Memory

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One of the best Blender production’s I’ve seen. Ever. High-resolution HD version available on YouTube. See their website (translated from Japanese by Google) for more information on this project.

3d: Ryusuke Furuya, Kyushu University Graduate School of Design.
Written and directed by Junichi Yamamoto.

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    • http://free3dmodels.fleshsoft.eu iuli

      super :)

    • saverio

      Beautiful video, great atmosphere and soundtrack…

    • http://www.peterstrobos.com Peter

      Wow! I’m lost for words. Really moving. Truly inspirational!

      I can’t wait for the day that I am able to produce something of this calibre using blender.

      Thanks.

    • granny_biggins

      That was one fantastic animation.

    • http://lasserb.dk Lasphere

      Wow, that was great! Good job!

    • http://lasserb.dk Lasphere

      I think we will se lots of productions being made with blender the upcoming years. I have one going myself.. :)

    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com Kernon

      That was really great! So many great things are being done in the Japanese Blender Community. I wish there was less of a language barrier.

    • rogper

      This is a special one :)
      Although the animation at some levels it’s not like Pixar, I’ve found it incredibly realistic and natural… sometimes I even had the feel of it being live action.
      The soundtrack reminded me of the Snes/Super Famicom Squaresoft RPG Video games :) liked it very much.
      Loved the story and all the mood of this short.
      Congratulations, it’s excellent ;)

    • Proportion

      now if that doesnt make u wanna learn blender i dont know what will hehe.

    • Xenon

      NO. From graphical perspective is really great.
      B

    • http://www.dustyghost.com dusty

      Utterly wonderful!!!!

      Love it! 100%

    • llamalizard

      I’m still not sure which bits were Mocap, if any…if those were just bone posing, it’s INCREDIBLY well done. this has a great visual style too, and is generally great. The emotions it brings up suprise me too, since I’ve never seen a blender film which has both inspired and saddened at the same time.

    • llamalizard

      NOTE: that nearly reduced me to tears, truthfully. I was saddened by the ending, but I suppose it made sense.

    • kram2301

      Oh dear! This is a moving story.
      The music fits it perfectly.
      This must have been a lot of work.
      It’s so horribly sad. I hardly ever get touched by a movie as much as I got from this.
      The only thing is, at the very end, when the soldier is going to delete all the memories. Is he supposed to act as if he’d sell his own grandmother or rather as if he has a heavy heart, doing it? Because he stopped too long for first and too short for second, in my opinion.
      Quality and Detail of this animation are outstanding! It has a touch of FF. Really really well done.
      This could actually be a good moodboard entry for Durian…

    • Artorp

      I’m speechless! It was a beautiful, fantastic film! Excellent work!

    • RNS

      It was beautiful done.Japaneses artist are more toward originality in telling good stories.those artist inspire me artistically…

    • paul_

      depressing

    • lifeling

      Wow,
      This was quite an emotional journey. I won’t say the animation or rendering was the best Ive seen. But this really was fantastic storytelling.

    • n00bhaxor

      Epic story. Really moving…

    • Magiciandude

      I feel like the modeling, texturing, and lighting were incredible. Just…outstanding! The overall production value was just…wow…amazing.

      However, I also feel like the characters were lacking emotion. There were several animation principles that could have been improved upon.

      Still, though. It’s not like I could do something like this! Absolutely incredible work! I can only hope to be this good one day.

    • Alchemyst

      superb animation, really moving. A perfect example of a well written, well directed and well animated story. Hope this does well on the festival circuit!

    • Blenderer

      Beautifully done :)
      Horribly sad :(

      (as said above)

    • Agile

      As a connoisseur of Japanese culture and animation I really welcome their every creative endeavour.
      There always is a hard work behind their stuff.
      I must say from my personal experience that some of their creations strongly influenced my life and career
      choices.
      They were in some periods of 80′ and 90′ at the cutting edge of progression. But if you have been here (in the land of analysis of their artistic messasge ) you could discover all land of meaning and intention that
      are not accessible to average viewers from the euro-culture influence region.
      That what is depressing for us for them is a standard way of viewing the world. Influenced by literature,
      and other things…
      We must first delineate the main traits of topics and storylines that are present in their animation.
      And then bring to light a background that leads to that all.
      ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
      ……………….There is really no reason to be depressed about the WORLD………………………………………………….
      ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

    • http://hyper-ball.net/ daywalker

      beautiful!!!

    • http://etwas.wolfish.org/ MadHyde

      Oh, I had already checked this great movie :)
      “Nico nico douga live” is going to stream it tomorrow.
      live comments with Memory at PM9:00(JST) 13.Aug.2009.

    • blenduder

      that nearly reduced me to tears
      Beautifully done

    • http://www.studiorola.com Sim Pern Chong

      This IS the best blender work i have ever seen!!! Simply incredible…

    • Gryphon

      Very anime, very post-apocalyptic, with a feeling of giant robot wars past. And it was animated in steps, not at the full framerate! Animators who are working on CG to be composited into anime don’t usually animate in steps! This is a little thing that goes a long way.

    • Gryphon

      Though… I guess it was a nuke.
      Sorry for double-post.

    • Xenon

      @gryphon: where it was written that animation was done in steps?

    • Xenon

      And there was used Blender internal?

    • Xenon

      And …what is to “animate in steps”???

    • http://www.tonymullen.com/Books.html TonyM

      Fantastic!

    • http://www.animationbytim.com/ Tim Formica [Room335]

      Stunning!!!

    • Paul

      That was great!!!

    • pixel master

      This was great, in every way. How can we see more Japanese Blender work?

    • http://shanenewville.deviantart.com ShaneNewville

      Wow. This is awesome.

    • afiefh

      The movie was beautiful, in some areas the animation could have been better, but it was still beautiful.
      Let’s hope the Durian team set their standards at least as high as this!

    • tud

      that was amazing

      but are all their works made with blender? on their website they have live action + 3D and it’s all really well done

    • http://www.roytheartist.com roy

      Wonderful! This is a true work of Art, we can all aspire to this level. Many congratulations to the producers.

    • Gryphon

      @Xenon:
      It was animated in 2s or 3s. In other words, each of the rendered frames in the animation was repeated for two or three standard frames, giving the appearance of a slower framerate. This technique is used in most traditional animation, because each frame has to be drawn by hand. Saving frames by animating in steps makes it quicker and cheaper to finish a traditional animation.

      Frequently, when CG is composited over traditional animation, the CG part is animated at a standard rate (25 FPS for PAL in Japan), and the juxtaposition of frame rates is really conspicuous. By rendering the CG portion of an animation in 2s or in 3s, you can reduce the clear delineation between the traditional parts and the CG parts.

      The video above, which is very clearly anime-inspired, goes so far as to use an obviously anime-standard frame rate, which is really cool. It adds a level of authenticity and enhances the feeling that this is anime.

      Blender recently gained a “Step” control on the “Render” panel in the F10 Render Buttons. This control tells Blender to repeat each rendered frame for the number of standard frames specified. This way, you can output video at a standard PAL or NTSC frame rate, while apparently reducing the playback frame rate (and reducing render time, because each frame is recycled).

    • Jahmaica

      Boring

    • Stiffy

      Sorry but by my standards this was not very good.

      To 2 Dimensional. Their errors in perspective were so bad I couldn’t even stand to watch the whole thing.

    • andycircus

      I had a panic attack there for a second, because I thought one person made all this :D

    • tonurs

      Fantastic ! Following the Youtube links I also came across this excellent work:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgGtNxOfxjA&feature=channel

    • Bobster

      I was wondering about the production environment, but saw it on their website. The hardware was an iMAC 2.8GHz intel, and a powerbook G4 1.5GHz. The software was Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe After Effects CS3, Adobe Illistrator CS3, VUE6, Final Cut Studio 2, and Blender. Considering the hardware used (only 2 computers), their organization/pipeline setup was even more impressive than the film (and it is very impressive). Great stuff!
      Bob

    • BlendNmix

      Why are you all loosing your objectivity when you see someone doing something with blender?
      Come on girls and guys :)

      The animation itself is boring, the screenplay is sooooooo boring, the compositing is ugly, the music is so “cliché” and bad!

      About their pipeline, it is ridiculous too long regarding the achievement.
      Blender and Gimp would have been far enough to get this result.

    • blndrusr

      F…!

      This is a genre breaking work for Blender!

      It deserves a graphical link from the main http://www.blender.org site like Apricot etc and a page dedicated to it with some development info mixed with a mini-interview with the makers.

      Works like this shouldn’t be allowed to become buried in the news archives in this site, but held up for all to see!

      But thanks to Blender Nation for bring this to our attention and many many thanks to the brilliant people who made it.

      I was almost expecting to see a FF character after the memory loaded – but they can’t be compared – this story has its own style, and certainly shouldn’t be compared to Pixar’s stuff for the same reason.

      This work stands on its own and we should be very proud that Blender was used in its development.

      Now could someone please add a visual link to it from the http://www.blender.org site, like Apricot, Durian, etc? :D

      It’s the thing I like most about http://forums.cgsociety.org/ – it’s graphical promo of top works in the forum header.

      But a thumbbnail of this video shouldn’t be rotated off the top spot for a while as there are few works we’ve seen developed with Blender that are comparable.

      I hope someone posts this to the same forums – it will be a great promo for Blender.

      blndrusr

    • Iconoclast

      This is not the best ever. It’s good, some aspects were top notch, some were weak. Personally, I liked the visual effects of the highlights and the HUD kind of stuff but the textures didn’t really feel right to me. But that’s something personal, and I didn’t make it.

      I liked the music, however cliche it may be. And the team effort was pretty good considered the size of the production.

    • http://wxtools.com Genscher

      @ BlendNmix:

      Nice critics – now show me your portfolio, please :-)

      Otherwise shut up and go on!

      (Man I can’t stand wanna-be’s)

      This stuff is just great!

    • Gryphon

      Wait a minute…

      BlendNmix wrote:
      “Why are you all loosing your objectivity…”

      Um…
      “The animation itself is boring” is subjective…
      “The screenplay is sooooooo boring” is subjective…
      “The compositing is ugly” is subjective…
      “The music is so ‘cliché’ and bad!” is at least partly subjective…

      “Blender and Gimp would have been far enough to get this result” is probably true… but then, Blender 2.3x was “far enough” to get the results seen in Elephants’ Dream. We’ve all seen a lot more done with a lot less, but when that happens it’s truly remarkable. And so is this, just for different reasons. But not everyone’s going to get that, because it’s subjective. And so are you.

      Please don’t let this turn into a flame war… please keep it focused on the video. This piece is way too good to be reduced to that.

    • http://www.numarul7.ro Numarul7

      The video sport the message to the Americans that bombed Japan and erased the past of the family and the future of the newborn letting the country in a teenage loss and grandparents zone.

      The message it is don`t erase the past , don`t forget the wrong things you do and don`t destroy.

      It is easy to make a bomb and make war , it is so hard to build something new , remember that!

      So yes the video it is not top quality , neither don`t have all Blender new features used , but that does not count.

      The fools will do harsh critics … the smart ones will just appreciate.

      Good work and good message!

    • http://www.vimeo.com/amdbcg amdbcg

      I like how there were no words expressed in this piece, but the story carried the same.
      Animation is hard no matter which way you look at it.
      This looks like production was hitting a deadline. I must say though, the emotions carried quite well. It told a story and that’s what counts.

      A good story can carry a crappy animation but a crappy story is still crappy no matter how much time you put into the animation :P. While not as good as Up, Lifted, or Magic (pixar shorts), it was definitely better than the tale of Desperaux :) – Desperaux had a quilted story mixed with semi-good animation/ SSS .

      this was a great story – especially since it carried through the language gap quite well
      animation was good, and the audio was good.

      I liked it.

    • http://www.davidrevoy.com David REVOY

      I watched this one at morning, and it was the best blender short I have seen ( sorry to ED and BBB ) I’m very near to this anime culture, and for me characters were loveable ; as faces expression and animation. I hope to watch more shorts from their talentous authors :)

    • http://www.DreadKnight666.com Dread Knight

      Impressive :)

    • Trawler

      A very nice work!! Great job! I think it would be even better with more sound. I’d love to take a foley pass at that, add some sound effects, and voices and laughing on the recordings. I certainly understand the choice of just music, but I also think it would add to the impact with the sound of the ships and of the soldier’s footsteps, radio chatter, electronic sounds of the military gear. And then the tinny sounds from the memory recording…

      Anyway, great animation!! Looking forward to seeing more from these artists in the future!

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    • Gerbin

      OMG! nice story. great animation style too. i love it! hope i can make something like this too in the near future. it has a final fantasy feel to it. 1 million stars!

    • XeroWolf

      WoW it’s simply beautiful. That’s all I can say.

      @ Jahmaica
      It must be terrible for you to have sight and yet be so blind.

    • ralmon

      To Trawler: That is something subjective too. I would not like it as much with those kind of sounds as it would distract the feeling that the music is giving. For example, in the end of the video we see explosion and other else, this is a very loud noise and would surely drown the music cause it would be more dramatic. Also they are not talking very much in the first place. So I think the choice is rather important for the feeling they want to achieve.

      The makers sure are talented. The animation may not be that good but the effectiveness of the storytelling is very awesome. Its much more wholesome than other videos I seen (even Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, sorry guys).

      One of the greatest story telling ever (made in Blender? can’t be sure if it is).

    • Sleeper

      @Gryphon: Japan uses a version of NTSC.

    • Manda

      Fantatic work!!

    • Alvin Saputra

      Excellent work!

      (actually when I open this thread from my rss, I thought it was about hardware topic (-_-) )

    • grafixsuz

      すごい！！これは本当にすごい。感動しました！福岡に住んでいますか？私は東区に住んでいるからもしよかったら何時日話しましょう。次のプロジェクトもＢｌｅｎｄｅｒを使ってください。あなたたちは天才です！

      @Gryphon, Japan actually is REgion 2, and uses NTSC as stated above. Frame rate of 29.7 FPS. Pal is for Australia and several other areas.

      I really enjoyed watching. It was very well executed considering the hardware they had to work with. I actually live in the same City as the University these people went to, soI would love to catch up and have a chat one day.

      Great work!

    • http://3dtinkerer.blogspot.com 3dtinkerer

      Fantastic story telling. Good choice of music background.

      Thanks for sharing.

    • johnj

      great job; all the tenderness and the wonder for life, and all the sadness for evil
      blender gives the power, but without a heart is not possible to do things like that
      thank you!

    • http://amarneethi.blogspot.com Amarneethi

      Im speechless……. This is awesome… And music supports it a lot….

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      I liked the movie very much. I had noticed some slow motions, but before reading this thread I hadn’t understood that the animation was stepped.

      For the sadness and global ambiance of the story, it reminds me the marvelous (and very sad too !) movie made in 2002 by Liam Kemp (Made alone !), named “This Wonderful Life”. Though, it was not made with Blender, but with 3ds.

    • Hessiess

      Nice, why do the japs always manage to come up with the most interesting and original ideas?

      The Blender foundation should make an anime:)

    • BlendNmix

      Genscher: This short is completely dull! Stop smoking your codes, pls. :]

    • EX

      Great idea !

    • http://3dtinkerer.blogspot.com 3dtinkerer

      I really like this video. Looking forward to the next one.

    • Gryphon

      @ Sleeper, graphixsuz:
      Gah?! Really? I thought we North Americans were the only ones using NTSC. Next I’ll be learning that we’re not the only ones who drive on the right side of the road! XD

    • http://dgreater1.blogspot.com DG1

      BlendNmix: It’s all subjective so stop (t)rolling in circle and move on, please.

      As for me, I believe some SFX could be use to enhance the video, well… as long as it doesn’t drown the music out which is for me, the thing the strings out our emotion.

    • http://www.reynantem.blogspot.com reyn

      For me, this is second to BBB design-wise, but first in terms of story and animation. Wow! It almost brought me to tears. Thanks for sharing! I’m even more inspired now. ^_^

      -Reyn

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    • BlendNmix

      Just have a look at “5 centimeter per second” because you are all thinking i’m a little Transformers fanatic.

      And of course, the other is not done with Blender so… :)

    • http://joshua.worth.id.au/ yokljo

      WOW! That was amazing! Thats some serious skill right there! I love how it shows off the cloth physics so well, and how it incorporates almost every feature in blender that I can think of.

    • Marc D

      I really liked it. Good job and thanks for sharing!

    • inatrice

      Fantastic!!! – once again it shows the power of Blender is mainly in the people who use it, ( and those who develop it of course! ;-) )

    • Olaf

      Wow! Excellent animation. Very powerfull. The rendering isn’t spectacular but it perfectly conveys the emotion and mood.

    • phorestro

      Muy bueno, mucho!

    • sgbzona

      Remarkable work ¡¡ . Nice story telling, music,
      ambientation. A few animated parts were a bit slow,
      but in my point of view this was a great work. Congrats
      to the team. ;)

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    • http://www.qso.com/carlautta/colin/Beta/ Tynach

      Wow… I’m absolutely speechless…

      I almost cried… The memories were all erased… Why?

    • Nemesis

      This is a brilliant video. It is inspirational.

      It is well planned and executed. The storyline, settings and ideas involved are put together nicely. The ending will shock a lot of people, but gives the story an interesting and unpredictable end.

      The makers are to be commended for there excellent work. I look forward to seeing more from these people.

      There is also some very interesting other things happening on Youtube, such as

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr4QBZfjtqs

      Also for all the scifi animators out there, there is a film project being put together by the makers of http://www.starwreck.com/ called Ironsky. http://www.ironsky.net/

      That will give you an idea of what can really be done when people who are dedicated to there work, sit down and actually do it.

      Blender is now at the point it can be used for projects such as these, in direct competition to 3ds, xsi, maya and lightave. Now that Blender removes the need for expensive upgrade cycles every year, money can be invested in hardware, books and training. Blender allows direct competition on skill basis alone, which is the great advantage of Blender. It is a social leveller

      Switching to blender has left me with money to spare, which is badly needed to pay the mortgage. That about Blender has made me appreciate it a lot, as it enables me to avoid a yearly upgrade expense and keep my apartment even with substantially less work to the point, I am actually losing weight.

      Thanks to all involved in any capacity with Blender for that. Blender has given me the chance to pay my bills. Blender has so far allowed me to keep my apartment after losing my main job, four months ago. That I will remember.

      Any of you who work in architecture and look like you are going to have future problems due to the economic crisis, I suggest you get the book Blender, 3d architecture, buildings and scenery. It is like architecture for idiots and OK to follow. If new to Blender, get Blender for dummies. Blender can actually do everything that autocad can do. Rendering is a bit more flexible if you look closely at it and can handle bigger files with more stability particulary in lunix.I put an 8gig flythrough file through Blender 2.48 a while back in linux and it handled it smoothly, without a problem. Read both books from cover to cover fist, then start and you should be OK. It is not as easy to use for architecture, but it is free and 70 euro will get you all the manuals you need to buy. Compared to Autocad that can allow you to stay in the business or enter it, literally. File importation is also pretty good as it can import Autocad, max, maya files and quite a few others, basically all the major 3d file formats.

      I just hope they get the 64 bit windows verison installer and issues sorted out, as I want to use the full 12gb of ram on my computer for flythrough work, so I can discard 3ds max design completely, as I have done with autocad.

      With some of the new features in Blender I maybe also able to drop photoshop, which will also save a lot of money. Hopefully soon I can also drop Z brush, then switch to linux 64bit with blender 64bit, when blender 2.5 is released.

      Blender is an ongoing sucess story. I look forward to 2.5.

      Keep up the good work and many thanks to all who have worked to produce, update and maintain Blender.

    • http://moriscanet.blogspot.com funlw65

      Quote:
      “Is he supposed to act as if he’d sell his own grandmother or rather as if he has a heavy heart, doing it? Because he stopped too long for first and too short for second, in my opinion.”

      IMO, it was ok. Imagine that soldier in tears (blurry sight, trying to “recover”), touched by the movie… had to make a decision and that was painful so, it ended fast.

      Technically, can be remake by a studio better.

    • tkroo

      bravo!

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    • Lucas Cavalcante

      Very good!!!