting for someone to figure an interesting project.