Blender

Durian DVD

Follow our progress!

  • on Twitter
  • on Identi.ca
  • Follow our commits on Twitter!

    Guardians – Community Help

    on February 7th, 2010, by ben

    Hello awesome Blender Community!

    Thanks for the comments on the Guardians in the previous post, I agree with most of them.

    For those who mentioned the time frame and scale of the project – that is the main reason the characters look the way they do. There are plenty of other factors I can point the finger at like:

    • getting familiar with using 100% Open Source and Creative Commons tools and resources
    • uncertainty about things working in 4k
    • not being used to the visual style we are trying to work in (not quite Pixar stylised but much further in that direction than realism)
    • not using things like raytracing, higher polycounts for base meshes and most other tricks I have been trying to previously construct a workflow from…

    …but the main issue is still good old fashioned time.

    The Guardians were scheduled as all four characters to be worked on at the same time. Modelling, hair, texturing, facial expressions and so on. Other than getting a head start on Jack’s face, the bulk of the modelling was done in a week. Facial shapes (so far) were done for all four in a bit over a day. Granted they use a lot of the same pieces and materials but working on four characters at the same time isn’t particularly efficient. As you can imagine if something was updated, then it often needed to be updated in the other four files for consistency. The four rig files are separate too, so everything needed copying in there as well. I tried merging all four characters into the one blend file for a while but had to split them back out eventually anyway.

    The result of the such a time frame is four characters that at least work to a certain level, but to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t include them in a reel or portfolio. Talking with Ton about the current level of the characters, I explained that I can’t think of one quick area that we could schedule to bring them up to a higher level. (We at the Blender Institute also agree that Proog and Emo have more character and polish by the way.) Given more time there is plenty of things I would tweak or simply redo outright, which would be fine for a personal project, but on a really tight schedule that we are having issues sticking to as it is, their budgeted time is already more than over. Originally I should be well into the modelling and texturing work of the snowy mountain range by now.

    So – where to from here? Excuses don’t get a film done. πŸ™‚

    There has been much support from the Blender Community – financial support, donations of textures, development work and generally cheering us on. As always this is very much appreciated! There has also been talk but nothing really put into practice yet about community contribution to the art assets themselves. This is our first go at changing that:

    guardians_r854.zip – 317.8mb (All four characters + Textures)

    Apologies for the relatively large file, but if I sampled the textures down too much then there wasn’t a huge point in including them. (Most now 2k instead of 4k.) This file includes all the Guardian meshes and textures with the current rigging progress. Just a basic camera and spotlight with some environment lighting. You should be able to see pretty obviously once you start playing around where the current issues are. I’m not a fan of the hands either for the record.

    For the film, we probably won’t use raytracing but it hasn’t been ruled out completely. The lighting in the previous image was kept quite simple because the textures and materials need to hold up before compositing and so on. More of an in-house review image than a promotional image. (One of the corrected ones looked quite dark on my monitor – good Eizo – here so we may have to get them calibrated.) Before I keep rambling –

    Feel free to play with basically everything except the face topology as that helps to transfer face shapes and speed maintenance things like that up. Play with textures, additional modelled details, scars, dirt, hair (please!) character traits and whatever you would like to try to make them more fun and unique. Please stick to the style and details of the concept art below where you can, but at this point we are unleashing them a bit to see how far the community can help us bring them visually.

    Thanks in advance for your time if you lend a hand- I hope you enjoy playing with them and I look forward to seeing how this turns out. Community involvement is something we probably should have tried to start sooner.

    Uploading

    There is an open ftp space on blender.org. It works like this:

    • ftp to: download.blender.org
    • user: anonymous
    • password: your email address

    When logged in, go to the directory β€˜incoming’. What you put there is visible here:

    download.blender.org/ftp/incoming/

    This upload space deletes all old files after a couple of weeks, so don’t use it for permanent storage, link to your file in the comments and we can look into it.

    –Ben.

    NOTE: Forgot to mention we all use latest SVN builds, so anything above revision 26680 to 90 or so should work fine.

    ***** NOTE 2: Apologies for the poor communication on our part regarding your help this week, Colin will be posting shortly about how we are planning to organise outside help in the near future. *****

    161 Responses to “Guardians – Community Help”

    1. RH2 Says:

      Where should the revised files be uploaded?

    2. jorisAR Says:

      I’ve just started learning Blender, so I’m afraid I can’t be of any help.
      Anyways, hope there will be a lot of respons to this, so that it turns out great.

      good luck

    3. Lasse R. Bruntse Says:

      Brilliant! What a great idea! This is a great way to include the community and save time simotaniously.

    4. spacetug Says:

      I have to say its great to finally give the blender community a chance to show what they can do.

      i am excited i can try and help.

    5. Revolt_Randy Says:

      Glad to see you’re reaching out for help as there is alot of talent in the community. I’m not that skilled to help out, but I will be downloading these to further examine how the characters are created, as a learning tool. Good luck and hope you receive lots of help from fellow blender users.
      Randy

    6. spacetug Says:

      @RH2-
      pasteall.org/blend (under 30 MB)
      that probably doesn’t help.
      i would use dropbox, because i already have it set up.
      if you unpack the textures, you could probably put it on mediafire (200 MB limit) or filefactory (300 MB)

      or rather, LMGTFY– http://tinyurl.com/9k9f5m

    7. spacetug Says:

      Ben, care to start a torrent?

    8. Yann Says:

      I actually wonder, should you open the subversion repo read-only to everyone, what would happen πŸ™‚ (a big network failure first probably, but beyond that πŸ˜› )

    9. Anonymous Says:

      I agree a torrent would be PREFECT for this. I can make one πŸ™‚

    10. Jacob Valenta Says:

      I can start a torrent with in the hour πŸ™‚ Ill post it here (unless the durian team starts one)

    11. Samuel Junior Says:

      http://www.4share.com
      Is a good site for upload files.

    12. lichtwerk Says:

      will there be a deadline for submitting? I could only start on this from february 14th onwards…

    13. Jacob Valenta Says:

      http://www.mediafire.com/?yhydufmy2mz

      Theres a torrent for it πŸ™‚

    14. erik90mx Says:

      I am in this project right now : http://creatucriatura.forosonline.es/board/portal.php
      but I want to help this project too(and I like the idea), where we can upload the changes?

      Can I change the shape of the face (without adding vertices)?

      Greetings

    15. J.B. Nicholson-Owens Says:

      I would suggest against BitTorrent, pasteall, mediafire, dropbox, filefactory, or any service linked to a “shortened” URL because they’re all temporary file serving services (or pointers to same). Torrents die when peers lose interest in sharing further. Eventually the service hosting the shortened URL dies and all of their URLs become useless. You can use inline HTML on blogs, there’s no need for shortening URLs (or any tracking tied to shortened URL use). After a while the filehosting services I listed above won’t let people get the data they want because the service will stop hosting that file. Whether the outage is due to a lack of popularity or a planned outage, who are we to say that 10 years from now someone should not be able to read this blog (or a copy of this blog from the Wayback Machine) and get this data?

      Share many copies of the data with different sites and protocols, but don’t depend on the aforementioned services to last.

      Instead I recommend The Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a great place to distribute virtually unlimited amounts of data to everyone for no cost. I posted Big Buck Bunny ISOs there with documentation and those files are still there, ready for anyone to download. Sita Sings the Blues did even more, encoding the movie many different ways and distributing many formats of that movie. You can even link directly to individual files hosted on Internet Archive without any hassles or intermediary ads/webpages getting in the way. Just link to the “download” URLs so that when archive.org librarians do their internal bookkeeping the download URLs redirect users to the right place. It’s easy, free, lasts for a lot longer than any other service, and archive.org will even do some transcoding for you. Archive.org also hosts the Wayback Machine, an incredible service to see many versions of old websites.

      archive.org beats all the aforementioned services including BitTorrent for longevity. Where all the other services fail, IA hosts a lot of stuff for a long time.

    16. spacetug Says:

      as long as you don’t change the topology (connections between verticies) then you’re fine. πŸ™‚
      incidentally, all four faces have the same topology, even though they are different in every other aspect.

    17. J09 Says:

      I wonder if creating a WIP thread on BlenderArtists for the Guardians would work well here.

      The community could make comments/changes as they do normally, and a BlenderArtist member could take over leadership – performing the changes the community recommends. If multiple artists make changes, then that leader would also keep track of which file is the most current revision.

      I’d do it myself, but I don’t have the time or skill. Anyways, it’s just a thought.

    18. Juan Romero Says:

      Hi, I’d be glad to help.
      I would like to comment on some issues:
      First, with all due respect, in my humble opinion the concept art made by David isn’t top notch. I’m not daying it’s bad but for a project like this I think it should have been better although I understand the constraints in resources and time.

      Second, yes, you should have organized community help much earlier. I was expecting to participate as soon as Ton made the anouncement, but nothing happened πŸ™

      Third, the style you are seeking, is not clear. is it semi-realistic? because i really don’t see it very stylized. The result to my eyes is like characters look like action figures, and everything else, by comparison like elaborated dioramas. I would like them much more if they were much more stylized, but like I said earlier, the concepts weren’t stilyzed nor spectacular.

      I have to say that you are doing a great job for the users and community and I’m sure Sintel will be great because you are very talented, I truly admire you but I think a little constructive criticism helps,

      Keep on rocking, guys!

    19. Nik Says:

      Great strategy, i kinda wonder why this wasn’t done sooner.

    20. hperigo Says:

      just one question:

      isΒ΄nt the changes in the shading system affect the work we make?

      see ya!

    21. Gu4r@ Says:

      Thanks Durian team. I will try my best.

    22. Juan Romero Says:

      Do we need a certain build? because with 2.5 alpha it crashes when I try to open the files

    23. Victor Says:

      Yeah, what version are you using for this, the last svn?

    24. RNS Says:

      sorry, wish to help,but I on a project for a TV studio children development program.best of luck.

    25. Max Puliero Says:

      wow! this is an awesome idea!
      I’m downloadin right now butthe serer is little busy πŸ˜€ after that I will try to do something πŸ™‚

    26. Jack Says:

      it seems to work with this graphicall svn build:

      http://www.graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=877

    27. Troy James Sobotka Says:

      “(One of the corrected ones looked quite dark on my monitor – good Eizo – here so we may have to get them calibrated.”

      *cough* *cough* Color Management *cough* *cough* Matt Ebb *cough* *cough*

    28. SANTIAGO Says:

      yes it crash if you try to open the file, but you can append the group with blender 2.49 (file>>append, then search the file, search groups)

    29. ralmon Says:

      Oh! Nice idea but then, since this is a community, someone should lead the individuals to coordinate.

      Hey is someone there willing to be the leader? We could start a site, or a topic in the blenderartist site, or something where we take notes of progress, keep contact, and organize.

      There should also be one who will keep contact with the Durian team if something arises.

      We also need one to contact all the members and keep them moving and also hiring new ones and telling them what to do.

      Those people will be busy.

    30. JustinBarrett Says:

      I don’t have much time ATM, but one thing that jumps out at me…these guys are all about the same age, just using some grey(hair/eyebrows/beard) and wrinkles in one could bring his age up and define him quickly…another form of definition is movement/motion also, it is quite possible one could be missing a hand or have a slight limp…not compromising his strength or ability to fight…but he definitely wouldn’t be the strongest runner/jumper…..just some thoughts.

    31. botanic Says:

      http://216.6.227.163/durian

      Set up an SVN for the files, feel free to use it. It is much faster then there ftp ^.^

    32. Robbie Losee Says:

      Hello Awesome Durian Team!

      I get the impression that there is a lot of work to be done, an increasingly limited time to do it, and a community eager to help out and be able to look at the finished product and say “I contributed that detail…” and “I helped make that…”

      I would like to suggest (humbly) that you collect up any and all of the time-consuming work that could be passed on to the community (without logistically hindering progress, of course) and make it available as soon as possible. Every bit of detail work done by the masses is a chuck of time saved for the core Durian team to be doing other essential work.

      Ask yourselves: What can we save time on by letting others do and what must be done ourselves?

      Let us be more than your critics and advisers. Let us be your fellow artists!

    33. Fatfinger Says:

      Looks interesting. Do the characters have I.K. arms, and has anything been done yet, regarding prop interaction/constraint?

      Best of luck with it, hope I can help, where possible.

    34. Fatfinger Says:

      Oops, I forgot about the new menus in 2.5. disregard my previous question.
      Carry on. :]

    35. dd Says:

      how about google docs..
      docs.google.com now support many file type upload (20gig free)

    36. D Says:

      Am I the only one for whom the shadow buffers don’t render? I turned on ray shadow, and that worked fine… πŸ™

      http://i45.tinypic.com/24c8nxw.png
      Just to avoid confusion, the left pic is an unmodified render and the right has more realistic eyes not really because of ray shadow, but because I changed the eye texture as I described previously.

      Anyway, what’s with the lack of shadows?

    37. Neoranga974 Says:

      Hey guys, read the article before posting.

      They provide ftp for upload “download.blender.org”, free access, you post here.

      I think durian team is very busy so they don’t have time to seek for every thing we post here. If you can contribute, then upload it where he said.

      Go go guys !

    38. Dimetrii Says:

      Hi, Ben.
      When the characters are ready, where can I send?

    39. Bao2 Says:

      I think instead of start uploading files to the ftp just upload a render and a text file with an email for contact and they can then ask you for the file to upload if they think it is worth.

    40. patimo Says:

      Bao2 is right. May be it is also a good idea to arrange something like a contest to choose the best render. It can also save the time of Durian team.

    41. Anonymous Says:

      Why not use SVN for Internet collaboration?

    42. ben Says:

      Hi all,

      The uploading details at the end were added after I made the original post, so apologies for any confusion. Thanks for those who set up alternative download options as well. Internet back home in Australia can be a bit limited in terms of bandwidth and sometimes speed so I’m not used to sharing lots of large files.

      All of the Durian team works on the latest 2.5 svn. Campbell made us a handy button so we can just update and build in one go so it’s a no brainer. I forgot to mention that, will update the main post.

      I think I had something else to say but we just had a break to clean the office. Hmm. Anyway, I think the main reason we held off with asking the rest of the community for external assets was whether or not the time we added in managing it would be more or less than the time we saved doing it all ourselves.

    43. D Says:

      I made a new skin shader as well as tweaked the eye. πŸ˜€ I hope you like it, as I think it’s a little better this way than it was before: reacting more realistically to light.

      Before: http://i45.tinypic.com/30ttgup.png
      After: http://i48.tinypic.com/nwzvvo.png

      Ben, your textures were excellent! Everything was there. Just a bit sparse on the tip of the nose and on the cheeks and lips.

      The render may look somewhat bland or harsh, but that is what you get with just one light source and a small AO.
      I made his skin less red and saturated to something I thought more appropriate, although this is easily reverted. Renders faster too, I believe. πŸ˜€

    44. danielvmacedo Says:

      I really like the D shader for the skin πŸ™‚

    45. Colezero Says:

      THis is a great idea, but hopefully the ‘flood’ of character uploads won’t slow you down, because you need to check all the files πŸ˜‰
      Anyway great idea!

      Best wishes and iam pretty sure that the dvd will be full of fantastic pictures.

    46. Giovanni Lanfiuti Says:

      I suggest to open a Blender Artists thread, it will help to quickly understand changes from the original file and would offer a great way to express opinions and suggestions…
      D shader looks very good.

    47. EdgyMunkey Says:

      That’s what I love about Blender : the fantastic user community!

      Too bad I’m a bit of a noob in Blender, otherwise I’d love to help out how I can πŸ™‚

    48. Cory Says:

      @D The skin shader looks much improved.

    49. Anber Says:

      @D, amazing what a few tweaks can do. Good job!

    50. Robert Says:

      @D I like the shade tweak it’s much better and nice job on the eye too!!

      @Durian team Guys keep up the good work… I can amagine that working under a thight schedule like yours is that you need to make compromises. I think it’s fantastic what can all be done with open source programs.

      I’ve been following blender projects for a year and a half now. I’m sure that there are a lot of people in the blender community like D that can contribute to this great project.

      I just want to let you know, keep up the great work and I look forward to an incredible open movie.

    51. blendNmix Says:

      Please don’t make noise! If you can help good, if not, keep quiet, please.

      They/we don’t need to know that you can’t take part because of any reasons.

    52. Anonymous Says:

      Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this project!

      Now’s a chance for the community to put their money where their mouth is, it’s easy to be vocal about what you don’t like, now let’s see those critical eyes put to work πŸ˜‰

    53. Tuomas Says:

      For future use: http://www.wreckamovie.com

      It’s an on-line collaborate movie-making site by creators of Star Wreck, one of the most downloaded internet movies ever.

      I’d say it would be the perfect tool for community input in Durian and future blender open movies.

    54. Anonabus Says:

      if your work is included in the final product do you get a credit in the film?

    55. D Says:

      JUST GETTING YOUR ATTENTION

      I think the community would benefit if someone from Team Durian could describe what exactly the Guardians are supposed to be wearing. That way, we can decide whether something needs improving and then have a goal to aim for.

      I’m having trouble improving the overall look of their clothing because I don’t know what they’re supposed to be wearing in the first place.

      We need at least basic details on each object such as material and color, and maybe something more specific such as stains and amount of wear.
      When you have a goal in mind, extraordinary things can happen.

      Thank you for your attention. πŸ™‚

      By the way, I still don’t know what’s up with buffer shadows.

    56. Dimetrii Says:

      Corrected form of characters.
      http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/460/jackfix.jpg
      http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/894/smithfix.jpg
      http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8963/laotseufix.jpg
      http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9195/darkfix.jpg
      Tomorrow I want to do as the head men at the sketch. And start edit the texture. Maybe I can do.)

    57. yoff Says:

      D’s after picture is just white for me…

    58. Cire Says:

      I actually think they hold up well, with the right lighting and material settings. The textures may need a bit of work, esp. the hands.

      Here’s a render with some minor geometry tweaks, more interesting lighting, material adjustments (mostly for specular) and a toning down of the red in the skin/SSS:

      I’ll work with it some more and post back later if I have the chance … can’t wait to see what others come up with!

    59. Cire Says:

      Link didn’t show up in that first post …

      Let’s try again:

      http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/zz106/Yecire/Guardian.png

    60. D Says:

      The materials look much improved, Cire! Care for some close ups? πŸ˜›

    61. UglyMike Says:

      Cire, really nice pose!!
      As to the texturing & geometry tweeks, these are rather hard to judge without a before and after view. (this shows of the improvements in D’s skin shader quite well as one can flip between both.)
      Is it possible to show your guardian in the same pose but with the textures (and geometry) from the original set?

    62. Riton Says:

      Hi,

      Thanks for posting your work. I’ve done some texture work for the arm. The new bump is quite awesome! But I’ve notice a strange comportement for the render : bump seems very important when render a close -up of the arm, but when I do a global render, we can’t see the bump anymore… Here are 2 images to explain :

      http://img706.imageshack.us/i/rendumanches.png/

      and the global render :

      http://img706.imageshack.us/i/renduglobal.png/

      The texture set is composed of a diffuse and a bump map.

    63. dseverino Says:

      Hello everybody !! πŸ˜‰

      A small resemblance to SINTEL :
      – a Girl
      – a Dragon
      – Guys
      – Mountain
      – Snow

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iFrHRaH0Os&feature=player_embedded#

      Make better !! Blender’s Community, CAN DO !!

    64. Juan Romero Says:

      @Riton,
      Well that’s just pixel interpolation working there. The bump details when are far, are smaller than 1 pixel, so interpolation occurs. Maybe Mitchell-Netravalli could improve the bump detail, but I doubt it, since de size of bumps and that of the whole image differ too much.
      Is like watching an flea through a electron microscope, and then watching it on the table and think “where did all those hairs go?!!”

    65. Juan Romero Says:

      @dseverino
      Oh-oh! someone already did Sintel!

    66. Dimetrii Says:

      Cartoon LaoTseu and Jack.

      http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/1389/cartonlaojack.jpg

    67. Dimetrii Says:

      Corrected form of characters.

      Jack: http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/460/jackfix.jpg

      Smith: http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/894/smithfix.jpg

    68. Dimetrii Says:

      LaoTseu: http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8963/laotseufix.jpg

      Dark: http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9195/darkfix.jpg

      Start edit the texture.

    69. yoff Says:

      Wow lots of good (and quality) effort there. This really needs to be organized, though, before people start duplicating work…

      I suggest to divide work into areas:
      – shape/modeling
      – textures/bump-/whatever- maps
      – shaders

      People will usually have special skills in one of those…

    70. D Says:

      I really like Riton’s textures. πŸ™‚ I hope the hands will get some work done on them, too.

      I wouldn’t really worry about the loss of bump detail; it’s normal, and when rendered in 4K, it will be unnoticible.

      I wonder, however, whether the ramp color shader applied with screen over the material is really necessary? Maybe it is, to simulate environment light reflection, but I wish the effect could be done in a more elegant, accurate way. πŸ™‚

    71. Riton Says:

      Ok, thanks for your answers.

      About the organisation, I just intend to rework various textures, expecially fabric texture. I won’t work on skin shader, i think D’s one is great.

      Can I add extra geometry for the boots (details, thong…)?

    72. AnaΓ«l Says:

      I think Dimetrii is in a good way of reshaping, the global dynamic is really better (dynamic is in fact the bigger problem of actual modeling), be careful to not be too realistic in the face (but i noticed you give different proposals).

      If the characters we’ll be seen only small and in action, if more important to have a good shape with a good dynamic than to have details.

      In the image posted by Cire we can see the problems of the shape, the pose don’t react natural, the boots are too long (should stop before the knees), the thighs are too long compare to the rest of the leg.

      http://anael.maratis3d.com/durian/Guardian.jpg

    73. Anonymous Says:

      in fact, we can notice the original models were really poorly designed and modeled.

      How many people in the Durian team are dedicated to the modeling?

      Can you pls give us more background about these characters?

    74. Cire Says:

      “The materials look much improved, Cire! Care for some close ups?”

      Thanks! Here ya go (didn’t realize photobucket downsized it):

      http://s4.postimage.org/Md_ii-c206a51bcef08286264ee20431fa8ae3.png

      “In the image posted by Cire we can see the problems of the shape, the pose don’t react natural, the boots are too long (should stop before the knees), the thighs are too long compare to the rest of the leg.”

      Yeah, I thought the boots were too high, which is why I lowered them for my render. πŸ™‚

      Which, of course, made the thighs appear longer now (I think it’s a bit better than the original proportions, though)… but I think the main problems shown by the pose is rig/weighting related, and I didn’t mess with those.

    75. BobJ Says:

      Cleaned up one of the staffs and remapped it…lower poly count and and a more workable layout.

      Quick test render, trying out bronze for the ferrels and ornaments, haven’t done the rub zones yet and no normal maps. Want some feed back before I commit more time.

      http://i46.tinypic.com/99owba.jpg

    76. erik90mx Says:

      Hello

      I made some little changes in these areas of Jack: Nose, complexion of the face, splits the eyebrow, scar and patch’s texture.

      To see him a bit more aggressive …

      these are the images:

      http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/6084/front.png

      http://img13.imageshack.us/i/sidefk.png/

      I want to change his body complexion a little and give him a good mustache.

      but … every time I go to “Particle Mode” and remove all the hair with the tool “Cut “when I return to “object mode ” the hair is still there.

      What can be?

      Greetings

    77. Anonabus Says:

      /wp-content/uploads/2010/01/blog_guard_progress.png
      ^ can you post the .blend files for these models to examine.

    78. ZeroO Says:

      How come the hair here in one of the old posts:
      /wp-content/uploads/2010/01/jack_hair_finally_nice.png
      looks much better then the current renders? Different render settings?

    79. Rudiger Says:

      Thanks so much Ben, for finally making this open-movie truly open!

      I too think D’s new skin and eye texture is a definite improvement and really hope it makes it in.
      Also, Dimetrii’s geometry tweaks are also looking promising, particularly for the hands.

      I’m also not really sure that it will be necessary to formally organise the community involvement at this stage. Ben’s models are already over 95% there, and people have only submitted changes if they thought they could improve on what’s already been done. Surely that means the submissions will gradually slow down on their own.

    80. Haidme Says:

      I have a question if these guys are all dead in the fist 2 minuets of the movie, where is the other project content? Why so much attention and wasting precious time on them? I don’t know the length of the movie, but I think that if its 25-30 minutes there should be a lot more content in it,a lot more characters to discuss.
      No offense,I’m just asking this question out of curiosity.

    81. Victor Says:

      It’s 4-5 minutes long, I think, so… you know 25-30 minutes is a film in terms of animation, it’s better something shorter that possesses quality than a film of 60 min with the default blender cube moving around.

    82. Le@ndro Says:

      Besides, Durian team is sharing mainly the first minute of the film (in order for us to have a surprise with the rest of the story), that’s why we are not discussing the rest of the story(board)/characters/etc.

      Regarding the modifications made to the gatekeepers, I did like very much the faces that Ben did, and not so much the more realistic ones that saw on Demetrii posts… About shading (I liked D’s too), i think it’s a bit early, isn’t it? Without lighting, and composing still established… but I don’t know the normal production flow for these things…

      Anyway, grate work Durian team and blenderheads!!!

    83. jirms Says:

      Thank you for releasing this. This is a very highly anticipated project and a lot of us are excited to the results when you are finished.

      Don’t let the nay-sayers discourage you. Negative comments from a scifi/fantasy fan community are often a way of saying we want this NOW!

    84. Cire Says:

      @ D: Sorry for the link problem with the larger image you asked for (if you happened to check it out already). This one should work:
      http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVMd_ii

      Dimetrii’s modifications look great, much more natural/realistic … but the design of the characters is supposed to remain somewhat stylized, right?

      btw: (anyone on the Durian team) which parts of these characters’ clothing will be simulated, as opposed to ‘rig-deformed’? Just the cloaks? the hoods as well? what about the baggy parts of the pants?

    85. Dimetrii Says:

      Styled with a cartoon. Not only is realistic. )
      http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/1389/cartonlaojack.jpg

    86. D Says:

      Thanks, Cire. πŸ™‚ The shaders seem to hold up well; I’m most impressed with the boots.

      I am of the opinion that the cloth textures really need some reworking, however. At the moment they just look like blotchy things, and the pants almost look like stone. I really wish I knew what they were supposed to be…

      If anyone thinks they’re good at doing textures and bumpmapping, I strongly hope they’ll take these characters on and work on their textures. Maybe work in conjunction with Riton: I hope to see more from him. πŸ˜€ You guys are needed.

      @ZeroO, the hair did look more realistic than it does now because the hair colors were changed, and I’m not sure of the reason for it. Jack’s hair is supposed to be gray, but real life gray hair is actually both black and white and none between. I also hope someone who knows blender hair can make the fixes. πŸ™‚

    87. Bao2 Says:

      I modified the hands and uploaded to the Durian ftp this file: Bao2-jack_hands.zip with the only textures I changed.

      This is a before/after render: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/3002/renderbeforeafter.jpg

    88. Bao2 Says:

      Hey Riton, upload to the ftp your work :

      http://img706.imageshack.us/i/rendumanches.png

      I am sure they will love take a look.

    89. Bao2 Says:

      The above link was broken, this one works:

      http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9935/rendumanches.png

      (modifications by Riton that I hope he upload to the durian ftp)

    90. Juan Romero Says:

      This is my try:
      http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/Lao-Onnevan.jpg

      Dimetrii, I like tour modifications a lot!

    91. Juan Romero Says:

      Oh, I forgot, this is realistic but I’m trying non realistic too, I’ll post later πŸ™‚

    92. Juan Romero Says:

      Stylized:
      http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/lao-OnnevanStylized.jpg

    93. GREENie Says:

      Juan Romero
      I love this.
      http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/Lao-Onnevan.jpg

    94. aisbaa Says:

      Aesthetic Science of Color http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PZZYuSCmWI
      I hope this will be useful..

    95. AMendes Says:

      After a week, a Durian Team note would be very useful to narrow down the efforts, specially Dimetrii’s and Juan Romero’s great efforts on the shape reworking. I like the Romero’s stylized version a lot (http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/lao-OnnevanStylized.jpg), but a little guidance from the team is needed so to not mismatch the overall film style Durian Team is looking for.

    96. Juan Romero Says:

      Yes, a little advice or comment from the Durian team would be very usefull πŸ™‚

    97. Bao2 Says:

      I think the only advice is try to follow the designs posted. Then upload your files compressed in .zip and post here the name of the zip file and a before-after render to the Durian team to look and then look at your uploaded file.

      For the hand I uploaded I did a photorrealistic hand and then mixed with the original Durian textures to tone down the photorrealism, that can be a tip to others to follow.

    98. Juan Romero Says:

      well, a comment would be welcomed, just to be sure the have seen it, you know

    99. Dimetrii Says:

      Cartoon texture LaoTseu.

      http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6774/texturcaroonlao.jpg

      Realistic texture Jack.

      http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3936/texturfixjack.jpg

    100. Dennis Says:

      I Juan Romero styled version, it gives Lao Tseu much more personality!

    101. Riton Says:

      Hi!

      I’m still continuing my texturing work. I’m having a lot of fun doing this!

      Here we have the hood :

      http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/uploads/img4b75a4d7c0a85.jpg

      and the belt :

      http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/uploads/img4b75a4fc80a74.jpg

      I’m having some trouble to find a correct material for rusty metal…still searching….

      And yes, I agree with the others, it would be great if we had some feedback from the team. πŸ™‚

    102. D Says:

      Riton you genius! πŸ˜€ Love the hood, though I suggest you make it more
      this colored: http://i50.tinypic.com/dph9g5.jpg
      Also, not sure what those splats that look like ink are. Maybe you could try to make it look more worn around the edge near the face by reducing bump and making it faded and fuzzy?

      For the rusty buckle, do one of following look appropriate?
      http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=1215710

    103. Izzem Says:

      love the hoodtexture! Great!

    104. Jimmy Haze Says:

      I had a great time this evening (friday afternoon weeklies) at the Blender institute,
      have seen some great Sintel stuff… wow… realy amazing!
      thanks to Ton and all members of the Durian team πŸ™‚

      Jim.

      PS: Thanks to Lee for this funny Sintel “Pinocchio” print πŸ˜‰

    105. kike sanz Says:

      I want my fire breathing dragon!

    106. yoff Says:

      Riton: The splats on the hood look duplicated. Otherwise nice πŸ™‚

    107. Agus Says:

      A week without

    108. Agus Says:

      A ENTIRE WEEK WITHOUT ANY BLOG UPDATE. WHATS GOING ON THERE? πŸ™‚

      We would really like to know about your fight there, at least the problems, you don’t have to give us good news all the time! keep it up thanks you very much team!

    109. Rounin Says:

      I really like Dimetrii model tweaks, the hands looks so much better. Add Riton’s and Cire’s textures and think’s it’ll look really good.

    110. erik90mx Says:

      Hello

      I continue working only on Jack
      And I repeat some of the changes:
      Shape of nose, scar (texture), Streaks in the eyebrow, I did his hair again, change the shape of his hand, complexion of the face and body.

      I hope you like the changes:

      http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/5118/jackfront.png

      http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/8706/jackside.png

      http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/8998/pantallazo1tg.png

      Greetings from http://creatucriatura.forosonline.es/board/index.html

      PD: How do I upload the. Blend and textures into the FTP space?

    111. Juan Romero Says:

      This is my last effort on the realistic Lao:
      http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/Lao-full1.jpg
      There are many things to improve, specially the hands shader, but now is time to sleep!

    112. Emili Sancha Says:

      Fantastic model Juan !!!… but….

      SOME people MUST calibrate their monitors !!!

    113. nikola Says:

      I really like how the realistic Lao is executed by Huan Romero and I’d like to hear how the core team reacts to that!

    114. Rudiger Says:

      Juan Romero: This looks really amazing! I would love to see it make it to the film.

    115. OriginalBBB Says:

      I really appreciate your work, Juan

    116. Samuel Junior Says:

      Very good Juan. πŸ˜€

    117. Anonymous Says:

      ZeroO: Good but you forgot to do the eye lashes.

      For the suit, there is simply no thoughtful design.

    118. Juan Romero Says:

      IΒ΄m still not happy with the hand shader, I will fix it later.
      Added cape, and improved textures. I guess it is not suitable for durian since it is too realistic for that, but it’s easy to modify into something less realistic.
      http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/LaoBig-Onnevan-1.jpg

    119. Juan Romero Says:

      Photobucket does some nasty filtering to the pics, flicker does resizing better, here is a better version:
      http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/4356792151_fb23629043_b.jpg

    120. Riton Says:

      Hi,

      D : Thx, I’ve corrected the hood color. Still working on the old metal shader!

      I’ve begun the boots. I’ve added a thong and textured it. Also reorganised the uv map…

      http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/uploads/img4b786ad71350b.jpg

      And here a global view :

      http://blenderclan.tuxfamily.org/html/uploads/img4b786b125602b.jpg

      See ya! πŸ˜€

    121. Deevad Says:

      @Juan Romero :
      (answering your first comment , concerning concept art )
      This is an open movie, so, feel free to propose top-notch concept art for the guardians on your 3D model. If the team feel it’s better, there will be no problem to use them.

      I very like your work on the stylised face here : http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/lao-OnnevanStylized.jpg. I would like such a work on each other characters face. ( I rather prefer stylized to realism. ). Can you propose this to the team (post here the link) ?

      On this one link (your last) ; http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/Lao-full1.jpg > it look to have a weak body for a warrior ; I like the various belt additions as the tissue belt , but don’t use red, it will be a key color for the screen composition to focus on the hair of Sintel. Guardians are snow barbarians and they can’t afford or have the technology level of tainting with color their clothes, and we can’t take time to explain he stole it to another rich traveler. Thanks to help Durianers !

    122. Juan Romero Says:

      render detail:
      http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4040/4356822133_5f1da381e4_o.jpg

    123. Deevad Says:

      @all that are really nice to tweak those models:

      Texture : The skin of characters feedback (face ) :
      -Too reddish around the eyes; they look as leaving dead. Please feel free to correct it, I didn’t had the time to ask the Durianer to correct it.

      The face ( in general ) are too smoothed and not enought angular. This work of Juan Romero : http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt333/onnevan/lao-OnnevanStylized.jpg Can give a good overview of what I previewed in the art direction. Think of the ‘anime’ part of Sintel ; other human have to follow a bit in the stylised way. I’m open to proposals.

    124. Juan Romero Says:

      OK, thanks for the guides! Reading now the comment I made about the concept, I feel a litttle embarrased, It sounds a little arrogant and stupid πŸ™
      David, I have seen your page and your paintings and well, I judged your work only by a sketch. I have to say the work I’ve seen from you now is fantastic and of course top-notch!
      then, IΒ΄ll make the stylised faces. I thougth from the beginning that the characters seemed too bulky. All of them. Maybe one character could be thinner, a la Bruce Lee…but anyway I’ll make whaterver fits better into the movie if the team wants me to .

    125. Deevad Says:

      Hey Thanks Juan for the comments on my work ; and no problem for the first comment. πŸ˜‰

      If you want other resources I did for the team ( paint over ) find them here in link :

      -texture guide:
      http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6436/jackskinmatpaintover.jpg

      -style (for Jack) :
      http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/1166/jackcorrectionforben.jpg

      -Some critissism of me after the first blog post about guardian :
      http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/645/blogguardprogresspainti.jpg

    126. OriginalBBB Says:

      I thin that a thinner guarian can go well, to enhance variety

    127. jcl Says:

      Experimenting with Smith’s face:

      http://jotaro.com/temp/smith_render.jpg

    128. Acolyte Says:

      Hey guys…great looking work on the paintovers and reworking the models. Only thing I have to say is, do we really need another anime? I really liked how things were progressing with the original characters. I think we can go a long way by simply improving or adding details to the shaders and the models. I think changing the style at this point is, first, a little late in the game, and second a little boring. I mean animes have been done to death. The thing I really like about this movie so far has been the way the concept art was very original and the characters seem to mimic a unique style. If i’m alone on this one, I apologize, but I was really happy with the work the original Durian team had done. We can improve it as a community, but please, no anime. Realistic is harder, but it will go a long way in being more impressive all around for a short as well as showing off Blender’s new improvements. Any other thoughts?

    129. D Says:

      Hi, Acolyte.

      Though I can’t speak for the Durian team, I think you shouldn’t have to worry about the style becoming too ‘anime’. I believe what Deevad was trying to say was that the Guardian characters currently don’t have the same amount of stylization that Sintel has.

      Although the style can definitely be said to be influenced in part by the Japanese aesthetic, it is in no way, shape or form meant to resemble anime as, for example, the Hatsune Miku model does.
      http://www.blendernation.com/hatsune-miku-rigged-blender-character-available/

      David Revoy and the team should already have established in their concept arts a good idea of what the style for Sintel should be, and it has shown to be a unique blend of different influences. If you’re not shocked by the final design of Sintel herself, the style for the Guardians and everyone else shouldn’t be too much of worry for you.

      πŸ™‚

    130. Anonabus Says:

      New concept art from someone else? at this stage in the game? don’t really see the point of that. It’s just going to make the project look even more disjointed and odd. If anything they should keep it more cohesive.

    131. munhu Says:

      I agree with Acolyte 101%!!!

    132. Deevad Says:

      @jcl: Thanks for the image posting ; I did a paint over and it’s can be a guide for Smith, I used your render for it .
      here : http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/3961/smithpaintover.jpg

      @Acolyte / Munhu : I’m ok with what D says. Don’t be affraid of the word “anime”; as a european I made the mistake (and sorry for it) to use it to include a lot of stylization terms. If you followed the project since the start , you will see the art direction is really clean about this. I invite you to read older post for more info about, and see the video on Blender conference about style.

      @Anonabus : It’s not “new concept-art” ; it’s “if you want to add your / belt / details / accessories we are not against, even if it’s not follow my original concept art clothes/ accessories”. I keep an eyes on the project to not look “disjointed and odd” so you don’t have to worry about this.

    133. Anonabus Says:

      excuse me? ( feel free to propose top-notch concept art for the guardians on your 3D model)
      Those are frivolous details(oh he added an extra button, does that need a new drawing?). I was getting more at a clash of styles being “odd” that’s all(sorry if you took it as more then that). Don’t want pokemon running around sintel do we πŸ™‚ . At this point everyone should be following your concept art and only your concept art because otherwise any additions might look out of place in this world you’re creating. It’s clear you’ve gone to great pains to make sure the development team strictly followed the concept art and you’re advising the community to stick to it as well. In fact I’d love to see more of it available as soon as possible to get a better feel for the look and style you want.

    134. ben Says:

      Hi all!

      Sorry to leave you all hanging like that for a week. I honestly wasn’t expecting people to immediately have time to jump on these. Thanks to David for pitching in a bit recently with feedback.

      Now that we (Durian team) can practically see the community help in motion we have been discussing better ways to practically help you help us. πŸ™‚ Colin is currently working on a blog post about that which we will hassle him about if it’s not posted later today. Hopefully it will help kick start ways for the community to help with a wider range of assets for the project. Think of me posting the guardians as more of a poorly executed ‘first go’ at asking for community involvement.

      So again – BIG thanks for the help so far on these characters, we’ll certainly try to do better at organisation/coordination in this area from now on.

    135. Dimetrii Says:

      You have all the characters? Or just ready Sintel and bandits. ???

    136. Juan Romero Says:

      So we better spot making changes until Collin says something.
      @Anonabus:
      I did a little arrogant comment about David’s concept drawings not being of the highest quality and he only said: “If you can make better concept art, c’mon do it and show us” That’s why he said we can make concept art yet, he allways will look if it fits, so it is never going to look uncohesive (does this word exist??!!)

    137. Anonabus Says:

      Fair enough.
      He should produce more concept art for the community to view and work off of. There is very little available at the moment.

    138. Juan Romero Says:

      I also wanted to say that the latest builds of Blender are impresively fast rendering, even with ray tracing, SSS and AO.
      Congratulations to the developers!!!!

    139. Anonymous Says:

      Juan R.: no, you have not been arrogant. If you are not allowed to say something else than “Epic!!!Β©”, let’s say that it is not what we can call an open project.
      Moreover, it is not “american idol” here.

      Deevad: I usually like your works but here, i’m sorry, you didn’t really think about your design. the guardian’s sheet looks more like doodles than concept artworks.
      Of course, we don’t have access to the rest of the works done, so we judge about what we are seeing.

      But i’m pretty sure after the Colin’s post, the project will get improvements quickly!

      Good luck!

    140. Acolyte Says:

      Thanks for the replies all. I think my mind is at ease with the blending of styles that was mentioned. Great work team, keep it up, and please post more more more test renders and news!!!

    141. Deevad Says:

      Anonabus : Concept-art period is over now, and each part of the movies almost got a drawing to do the concept art or to show the art-direction. Drawing more precise things for the community is not excluded in the future if the team accept I use my time budget in doing this, instead of doing mate-painting/ or continue criticism with paint-over.

      Anonymous : Thanks to usually like my work πŸ™‚ If you think you got better thinking on the guardian design, please share it.

    142. Shinobi Says:

      “Drawing more precise things for the community is not excluded in the future if the team accept I use my time budget in doing this, instead of doing mate-painting/ or continue criticism with paint-over.”

      David, this would be good too, but if you or the team have to choose, please concentrate on to driving the team better follow your guidelines and of course in matte painting, your matte paints really rock.

      This is nothing less than astonishing: http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6436/jackskinmatpaintover.jpg

    143. Frederick D Says:

      David’s paint-overs are great! They give much more understanding of the overall art style. Those details make all the difference.

      A texture is quickly swapped, maybe other parts in a production pipeline it is more difficult to make changes.

      I hope he (david) has time to do many of those ‘critics’ on any assets that are near final. And hopefully the team has enough time / people / funding to bring this epic film to completion with those last minute alterations.

    144. SeanJM Says:

      If you want people to work for free–the work your going to get is going to suck.

      If you are willing to pay…

      http://www.seanjmacisaac.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17&Itemid=16 <– demo reel

      Timelapse: http://www.seanjmacisaac.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=17

      you've got my email. I'm fast, and if you want good quality I'm your guy.

    145. Psy-Fi Says:

      You are indeed very good at modelling SeanJM, and I loved your tutorials, however saying that other people’s work sucks is not that polite, especially when this, actually, is not the case.
      And, though your modelling skills are excellent, your texturing skills, which seems to me to be the main problem here, are not as good in my opinion. It does not suck, but it’s not to up the quality presented by the community members either.
      So I think that you will excuse the Durian team for thinking like good businessmen (why not, you started it) and stay with the community.
      And I’ve got a question:Where were you when artists submitted proposals for Durian?

    146. Luks Says:

      @ SeanJm
      “If you want people to work for free–the work your going to get is going to suck.”
      I think you are wrong about that, blender is a free open source program, and there are many really good artists that work with it( go to http://blenderartists.org/forum/ and you’ ll know what i’m talking about) . Besides that, i think one of the main points of “community help” it’s to do it for free.

      Well that was all i had to say, ohh and congrats to the durian team, because this project is looking awesome. I’m gonna give those files a try.

      I’m sorry for my english πŸ™‚

    147. Anonymous Says:

      SeanJ: haha, you made me laugh! Thank you!

      Don’t worry fo the team, they can do a lot better! :p

    148. Juan Romero Says:

      No Collin’s blog post yet?:(:(:(

    149. Juan Romero Says:

      First try with Jack, sculpting it seemed a lot less realistic.. I don’t know, but I guess is the diffuse layer, maybe is too strong
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/30770860@N06/4361573300

    150. Dimetrii Says:

      SeanJM .
      Work your rather primitive. Not to see what you’re boasting.
      Portfolio weak. Where are your options for Durian. So, suck in the corner, and his mouth shut.

    151. Deevad Says:

      @Juan Romero : Good job on Jack face for the modeling part. It look more dynamic.

    152. nathan Says:

      @SeanJM:
      If you don’t want to help out, that’s fine. We’re not forcing people here. We’re not asking them to commit to anything. We’re not bribing them with false promises of “experience” or “good for your reel”. We’re just asking if people want to help out in their free time.

      Already it seems we’re getting some good work from people, so your “volunteer work = crap” assertion appears to be demonstrably false.

    153. JG Says:

      Hi !

      I’m a big fan of project Durian, and for what it’s worth, I really like the way it’s going, and I’m very glad to have an opportunity to contribute (even to a tiny amount).

      Sorry, catchin’ up a bit late, a lot of great work’s already been done by the community.

      I just figured from the concept art that Lao’s supposed to be an archer and didn’t find his bow in Ben’s archive, so I made him one (a bit extrapolated from David’s concept πŸ˜‰ and based on the staff mesh).

      You can see it here :

      http://download.blender.org/ftp/incoming/guardian_lao_tseu-JG-bow.png

      If you like it it’s yours .. I’ll be working on the materials and shapekeys and also make arrows .. (’cause playing around with 2.5 is a lot of fun too).

      Cheers,

      ______
      JG

    154. Deevad Says:

      @JG : Brillant Bow and good idea. This is defintely how Lao-tseu bow could look. Thanks !

    155. JG Says:

      Glad you like it !

      I kept the blades at the end of the bow because, appart from looking good πŸ˜› , it would allow Lao to fight both long and short range at the same time, and maybe result in original and cool fight choregraphy ?

      I’ll make a rig for the bow (if Lao plans to ever draw it), a quiver, arrows .. and try to add some “realness” to the whole thing .. and upload to the blendswap thing if you wanna use it ..

      See you on saturday maybe ?

      Cheers,

      ______
      JG

    156. Juan Romero (Onnevan) Says:

      @David: Collin said that we, the community, should only focus on Lao-Tseu for the moment, so IΒ΄m planning to finish it with all the details, I was wandering if you have more concepts of him, because I want to add all kind of details like bags, chains, short range weapons, etc.

      @JG: Maybe I could use your bow in my Lao-Tseu πŸ™‚

      And a reflexion: coudn’t we use a better system for communicating and sending models, shaders, wathever than comments on the blog? I mean officialy, to have an organised platform where the team could approve or reject the material?
      Thanks!

    157. munhu Says:

      Try Google Buzz, seems convenient

    158. Manu JΓ€rvinen Says:

      Or the http://www.wreckamovie.com – what Tuomas suggested a couple of dozen messages ago

      Tuomas Says:
      “It’s an on-line collaborate movie-making site by creators of Star Wreck, one of the most downloaded internet movies ever.

      I’d say it would be the perfect tool for community input in Durian and future blender open movies.”

    159. Michael Says:

      I’m not 100% up to date with the capabilities of Blender, but I noticed some important things missing from a lot of these renders.

      1) Eyelashes
      2) shadows within the hair/beards
      3) shadows from the hair onto the skin, and vice versa.

      Ideally you should have a base lighting setup for each type of lighting the character will appear in, and then always do your test renders from that setup (ideally with a set number of cameras that point to the important details). That way you can compare apples to apples when people do surfacing and texture changes.

      The lighting setup should include your base key light, fill lights, kickers/rims, environment map, shadow settings, etc. You should also be doing some test renders at the intended resolution, since a closeup/head-shot at 1k will need different texture love than a 2k or 4k shot.

      I might also add that rendering Durian at 4k is just plain stupid. Render at HD 1080p (1920×1080, or whatever your aspect ratio is for the vertical resolution) and call it a day. 4k is a colossal waste of render time, memory, and disk space.

      Cheers,
      Michael

    160. Luks Says:

      Why dont we use an irc channel like #Blenderdurian or #blenderchat to talk?

    161. AMendes Says:

      @Michael: Cinegrid Amsterdam is a project partner on Durian, and one of it’s the objectives is to encourage the creation of more 4K content. Durian will could probably be used to benchmark results of projects involving digital distribution and projection of audiovisual media at 4k. Check it on the sponsors section.