SIntel - opinions from non-blender websites

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

I’m interested what people who do not use Blender think about the movie instead of Blender fans. Needless to say Sintel was supposed to convince people to give Blender a chance and forget about their favourite commercial programms.

At one of the biggest polish 3d sites (www.max3d.pl) the opinions are rather moderate. People are usually amazed that it’s an open source movie, that the .blend files will be spread among community, that it was all made using just a freeware software. But on the contrary they find the story not really entertaining, most of them don’t like the quality of the animation finding Big Buck Bunny and Elephant’s Dream much better.

Could you share some of the opinions from non-blender websites around the world?

2

CGTalk’s thread : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=923562

3

Haven’t had time to look very far, but on Twitter Freddie Wong (his videos are very popular - just over half a million Youtube subscribers) just tweeted:

This was made with an open source 3D package and a lot of donated time and money: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
Doesn’t really give his opinion, but I guess he thought it was good enough to tweet about. Shows that it’s definitely making it’s way around the internet!
[Edit] Freddie Wong just said: (in reply to Colin Levy saying that is was “stoked that you tweeted about it!”)

It’s awesome work. It’s miles above commercial theatrical animated features I’ve worked with in my freelance VFX days - kudos!

On OMG!UBUNTU! (one of the biggest Ubuntu blogs) the post about it is getting mostly positive responses, (PURE AWESOME!, epic, reallly really beautiful! etc.) although a couple of people think the story was too flat, along with a few other complaints:

I’m in two minds what to say about this film. It looks obviously cheap with low production values in a lot of scenes, but then the film IS cheap, as its not like they had a 10th of a Pixar budget to make a film a 10th of the length. So judged against the budget it had to work with is the film awesome? Probably? - but it goes to show that in the field of animation where you have to create every blade of grass and pebble from scratch, it is simply not possible to compete with the big boys and their bigger budgets; where as with live action film making that is entirely possible.

4

Needless to say Sintel was supposed to convince people to give Blender a chance and forget about their favourite commercial programms.

Well, not really. At all. ED and BBB were certainly promotional tools in a sense but the core aspect of all three projects is to honestly road test Blender where Blender is currently at and then improve. In the case of Sintel the point was to get 2.5 working/useable.

So it’s probably more accurate that Sintel was supposed to convince Blender users to give 2.5x a chance and move on from 2.4x. How successful that was might take a few more months to fully grasp.

5

Ben,

Well, not really. At all. ED and BBB were certainly promotional tools in a sense but the core aspect of all three projects is to honestly road test Blender where Blender is currently at and then improve. In the case of Sintel the point was to get 2.5 working/useable.

It is primarily as a promotional tool for non blender users and to cause a ‘stretch’ for development. Getting 2.5 working/usable would have been far more efficient without Sintel, and development efforts would have been more focused on certain aspects without it. Users don’t need convincing to move to the latest version when it is usable enough.

So it’s probably more accurate that Sintel was supposed to convince Blender users to give 2.5x a chance and move on from 2.4x. How successful that was might take a few more months to fully grasp.

I’m fairly confident you are wrong on this. Durian film project was intended before there were any specific plans of of the major changes that were done for 2.5x. The fruit projects do have as a goal to ‘production prove’ whatever version they are used with, but that isn’t to convince folks to move from the previous to the current version.

6

LetterRip,

I did get the impression that I had the wrong idea about the project the whole time I was there. Thanks for the closure from a developer standpoint. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Ben.

(Genuinely no sarcasm intended, that doesn’t translate well with forum text.)

7

I guess it’s something natural among Blender users that they switch to the next version, it’s a matter of getting access to new features. Besides Blender users are mostly Blender fans so there don’t need to be conviced to use their favourite software.

Still I’m afraid that Blender is very rarely used by professionals because they think: “Nah, it’s free (and you cannot expect something to be good if it’s for free), most of the works we’ve seen at forums are rubbish, it’s got weird interface” and so on. Such shorts made by BF (sadly by no other users) are the proof that Blender is capable of great things, that it deserves some interest, that it’s no use to buy a 3ds max licence if you get the same or even better quality for free. It’s also some kind of Blender demoreel that shows its current abilities. BF delivers probably the best shorts from the whole community (which does not mean that it’s impossible to reach better standard; it means that - generaly speaking - nobody does it except BF). And because Sintel is understood among 3d world (I’m a professional 3d graphic myself and I know more or less how do people in this business think) as “the best of Blender” I’m curious what do people from all around the globe think about it (which can also be translated to - what do people think about Blender now).

Because few days passed it’s time for some conclusions from polish www.max3d.pl website. There’s been nearly 100 comments, 50% of them says that Sintel is a very poor short, or that the quality of animation itself, textures and lightning was bad. Other think it was good, they liked the story although Sintel’s quality was not perfect (there were good and worse moments). Only few people admitted that it was the best short made by BF so far, most people (including Blender users) said that BBB and ED were much better.

So, any other news from the websites from your country?

8

As far as I’m aware, there was no freeware used in the production. Audio was done using proprietary tools and only free software for the visuals. :wink:

9

The goal I think is achieve money to continue developping blender. It is not a goal to convince people to abandon their current apps but yes attract people to do something in a cooperation way instead of a competitive way all is done in the world. Cooperation is the way to follow if we want this world be a paradise again.

It would be interesting if durian team months ago released to community the worst animation to people try to enhance them. I myself find a hard contrast in the final scene with Sintel leaving and then the flower opening and the dragon appearing and following sintel, that in this scene dragon animation is wonderful and sintel one is clearly inferior in my opinion. Clearly the guy animating the dragon was using rotoscoping and the one animating Sintel was not. Rotoscoping is always the answer !!!

10

Open movies help improve Blender’s image, and Sintel will help too. Although before the next open movie my vote would go for a different type of promotion tool.

I think Blender could be greatly showcased through a simpler and more affordable method than an open movie, which could achieve the highest quality out of Blender with less effort.

This community is capable of gathering an impressive amount of money. I think it would be more efficient to put that kind of money in producing smaller things like very short videos, without any storytelling to worry about, or actors, soundtrack, or a multitude of assets working well together. That’s a huge effort.

If we want to showcase for instance Blender’s sculpting/painting capabilities, it would be enough to pay an amazing artist to do an incredibly detailed character and do a quality timelapse screen capture while he/she builds it, and a beautiful final render.

If we want to showcase rigging/skinning tools, give that character to another great artist, and show a timelapse of how he adds a skeleton, corrective shape keys, facial shape keys…

To showcase animation, just one minute of that amazing character, beautifully animated, with just one still camera, would show animation capabilities in a great way. The character doesn’t need complex interaction, nor be restricted to a script. The efforts are directed to showcase how beautifully a complex character can be animated.

Facial animation, just make the character say something simple, and do some very expressive facial gestures, one after another, in a nice way but just focusing on that.

Same with fire, smoke… small video with that character causing an explosion, or spit fire in the most beautiful way possible, without worring about compositing it in a complex environment and work well with everything else, or beeing restricted by it. The attention is focused on the fire and all its details.

For compositing, something very short, just seconds, and showing how things are layered and how the different nodes affect the results, or how it’s incorporated into real footage.

There are many key features that would showcase Blender’s capabilities, that could be showcased in a very short simple way, but in its highest possible splendor, because the focus, effort and enough time is all spent around each feature.

And all those small videos posted at Blender.org, all together.

I think much of the good impression about ZBrush is because they put an amazing model on each presentation they do. I don’t know much about Mari, but I have a good impression, (I think I’m not the only one), and how much is it because of the great model they’ve put on their presentation? In my case quite a lot is due to that incredibly detailed TRex they’ve put in their presentation. I really don’t know much about Mari, and still have a good impression!

They just needed one model, and it wasn’t even rigged?.. I don’t remember, and still doesn’t matter to me, it doesn’t change my good impression about it, because that TRex looked just great.

11

I thought the main point of Open Movies was to further improve Blender and test it in a rigorous production environment, and that promotion was a secondary by-product that happens on it’s own, thanks to the free licensing of the material.

“Getting 2.5 working/usable would have been far more efficient without Sintel, and development efforts would have been more focused on certain aspects without it.” I don’t understand this sentiment, having 10-20 power users using Blender on a daily basis for a year is a much more efficient method of finding issues than reports trickling in from the community, no?

12

Eclectiel, you’ve pretty much just described my next Blender project – not as a reaction to your post, but because I also feel it’s a solid way to “show off Blender.” And, because it has storytelling possiblities beyond the usual “CGI animated short” genre cliches.

The problem is, of course, that this kind of project undertaken by one person is excruciatingly demanding. Few can devote the time and effort needed for such a solo effort – I’ve certainly paid a price for my commitment to Kata.

But the Blender community, as excellent as it is, is not in and of itself a production company or a studio. It does not have the kind of strong hand at the helm that the Blender Foundation does. Lacking that kind of organizational structure, no amount of fund-raising will produce a good result.

I don’t mean to be negative, I like the idea you present a great deal, but the realities must be faced. Assemble a production management team with the experience and commitment needed to guide the project, and it could happen. Without such a team, I think the effort, no matter how well-intentioned, would eventually founder.

13

The reason Sintel was made is because Ton is a filmmaker. Blender was originally an in-house commercial production tool that Ton developed with other software engineers for use in production.

In 1988 Ton Roosendaal co-founded the Dutch animation studio NeoGeo. NeoGeo quickly became the largest 3D animation studio in the Netherlands and one of the leading animation houses in Europe. NeoGeo created award-winning productions (European Corporate Video Awards 1993 and 1995) for large corporate clients such as multi-national electronics company Philips. Within NeoGeo Ton was responsible for both art direction and internal software development. After careful deliberation Ton decided that the current in-house 3D tool set for NeoGeo was too old and cumbersome to maintain and upgrade and needed to be rewritten from scratch. In 1995 this rewrite began and was destined to become the 3D software creation suite we all now know as Blender. As NeoGeo continued to refine and improve Blender it became apparent to Ton that Blender could be used as a tool for other artists outside of NeoGeo.

The history can be found here:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Introduction/History

So the Blender foundation films are made - one can only presume - because that is what they enjoy doing. The software is developed to forward that purpose and the entire endeavor is now done under a non-profit status.

If Sintel was made to impress anyone it was to impress future portential sponsors and users like us that they are capable of making entertaining films with a technology that can compete in the broad marketplace of 3D entertainment.

One can correctly assume that they want to make more films and even features in the future. To accomplish these goals a) the software has to continually improve to stay as current as possible with existing commercial technology - and hopefully even surpass it in ways. b) Corporations with money need to have confidence that these endevours can be exploited for positive PR and advertising for their own products and/or services so they will be willing to put up money for future projects. And finally c) the user base of Blender has to continually expand. Because it is the users who not only use and put the product though the paces but also contribute time and money to the open projects in the way of pre-sales of DVDs and production sprints to help with the projects directly and then of course those who contribute development time. All these things have to be working and expanding for the Blender foundation to continue its goals upwards into the future.

This is a great set up where everybody wins.

14

Ben,

I did get the impression that I had the wrong idea about the project the whole time I was there. Thanks for the closure from a developer standpoint.
Heh. I’ve honestly never heard Ton express any hint that ‘getting people comfortable with moving to 2.5x’ was even a tertiary goal. In discussions for the fruit projects the goals and intents have always been made quite clea that the fruit projects are for 1) Stretching development towards ambitious goals 2) As advertising to other cg artists that Blender is capable and battle tested software.

Richard,

The reason Sintel was made is because Ton is a filmmaker
Yes absolutely one of the reasons Ton does these is that he loves to do film projects. However we were talking about the goals of the projects. Yes the happiness of the sponsors (both corporate, private, and community) is also a key goal (arguably the primary goal).

jay,

I don’t understand this sentiment, having 10-20 power users using Blender on a daily basis for a year is a much more efficient method of finding issues than reports trickling in from the community, no?
As long as the flow of bug reports into the tracker is greater than the speed at which the devs can fix them, the source of the report doesn’t really matter. Once the bug tracker is down to the magical 50 number then a team of users to do a final shake down would be useful. 95-99% of the bugs encountered though were bugs that would have been reported anyways.

Eclectiel,

I’ve discussed with Ton doing that sort of thing. I’ve also discussed hiring high profile artists who use other packages to play with Blender.

15

You can not separate these in my opinion. Films are being made initially and primarily because someone wants to make them. I pointed that out because it seems people miss that. As if there are all these other reasons. The goal of each film project is to be entertaining and communicate a message. The goals of these films are related to the over all goal which is to keep making more of them - eventually features.

You have to put this as the primary consideration and goal. Under that goal each project has a purpose to further the primary goal which is to make movies in some way. Since it takes financing and in this case development of an in-house software along with the support of the community, that means the films naturally are selected primarily because of the interest of the producer - to tell a story. And secondarily to fit into the over all plan to continue making films and developing software to do that. So the films have the sub purposes I stated. About furthering the development of the software - putting it to the test - and attracting positive PR for the foundation and continue receiving financing (and other contributions) for future projects.

If the original development plan for Blender had succeeded it would not be open source now. It would be a proprietary software marketed to the public and the main purpose would be the same to make movies while continually developing and marketing the software as a separate activity but dovetailed with the primary goal of making films. All you are seeing now is activity that falls within the legal framework established under the new agreement with the initial investors.

Blender is not being developed so we can all have it for free. It is not being developed to get people to do anything but perhaps continue to be involved. The films dovetail into this very well. Ton may also have the purpose to prove to the industry that something can be done in an innovative way apart from commercial considerations.

But when you break it down to brass tax, the Blender foundation is operating with the same goals of any commercial corporation - to remain financially viable and expand (although perhaps gone about in as different way). To this end you could say the films are being made also with the same financial goal of any film product. To generate income. In effect that is what they do for the foundation. They continue to perpetuate existence of the organization. So with the primary goal to make movies it is a continuing cycle.

16

The primary goal isn’t to make movies though. It is a secondary goal. If Tons primary goal was to make movies then he could have got the funding to do that differently (there were funding offers for a feature film at siggraph after BBB came out). The movies are a goal in and of themselves but they are secondary to getting Blender into more peoples hands.

If the original development plan for Blender had succeeded it would not be open source now. It would be a proprietary software marketed to the public and the main purpose would be the same to make movies while continually developing and marketing the software as a separate activity but dovetailed with the primary goal of making films. All you are seeing now is activity that falls within the legal framework established under the new agreement with the initial investors.

When Blender was part of a commercial organization Ton wanted Blender to be developed to become the ultimate game creation tool, not for films. Also Blender itself was being given away for free, his business plan was to make money off of licensing the game engine. As to the reasons Blender went open source that has a lot to do with the timing of the dot com bust.

Blender is not being developed so we can all have it for free.

It is being developed because programmers like developing on it, and either idealogically opposed to commercial software, can’t/don’t want to afford commercial software, or just want to work on something cool. We do in fact often work on it so other people can have it for free too, and to see others create something awesome with our hard work.

But when you break it down to brass tax, the Blender foundation is operating with the same goals of any commercial corporation - to remain financially viable and expand (although perhaps gone about in as different way). To this end you could say the films are being made also with the same financial goal of any film product. To generate income. In effect that is what they do for the foundation. They continue to perpetuate existence of the organization. So with the primary goal to make movies it is a continuing cycle.

The publishing business is what primarily funds the Blender Foundation. The goals of the BF are to grow the Blender ecosystem. The films I believe tend to be break even or small net loses and subsidized by the rest of the publishing. Also the true cost of the films is about double the amount paid.

17

That is pure conjecture. The reasons funding is turned down for feature efforts can be many. Not the least of which is some personal integrity of the filmmaker in regards to the demands of the filmmaker by people with money. I know that one both subjectively from my own experience and from the experience of other short film makers I have known. That Ton never took up the offers could be for many reasons. It could be the funders backed out for any of thier own reasons. You can’t site this as definitive reason.

On the other hand Ton himself said in an interview, he’d love to make a feature. I’d go with that before making some stretches based on conjecture.

That way be well a stated attempt. However it never happened and the Blender foundation has been making films not games. Therefore, one can surmise - this is the goal. Games would be secondary at this time. The production company was making animation not games. Blender came out of that not out of a game company.

The fact that Sintel will also be a game shoes that there is interest here and it is a logical marketing strategy besides. Just as any film company would do if they had a title that could be exploited as a game. It does not make it the primary purpose.

That is entirely subjective. That may be a spin off of development. That may be the reason you get involved. And the reason many others get involved. But it does not stand alone. You have to first have a purpose to use the software for the thing it is being developed for. Ton, the founder may have many purposes. But his actions - continuing to make films on his terms - large undertakings by the way not little attempts - speak for themselves. Making movies and developing software to do so are the two primary actions that are happening at BF. Regardless of any other things going on, these are the two driving forces in reality - it may not be understood by everyone. But that is not unusual in any organization.

Yes of course. The films are at the center of all of these efforts. That is how they generate income. Again I was hoping I would not have to break apart and explain everything. But when I say films generate income. I don’t mean from DVD sales or funding alone. But from that as well as all of the other activities which they help add value to directly and indirectly as well.

In short you can not discount these films as just some lower side purpose. Not objectively.

By statistic, by what is being done, they are part and parcel to the BF and without them Blender would be just a potential.

18

Richard,

You are doing pure conjecture, when I’m just making statements based on actual knowledge of what the individuals have personally told me their goals, motivations, and reasons are.

19

I personally wouldn’t say that Letterrip is pulling words out of thin air, as he’s been in close contact at times with Ton and other developers for many years.

Richard: If Ton wanted a tool primarily for film production all along, than why all those years ago did he hire Erwin to build a game engine into Blender (note that he was a former NaN employee when Blender was still commercial)?

20

It probably ought to be remembered that the Netherlands Film Fund are a main sponsor of these.
I dont think they view it as Blender development money, indeed I seem to remember they thought the proposal was somewhat marginal IIRC.