Let's talk about The Exigency!

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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I’m currently watching it (had to snap it in two because it was getting late and the movie requires some level of attention). No, it is not a pretty movie, and no, it is in no way Shakespear, but then again, little is thee days. It still fascinates me that it is made by one man, especially becaue of my work on moviemaking tools for small Blender teams. And now it seems he is moving to Blender for the sequel(s)!

Did you watch it? Or hear about it? What are your thought on using Blender as a one-man movie studio? I of course have many thoughts on what the obstacles are, but I would love to hear what others think is standing between us and people just making movies because they feel like it. Okay, phrased badly, but I think the conversation on this is gravely missing!

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Convo about the movie or one man movie making?

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In a movie world that is dominated by Marvel VFX, people might going to ask you if you took your pills.
The movie might get a 6.5, but in no way I’m going to look at that for 90 minutes.

Call me shallow, I don’t care :stuck_out_tongue:

On the other hand, the drive to make - and finish - this movie is truly admirable.
There was a guy on the Softimage forum si-community, who was creating TMNT episodes for years on end. I think he’s still at it. For that I give both of them a A+ :wink:

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One man / small team production possibilities in Blender, what tricks Blender has that might be useful, and perhaps more than anything, what tools are needed / could be handy to facilitate such madness. Blender gets used fr a lot of really impressive picture art and very short animations by talented people, but even a 15 minute short still requires a big team for several months. Are there ways to change that, I wonder…

The movie is bad. But the project is impressive, and I don’t think any 3D packages on the market facilitate one man or small team projects of greater / insane ambition, and that is a shame. It seems to me that Blender has 99% covered with what it does now, so new goals can be added, like this.

Oh, and do you have a link for the TMNT guy and his work??

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In short. No. And there is no way around becoming professionally skilled as well as creatively talented in all aspects of the production. This may require having a small team.

Of course part of being professional is finding the best practices and shortcuts and tools that make things move quicker. The list for those things could be extensive. But I would consider that as a given with an individual or crew that is professionally minded. And so you can bet that, for the most part anyone creating anything worth looking at is doing all of this and more to achieve their ends. That is if you want your project done in your lifetime… lol

Game engines like Unreal can take some of the challenge away but they are only as good as the team using them makes them.

A huge production roadblock is a render farm. A game engine in good hands can circumvent that to an extent. And new technology coming to Unreal Engine is opening the possibilities to some stellar heights.

Qualities of being smart, resourceful and creative would also be a part of it and these things are more intuitive and intangible and you could say really can’t be taught.

Then there is the overall creative aspect of story telling.

And then the production predictability of what can be done in a given time or budget. That is hard even when you have experience.

Most projects break down with a lack of…

Skill
Talent
Knowledge of the process

If any one of these three are missing it will undermine any of the efforts made. It happens time and time again.

Even with all of those three intact and the best, fastest technology and practices, this is an extremely difficult, frustrating and never-wracking process, if rewarding in the end.

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@Embassy_of_Time : here ya go:
TMNT Complete Episode Work/Image Thread - www.si-community.com
This is a period from 2012 till the end of 2019, before that he was showing his work on XSIBase, that site went down a couple of years before. His first YT video on this is 13 years old.
Like I said… A+ :wink:

And I fully agree with @Richard_Culver
Anything longer than a couple of minutes of work will require a team of people, no matter how good or fast the tools become.

It’s also a kind of two edged sword. The better the tools, the more complicated your shots can be. And that will result in more time spend on it. And added time to acquire the necessary skills etc.

The risk of burning yourself out on this is very real too.
Not to say there are people out there wo can do all this, but it takes a lot of stamina to pull it off.
No matter what tool or tools you are using. :wink:

rob

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Another aspect of this is the fact that also with new tools available to get the same effects cheaper or easier than say, 5 years ago, is the fact that you have competition. And now they have those tools as well. And in effect the industry-wide bar and level of expectation raises.

And on the same note, as game engines get better looking results, so does Arnold, Renderman, Cycles and the like.

Then there is this gap between high end and specialized or customized tools and those cheep off-the shelf effects or features from tools available to “everyone”.

I think over time that gap does narrow to a point that it is hard to tell the difference.

This happened with digital cameras.

And as that gap narrows the difference becomes more based on artistry than the technology.

But 3D is a little bit different. Mainly because it requires so much skill in so many different facets that no matter what tools you avail yourself of, it still takes a lot of hard work and dedication to look great and tell compelling stories.

And then you have to ask, what genre or style best fists the size of your team? Ultimate realism requires a different level of production than say, cartoon characters with fake hair and limited cloth movement.

So you either cut back your expectations of quality/features or the screen time. Something has to give.

But in my mind no matter what you do, it has to match up to the level expected for entertainment. If you are trying to satisfy the cut scene crowd, fine. That is one thing. But outside of that, you have to pick a genre and respect the level of artistry that has set the current standard or try to surpass it.

But if you don’t make some sacrifices someplace, you won’t get anything done. The trick is how little to cut back and still achieve an end goal.

Cutting everything back (like they did in Exigency) just to achieve and end, is only good for a certain gaming crowd that likes the cut scene style. Or maybe there is a limited audience beyond that. I don’t know. But it won’t hold up against other work with an audience expecting a certain level of entertainment.

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What I think currenty has taken the challenge away besides game enginges are denoisers. At least I notice that with lower budget animations like you often require for industrial visualisation animations and explainers and similar stuff often needed in the advertising industry. Two or three years ago I requried a render farm because to get a “good enough” frame I would have had an hour or render time per frame.
Then came the denoisers and the bottle neck is no longer render power. I now get “good enough” with one minute per frame on my workstation.

And even if you need more you can simply render cheaply on an Amazon Render farm. It isn’t even complicated to set up anymore (which used to be the case). There are now addons that handle all the difficult AWS setup bullshit.

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What is actually the difference between the first two?
Skill = Craftmanship, Talent = Some handwavy, obscure, ill-defined, nebulous concept of ‘being gifted’?

What’s your take on the terminology/semantics here?

greetings, Kologe

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Not much into semantics or explaining these kinds of things. Try a dictionary?

Here is a link:

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That’s fair.
I’ll dare claiming ‘talent’ in the above sense hardly exists for much of anything related to movie production or CG, though.

Maybe for very few, narrow niches (sculpting, drawing, maybe screenwriting and animation I guess). But being born with a natural ability as a lighting artist? Rigger? Modeler? TD? Producer?
I don’t know… My two cents, nothing more.

greetings, Kologe

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I have not enjoyed working with or employing anyone who does not have both the skill and talent for something. Anything.

One does not assume the other. And in fact managing a team is exactly the balance of finding what people are talented at as opposed to just having a skill. Anyone can acquire a skill with hard work. Fewer also have a great talent at something. I would rather train the skill into someone with talent than I would try to beat the talent out of someone with only skill and an abysmal natural inclination. Nothing can be more frustrating.

And on the other hand there is nothing more rewarding than finding a person’s talent and helping them bring it to fruition with practice, discipline and experience.