Hey does anybody remember the talk about a project I mentioned a while back about the stories of certain movies and how they need to be better. I think it was on a thread talking about the story details of Elephants Dream. But I had a wonderful idea to make a full blown full length movie. I’ve got plans and am in the process of looking into them. One thing I hope to do is if this eventually becomes a major success then I’m hoping in forming a blender based movie production company and giving jobs to team members on this project. No garentees as I’am still in the pre-pre-production stages.
One thing you need to know about me is that I’m organized. Because of that this project will be too. I’m planing out everything I can before actual production starts. The first big thing I’ll probably have the team do is making a teaser trailer to show off and help get some funding. I already have a script, storyboard, and character sketches for this teaser as well as a history, and this is months before I even think about getting a team together.
But to move on I’m in the stages of researching any software I might need along with Blender to actually use in this project. I thought what better then to ask the awesome Blender community for help. This is what I have so far and not.
Dev Software
I. Preproduction
A. Script
a. Celtix
B. Storyboarding
a. ______
II. Production
A. 3D renderer/modeler/animator
a. Blender
B. Image editing
a. Gimp
C. Textures
a. Gimp
D. Video editing
a. Blender b.zs4
E. After effects
a. Cinepaint b. Gimp + plugins
F. Audio editing
a. Audacity
G. Music creation
a. _______
H.Contact software(to keep contact with the team)
a.IM b.Email c._______
-I would greatly appreciate it if anyone would let me know of the open source or free software they use for each thing as the use of Blender is the only thing certain at this point.
-And if I forgot something in the production pipeline then please tell me what, as I’m sure I’m missing stuf because I just quickly made this.
One thing I hope to do is if this eventually becomes a major success
You are funny.
On a more serious note, are you recruiting artists? Or just want us to help you plan this? These sort of things are great but extremely hard to gain momentum unless the artists are paid, and paid well. But I honestly think aiming for a 2 hour feature-length movie is too ambitious, a good 10 min. flick (like the one shown before Cars: one man band) is enough to give your reputation a serious boost.
edit: one thing you overlooked, i think is a render farm. Assuming you are aiming for a 2 hour film, you are going to need tons of processing resources to crank out frames after frames of high resolution images.
mpan3-- No no no. I’m far off from recruiting artists; this thing is going to be planned out for months before I even think about that. I don’t really need help planning this. I was just going through some research to find what software to use for each thing, and I was just wanting to know what you use for each thing. Or what software you know of.
vitaliy-- I also know this, but I also know it can be done. This is before I’m even going to start and just wanting to know software to I could use to make this content.
To clear some things up. This project is going to be planned to every detail before I start getting a team; I’m in the planning stages now. When I start getting a team I’ll make a quick short (probably like 90 secs long), as a teaser and to show content. Then as I start picking a team we will start making some content here and there, and make shorts first. I’ll use these shorts to start gaining sponsors for the project, and start a website; also donations would be taken of course. But I fully plan to pay full team members.
One point that I like is that I hope to have this project open to the community to upload content. And I also hope to plan contests with cash prizes for certain content you give, and it could end up in the final production with each contributor’s name showing in the credits.
But now I’ll step back. I’m a far way off from that at this point, and will be for some time. I also know you won’t trust me till I have a website up with content. I don’t expect you to trust me right now. That’s why I’m only asking for info on software that could be used for this project right now. Please try to list only open software as I’m hoping to only use open and freeware software for this project.
Thank you for you time.
P.s. On a further note I know I have some problems explaining things clearly to people so if you have any questions ask them.
There’s a website called www.blenderprojects.com that’s for this type of stuff. Make some publicity for the site; that would be good.
Well, use Linux. Fedora Core is fast, but Fedora Core 5 is noticabily faster than 4. You might try Ubuntu, I’ve never used it, but Project Orange did.
Software:
Modelling - Blender; Wings3D; k-3D
Animation - Blender; k-3D
Textures - Gimp; Inkscape
Rendering - Pixie; Aqsis; Yafray
Post-Pro - Cinepaint(you can also use filters with the video editors)
Video Editor - Cinelerra; LiVES; avidemux(fast)
Audio Editor - Audacity
Video Encoding - FFMPEG; huffyuv; Xvid; Divx; MEncode (comes with Mplayer, very fast)
Audio Encoding - ogg; mp3; FLAC
Video Player - Mplayer; Media Player Classic
Links at bottom.
Notes:
1.k-3D is hard to install on Linux and sometimes the fonts don’t work on Windows. It’s a nice software though. Get it if you can.
2.You might not even want to use cinepaint or FilmGimp. These are for retouching frames.
3.The Yafray core is being rewritten right now, so wait for a realese if you want to use Yafray. The new Yafray core, codenamed Yaf(a)ray, is a lot better than the old one, by far, in my opinion. Here’s the thread for development. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=78097
4.If you want to render using Pixie or Aqsis, get K-3d, it has built-in renderman support. You might also want to animate in K-3D. But, I havn’t used K-3D that much.
5.When encoding, don’t use h-264. It is patented, isn’t any better than Xvid (from my experiences, though), and is being made by a propriatary compony. Tha isn’t bad in itself, the only problem is that they are rushing it out too fast and the people who are making it are known for their earlier format flop, the one that is used in 99% of DVDs today. It’s pretty ineffeicent. Take a look at the Elephants Dream movie, and see what it is encoded in.
6.Mplayer would be the best choice. It has no GUI, so it is fastest playing videos. It can also play audio files. All you need to do is make a link to Mplayer on your desktop, and then drag anything you want to play onto Mplayer and it will play. There are a bunch of shortcuts, like “f” makes it full screen, and “j” selects sub-titles.
7.MEncoder isn’t a codec, it just encodes stuff using codecs you already have.
Hope this helps. If I ever get into the habbit of finishing my projects, I will help with the art part, if you need it.
Some critiques: You’re starting too big. A full length movie? Why not try a 3 minute short. I mean, Project Orange had several really good artist and a couple coders and they only made a 10-minute short! And it took them 7 months.
