Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project

As requested by Tim Chen, a Taiwan University researcher who created a great non-linear image revision system with a GIMP prototype:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBL1cVzIQik

the full studio svn database for Sintel has been put online as well. Tim needs this data to investigate how a studio workflow for CG animation film goes in practice, and to check on the feasibility to develop a similar revision system for .blend files. If you check the video, this would certainly provide a revolutionary workflow for teams on films!

For anyone interested to investigate studio workflows in general, our svn is available for download here:

http://download.blender.org/durian/svn/

There’s also an md5 for the files. The .tar files have been created like this:

tar -cvf - ./svnroot/durian | split -a 4 -d -b 256m - /tmp/usb/durian.tar

Files that have been uploaded should be 268435456 bytes each, which exception for the last file which is 153933824 bytes. Total size of the svn data is about 114 GB.
Tips for how to merge it all and untar I found on this page.

-Ton-

The blog is quiet, but there’s still work on Sintel being done here.

In the past two-and-a-half months we worked on getting the film fully re-rendered in 4k, in a resolution of 4096×1744 pixels. When Pablo left back home to Patagonia mid December, Dolf took over his job for the final-final tweaks and solving some render errors. Yesterday he sent the last tweaks to the farm, and we might have today a working version!

Last week I watched with Dolf the full re-render in 1920 wide downscaled png playback, and the detail in the images is just amazing! It also pointed me to the fact our mp4 files here are quite heavily compressed… we should replace them with 800M versions or so.

In the next days (within a week) we aim at publishing the 1920 (“HD”) wide pngs online, so people can play around with compression setups. Please post links to movie files here (ogg, mp4) if you have good ones, then we update it on our mirrors too!

We will also output an original 4k version in 3×16 bits DPX format. That’s been sent on USB drive to our sponsors first, but I know they won’t mind us sharing it. Still would be awesome to have a couple of public screenings of the 4k version announced. Stay tuned!

I do know that on NAB Las Vegas Sintel (in 4k) will get prominently covered. 🙂

Another update: Jan Morgenstern made a soundtrack without voices, for dubbing pleasure:
http://download.blender.org/durian/movies/sintel-m+e-st.flac (71 MB FLAC, 48 kHz 16 bit Stereo)

Laters,

-Ton-

Although Sintel has been released, we will still continue to work on re-rendering the film in 4k format (3840 pixels wide, for digital projection or screens). This is being sponsored by the Amsterdam Cinegrid consortium, and will be available (tentatively) end of 2010.
As last and ultimate target we also would love to be able to deliver the film in stereoscopic format. We believe that an open and free accessible ‘stereo 3d’ film has a great potential to become a worldwide test and evaluation standard. It’s currently even open to deliver this in stereo-4k!

Blender Institute intends to produce this with the highest quality possible, which means that all shots in the film will be carefully (re)designed by an experienced stereographer assisted by experienced Blender artists. We also want to spend considerable time on optimizing and implementing an efficient stereographic editing workflow in Blender (camera tools, integrated render, compositing).

You can e-mail Ton Roosendaal to get further information about this sponsoring opportunity.

-Ton-

Here’s a zip with original un-touched 4k renders. One shot (cave) even has bad AA, but that’s because it was accidentally rendered without FSA. 🙂

(more…)

Over the course of the project its come to my attention that as developers we get it pretty easy with lots of encouraging comments from the community, however I worry that we don’t properly communicate the troubles we invariably cause when poking about with Blender.

To this end, here is a laundry list of memorable mistakes we made during the project.
– Campbell 🙂 (more…)

In the studio we have a variety of systems: Maqina Xeon workstations, Dell Xeon blades, off the shelf Intel I7’s, older workstations from Big Buck Bunny and our Justa-Cluster i7 render nodes so we thought it would be interesting to compare render times.

The tests below are not as comprehensive as they might be, but since we also use these systems on the farm and as artists workstations we decided to keep it simple.

(more…)

The premiere announcement overshadowed this one, so here’s it again:

To celebrate the end of the project, we will organize a good bye party for and with the team, including a private screening of the film in progress. We will show the film twice, including a sneak peek of the Making Of documentary by Ali Boubred.

Durian Finals Party
Sunday, July 18th, screenings on 20:30h and 21:30h
Studio K Cinema
Timorplein 62, Amsterdam

This is a private screening, so we’ll work with a guest list. To get on the guest list is easy, just email me (ton at blender org) your Durian DVD order number, and I’ll return your guest list number! With this number and your name you get admission to the theatre. Seems fair for our loyal investors, eh?

Don’t forget that we will show an unfinished film with an unfinished soundtrack. Only in September we’ll be ready for sure!

-Ton-