my hope and desire for the future of blender is to reach the the stadium in which will be possible to produce feature films.
may be I’am not realistic, but this for me is the really amazing challenge.
if we make an outline of the principal steps in production and develope some related programs or plugins to do these jobs in an easy dedicated way, we can have a solid, speed, dinamic and modular software with the plus of python programming, for specific tasks who could really compete with blasonated software.
That means thinkin with the film production in mind.
If someone is interested I propose to found a dedicated forum about this, we can call it “film blender”
I don’t want to discourage, but Haunt House is right, making a feature film is very ambitious and requires the coordinated effort of too many people and resources. Someone tried to organize the production of a Blender movie not that long ago and ended up cancelling the project due to organizational problems. Here’s an example of the amplitude of the work required to achieve such a gargantuan feat.
A full feature is equivalent to : 30(NTSCvideo) or 24 (film) frames/seconds x 60seconds/ minutes x 60minutes/hour x 2.5 hours= 270,000 NTSCvideo or 216,000 film frames. That’s a lot of rendering, modelling, texturing, rigging and keyframing, not to mention the hard drive space to store it, and the time to render 270,000 frames.
Try making a short 5 minute movie instead. I have been working on a solo 10 minute short movie since May, on an almost 12 hour day basis, and I am not even close to finishing it. Making movies is a lot of work and requires commitment, and it is not simply a matter of coming up with ideas. Now that I have failed to discourage you, I can’t wait to see your movie.
I’ve been playing with a strange anthology series (Blender-made, of course). I’ve been thinking about it for so long, I don’t even remember the amount of time (it’s so old, I first posted on it on the blender.nl forums). Mainly because I’ve got so much to learn about armatures and modelling, I haven’t even started the first episode. I’ve got the script done (not as in Python script) for that episode, but I can’t get the location modelled, or even the characters. Hmm.
Has this discouraged you? No? (First tries Monty Python method of constantly hitting you with a huge hammer, and upon finding it failed…) I’ll be glad to see your film when I’m 72!
PS: Read the most recent CJ, the one posted about 29 years ago (nudge nudge, Goofster). In the article on “The Last Outpost,” the writer, SKPjason, says that he’ll be releasing a tutorial on “speedy filmmaking.” He also mentions that he’ll release the movie in September. That’s supposing he has finished it, because guess what? It’s September!
Making animated shorts is my main focus right now, and I’ve even enlisted the help of a friend to assist with the less-than-fun parts like storyboards and deadlines and design documents…
And so, yeah, I would like to see a forum based on the process of taking Blender from modelling to a finished product. I could ask a question about finding (easy) ways to do network rendering (with and without Blender).
Consider Pixar’s ‘Monsters inc’… 5 years in production… Several full-time employees working on nothing but shaders for instance… 35 animators (not counting modelers, light-rig experts, color scheme analyzers)… Pixar has a total of 550 employees… I shouldn’t even mention the hardware requirements (the render farm, and those killer real-time animation workstations and all the custom software)
Film making is huge. Incomprehensibly huge. Make a good 5 minute short first and see where you end up. It might seem simple enough in the planning, but once you realize how incredibly much work it is, you’ll know what a feature movie would really mean.
Start with a 1 minute short. Do it. Blender is fully capable to do that. start with a drawn storyboard. a minute can contain much content. Length is not that important.
1 minute / 1 person / 1 month. That’s probably a fair calculation. Work for a year on your own and you’ll have a good quality 12 minute production. Assuming you have no work or school to go to, and/or can live with very little sleep. Blender is fully capable, and not the problem.
I did a 1 minute trailer, and it took about 6 weeks. I finished school, don’t have a job, and I have coffee intraveneously injected into my body; therefore, I don’t sleep :). It is a lot of work, but it is also a lot of fun.
I think the best way to increase the popularity of Blender is to make it
the best quality app it can be! It will be used in feature films when it is capable of meeting the demands of a major production studio.
Understand of coarse I’m no programer, but I know that to realise its full potential the aim should be to make the quality of Blender second to none! If it can’t be used to produce the quality of work the pros need then it’s just another sub par freeware app to them!
What are the things it needs to make it a tool of choice?
I did a 2 minute feature for someone in about 3 weeks. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.
I’m currently trying to do one of the chapters out of the latest Harry potter book, though, and this is at completely the other end of the scale. setting up characters takes abnsolutrly ages. And it’s bloody boring, too.
I’d say the biggest challenge you’ll face is gettiong character animation running (ie rigging it right!) and keeping the commitment going thorughout. If you can do this, then you can make something as long as you like!!
Im amazing about all your interest about my ingenuos purpose,
blender is wanderful and so is the forum, really! I’m not joking!,
I’m Italian and it’s not so easy for me understand quickly all the replays in English.
I’m an absolute beginner in 3d( my job is editor at the newsreel in Italy)
ut I am fashioned for the freedom of immagination and the possibilities in terms of production.
I will follow all the suggestion that you send me.
I launched a little stone in the water just to see if the topic was interesting for other blender users
I will send my future works in the next future (two three years)
but I wish sincerelythat some blenderhead will carry along this idea:
Whit moneymeter over 98000 is the moment to deam, is it?
I’ve come up with an idea of my first short film: I’m just going to record myself talking about something, then have everything I’m talking about happen! But that’s not what I’m going to do. I’ve gotten an idea: I’m going to remake a Monty Python sketch! I won’t tell you what it is, but here’s a hint: It will take… eh, I think I’d give too much away. Idea: Go to www.imdb.com and click on their daily poll. On the left, there’s a random title thing. Click it. Read the plot summary of the film and think about it for a while. If you hate the plot summary, either try another random title, or just go along. Bend the idea out of shape (i.e. throw the film into the future, or if it is in the future, the past). When you’ve got something totally unrecognizable, start writing the script! Hmm… not a bad idea, I think I’ll attempt it after a while!
Disencouragement:
I’ve got NO ideas of what I should make a short about. The ideas above are all I can come up with!
I agree. Just look at all those old Warner Bros. cartoons with Bugs Bunny et al. They were all under four minutes and they were fantastic! You don’t need two hours to tell a good story.