Animation done, sort of
on June 24th, 2010, by WilliamHi Community,
Here’s an update from the animators. Things in the animation team are winding down these days as we run out of shots to do. In terms of character animation there’s only one, maybe two, shots left to do – most of us have moved to other tasks, such as making final tweaks, and doing non-character based animation. There’s still a lot of rocks, hair and particles that need to be moving, but even so this milestone is a significant one for us.
Take a look at the above image showing the film in it’s current state inside the Blender Sequencer. The three clip stripes represents from the bottom up the layout, animation, and then rendering. The red strip in the center represents the only shot in the current version of the movie with no character animation, but Beorn will sort that out in due time.
Also, feast your eyes on this amazing scientific progress bar we’re using:
Exciting times! The end of animation also marks the end for certain team members, like me. I’m returning to Denmark on sunday to enjoy the summer and relax after some hard work. This has been an exhausting, exciting project, and I still can’t wait to see the final thing on a big screen.
Cheers
-William
June 24th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Fantastic work, thanks for the update 😀
looked closely for some spoilers, but nothing there 😀
June 24th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
WOW !!! a lot to lear from that time line!!
congrats great work!
June 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Congratulations folks – can’t wait to see the end result.
June 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Congratulations! Nice progress bar 😛
June 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for the insights! Wish you and the others who leave a good summertime and relaxing!
June 24th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Sounds like a big step taken! Congratulations!
June 24th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Way to go animation team! I’m psyched to see all your hard work and skill bring Sintel to life. From the little bit that has been shown, the animation looks stellar. Congrats on reaching this major milestone!
June 24th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
😀
This is great.
June 24th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Well done to you all a huge pat on the back! I’m so excited about seeing the final move, but at the same time a little sad to hear that this amazing durian team are slowly heading home! Well done to you all in advance and I’m sure all that hard work will be worth it!
June 24th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Is it me, or does the rendering progressbar look like something else?
June 24th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Yes, yes it does… A thermometer.
June 24th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Those are amazing time-lines. May I have the source-code? Is it in Pythong? Or did you use another code? I need timelines like this for an upcoming project.
June 24th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
exclent work guy. thanks….
June 24th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
I’m just wondering, are smoke/fire simulations used in Sintel? Didn’t hear about it since a very long time. Maybe this is one of those things that you want to be undisclosed because of its awesomeness, but I would like to know If they’re used at all. However, you’ve created a great move already. Epic renders combined with epic story and music will be .. well, epic I guess 🙂
June 24th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Very cool. I cannot wait for this film, this is the first open-project that I’ve actually followed. It’s very exciting.
June 24th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I think the mercury will spill from the top at the end 😀
June 24th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
big pen… progress bar!
June 24th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Isn’t that render-thermometer a bit overkill? You’ve already the LCD screen with the progress bar hanging on the green wall, right? 😀 😀 😀
@William: Will you attend the screening on July 18th?
Just ”kop op”, see you guys at Studio/K!
June 24th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
that progress bar is amazing where can i get the software for something like that? great job, with that progressbar you can’t do anything wrong (before the progress bar was designed you didn’t do anything wrong either but this makes it save ^^)
June 24th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
impresionante la barra de progreso.jejeje.
June 24th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
impressive progress bar.
June 24th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
As far as can be seen from the screenshot, the software for the progressbar seems to be the famous “edding” creative suite, i bet for this!
June 24th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
From that board I would say you guys need to cool down – badum-tish 🙂 Go have some beer! And champagne at the very end of course 🙂
Cheers!
June 24th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Congrats, guys!
PS Shameless self promotion: Stoked to see my patch in action in the sequencer shot 😀 😀
June 24th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
you guys have such advanced software to keep track of your progress 😛
June 24th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
It’s getting close! I love your high tech progress bar.
June 24th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
J: No, unfortunately not. I’ll be in the US at that time, but I’ll return for the ‘true’ premiere in september.
Wahooney: Yeah cheers, it’s very useful to be able to see which area you’re previewing. Thanks for that.
June 25th, 2010 at 2:27 am
Congratulations to the whole team! And have a great vacation, William, you deserve it. ^_^
-Reyn
June 25th, 2010 at 9:10 am
@William: The danish summer weather is no good – so don’t set your expectations to high… 🙂
June 25th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Good luck to all of you!
June 25th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Great 😀
Nice highly scientific progress bar 🙂 – Whoes email is that? xD
June 25th, 2010 at 11:32 am
HI all,
I have followed week after week this great work in progress, which is an amazing source of inspiration for me.
I have a question :
What program have you used for production purpose? I mean :
-Asset Management
-Scheduling
-Task management
Thank you, and sorry if the answer has already been given.
June 25th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Excellent!
Great to see one of the most difficult and time consuming parts of the project is wrapping up nicely. Cant wait to see it all 🙂
June 25th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Oh and 11.8 minutes in total – Im guessing from the screenshot! (I think this is the movie total minus the credits)
😀
June 25th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
@Morten
Aw Morten, I think it’s getting better. But maybe now, with a(THE) big festival coming up it might start raining again (as is usually does).. 😉
Anyway:
Sounds great, William! Can’t wait to see the movie.
June 26th, 2010 at 12:02 am
I know the main audio guy did final work in other software, but did you guys end up doing any sort of sound in Blender? For example, lip syncing?
I’m just hoping the next official release of Blender will have the audio/video sync fix included. I’ve heard the issue HAS been fixed using Jack supporting software (Audacity, etc), but I don’t know how official it is.
Hoping…
June 26th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
brownie: For long term planning Ton likes to use Inkscape to draw graphs and plans, and dice up major tasks between the worker bees. Weekly planning we do each monday, with each person writing down his/her tasks for the week, which are then presented at the friday weekly.
Alex Delderfield: You are correct about the length, the current version is without credits.
ShaneNewville: Not quite sure what you mean, but we use sound quite extensively in Blender, both for previewing sequences and doing lip syncing. We import audio clips into the Sequencer and then make sure AV Sync is enabled in the Timeline. It works quite well. Our biggest issue with sound has been the sorry state of audio support and drivers in Linux distributions.
Lasse R. Bruntse: Haha, true. See you at Roskilde! 😉
June 26th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I’m assuming the progress bar is open source, but – for the life of me – I can’t find a download link. 😀
Congratulations to the animators and the whole team!
June 26th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
@Matt
Right-click on the image and select “save picture as” 😉 😀
June 26th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Whahahaha, I wanted to say exactly the same! 😀
June 26th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
ShaneNewville: there’s a script called “bpyjack”
June 30th, 2010 at 9:41 am
This is simply awesome guys! Awesome progress bar too 😀
July 3rd, 2010 at 5:02 pm
This is a most awesome project we have seen to date! Incredible …simply incredible!