Blender's Open Movie Project 156
MrAndrews writes "I just read on the Blender home page that Ton Roosendaal is going to be creating an open movie project called "Orange", which should kick off development sometime in the fall: "The Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts, have agreed on producing a 3D Animated Movie Short, to be created with the Open Source 3D suite Blender and other OS tools such as Yafray, Python, Verse, Gimp, and Cinepaint." Moreover: "... the resulting movie - including all the production files and software - will be published under an open public license." Open source entertainment is another step closer to reality!"
Will FOP be soon behind? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Will FOP be soon behind? (Score:1)
Your missing the point though (Score:1)
Re:Will FOP be soon behind? (Score:1)
Re:Will FOP be soon behind? (Score:3, Funny)
It already exists... (Score:2)
Trying to understand the point (Score:5, Interesting)
What I suppose is interesting about this is that the final product will be open and available for others to use. Free from copyright, so to speak. It seems like a nice idea, much like Creative Commons [creativecommons.org], but it doesn't seem like some really huge step forward in any respect.
The complete open-sourcing of the toolset would be cool (Blender and a few others are already open).
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't like how something is going? You yourself can lead it in another direction if you wish. I don't know how many times I've watched a movie lately and said to myself "wow, this really needs to be edited more". Case in point is Revenge of the Sith...there are a few things in there I would slice out to make it a better movie. One would be to take out
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Stories aren't things that can be put together piecemeal, and generally don't adapt well to the traditional open source paradigm. However, there are other ways that Free thinking can help this type of creative project.
There are some aspects of these projects that can be done piecemeal. Films typically have soundtracks, and most filmmakers aren't composers/singers/musicians as well. With shared work out there, filmmakers can build on top of the music that other people have put out there.
Taking video clips from a shared work can be useful as well. In many typical dramas and sitcoms, they show a little clip of the city the story is taking place in or a shot of the skyline. Most people don't have the resources to do that sort of thing, but if a video that incorporates such a clip has been shared, another creator can make there work better by leveraging off of work that has already been done.
The traditional open source methodology seems to be the focus of this article, however it seems that they have a core group working on the creative concept [blender.org], though they say that others from the community will be involved as well. The collaboration of many people on the technical aspects of the film will work fabulously, but there are some things that just don't lend themselves to that way of working, and I think they realize that. I think the main benefit from shared crative works is being able to reuse bits of that content that suit new works, not the way people put them together. People have collaborated on creative works for a long time. The new development is that the product of that work will be able to be built upon by others.
I actually have a research project on this topic that I should be working on instead of reading Slashdot.
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
A good storyteller makes the story his own. You will never hear a genuine folk tale told twice the same way, nothing is set in stone, or feels as if it has been written-by-committee.
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:3, Insightful)
The key, I think, is not that anyone can or should be in charge of changing the script, but that anyone can contribute to the final product. How many developers have commit access for the Linux kernel? How many can suggest changes and have them integrated if they're good? How many can fork the entire codebase at any given time to focus o
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
With your post you have complete ignored any literary work created more than two hundred years ago, which includes some of the finest examples of western literature. The list looks a little something like this: William Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Beowulf, any western folk tale / legend / myth / fable you can think of. All of these works were the result of someone takin
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
Where's the reciprocity?
What benefit does a musician get when his or her music is incorporated into someone else's film?
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
We have the
see it as a proof of concept of a tool chain (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I guess you have to see this project more as a proof of concept, that it is possible to create something like that using only open source tools. To try convincing others to use them to create open source or non-open source entertainment.
Tristan.
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
Of course successful programs fall off towards the end. THey all do. That's why they're dropped
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:1)
This is only because they have so many episodes. A series of X-Files is 18 hours of material. Even the most dedicated writer could not work at the required pace or under that kind of pressure.
Some movies do the consecutive thing, and only in Hollywood. If you're making an a
Collaboriation hardly means Piecemeal (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't seam to "get" collaborative projects. Don't feel bad--I used free software almost exclusively for years (based on quality, not politics) before I understood how and why collaborative projects work so well. When one is spoon-fed "you get what you pay for," "profit motive required for progress/production," "no one will create without monopoly entitlements (patents/copyright)," and similiar corporate untruths all of one's life (and we have all been spoonfed that nonsense since they day we were born), free collaboration can be a very difficult concept to get one's head around. As I said, it took me years, and I'm generally fairly quick.
First, collaboration != piecemeal. For that matter, Free Software is rarely piecemail either--equating the two shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the process and its results.
Second, unlike writing a novel (where what you say has some applicability, though by no means is it an axiom--there have been collaborative novels written in the sci-fi genre by well-known authors that are excellent) nearly every film and telivision project of any size involves multiple writers (in the case of telivision projects, sometimes hundreds of writers), and hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people performing supporting functions (compsing the soundtrack, performing the music, lighting, choreagraphy, set design, editing, post-production, etc.).
In short, virtually every project of any size is a collaboration--we're just not used to seeing it as such. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing intrinsicly different between a large collaboration done under the the auspices of a commercial enterprise and that done under an open collaboration, other than perhaps the overall budget that is available. Star Wars Episode 3-1/2 "Revelations" is a fine example of a fan film made entirely through collaboration on a tiny budget.
Yes, collaboration can and does produce absolute dreck. So to does Hollywood...in abundance. Profit motive and corporate-feudal power structures do nothing to insure quality, nor are the a prerequisite to the production of quality, whether it is software or a film.
I do agree, doing the entire project start-to-finish using only free software would be a powerful demonstration of what is possible using only the resources of the Free World.
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
Heck, look at all the free advertising that anime gets via AMVs.
It'd be nice if you could buy an extra DVD of film footage with the actors walking in front of blue screens before the background was put in. Or a Golem skeleton that you could attach your own 3D model to and re-render the scene for a video.
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
I am working on a project that aims to better co-ordinate that kind of idea... pulling together ideas and art at various stages of development, making them searchable, retaining credit and license information, and helping people find the other parts of the puzzle they need to get their idea off the ground. This Blender thing goes in a slightly different direction, but the end result should be close to the same: giving people more tools and resources to do cool stuff.
If anyone has
Re:Trying to understand the point (Score:2)
This statement shows that you have misunderstood the idea of OS style development. Namely, you have missed that:
What's it about? (Score:2)
Re:What's it about? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's it about? (Score:2)
Re:What's it about? (Score:2)
Re:What's it about? (Score:3, Funny)
My Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:My Suggestion (Score:1)
People will always work more for kudos than prizes. Even if you offer to give kudos and a prize, people will think entirely in terms of the monetary value of that prize.
Now, if you do offer kudos, they'll first have to convert it to money-equivalent value...
It is the first thing I thought reading your post : "Hey, how much is that worth, an ad on Blender.org ?"
How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:2)
Honestly I don't see the point. Who cares if the data is created with Open or Closed source tools, just as long as the resultant data is worth the resources their spending on it, at least that's my opinion about it all. I guess to those in the project, it simply proves the tools are "good enough", and that it can be done, if anyone was suicidal enough to attempt it.
Re:How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:1, Interesting)
Trying to do a score in Ardour/Rosegarden vs. say Nuendo or Sonar would be extremely painful.
Re:How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:2)
Part of it is to prove that the tools are 'good enough' and to show off to the world that they are good enough. Part of it is the fun and the challenge.
Not sure why you think it would be 'suicidal' to attempt it. The modeling tools and uv tools are plenty fast and mature enough right now (not to say that there aren't nicities that could be add
Re:How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:5, Interesting)
When we start talking digital animation, the amount of work leaps exponentially. Long hours of modeling, shading, color checks, lighting checks, triangle counts, waiting for renders, etc. It's a tough business.
The "suicidal" part comes in when someone suggests making a feature length film, animated, basically with no money to pay people to come and work for you. You're looking at a group of 10 to 20 dedicated people, spending a great deal of their lives for the next year or two, churning away at scenes, storyboards, models, textures, etc, until finally they come up with something, instead of Pixar's or Dreamwork's thousands of support personel. You're looking at 10 to 20, midrange servers whereas Pixar or Dreamworks has hundreds, possibly thousands of highrange servers in their rendering farms.
Now, will the final product be worth it? Hell yes if it's a good story, looks good, and feels good. Put it in theaters, get a couple million in ticket sales and you've instantly paid for your venture. But the problem is getting even that far. And for that, I would call you suicidal, but I would commmend your work.
Re:How about Weta or Pixar? (Score:2)
Well, they have full funding for 5 full time artists for and 1 full time coder for 6 months. Plus funding of a budget for talent that is not needed for the full time period. Also there will be plenty of volunteer effort from the Blender community (there are a number of talented artists who will likely want to contribute but do not have t
Great news (Score:5, Funny)
Oh.
Re:Great news (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently took a trip from Glasgow to Amsterdam, for a job interview. In Glasgow airport, I saw a Tux Racer arcade cabinet!
I was actually pretty shocked, didn't know the thing existed, but the little kiddies playing Tux Racer seemed to be having fun.
Re:Great news (Score:1)
Funding? (Score:5, Insightful)
While this would be quite an accomplishment should it come to reality, and could set the establishment on its ear, I can't help but thinking from browsing through their site that it's still 'vaporware'. Just take a look at the Sponsors [blender.org] page. They're requesting 6 quality 3D Unix machines and a 10-system rendering cluster, among other things.
I wish them the best of luck in their endeavor.
Re:Funding? (Score:2)
W
Blender + Orange? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Blender + Orange? (Score:3, Funny)
I think so, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?
Re:Blender + Orange? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Blender + Orange? (Score:2, Funny)
I wish I had mod-points.
This was surely the best uncalled-for post in a long time. Thank you Sir (or Madam, or whatever.)
The tools used (Score:4, Informative)
have a look at the development digest
http://cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=233256 [cgtalk.com]
Blender now has manipulators and universal undo - two things that lots of slashdotters complained were missing the last time Blender was mentioned on slashdot.
LetterRip
Folk music (Score:4, Insightful)
Open source entertainment is nothing new. There are plenty of examples from Folk Music and Hymns to Pantomime (christmas plays, that have nothing to do with christmas). You hear a song, you play a song, you change the lyrics/tune to suite your own politics. You never claim to have written it yourself, you just say something like "Here is a song I heard over in Sheepy Magna, it goes a little something like this..."
Copyrighted entertainment is new, and a little bit counter intuitive. My understanding is that it was brought about to protect the incomes of the artists, whilst provide recording companies to profit from the sale of recordings. Now, as recording companies start to fear for their livelyhood, it seems to be coming full circle.
People have always been able to make a living from providing entertainment and they always will (if they're good), they have not always been treated like gods and they have not always been richer than our leaders. Never mind the dotcom bubble bursting, I think the entertainment copyright bubble might be leaking a bit too.
Re:Folk music (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyrighted entertainment is as new as the means to copy the entertainment is. Copyright came right behind the printing press. It expanded after the player piano. Being able to copy creative works changes how things work.
You describe a time when people create works to entertain themselves and didn't need copyright to prod them along. Folk music and hymns were satisfying entertainment until someone who was really good at singing decide
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
In the spirit of healthy debate, I'll retort
That simply isn't true. People have never stopped going to performances. There is simply no comparison between a live performance and recorded one. If anything performances are getting bigger audiences than ever before because of the massive advertising that recorded performances represent. The performance arts that have 'suffered' because of 'pir
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
I am an artist, and I do consider myself "truly creative". Even without copyright, I would still create art.
That said, I make a living three ways, the first is selling prints of my artwork, the second is creating new artwork on comission, and the third is licensing artwork I've created.
Without copyright, I wouldn't be able to be profitiable doing any of
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
I think we are coming to the same conclusion, but from different ends. We both want you to be able to generate money so that you can continue to generate art. What we don't want is corporation XYZ (or anybody else) from being able to make money off your art without your permision - that just isn't fair.
If people are selling prints of your work, then you are clearly entitled to a cut.
If a body decides to use your art to promote their product they should provide you with a fee - as they are profiting from y
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
What copyright does is allow a creator to make the copy a product in the first place. What a creator posesses is talent. It's pretty hard to sell talent. You can either perform that talent for a charge, or because of copyright, you can sell recordings of that talent. CDs are far more profitable than tours are, and while some people use an album as an advertisement for their concerts, most of the established
Re:Folk music (Score:1)
A few things.
I agree with you that "Copyrighted entertainment is as new as the means to copy the entertainment is. Copyright came right behind the printing press. It expanded after the player piano. Being able to copy creative works changes how things work."
Each time a new technology comes along enabling the distribution of creative works, a new business model evolves exploiting that technology. Depending on the business model, new legislation is introduced to support the new industry. There is usually
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
I think that small artists benefit from sharing and larger artists with significant marketshare are hurt by it.
Re:Folk music (Score:2)
More details on the people involved in the project (Score:4, Interesting)
Bassam Kurdali aka slikdigit - created the animation 'chicken chair' among others.
Andy Goralczyk aka @ndy - has done both gorgeous stills and lively and fun animations.
These are two of the best artists/animators using blender, both have excellent imagination and the talent to accomplish any bit of artistry they put their minds to.
and lastly Ton Roosendaal - he is the creator of Blender and the primary driving force behind its open source development.
With this combination of talent being the driving force behind project Orange, we can be sure to expect something truly entertaining and masterfully executed.
LetterRip
Re:More details on the people involved in the proj (Score:1)
LetterRip
Re:More details on the people involved in the proj (Score:4, Interesting)
Myself, I'd rather watch the pathetically animated but extremely funny Home Movies on Adult Swim than the beautifully and painstakingly rendered but pointless Final Fantasy movie. Good characters and storytelling should come first, I hope this project realizes that before embarking on this effort...
Re:More details on the people involved in the proj (Score:2)
Kiss my shiney metal ..... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Kiss my shiney metal ..... (Score:2, Funny)
Blender (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention the facts that the package is smaller than your average text-editor, its start-up is almost instantaneous, that it runs identically on Windows and Linux and that you can extend it with Python routines?
Oh, and did I mention that I love it? :-)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
I read the documentation, did the tutorial, made my gingerbread man, animated it, textured it and made it dance.
That took me a week in total, making me wonder what on earth people complain about when they say they can't use it. Doesn't seem all that hard to me
I now use it to create real life holograms.
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Re:Blender (Score:2)
Yep, just take a look and see: iexplore.exe is 91 KB.
It is amazing that those programming wizards at Microsoft could pack so much functionality into a 91 KB program.
(I'll stop being sarcastic now. I didn't mention anything about the size of DLL dependencies.)
Wouldn't it make more sense ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't it make more sense ... (Score:2)
Distributed rendering similar to seti@home (Score:1, Interesting)
Where is the open source pron that I'm waiting for (Score:1)
Re:Where is the open source pron that I'm waiting (Score:1)
Verse (Score:4, Informative)
Heh. As a full-time developer of the related technology, I'm glad the mention of Verse survived into the blurb!
Verse is a low-level data model, network protocol and programming API for dealing with distributed applications involving 3D graphics and audio. It is completely open and distributed under a BSD license so you can use it in any kind of application.
For details, see the top-level Uni-Verse site [uni-verse.org] (toplevel page about the current research project). If you're a developer, perhaps heading directly to the Verse [blender.org] pages is more interesting. You could also check out the specification [blender.org] for the Verse core technology. Or why not just surf the CVS and read some code [blender.org]? :)
If you have questions, you could drop by #verse on FreeNode [freenode.net], or use the mailing list [blender.org]. More developers would certainly not hurt.
Re:Verse (Score:3, Interesting)
I left that bit in when I submitted it specifically because I wanted to see if I could drag someone like you into the discussion
Re:Verse (Score:2)
I can't answer for Blender in any detail, as I'm not actually part of the developer pool for it. I work solely on Verse, so far.
But I do know that there is a developer who is working on getting Blender to use Verse, allowing real-time collaborative modelling across a network. I've seen him demo early versions of the code, so I know it's happening. I can easily imagine that being useful for a project such as this, where (I guess) many artists will be working on the same scenes.
An Open Source Script? (Score:1)
Re:An Open Source Script? (Score:3, Insightful)
wer (Score:1, Redundant)
Open source Bender! (Score:1)
Ohh BLENDER, sorry my mistake.
Re:Open source Bender! (Score:1)
Crossover (Score:2)
Render@home? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some issues that I could imagine:
-reproducibility: subsequent frames that were rendered by different clients should look exactly the same. This means that only a project provided rendering core can be used, no tinkering allowed by the user.
-copyright (not an issue in this case): suppose Toy Story 7 would use this concept. I guess Disney/Pixar wouldn't be to happy if all the frames were posted online well before the final release. Posting only low-res previews might actually create a big buzz.
Bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Render@home? (Score:2)
Blender is "deceptively good" (Score:4, Interesting)
The next killer app (Score:3, Interesting)
The success of the Halo movies, the game 'the Sims' and Pokemon success are prime examples that people like the 'director' concept.
Finally, Lots of people have been asking in various forums how to direct their own anime. A 'movie director' application would make it possible.
Re:The next killer app (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The next killer app (Score:2)
If you're going to make an animated film, first you need a story and a script. A good storyboard is the next big step. It's customary to then make the storyboard into a time
Re:The next killer app (Score:2)
reminds me of writing class (Score:2, Funny)
Dawn of a new era (Score:1)
It is predictable that few are understanding how big this is. Computer graphics have soaked into entertainment such that people have not yet captured their impact. How is an open movie different from a normal movie? Is the inspiration of the artist dumbed down?
Open entertainment is great for subjects or that happen not to fit the usuall bounds of 44 to 160 minutes. In can also be participatory, allowing viewers to watch scenes over again from different views or with different cuts. Distracted by ho
speaking of open source video editing... (Score:2)
Currently looking at Zwei-Stein. Is there anything out there better than that?
Re:speaking of open source video editing... (Score:2)
http://www.pitivi.org/ [pitivi.org]
http://kdenlive.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
http://positron.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
That, for me, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for a fully-open movie... I can't live without my Final Cut Pro. Are there any other options anyone knows about?
Render Farm (Score:2)
Never mind blender movies (Score:2)
Blender is a great visualisation package, but is absolutely terrible when trying to design real-world objects to scale, or something as simple as changing the overall colour of the object.
There's not actually that many changes that would have to be made to the codebase to achieve decent CAD functionality. I'd fix it myself but don't have the time. A sentiment echoed by many other developers, no doubt.
Re:But (Score:2, Funny)
-Jar.
Re:But (Score:1)
Re:boundaries (Score:2)
Sorry !