Plumiferos to premiere on February 18th?

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Interesting news about Plumiferos, the first feature-length movie in Blender – or in Open Source 3D in general.

The project seemed to have died a silent death about a year and a half ago. It now turns out though that a new team of people has finished the movie in secrecy and indications are that it’ll premiere on February 18th.

Claudio Andauer (Malefico) writes:

I met [director Daniel De Felippo], and the conclusion is that the producers do have in mind to premiere the movie (which was incomplete a year and a half ago) next February. In fact, the studio was working secretly, without telling anyone not even the director, all past year. Almost like an army of tiny elves.

When I left the production, there was nearly 80% of the movie finished. 90% of the animation was blocked, a few scenes needed to be lightened, and only around 20% of the shots were rendered/composited, maybe more.

Plumíferos was going to be the first 3D movie made with FLOSS, even more, it was going to be the first argentine 3D movie ever done. Today it can still be, although those who finish it are not the same who started it. My sincere congratulations to the team that took the torch and guided to good harbor our most pampered creature.

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    • marijn

      for the people who didn’t know it (like me): FLOSS stands for Free/Libre/Open Source Software

    • http://www.youtube.com/robbielosee Robbie Losee

      So it is true? This is GREAT!

      @benjaminbailey – My apologies for being such a skeptic when you reported this via the “your news” system. I am very glad to see it is true after all.

    • Spencer Dupre

      Hey, it’s not dead after all!!! Congrats to this team, can’t wait to see it.

    • Felix

      WOW – Awesome/Epic news right there! :)

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar gespertino

      There’s a rumor that the movie is being finished with commercial tools and Blender isn’t being used anymore.
      As far as I know they’re using commercial compositing software to beauty/finish some old renders and visualizations and put the scenes together.
      I hope they did a decent job. I’m afraid that a movie with 3 years old renders might look pretty dated now (no fur, no AO, etc).

    • Iconoclast

      …lies?

      Awesome. I remember them starting this when I found Blender. Aye!

      Also, you right above me, that’s a serious statement, you got anything to back that up?

    • http://johantri.com johantri

      CONGRATULATION !! ^_^ is it going tobe released internationaly ? looking forward to watch it in my country, indonesia

    • http://www.jpbouza.com.ar jpbouza

      Greaat news!

      Although I doubt this new team used Open Source software exclusively. Not talking about 3d, cause that´s surely 100% blender, but I doubt the finishing process was done with free software.

      Anyway, great achievement!

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar gespertino

      @Iconoclast: Of course they started it using blender and most of it is made with Blender. What I heard is that the new team that took over the project and finished it didn’t use Blender. So it’s not a “Free Software only” project anymore.
      It’s not a big deal anyway. Just a production decision. After all is a commercial movie and they have the right to choose the tools they want.
      I just wanted to mention that because people keeps talking about “a movie made with free software” and even the Plumiferos’ website doesn’t mention that argument anymore (there’s a Blender logo though).

      And no, I have no links to back that up. Or you want me to tell you who told me? :-)

    • http://www.jorgerausch.com.ar Jorge Rausch

      I do Gespertino! I wanna know who said that to you!!!!!

    • Iconoclast

      @gespertino: Basically, yeah, who told you? I guess my inner FOSS fanboy was just hurt. I didn’t say they couldn’t but I didn’t know the new team wasn’t going for the open alternative. As long as they don’t pretend it was, I’m fine with that.

    • http://twoday.tuwien.ac.at/pub/ panzi

      Awesome!

      What was the reason for the death and reincarnation?

    • http://oenvoyage.wordpress.com oenvoyage

      Open source or not, it is still great news to see the first argentine 3d movie.
      And i will be Argentina around that time, so i am going to see it for sure :)

    • nw

      So much great news today!

    • http://www.jpbouza.com.ar jpbouza

      OK, there is nothing wrong with plumíferos being out, the only thing that has to be clear for the community is that it ended up not being 100% FOSS, though the 3D is 100% Blender.

      Wisely enough, the producers are not saying anything about the movie being 100% FOSS at their homepage now.

      I just wanted to make that clear in case someone was getting things in a wrong way.

      So it is a great achievement for Blender, but not that great for the spirit of Open Source productions.

      Moreover (you can call me an extremists, hehe), but I think if we want to do a 100% FOSS production, we should start thinking on using FOSS also for the soundtrack creation and every other area of the production. So, giving a little thought to Ardour, Jack, Audacity, LMMS and all the other FLOSS sound production software out there would be cool. Making a movie is not only about Images.

    • morre

      I would say that the sound of a movie is actually more important than the images. Look at South Park – the movie, do you that movie would have been as good without good sound/music production?

    • Markus

      @Bart
      It would be nice to get a interview and find out how much Blender was used in the end, thank you.

      Markus

      PS: I hope this news is still Blender related, but I guess not…

    • http://rogerwickes.com Papasmurf

      Inspired by altruism,
      motivated by comaraderie,
      dedicated to the goal,
      they press on.

      In spite of setbacks,
      despite daunting obstacles,
      besides the trials and tribulations,
      they realize their dream.

      Congratulations, Team Plumiferos!

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar gespertino

      Here’s some backup information for my previous claims about Plumiferos not being completed using Blender. One of their sponsors (check at the bottom of the the official website) is “Edgar Allan Post”, a well known local post-production facility that use high end commercial tools.
      If they were involved, then other software was used (is not very likely that they just got their name there just as money sponsors).

      Anyway. That isn’t necessarily something bad, and that doesn’t change the fact that most of the film was done with Blender in the first stage.

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

      This is great news.

      Of course it would have been nice if the original team, using the original toolset, had been the ones to ride over the finish line, but from any perspective having a finished product is better than having an unfinished, forgotten project.

      In fact, if other 3D tools were used to complete the film (and I think that they probably were), then this is great validation that Blender can integrate nicely in a pipeline with other top-end production tools. This is at least as interesting and potentially much more useful to a large studio than knowing that Blender can be used to make a movie on its own. Open source purists may be disappointed, but if you’re interested in seeing wider professional adoption of Blender, then I think this will all reflect very positively on Blender.

    • http://www.blendertorenderman.org Ted Gocek

      I have waited for this to come out for so long, thought it was dead. Awesome!

      As for the comments regarding %100 open source software… well it may be ALL Blender for the modeling and animation, rendering even but when it comes to post production, there is very few compositing and editing tools out there in the open source world that can even touch the likes of something like AfterEffects and nothing like Nuke. Yes there are SOME tools out there that try to achieve a basic working functionality of the commercial tools but sadly that is one area that open source is very lacking in.

      As TonyM said – Blender purists will be irritated with this production decision but in the end it only helps Blender. Most 3D tools are not designed to be end all be all for everything, they are designed for a purpose and when that purpose is complete it goes to the next tool, be it commercial, in house, or open source in a professional production pipeline. For Blender to be taken seriously by these places it HAS to mesh well with their existing pipeline and in this case it seems that the team did what they had to do to make it happen. I say congratulations!

      My two cents

    • vidrazor2

      Regardless of the reasons why it may have gone a commercial route, I wonder what ever happened in the first place that derailed the original project. We may never know. Who’s in charge of this project anyway? Are they still in charge, or did financial backers pull the rug out and take the project somewhere else for completion?

      The story behind the making of this movie is probably more interesting than the movie itself.

    • http://www.jpbouza.com.ar jpbouza

      Guys, please don´t mess up things. This is a Blender movie, everything involving the creation of it was done in Blender, from the modelling phase to the rendering phase. Everything is 100% Blender, no other 3D software was involved.

      The no FLOSS things comes with the compositing of some final shots that couldn´t be done by the original team.

      Our (Gez and I) clarification on this issue comes to place because the movie was originally 100% FLOSS, and the majority of the people may still believe that. Well the movie ended up not being 100% FLOSS (mainly because of compositing), but all the 3d work is 100% Blender and Gimp.

    • http://www.blog.ohweb.com.ar gespertino

      Yes, and as jpbouza just said, I want to clarify my point: The original team had the idea of using only free software for the movie, and they did a great job using it. There were some great local Blender artists working hard in that movie and my intention is not to disqualify their work. They DID use Blender and free software and that was one of the great things about the project

      The reason of the change of the team and the premise, as far as I know, has nothing to do with blender and its set of features (not that they couldn’t finish it because Blender was not ready for composition) nor the team skills. It’s only a “production decision”. The team changed, the original idea changed.
      I think that it’s better to let the community know this to avoid wrong ideas in the future, when the movie is released.
      In my honest oppinion, it’s better if (blender and 3D) people watch the movie knowing that: most of it was created 2 or 3 years ago (so there are some limitations that Blender had at the time but now hasn’t) and that it’s being released now by different people that took over the project and finished it with a premise that isn’t the same original “free software only”.

      But, again, the original team did use Blender and free software.

    • http://www.malefico3d.org malefico

      For those who could not watch the TV broadcast video link here it is:

      http://www.4shared.com/file/208881067/655d5a1d/PlumiferosTELEFE.html

      This clip is going to be repeated the whole day in that TV station… you gonna hate “Volare” :P

      @gespertino, jpbouza: thanks for the clarifications mates ! I felt a little sad at first, it seemed that our 2 years working only with FLOSS meant nothing :)

      @PapaSmurf: wow, you are a bard ! thanks mate !

    • http://www.pyrosever.com pyrosever

      That’s great news, I thought the film was destined to remain in production hell forever.

      Kudos to the ninjas who revived the project, I look forward to seeing it.

    • http://www.benjamindbailey.com/ banor

      I reported about this on the BlenderNation “Your News” a few weeks ago – not nearly this indepth and my source wasn’t good (I didn’t even reference the Facebook page I found the info from, rather the Plumiferos website itself,) but oh well… glad it’s being featured.

    • RNS

      you’ll remember what the creature promise it first million dollars donation the to blend foundation.it show blender was limited use at that time and buggy.-buggy- buggy.

    • tom

      Regarding the software,

      from the beginning it was planned to use commercial compositing options. They did testing with a number of different compositing and NLE solutions, but switched to Blender (from what I recall) because the team was already familiar with Blender usage, the entire team could use it, and of the compositors and NLEs they could afford none were very good.

      (Note this is based on a half remembered discussion with Malefico years ago, so I might be misemembering).

      LetterRip

    • http://leifandersen.net Leif Andersen

      Wow, that’s great news. I had lost all hope in that project over two years ago. (For the record though, I had also lost hope in blender 2.50).