It's not amateurism at all, it's working within the constraints of the project. Our major bottleneck was not in processor power, but in bandwidth, transferring the files back from the USA render farm to Amsterdam – the most we could get out of our link was about 200KB/s, and with 5MB for one layer of an HD EXR frame, those transfer times add up quickly (especially with speed vector passes, Z passes, etc), and along with it, the time needed to do the inevitable checking of frames and re-rendering.

Rendering to separate image sequences per pass would have had it's advantages, but we never would have been able to get the files back from the farm in time. As it was, we had to use the 16 bit half precision EXR format, and Ton also added the 'preview jpeg' option so we could see the results of the render quickly, without waiting hours for the EXR frames to transfer. There were also many advantages in compositing direct from 3D, if only from the aspect of organising the files and re-rendered versions. It made things a lot simpler to manage, and also allowed a lot more freedom of splitting things up into multiple scenes, not having to worry about file sizes, which was necessary in scene 8, many of the shots in scene 8 had to be split into at least 3 scenes, with up to 10 or so total layers.

i didn't do any of the compositing for ED, but i always thought it was one of the strengths of new blender node system, that you can set it up BEFORE anything is rendered. so this way we rendered straight the final frame. no need anymore afterwards to go and tweak.

but you are correct on one thing. they are left just like we left them. there just wasn't time at all to go back and clean anything. so, what you see is the last thing our render guys saw.

.b

I can't help but think you seem overly disappointed by the fact that the files are complex…

Also.. what is this talk about the composite work being done on the 3d scenes and not on rendered OpenEXR images? In order to get Motion Blur you *need* the data about the scene that cannot be stored in an OpenEXR file. At least thats the impression I get. But alas… you're right.. they are amateurs. This was their first movie :)

These remixes are great and hope to see more work like this. The PC On Fire was just too funny. Great dubbing too!

So before someone can alter a scene the files first need to be cleaned-up.

"Was this scene with raytrace?" is question I heard Ton ask somewhere…
I tried to render scenes *without* raytrace but then the eyes turn all wacky. So i'm guessing the whole scene needs to be rendered with raytrace for 2% of the screen because they could not figure out a way to get the eyes material correct without it…. No problem with highend machines and 18 hours a day to work upon a project.

So I'm expecting the CC of this project to go into the fridge untill we all have a 500% upgrade of our machines.

I don't think it's very rewarding for people who have the skill to re-use these scenes to actualy make another version; they have skills enough to create their own stuff.

I'm not talking about just changing the animation to the current story/audio, but to completely change it? I mean, everything is set up and ready for people to have fun with this.

I, personally, don't have the skills needed, but I know that's not true of everyone else. :)

Are you serious? Or are you oblivious to the marionette like movements of the characters and frozen faces?