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It's HERE!!! Blender Peach Open Movie - The Blender Institute and … The Apricot Open Game!
Published by Tim Formica [Room335] on June 11th, 2007 in 3D News, Blender Institute
!!!EXCITING NEWS!!!
Ton Roosendaal has announced a follow up to the Orange project and more!
"As a follow-up to the successful project Orange's "Elephants Dream", the Blender Foundation will initiate another open movie project. Again a couple of the best 3D artists and developers in the Blender community will be invited to come together to work in Amsterdam on completing a short 3D animation movie."
Three well known Blender artists / animators: " Sacha "Sago" Goedegebure (Netherlands) and Lyubomir Kovachev (Bulgaria) have been approached. They will work with producer Ton Roosendaal to pick the other team members, define the concept and get a great script to work with. Andy Goralczyk, art director of the former Orange team, has accepted to join the team to migrate his experience especially."
If you want to be part of the process, see the details on the Blender announcement site.
Blender Institute for Open 3D Projects -
"Because of the overwhelming success of the first open movie project, Ton Roosendaal, the Blender Foundation's chairman, now works on establishing the "Blender Institute". This will be a permanent office and studio to more efficiently organize the Blender Foundation goals, but especially to coordinate and facilitate Open Projects related to 3D movies, games or special effects."
"As a second open project, the Blender Foundation and Crystal Space community are going to cooperate on organizing an Open Game. This will become possible thanks to the support by the NLGD Conference, the "Nederlandse Game Dagen", the annual conference for the Netherlands game industry."
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Excellent news! With Sago on board and bunnies, this thing is a surefire hit!
Wow, this is awesome news, and I look forward to monitoring the progress of the film and the publicity/ improvements it brings upon blender!
Out of curiosity, if we are interested in helping with Audio for either of these projects, what is the best way to get involved? I am assuming all source materials must be original recordings in order to ensure possibility of releasing under an open license, etc. so I am curious about helping with this.
Seablade
Cool! I wanna be a part of this!
Heh dang I just found the actual Peach Announcement page mentioning to check back for portfolio submission, so answers that one, but what about Apricot, same deal?
Seablade
This is great news. Really looking forward for more information!
HOLY SHEET *gets blending as quickly as possible*
Indeed, great news. I'm curious to find out more about the leaps in actual production. It's going to be a great '07 - with 2.5 coming out soon (not soon enough tho-).
Interested to watch the actual CVS system implemented with this one…is Verse dead? Anybody?
And are we implementing new OpenGL stuff? This is going to be one helluva project…
I can't wait…>bounce, bounce
truly a unexpected news so early, but wow, really good unexpected news, if only i had the ditches to work on it.I will do my best to help where i can, or rather is open to public editing.
Sounds awesome! I look foward to seeing the finnished film, and also wathcing as it develops! The concept draws look really funky, so it should be great!!!
An interesting pairing to begin with. Lyubomir Kovachev really is a Blender Guru/Ultimate Master and it is nice to see him involved in this project. Sacha's work is always well polished and his ideas are really interesting. I personally think this project is going to outshine Elephant's Dream by far, especially since they bungled pre-production during Project Orange!
owww…. nice characters (could use a little work) but I am happy you guys went with the cartoony style!
/me is tempted to go model one of the characters right now!
OMG, that hamster is awesome!
http://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/2fb41b51fd.jpg
Yes!
That's great.
- AniCator
Big WOW!…er real big WOW! ….and Calvin, wouldn't surprise me if you were part of this too. You are going to apply?
really good news :)
keep us updated
Tip for the character designers:
Remember to do *full-turnarounds on your selected character-designs
it will make it easier for the 3d-artists/modellers to understand
your models fully, otherwise - things that will look smart on paper
(eg: the impossible model) won't work in 3D, it also clarifies certain
issues about the models so everything works 100 %
*full-turnarounds are often referred to as a modelsheet/turnsheet.
This simply means drawing the character from several angles, that
is eg. 5-6 drawings showing the full body turned around 360 degrees.
Additionally draw pose-sheets to help animators with advanced posing
to show what the character can do. These also serve as inspirationals
for the other artists.
This is excellent news. I'm so excited!
Great news! Can't wait to see how it all will turn out!!
!!!
//Mathias
There's fur on those characters!
This is going to be so fun. :D
Sounds like good news. This could mean a great stream of exciting blender movies.
I was really hoping that the next Project Orange would be a short live action film, like the short film "405: The Movie", http://www.405themovie.com/Home.asp
What I had hoped for was for a DVD with 2K film scans (or digital) of raw footage of entire scenes, shot at 24 fps with 4:4:4 color, shot on blue and/or green screen, so everyone could practice compositing with professionally produced raw footage.
I would like to see Blender demonstrate digital sets, characters, props, explosions, bridges collapsing, car chases, composited with live action footage of miniature models and puppets. And as far as Blender development: a motion tracker, further develop Noodles with animated garbage mattes etc.
Certainly someone would donate the rental of F900 cameras, lights, etc, and could get a cinematographer interested to shoot it, and maybe, maybe, get a Hollywood celebrity to volunteer to star in it.
If two guys can make a short like the "405: The Movie" with no budget, Project Orange could too!
I would like to see Blender shine as a professional visual effects tool.
Maybe next time.
Wow, great news..
but, at this rate, all of the fruits will be used by 2010 and then Ton will need to start a project to manipulate DNA of fruits in order to create new kind of fruits so more open projects will be possible..
Result of BlenderFoundation's DNA fruit experiments in 2010: Project PinePear! :)
…that actually sounds kinda nice. Triple P's!
//Mathias
PinePears will be good, since you'll be able to prepare this without buying two different products: http://myso-calledjapaneselife.blogspot.com/2007/04/pear-pine-nut-cake.html
GREAT NEWS!
I also love the naming thing… you can imagine how I was totally amazed finding out this is going to be our neighbours: (4 doors away)
http://www.vosbroekema.nl/2007/05/28/paerz-ii/
Brand new opened; Restaurant PAERZ! :)
Note for non-dutchies, this is old-dutch writing for "Purple". But the hint to Pears was meant to yes.
And when you go further 4 more doors, you find this:
http://www.filmmore.nl/Home/index.aspx
A hip new facility for HDTV and film editing. :)
Yeah, we are going to have some fun there!
-Ton-
Awesome and Exciting news!!!
this is great news, really great. I can see the new Blenderheads coming after seeing the film… :P
[quote=Calvin]
OMG, that hamster is awesome!
http://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/2fb41b51fd.jpg/quote
nice artwork, just hope the feet don't stay the wrong way around, unless of coarse that is a characteristic feature of our the dear mouse.
Nice roughs though!
I wished I could quote someone correctly… sorry for the broken link guys, use calvin's.
i love this news, one of the cool things about this is we will probably end up with new toys like we did last time.
Wow - best of luck guys. We'll definitely be offering our render services :-)
Oh I really hope Jan Morgenstern does the music again. Hopefully he's not engaged with other projects…
Now I am officially excited about this. A fur system is what I need for my own project- and the best I could hope for up until now was to watch jakha's particles. This project looks more certain (time-frame wise) so this is definitely something for me to look forward to.
One question- is there any way I would be able to have access to the new goodies before it's part of the main blender release? Or will I have to wait until next year to get access to them?
Wow. All the best…and will this movie be a short?? The blender institute and the official game project with Crystalspace 3D is really very exciting news. :-)
Two wonderful projects! Especially the movie one. With Sago's sense of humor, Lyubomir's great skill in character animation and Andy's style, it's bound to shine brighter than the previous project.
…now, if the first one was Elephants Dream, this should be… Bunnies Fantasize. Yes!
… is the fact that I have soooo much to learn until I can consider myself to be half as good as necessary to participate in such a movie.
But maybe there are other ways in which I can help - I'd really love to participate. Be it for translating, checking the story, doing some soundtracks and the like.
Yt,
Gunnar
Two great projects! With Sago's sense of humor, Lyubomir's great skill in character animation and Andy's style, Project Peach is bound to shine brighter than its already-blinding Orange predecessor.
Now, if the first one was Elephants Dream, this one should be…Bunnies Fantasize! Yes!
Sweet! This is exciting news about the movie and game. :D
One thing I don't understand though is how come they're using crystal space instead of ogre? I would've thought ogre would've been preferred with the integration thing and all.
A new open movie? That's great news! The Blender Institute sounds very interesting, too.
Cheers
Thorsten
Wouldn't it be cool if it could all be rendered on BURP!
How can i apply for a position as a modeller?
This really caught me off guard- congratulations to all the artists who made the cut! Good luck with the film!
U-238: Apples to oranges. Crystal Space is a modular 3d engine that can serve as a full game engine if you include various plugins, Ogre3D is just a renderer. It didn't even have a scene graph last time I looked into it, so to use it as a replacement for the old Blender game engine, you'd have to tack on a lot of external stuff, and write most of a game engine first.
It'd kinda defeat the purpose.
Maybe a short without dialog, vis-à-vis the Pixar shorts, would be interesting and useful to the international audience this movie will be aimed at. It would also remove the need for subtitles, which were quite the headache (and in one instance a bit embarrassing) when producing the DVD, IIRC.
Pixar shorts are great. Many spin an entire tale without a single word :-D
Anyway, just an idea.
patdog: I would love too, but there are so many more skilled blender artists that I would actually be doing more damage than help by joining.
Sensei: "No dialog/but great music score" has been the medium for some of the greatest films ever made (think Charlie Chaplin.) If the right musical composition could be found, with a perfect placement of one of those extremely sad/touching scenes… within mist of comedy… we could be looking at an Oscar.
Pixar has come close to the concept, but slightly lacking in my opinion. Disney has touched it (Dumbo, Beauty and the Beast) Bard Bird nailed it with Iron Giant (Best animated Film ever made). BlueSky very close in Ice Age. Brad Bird once again almost pulled it off in the Incredibles.
I don't think the've given the call yet, from the site:
- June 16: Public call for portfolio submissions
- June 26: Closing date for submitting portfolios
- June 30: Announcement team (+ define spares)
I'd love to help as well, but for the movie, I don't think my work is up to the level they seek, yet, if it ever will be lol.
The game thing though….
if they could organize it so that the community can actually contribute stuff (models animations etc) that would be cool.
genre? who cares? fps seems cool enough, but what about a hybrid. sauerbrauten allows you to make your level as you play it. little big planet seems really cool as well. physics and creating your own solid platform game. this idea goes really well with open source IMO.
a coop multiplayer rpg like zelda? With elements of little big planet? Top down shooter like alien swarm?
Anyone remember battlezone? Take the UNREAL/Starcraft/battlezone1 mood, combine it with the strategy stuff of battlezone2, throw in player movement of call of duty United offense/FEAR, and give it a kick ass story.
Brainstorming doesn't hurt, and it's easy….
@Dr D, U-283: Well, Ogre has a scenegraph now (and does so for quite a while).
I think its really a shame (and a stratgic error on the side of Blender) that Blender bets on Crystal Space and not Ogre since Ogre is widely considered as one of the (if not the single) best open source 3D engines available, regarding render quality and - unlike many OS APIs - structure, programming and documentation. Looking at both engine's references you will find an outstanding selection of real games, open source and a number of commercial titles, proving Ogre is really "industry strength" — despite of its lack of game logic support. Besides, there are open source game engines built on top of Ogre.
I'd really love to see more from that Ogre-into-Blender project instead of a Crystal Space game.
@Niaho: I agree, I would love to see ogre used, as it is one of the best OS graphic engines around. Problem is, it's just that, a graphics engine, where as crystal space is a complete game engine (including networking, sound, input, etc.) To add all of those extra pieces to an ogre based engine would probably be outside the project's scope. Besides, people have been working on the crystalspace/blender for quite a while.
@Tombjo: Great idea. That would be a great way for people to contribute, and it would make life easier for the project team as well. (Weren't there problems with render time during Orange?) Only question is if BURP is up to the challenge
Hope they have a script you can enjoy this time around. ED, while superbly executed, had the most painfully annoying script…
(Just the a random thought.)
@Niahom, methinks: from what it looks like… it is Crystal Space community that has offered to help and willing to cooperate with the Blender Foundation. Including their developers who will be improving the engine as the game continues.
Is there an Ogre community that is enthusiastic as the Crystal Space community in seeing the project to completion?
(Just the a random thought.)
@Calvin: Probably, if someone actually approached them. But like I mentioned before, one of the advantages with Crystal space is the existing Crystal/Blender project (which at one point was being considered to replace the blender game engine)
@vidrazor: By the sounds of it, they do. The problem with ED was that they didn't come up with a script until halfway through the project. That said, it was meant more as a tech-demo.
I would like a message in the movie like this girl does
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8cmWZOX8Q
This is great news!
I am just slightly disappointed it goes in the trendy way of cute and fluffy animals - people might shoot me for saying that, but i actually loved the mystery of elephants dreams [after i watched the conference where they explained what it meant], it felt different
on the other hand, if the goal is to get more people to know blender, i agree it's better this way.
good luck to all participants! (and please make it at least a bit original)
@B-)art: that’s the only way to go!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5968977073007258412
I'm very happy to read that there will be an other fruit in the basket!
I have loved Elephants Dream, and I'm very confident in the next movie.
Good luck to the new coming team, and have some rest before starting, because you'll need all your energy one launched !
Two wonderful projects. With Sago's sense of humor, Lyubomir's character animation skills and Andy's style, project Peach is bound to shine brighter than its already-blinding Orange predecessor.
…now, if the first one was called Elephants Dream, this one shall be…Bunnies Fantasize! Yes!
GOD! this sound excelent news, I really love the idea for the Blender Institute.
Congrats
Is the institute open now?
If not, what's the time frame?
From the looks of it, I'm guessing it's near the zoo. Is that right?
Auria:
Maybe I'm biased, as I love cartoon style stuff, but maybe it will be better for the blender community if they next movie is more accessible. I remember showing a lot of people ED and the response being along the lines of "sure, the visuals are great, but what the hell is it about?"
Personally, I liked everything about ED except the acting. However, I'm of the opinion that elitist art is self defeating, especially if you are using it to try and promote something.
Plus, a movie about furry creatures will hopefully push the development of faster hair/fur rendering.
Now the Open Game is what gets me going! (not to take anything away from the mouth-watering goodies that another Open Movie will produce!)
Gotta say I agree with Niaho about OGRE, although I understand it's as much a Crystal Space initiative as a Blender one.
mmm, Crystal Space does have more runs on the board.
Ok, I'll do some research before opening my mouth next time. Crystal Space seems to be the natural partner to Blender doesn't it… (even if it its renderer isn't quite at at OGRE level.)
Sago is going to make this one fucking good
Mmmmm! The furry animals route is kinda well-worn, but yes, we want it accessible, so this is how to go! Also, because it is well-worn, it will make it much easier to compare the level of quality of this short with others. So good choice - and a challenge!
Looking forward to the fur/rigging/compositing updates that will come out of this!
I must give a vote for the compositing movie for some time in the future. Blender is now capable of some really cool after effects. It would be a fascinating experiment to produce a short live action film and make the empasis on Blender as an effects studio (kiddies, can we say photo-realistic rendering and camera tracking?).
Concerning the game discussion, there is an interesting comparison page for Ogre vs. Crysta (found on the Crystal Space website): http://www.arcanoria.com/CS-Ogre.php
It says basically the same things that people pointed out in this discussion, i.e. that Crystal is more complete, but it also stresses the facts that makes me an Ogre fan: The excellent structure, community support and documentation of Ogre and its impressive showcase. I'd rather spend my time writing bindings to other APIs than figuring out how to use a badly documented engine but I understand that the game guys want to start working on the game right away. On the other hand, numerous binding for Ogre exist (see link on the page mentioned).
Anyway, I hope that the Ogre-Blender connection will non the less be strengthened in the future.
It's "it's", not "its", btw
[quote]
Sago is going to make this one fucking good
[/quote]
Yes - He's F***ing nuts so yeah, this will be fun!
@Esben: Sorry to carry on with the off-topic, but isn't it "its" when it doesn't mean "it is":
http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/english_grammar_style/difference_between_its.html
But yeah, Sago is out of his mind! Hope he'll be able to assemble like minded people to work on the story. :)
//Mathias
Esben is correct. It should be "it's" (It is here.).
About the CS vs Ogre debate:
It is not a choice against Ogre, nor it's a strategic decision to replace the Blender engine with Crystal Space.
We just happen to work online with a couple of CS developers already, the CS project seems well organized, and it indeed looks like a complete game engine you can use to deliver a product in. Further, you cannot pick both engines for 1 project… so whatever you choose, it is always leaving out others.
Further it is especially the idea of the Blender Institute to have continuity. So, let's get ready for a Blender-Ogre next year? :)
-Ton-
Yaeh!
And Then Blender-Irrlicht, and then Gimp-Blender! :)
Open source unite yourselves!
And please be patient with developers or please steal a bank :)).
Hi, I'm the project manager of Crystal Space. I agree on most of the criticisms on Crystal Space versus Ogre. The documentation is indeed not as good. Our community is indeed not as big and we indeed don't have as many showcases. However, we are not standing still. Documentation is improving and while our community is not big it is very stable and dedicated. And showcases I'm sure will come in the future.
Ogre does indeed also have external game engines but I have been told (could be wrong on this) that they are not as well integrated as our own CEL game engine. CEL is becoming very popular and the CELstart tool (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/CELstart) is gaining a lot of momentum. While Crystal Space itself is relatively complicated if you add CEL and especially CELstart on top of that you can make full and powerful games without even touching a single line of C++. Instead you write game logic using descriptive xml files and/or python scripts.
I strongly believe that the way we are going with Crystal Space is right. That doesn't mean that I think Ogre is doing the wrong thing. Ogre is a powerful project and certainly a very good choice for any 3D game.
Greetings,
WOW! i'm excited!
REALLY excited!!!!
extremely excited!!!!!!
maybe so excited i'm, morbidly excited!!!
or perhaps im suffering excited delirium!!!!
:P
Just like Blender itself, the more this project carries on, the better it gets! Better than Elephants Dream? I'm sure it will be.
Visually, Elephants Dream was excellent, and so to was the soundtrack. The only part I didn't like was the (somewhat) unclear storyline. A prequel, anyone? I don't care if the episodes are jumbled up like the Star Wars saga, E.D. already has a great storyline. But that's the _only_ complaint I had about E.D. - everything else is thumbs up.
Bring on the next project!
Wow, I never noticed that Ton himself dropped messages here…
G'day from downunder Ton!
–Sam
I love the concept of an open source movie, but was sorely disappointed by Elephants Dream. As others have mentioned, the script was pretty awful. I seem to remember one of the people involved with the project saying that the narrative reflected the nature of open-source tools - quirky and inaccessible. Time to get rid of that thinking, both for this film's audience and new users of Blender.
Testing, testing… (to see if I can finally post comments).