A glimpse of 4K
on August 30th, 2009, by benI was looking to fight jet lag by staying awake this afternoon, which is always helped by keeping active in some way. While I was out for a walk I thought it would be a cool idea to do a bit of matte painting work and remembered I took some cloud photos from the plane. With that as inspiration and reference I made the following as a quick 4K test.
Having created 4K textures plenty of times, working with the physical pixel width isn’t that new to me, but I think it is really exciting to see it as an image as it would appear in the film. Just think of it – every single frame of Durian will have this resolution and hopefully most frames will be loaded with even more detail.
For content creation and data management that starts to get a little scary (it was fun to watch Colin’s face each time Ton mentioned something he wanted to try in 4K), but as someone who loves details I’m personally very excited about the idea. We haven’t decided on a final aspect ratio but we think somewhere between 2.35:1 and 2.5:1 to capture the epic cinema feeling. This image is 2.35:1 give or take a pixel.
Finally, we are still working on the story so the image doesn’t really give anything away. We have decided to keep the story a surprise for the premiere, but we plan to openly share basically everything else as we develop it. Figured that was the best way to be as open as possible but still have a rewarding film at the end.
– Ben.
PS – http://picfindr.com/ – cool website for searching stock images that can be filtered via license.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Wow… Just Wow.
I can’t quite imagine how awesome durian is going to look.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Very cool!!!
Can’t wait to see the final movie and all the improvements and new stuff that it will bring to blender.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
need some work in edge of mountain..
August 30th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Very cool, Ben! Great post.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Great art quality! … and in one afternoon, with jet lag.
And thanks for the PicFindr.com link… if find any other, those are always welcome.
August 30th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Hrm. Suddenly 4k looks very realistic and feasible to me… so let’s check on 8k, stereo or so? 😉
-Ton-
August 30th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
O-M-G!!! My computer felt like the days of 56k modems downloading an image.
5 MB per frame! If my calculations are correct, that’s 57.6 GB for an 8 minute movie @24 frames/sec.
Amazing!
This gets better and better. Now you guys got me eagerly checking this site 4 times a day for any updates.
August 30th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Very nice 🙂
So, is 3D still on the table?
Cheers!
August 30th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Awesome matte painting Ben! It’s a great preview of 4K.
About the movie formats, my personal favorite is the Panavision 2.40:1 …it’s epic, good for actual film and I think is somehow compatible with the Scope DCI standard (2.39:1)… for the 3D version 😛
August 30th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
4k is awesome.
August 30th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Sweet painting! Man Durian is going to be awesome 😀
August 31st, 2009 at 1:30 am
I guess I’m spoiled after watching 8K Super Hi-Vision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision) in Yokohama a month ago… talk about eyes bleeding! 😀
4K is still a huge target, and I really look forward to seeing all that detail (even if “only” on HD). Durian is going to rock!
Great job on the mattepaint, Ben! And on a jet-lagged afternoon, wow.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:37 am
Thanks all for the comments!
@Ton – one technical milestone at a time!
@mohanohi – yes I agree about the mountain. I was hoping to get some more blending in there, some cloud whisping over the top and a few other changes to the image, but again – fighting jet lag, needing sleep, back at work (in Australia) today. It does prove a vaild point though about working with 4K in that we have no room to hide errors and less room for shortcuts. Colin described live action 4K as “If a person missed shaving one hair that morning you will see it…”
@Thorben – 3D is still on the table in the sense that we haven’t ruled it out or confirmed it. Much more discussion is needed on the pros and cons, particularly in terms of time and resources.
@Rafster – this is not a great example regarding file size. The file format I’m pretty sure we are using for renders is the OpenEXR format with all the different render passes and so on. So bigger I guess.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:42 am
@ejnersan – Shh!! Ton doesn’t need any more encouragement on the pushing boundaries side of things!
August 31st, 2009 at 7:57 am
“or so?”
C’mon Ton, don’t be shy. Go fulldome !!! :p
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=165419
Cheers
August 31st, 2009 at 12:17 pm
4k image…ok
But what kind of CPU & GPU is require to play this res?
For now, if you buy a new LCD, the standard hight resolution is 1980×1200.
Are you render this hires to reduce the image and have the natural AA and smooth?
August 31st, 2009 at 3:04 pm
The general idea for the final version is to show it through 4k projectors on the big screen. There are 4k monitors in existence, but we will be making smaller (HD, PAL, NTSC, etc) versions of the film and releasing them all so you can play it with whatever setup you have.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:09 pm
this would be awesome if the cinemark IMAX showed this in a few select cities 😀
September 1st, 2009 at 5:33 am
5mb per frame?, do yo think we’d have 8bit per channel on film?
Probably 30-60mb per frame, lossless compressed EXR’s (half float).
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Please make it 2.5:1, this would be so totally awesome. 🙂
September 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
ehm… nothing to say. Really. I’m still enjoying this eye-candy stuff…
Durian team… Avanti!!!!!
September 11th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Hey Ben, will you be doing tuts on the some of the stuff you did on the team?