And is so,… how?
What blender can I use to render a frame from the opening scene of Sintel?
Thanks.
The render branch
Cryptic.
So there is no bf release of a blender that can render a frame from the 30 dollar dvds?
Did any blender user render a frame from the sintel production files dvd set?
the render branch build is on the DVD, try graphicall as well http://graphicall.org/?keywords=pablo
Are there small memory footprint versions of the projects to render?
This problem was pointed out at the time, and was met with the usual response for the time :ba: .
The last time I tried to render a Blender short scene, I was playing with the Big Buck Bunny. The character rendered OK, but trying an actual scene resulted in the render being cancelled after an hour. I’ve not tried any of the Sintel stuff though.
I feel the need to weigh in on this subject - and basically agree with you.
The way I understand it, the Durian project:
- Branched to the ‘render branch’ so we wouldn’t break too much compatibility on a regular basis for other users at the time, with the genuine intent to merge back later
- Through a lot of effort, Brecht realised that the effort required for the improvements we wanted in BI were getting more messy and complicated than it was worth
- Eventually Cycles emerged publicly as the long term solution
The obvious side effect being Sintel is not renderable except with a branch that is no longer maintained.
It’s also worth noting that so much of Blender in general has changed since then (2.53 or something) that rendering aside, other things like scripts, rig constraints and so forth won’t work from the DVD’s as is even if the render branch was merged. So the only real solution is to use the version of Blender on the DVDs.
Being able to open up the files and experiment / learn from / build on them is a large part of what attracted me to applying for Durian in the first place, so I’m also disappointed with what happened even though I fully understand why it happened.
If you haven’t found it yet, I’ve updated the Sintel character file somewhat with help from some of the other team members to work in 2.57b onwards. Will need to check again for 2.60 soon, but I haven’t spent much time in trunk lately to know if it is all up to scratch still.
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/characters/sintel-lite-2-57b/
It’s only one file from the entire film, but I wanted to make sure at least something was useable for the community. Also working on a more complete (geometry and texture wise) Cycles version to keep the file useful for newer tests as well.
While I have no plans to convert the entire film manually to 2.6, I have considered picking an environment and bringing it up to current Blender trunk for the same learning / testing / experimenting purposes. Until this thread though, I thought that a character would generally be of more use. Open to suggestions though.
If you are after the opening scene specifically, I have more or less cleaned up the mountain displacement/texture setup already, I just never got around to uploading the blend file. Having made the bulk of the snow environment I can say those files even in render branch could generally use a whole lot of improvement. (Trimming geometry to help the ray tree, better mapping, modelling, the works.)
Generally speaking, if I was going to work on a scene, Sintel’s cabin would probably make for a nice test environment.
So, would there be enough interest in a set/scene from Sintel being updated / reworked for 2.60? If so, which one?
I know this doesn’t directly solve the issue of the Durian dvds being a bit useless for re-rendering, but without remaking the film, this is the best thing I can think of to help.
Thank you for your time to answer my questions.
First of al:
I’ve been sponsoring the projects and think the results are great, the money is spend nicely on artists trying to make their way. But putting these files on the DVD is just silly.
Secondly I’m shocked
The foundation is misleading in using the term “open” for their movie productions.
They are only open if some obscure beta version of some svn branch is used.
And the BF claims the funding is used to improve blender?
Seems to me all “open” projects from the BF end this way.
The DVDs are sold as " All the files you need to recreate the film entirely " ( on backside of the box ). The files are dumped on the DVD.
And then nobody, except members from the team, are able to actualy render a single scene from the movie.
Disappointing, and maybe even misleading. Adds to the feeling blender is for the incrowd.
Thirdly.
I was asking this because I wanted to make some new renders for the sintel comic I’m working on. And could get it to work, or maybe to lazy to figure it out in depth.
( WIP Chrome only: http://excellentwhale.homedns.org/sintel2/ )
My “works out of the box” expectations where maybe misplaced.
The scenes I’m thinking to render are a parallax from the opening and indeed from the room where Sintel sleeps. Any help would be great.
I’m guessing the opening is moved to 5.8 as ending of the journey.
Still have to figure out what file I need to open.
The #_layout.blend, #.a_comp.blend, #.#_layout_02.blend or #.#h_comp.blend.
A “readme” would have been nice.
Maybe somebody did some work on this and blogged about it?
(jay)
“the render branch build is on the DVD, try graphicall as well http://graphicall.org/?keywords=pablo”
I’m on osx and will try Blender_RenderBranch_OSX-10_5-x86_64.
I’m very disappointed that it’s so hard to recreate scenes from this ‘open’ movie.
It does explain why there are no sintel images on the internet made by users.
If Mango is going to be like this then there is no use putting the files on the DVD.
Thanks.
Looking better now.
Got a frame rendered with Blender_RenderBranch_OSX-10_5-x86_64.
Opened file 01.a_comp.blend and run the script in the left bottom panel.
Render took 6 minutes, with loads of black and red spots, and then ended with a nice frame.
Thanks.
Sure it’s open. The specific build is included on the DVD, built for every OS that Blender runs on.
Does it improve Blender? Well:
- We now have a usable 2.5 (HUGE improvement that took a long time)
- Brecht found out that reworking BI was not feasible, so now we have Cycles (Not all improvements are direct!)
- And a lot of miscellaneous improvements.
Item one was the main priority of Durian. And it worked! There’s your improvement.
Colin Levy has a guide to using some of the Sintel files on his site. Personally I don’t think it’s a huge deal if the files aren’t terribly easy to use. They’re really heavy stuff, which is necessary to make the film look good.
I’m aware of that and adressed that with:
“They are only open if some obscure beta version of some svn branch is used.”
So you are repeating known issues.
btw. Your definition is a way to simple one.
By this definition all content running on iTunes is open.
“The build to play the mp3 is on the disc”
Open should mean a little more.
I think that the fact that there are NO spin-offs from the project on the internet or
anywhere else should alarm you a little more.
“Just like project Orange, and Peach and Apricot, the end result itself and all of the production files are being published under the Creative Commons, free to be reused and for everyone to learn from.”
Right. Except that is not really happening.
The files where released, and there it ends.
Maybe I’m just missing the links, i’m using Google.
So you agree there is no reason to start a DVD campaign claiming that there will be usable files on the DVD for project Mango.
Just ask for money to make a nice movie, and eatable food for the artists, as all improvements might as well be indirect. You’re saying there is no difference in sponsoring the movie or donating money to the BF in the factual difference for blender.
In fact, it would be way cheaper ( more money for movie & development ) if people would get a medal or a card as thank-you and watch the HD version on vimeo.
Anyway. Thank you for trying to change the topic.
The question being: Did you render a scene from Sintel?
rendering files from the open movies is not the only way to use those files, I don’t have any for the DVD’s but I have used files on both which are available on the net to help me learn.
I learnt how to use particle hair by looking at the BBB files, the sintel rig that has been adapted for use by Ben in 2.59 has been used by several people.
Some of the stuff I learnt about organic modelling was by pulling apart the old guy from elephant dreams and looking at Sintel her self. If I had the DVD the other thing I would be definitely be looking at are the comp node set-ups.
What’s with this spoiled brat sense of entitlement? What, you paid 60 bucks and for that the durian team should spend several extra weeks/months repackaging sintel so you can click a button a get a beautiful image?
The files on the dvd are REAL production files, and believe me, real production files are rarely, if ever, nice and neat. Im personally thrilled to have access to these files and dont mind doing a bit of work to sort through them.
And yes, durian improved blender tremendously, directly and indirectly. My 60 bucks was money well spent.
EDIT: Hmm… yeah that was harsh. I apologize for being so grumpy, but the blender devs work their asses off to give us great production-ready tools for free. So listening to someone bitch and moan about how cheated they feel really kinda chaps my hide. I have a bitch-list a mile long of things I would like to see improved in blender, but there is a right and a wrong way to go about it, y’know? It’s not like you dropped 6 grand on 2 blender licenses, like I did with maya just over a year ago. Really feels like a huge waste now… 
Seems to me all “open” projects from the BF end this way.
The DVDs are sold as " All the files you need to recreate the film entirely " ( on backside of the box ). The files are dumped on the DVD.
And then nobody, except members from the team, are able to actualy render a single scene from the movie.
Disappointing, and maybe even misleading. Adds to the feeling blender is for the incrowd.
Just to reiterate, this is false, it’s all self contained. The 2.5 period was a rough one, and the time was ripe to break backwards compatibility to try to make a better piece of software, to expect anything more is unrealistic. If severe breakage happens in 2 years then people would be right to be annoyed, but let’s be honest, Blender is developed like wildfire, and that’s both good and bad, depending on who you are and how you work.
I feel that the BI did recognize that the open project files can be a bit complex and have been showing how to get around in them since at least BBB. Personally, I would like to see cleaner files though, like when a character is opened they are in a T pose, on frame 0 with no other keyed frames, with a sane UI, in front view, and a nice camera placement for F12.
Yes, the comp files are the ones you want for re-rendering. All other required files should be linked in to those.
I’m not entirely sure how I can make my previous points clearer, but here goes:
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Yes, I am also disappointed that a release version of Blender couldn’t open the files at the time.
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Even if it was a release version - including render related improvements and all other work - Blender has already changed enough since then due to the nature of the 2.5 project that the durian files wouldn’t render in 2.59/2.60 properly anyway. You would still need to go download another release, effectively giving the same problem either way for today’s new users.
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Ton kept kicking the artists for more documentation. Mainly tutorials about what we were doing. In the end, the time went mostly into development and making the film. I agree there was potentially more room for tutorials and documentation, but we all managed to pitch in a few by the release.
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Ton also kept kicking us - very hard and very often - about the files being able to render as soon as you opened them. No tricks. For the whole duration of the project he was very clear that this was a goal. Frustrating as it made things sometimes on a practical note, I agreed with that.
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It was genuinely the intent to merge the changes back into the release, but it was eventually decided for the long term benefit not to. This of course in the short and mid term makes things look a little misleading, but the dvd can render the film as you have now tested.
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On a related note - Blender changed so much during the film itself, that sometimes if we needed to open a character or shot from a couple of weeks ago we would need to rework it on the spot to get it working again. During the project. I remember rebuilding Blender over a lunch break one day and coming back to find that the Shaman rendered entirely white. Had to rework all the materials before we could use him again. This sort of thing is more or less what took the time away from targets like tutorials and documentation. For me anyway, don’t want to speak on behalf of everyone.
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Before I make too many points I’ll end with this - much of the Durian related work on Blender is in Blender Trunk. It’s mainly the render improvements to my knowledge that were branched off. The animation system for example got a lot of testing and there was much dialogue between Aligorith and the team. As far as I know, that is all in there and available for everyone. Sure, Aligorith would have worked on the features anyway, but Durian feedback, bug reporting, and production focussed user requests went towards it.
So, to sum up…
I agree that it is not quite as accessible as the previous Open projects. I agree that sucks a bit. However, improvements that were made during the project are in Blender, just not all of them. It was the genuine intention to include all of them when we were working on it. The files are available and open, just requiring some more effort to use than the previous films. The intention right through the project was to have them all useable.
Seeing as Mango was brought into the discussion - that will be different, because Blender is far more coherent now than when Durian was announced. Changes will be easier to include because they wont be as dramatic and potentially harmful to the code that is already there. The 2.5 and Durian projects tried many things, not all of them were judged to be the best idea afterwards in the long term - hence the abandoned render branch.
I know you had some involvement in Elephants Dream and for that I thank you. I got a lot out of the files on that disk so I think I understand where you are coming from. Not wanting to assume. However, the genuine intent the entire way through was to have the Durian project just as open as the Orange one.
Again, if there is something I can do to help explain the files, please let me know.
thank you for your TWO explainations.
Ignoring the brat in the corner - I would like to also see the opening scene, specifically the shot where sintel’s hand picks up the staff from the snow (my favourite of the entire film). its brilliantly done!
thank you again.
No worries.
Pretty sure Beorn (freen) and Soenke (Zordan) should get the credit on the picking up staff shot in particular.
I know there are (legal) torrents somewhere, but to download individual parts, I’m not sure a repository like that was ever set up. Like http://blender-mirror.kino3d.org/peach/peach_svncheckout/
Quite happy to be wrong if someone has a link.
There is so much wonderful stuff about sintel.