4 months ago I asked the blender community for help for a commercial short movie project and now here is the result.
It’s a trailer for ZOTAC International Limited, which is a computer hardware company focused on producing Nvidia based graphics cards among other stuff.
[Because of copyright claims of the producing advertising agency I have removed the images and the Behind the Scenes video.]
Congratulations to all artists involved.
The movie has entirely been made with the latest Blender 2.4x, modeling, rigging, animation, compositing, editing, everything. There are only a few volumetric smoke and fire effects that I used 2.5 for. Half of the scenes, especially where the full body of the hero can be seen, is motion captured animation. In some of the outside shots there are polycounts varying from 60 to 80 million faces. Render times were around 10 to 50 minutes per frame. We used 3 systems for rendering, the biggest rig had 12 cores and 24 MB of memory. It took around 5 weeks to render the whole movie in FullHD.
Durian side note:
We all know that the upcoming Durian project movie “Sintel”, produced by the Blender Foundation, is about a dragon. Just in case some of you are wondering, if it’s intentional that there is a dragon involved in our short. I can clearly say, it has been a CI decision. The dragon is a ZOTAC character that had to be included. I tried to avoid any overlapping content with the Durian project whatsoever.
Incredible. This is just some seriously professional work man. Congrats. Were will this be showing? On their website? Oh, and how did you get the mocap to play nice with Blender?
The wide-mouthed creature is definitely one of the best creatures I’ve ever seen made with Blender, good job.
It would be pretty freaky to be an inch in front of an open mouth as large as you are (and hold your entire body as it chews you), as it tries to eat you.:eek:
I like the simulation related content and atmosphere/environment the best.
I wasn’t too fond of the human animation, his motion had no weight to it, there was one good part in it though when he was skidding to a stop before the door.
Stupendous piece of work! I dream of the day I create something this awesome. It was a bit dark (as it clearly needed to be), but perhaps just a little more light to see your awesome work would have been nice. The lightning flashes were a bit constant, which together with the darkness made viewing a bit disorienting. Did I miss Blender credited as the main piece of software? Altogether a stunning, inspiring showcase. Thanks!
i didn’t have much control about the final end credits and i don’t own the rights for the film either. you need not to forget, this is not a product to promote open source software but zotac hardware. that’s the price you have to pay if you work commercially, you have basically less control.
however, i’m planning a little behind the scenes video. so this might be a good opportunity to mention blender and to show it in action, of course.
It’s much better and much more engaging if you zoom it up to full screen as the small resolution doesn’t do it justice, because of that I have noticed things I haven’t before like small pieces of flesh on the creature’s teeth (presumely from people he already ate), and the compound eye.
I’ve also really liked how the creature introduced itself using its tongue and immediately following with preparing to eat the protagonist. The creature’s introduction was probably to tell the person to fear and respect him and accept that he’s food to him, that he is his next meal.
The creature would be an excellent being to genetically engineer into real-life.
EDIT: Just switched my monitor to the HD resolution (since I have a 22 inch HD monitor), watching half a foot from my monitor the creature just looked huge filling up every single pixel and all the corners. O.O
I liked it too, but the walking cycle seemed… somewhat too unrealistic. It lowered my overall impression quite a bit. And maybe you could make the wingmovements of that last angel a little bit more interesting, the last impression of a trailer might be everything. Still, I love that monster and the environment! Well done!
Is it ethical for a graphics card manufacturer that mainly caters to computer gamers, where what matters is real-time rendering in games, to use pre-rendered graphics in the advertisement?
I don’t want it to sound demeaning but what you are showing me in the video is not what is capable of being rendered in real time @ 60 fps by the hardware that you are trying to sell me. That apart (i am an ad advertising guy, so can’t help but ask such questions), the video is really impressive.
@anuraag_01:
this is a valid question. from what i understand this video should demonstrate the fullHD/bluray capabilities of there graphic and mini-pc products rather than anything else. if you watch the exhibition video above, you’ll notice that they doesn’t claim anything else.
they could have shown elephants dream or big buck bunny instead, but they preferred an own short with their corporate identity characters. think about it that way.
