Professional Work for Colt Firearms
Sterling Roth was recently hired by Colt to create demonstration video for Colt show booth this past January. ” All of the models were provided by colt in Pro Engineer format. I animated and textured the weapons and added in other effects. They were rendered in Blender internal with AAO. Total time spent animating this particular animation was about 25 hours, and about 55 hours for all 4 animations in total, minus render times.
I’m feeling unconfortable in days of war, terrorism and persons running amok if people “suppport” the weapon industry somehow or other.
I’m sure there are “better” examples for the publicity of Blender.
Kind regards
Alain
Blue background of death for professional stuff??!!
@ Alain
What’s wrong with firearms manufacturers? Guns don’t kill people, people do. By your logic, I should be angry at the dollar bills in my pocket for our economic troubles. They’re inanimate objects. The issue is that a cabal of corrupt politicians and bankers have hijacked our monetary system. It’s THEIR fault, not the Federal Reserve Notes.
Just the same, there’s nothing wrong with guns. What’s wrong is people that feel the need to threaten and kill others. If they didn’t have guns, they’d use knives. If they didn’t have those, they’d use their bare hands. We humans love senslessly killing each other so much that we’ll find a way to do it regardless what tools are or are not available.
The only entities in their right minds that want regulation/confiscation of weapons are the governments of nations. They’d love nothing better than to have a monopoly on firepower and a defensless populace. I’m not sure where you’re from, but in my country, our Constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms, and there’s a good reason for it. In the end, the armed citezenry is the only real check on the government’s power.
Please don’t drink the kool-aid and give your rights away.
yah, I agree with thegodofbigthings (ridiculous name by the way), that the animations ar enot very profesional. you could have made the guns stand out a bit more if you used more then one light source and a better bakgroung.
Grant – your argument has one flaw.Guns are actually produced in killing with mind, money is not.
@Grant: Running amok with a gun or with bare hands seems to make a difference, does it?
@Grant: Running amok with a gun or with bare hands seems to make a difference, doesn’t it?
Speaking as a SSgt in my nation’s army, that’s not how shells fly out of the m16…
Please don’t turn this into a ridiculous soap box competition over each other’s political views. That’s what off-topic forums are for. Have some respect for your fellow Blender users.
Congratulations, Sterling! Good job! I hope this helps you get more work with Blender.
Wow, I love Blender but this community has some serious growing up to do.
Sterling, congrats on actually getting a job and following through with it like a professional and padding your portfolio a little more.
Very good
@Grant
The fact that a constitution allows one to carry arms is no reason to feel more “right” – or more proud for that matter. The US has more senseless street murders than any other civilized country. It’s entirely not true that only governments want the regulation of weapons – most citizens in Europe do too. From Grant’s argument a paranoid picture emerges: it’s US vs THEM – the defenceless populace and the power-grabbing governemt. I live in Poland and I don’t feel that way at all, despite all the corruption and power games (which plague most countries, irrespective of whether their citizens are armed or not).
Just because it’s an American Constitution, doesn’t mean it’s the best thing in the world and flawless in every respect.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist, despite Kernon’s remark…
I just felt that this longish rambling of Grant had to be “weighed out” somehow
As for the video itself, in spite of some technical shortcomings (the background and the slightly artificial lighting) it’s an interesting presentation, and unlike some other comments, I don’t think it’s “wrong” to work for a weapons company, after all they make equipment for the police and the army, and we can’t argue about the need for those.
beautiful precision modeling :)
I understand in some way why some people doesn’t like that in a CG environment grows political debate. But I don’t like either CG environment (or any other work environmnet) where political debate is something that “not come with me”. Nowadays, in the globalization era and the real power of the citizens to comunicate things each other, we should commit political issues along with our living resources.
If not that way, our complaints about corruption of some people have no sense, because in his place whe would do the same things if we are’nt able now to decide what kind of world we support.
So in the Free Software environment, in which GPL explicitly says that you can use the app for ANY goals you want along with all the other freedoms of the license, this is a recursive but needed debate.
CGTalks -one of the Professional-Ones- sometimes seems a community of a bunch of gray people, that posts the forums as a robot: “5 stars, great mood”, and have no idea of criticisim beyond ridiculous observations about “the weird wrinkle at the lefmost part of the small square at the right of the image”. If you think that this kind of vulgar appreciation is more professional, of course you are free to consider like that… in the meanwhile i don’t bother myself too much about this debates on Blender context, even when slightly misplaced.
Raimon
Modeling was made by the engineers paid to create new weapons at Colt company, not Mr. Roth. He deserve no credit for that. He just put some firearms on a beautiful blue background. You know, firearms, these little cute and innocent things. Used by poor, defenseless, Good US citizens to fight against the Bad and the Ugly. “Guns don’t kill people, people do”, yeaaah, of course, Grant, of course…
BlenderNation could choose a bit more more carefully what is published, especially when the quality of the work is that low.
Modelling is good. The lighting is dull and makes the texturing look flat. Not helped by the background. But still, good work. I agree with Pawel.
Ah, no modelling was done…
Congratulations for the paying work Sterling.
I have to agree with Grant. If you want to blame guns for killing you might as well blame the Chinese for gunpowder and the Europeans for inventing the guns…then you can go back and blame ancient cultures use of sticks and stones too of course. Never mind the pesky fact that arms in the hands of governments have claimed the most lives this century. Feel free to overlook the fact that the military industrial complex has driven R&D that has changed the very way we lives on a daily basis.
Do folks blame IBM, DELL, SUN, Apple for piracy of music or films, identity theft, global warming, how about Ford or General Motors for drunk driving? Ah…but those. Yes Skadge, ONLY the US has guns, no guns being built by hand in Pakistan or anything, or tanks being driven towards protesters in China.
Yes, ONLY the united states can be bad.
Colt’s M-16 is nice, used the “small” version of it in the army several years ago.
But I always preferred AK-47 or “Glinon” ;)
Nice modelling, I live in the UK guns are not really an issue here because 98 per cent of the population don’t have them, the only people that own them are criminals, some farmers (not including fire-arms police response and the army).
I like movies with guns and lots of violence and senseless killings.
but i dont think that makes me a maniac since in real life im a law abiding citizen.
I too believe that guns should be given only to proper authorities like the police and the army.
I like you’re model as well as the animation. i agree you need to replace the blue background to something more exciting.
best regards,
anthony
@Stirling – good job; I like the attention to detail in the animation. The shell ejection could do with a bit of tweaking and definitely needs to feel a bit more dynamic. The overall feel could do with a bit more zing though, it’s a little too measured (bearing in mind the the goal of a product demo is to keep the focus on the product!).
+1 to Kerts comment – it’s a little disappointing.
people who adore guns compensate for small pricks, and weapon manufacturerers should be fined for the damage and suffering theire guns cause. Just my 2 cnts on this topic.
i don’t like guns, there are many beautiful things on this earth
why guns?
Sterling – I support your efforts 100%.
Don’t let these sheep discourage or try to make you feel ashamed.
One day they’ll look up as their being led by their goverment into a long building with billowing smoke rising from a smoke stack at the other end as they say to each other ” I never knew these buildings could hold so many people”.
Sorry for politics folks but if your going to let it get started in these posts I guess I’ll have to put my 2 cents in.
In case you did not know before that guns are not universally held in esteem, you certainly know now. In much of what is called civil society arms dealers (Colt Firearms would be grouped in) are socially below crack dealers for good reason. As life choices are made you are going to need to look carefully where you want to be, make your choices but inform yourself first. Work for the dealers in death and you become one. If you are ok with that so be it. Do not be surprised when much of the rest of the world is frightened when they see the Americans coming.
+1 Kert’s comment.
This is a CG community, is it not? Comment on the animation, and nothing else. You people are basically saying every time someone models a gun, you are going to give them your dirty laundry. This is not what the post was intended for. I’ve seen similar posts on Blenderartists (Martinsh’s shotgun, for example). Everyone was amazed with his work, and no political comments. Please, keep it CG.
Anyway, yeah-regular blue background could have been changed. And those guns fire differently, don’t they? You could have varied up the firing animation a little :D
@Grant
> the armed citezenry is the only real check on the government’s power
No, the elections are! Well, not in the USA, because of their flawed elections system (delegation+voting computers), but in real democracies.
And the main purpose of guns is to kill people. They are specially designed for that purpose. The main purpose of money is NOT the financial crisis. (And the problem is not the money but the economic system anyway.) However, if you’d like to say the main intention behind guns is NOT to kill people but to induce fear to keep the crime down or something like that, well this obviously doesn’t work. I don’t say it should be illegal to posses weapons, no, but the barrier to acquire them should be very high (psychological tests, no previous conviction (obviously), regular unannounced checks about the handling and safe storage etc.).
@Mitch
ACK
@DeesNuts
Criminals aren’t allowed to carry guns. Isn’t that the same in the US? So in case your government would turn onto you, it will surly declare you to be criminal. So this “right” makes absolutely no difference in that case, but in times of peace it hands out guns to all sorts of maniacs.
Still, the main instrument to control your government are the public elections! Its participation of the people, what controls a democracy, not fear.
Good work. I couldn’t say about accuracy of the shell ejection, but looks really good from my POV. I’d be interested how often it’s correct or not in FPS games. Any comments on the best / worst 3D FPS gun reproductions. For this project, one might request some superslow film of the actual weapon for that reference.
I had that same surprise to the blender blue BG. It could have actually it might have been by request, or we are seeing the animation without the actual clients background (would make sense if the client / tradeshow didn’t give permission for other graphic usage)
I believe the whole gun argument is tough. On the one hand, there are a lot of great gun owners, intelligent, respectful, they deserve the freedom to have them for protection / hobby. Of course you want the military in dangerous places to be equipped with good weapons. Many of us are fortunate to live in places where we don’t have much exposure or requirement for guns, so it’s hard to imagine that there are many dangerous places where firearms really work as protection and deterrent.
I think many gun owners also would acknowledge that if guns never existed, we’d probably see less killing. Hopefully anyway. Probably true, but we can’t live in that world. That world didn’t happen. So we must be strong, intelligent, vigilant and peaceful. Hopefully it rubs off on others in our circle of influence.
I think it’s an interesting discussion worthy of the forum (done the right way). Because it involves working for a client that maybe one could object to. So you want to use your hard earned skills and make money from them, but then you might think, “Does this project make me contribute to something I might not agree with?” I’d feel the same way about many areas. For example I wouldn’t do 3D intros for infomercials of supplement products I’m suspicious of. That’s me. I’d pass up that project unless I felt very confident in the product and company. Others would happily animate it, collect the check and forget about it. Many will face this in their lives.
Ok, so if we are talking about 3D and guns, I wanted to point to my favorite 3D work I saw recently.
If you follow the Onion, you mgiht have seen these. Brilliant Satire. Somebody got paid for these animations which I would totally do.
I do this just for 3D amusement, not to bother anyone or spam.
theonion.com/content/video/hot_new_video_game_consists
theonion.com/content/video/manufacturer_recalls_hollow_point?utm_source=onion_rss_daily
CG promoting guns that are designed to kill human beings (which includes CG artists) is plainly wrong. :)
Sure, but that topic imho more suitable
theonion.com/content/video/manufacturer_recalls_hollow_point
Wow, so much ignorance when it comes to guns. Oh, and the comment that people will be in fear when they see the Americans coming? What an idiot. We have helped more nations and people than any other country. Fact! Learn your history. What’s wrong with modeling a gun? If it’s that bad then no one should be modeling tanks, knives, cars, airplanes, helicopters or even people, since it it us humans behind all those inanimate objects controlling them to kill people. When ignorant people bring politics into a place such as this, it just goes to show their stupidity!
Oh, and by the way. I liked the modeling. What I didn’t like is the blue background and how the shells were animated to come out. That is not how the casings eject.
Okay, technically the models are nice, although they were not modeled by the artist. The models were imported and animated. The animation is okay but the blue background should have been more neutral like white or gray I think.
I can understand some of the criticism in the responses toward guns and other firearms. Not that long ago there was a little kid (6 y/o) who owned his own gun (from some youth line or firearms) and killed someone. Of course the dad was to blame foremost for giving his son his own gun and then not even locking it away. But while these things might be rare incidents, there would be much less incidents if people were just not allowed to have guns at all. And while I don’t know about this company having a special ‘youth line’ of weapons, I just think making guns for kids feels just so wrong. I played with water pistols at that age…
And when incidents happen you always see violent computer games being blamed, like also just recently, because they found one game at some dudes place. The media then goes on about ‘he was obsessed with violent games’ blabla…. Guns don’t shoot people, people without guns don’t shoot people, people with guns shoot people. Leave it to the professionals and let the amateurs play darts or something :)
But back to the animation at hand, it looks nice but with some small tweaks at the presentation it could have been better. Keep’em coming!
@Grant: OK, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This sort of …’reasoning’ holds when you look at individual cases. Now look at numbers: people with guns kill a whole lot more than people without guns.
… which is a bad thing (just thought I’d make that clear)
Sterling:
in the world buttons you can change de background
nice job!
That’s not the default Blender background. It’s a gradient from a darker blue to a lighter blue. The default background is a solid color. I just thought I would point that out since several people keep mentioning that it’s the default blue background. It’s clearly a gradient.
Nice argument but I think people are missing the logical question of survival. In this age when it is almost impossible to feed everyone, it is impossible to house everyone, and it will always be impossible to teach everyone, more people is the wrong direction to travel. If we keep trying to have everyone survive, our planet IS going to die. If we do not let go of our idea that life is sacred, life will be no more, soon. If we can’t control our fear of death, we will be faced with nothing but death, for everyone and everything. More people surviving, is that really what we need? I don’t think so. So please don’t get pissed at this artist who supports whomever supports his work(are you any different?) it just shows how downright plebeian you are.
Yes guns do kill people, and yet people kill people, cars kill people, rocks kill people, choking on food kills people, tripping kills people, drugs kill people, doctors kill people, alcohol kills people, pets kill people, not to mention disease, stupidity, intelligence, love and hate also kill poeple… oh ya and you can’t ever die if you weren’t born.
Awesome job by Sterling Roth, major props. Don’t listen to the haters, I don’t condone crazy violence, but I am also educated enough to know that people killed each-other more often, in the ages before guns where invented, in fact it seems like guns make it much more easy to kill but also make it far less likely that a person will kill on any given day. Also more killing has been done in the name of pacifists(Jesus,Mohamed,etc.) than in any war since the invention of firearms, Beware those who would have you leave behind your natural state, they will only lead you to madness.
The background sucks.
I wouldn’t work for Colt. Fck fun industry.
@Mg
I guess you and I had the same thought on this thread? The Onion links?
@Kernon
Regarding the bg color, my mistake, on my mac laptop LCD screen it totally looks like the default. guess I’m not the only one.
This is the first thread ever that I’ve participated in that I genuinely hope gets deleted. ugh, I’m weary just thinking about people’s opinions of firearms. Especially those with no experience.
About the default Blender background, I think what the
blender´s developers want, is the first thing
you learn is to change it. :).
All that’s wrong about this animation is that it lacks the target the bullet hits.
I appoligize for derailing the thread, but this is an issue I feel very passionately about. I’ll cease and desist, but I’d just like to clear a couple things up first.
1. I was not intending to be condescending in any way. I do not believe that Americans are any better than any other people.
2. I DO NOT support my country’s sensless wars of imperialism (yes BOTH of them, people tend to forget about Afganistan because Obama supports it)
3. If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find that gun-related crimes in Britain have increased 40% since the banning of handguns. It probably has something to do with criminals not caring whether guns are illegal or not.
@ Jacques
And when everyone has an equal ammount of guns, people tend to mind their own business.
Anyway, I’m done. I just wanted to clear a couple things up.
Grant,
The first thing Hitler did was disarm the people. End of story.
Haha, you guys didn’t even notice that the background is a gradient; it’s not the default background. And the precision modeling is still impressive, even If it wasn’t made in blender.
The animations looked great! I thought it looked awesome. I have seen many “professional” presentations that have looked worse. And as a result, now I know how to assemble a couple different models of guns :) I like how the transitions demonstrated the interchangeable parts concept.
I have a feeling you guys are jealous of him amazing animation skills! Blender represents freedom, why are you disapproving of his freedom to create/animate anything he wants? Why is it a crime to animate guns and make an honest living?
>I bet many/all of you have supported violence through video games, movies, and images by buying products that contain the content that you seem to despise. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”
I would take a job like that in seconds! And Sterling Roth, I would be proud if I could make an animation like that.
I like how the water mark helps create a brand association for the animation. The only things I would change would be the particle animation, and the spent casings. Sterling, were you working under deadline?
+ The animation could have been created using other 3D applications, why do you applause the idea of blender being used by professionals, and disapprove the ways the professionals use blender?
-It could have been just another animation done in some other commercial app.
@Tom (not Ton), nice observations about the military industrial complex. Have you read about President Eisenhower’s warnings about that?
Thank you blendernation for publishing this occurrence, although some may think it is bad publicity, I see nothing shameful about it. Thank you for informing the masses. Knowledge is power, and I believe the blender community and the public needs to be empowered.
There I hope I used all of my appeals; logos, ethos, and pathos
Everyone has negative comments about the background, but you do all realize that Sterling was “hired” by Colt to produce this animation for a trade show booth, and maybe was directed by Colt to use that color? Has anyone been to Colt’s website? Their predominate color is…….blue.
http://www.coltsmfg.com/cmci/home.asp
Wow this is really nice work!
@n00bhaxor:
“This is a CG community, is it not? Comment on the animation, and nothing else.”
Why not? Is it so wrong to discuss ethical issues when they appear in the work presented? Why only debate the quality of the form and not the substance?
“You people are basically saying every time someone models a gun, you are going to give them your dirty laundry.”
Rubbish. This animation was not made ‘just for fun’, but for a company which sells death. If you are making a gun just for practice or for fun, go right ahead. If you make a gunanimation for which you get paid by a gunmanufacturer, you are -at least to me- partly making money off other people’s misery.
“Please, keep it CG.”
Yes, I agree. Make guns only CG.
I think it’s pretty bad timing to put this up at Easter time. I understand some people don’t mind seeing stuff about guns here, but I personally don’t like that and it seems I’m not the only one.
It’s a continual amazement to me to see the loving relationship Americans have with guns.
RH2 summed it up…
I think it is interesting to see all the different styles of guns too.
You are all giving the Blender community a bad name.
Go to a political forum if you want to bash the gun industry or the US.
I’m highly disappointed in the community for turning this piece of work into a political issue. It is unprofessional and out of place and simply is bad form.
Hi all,
It was never my intent to create a political debate with this article. I just see it as another animation made with Blender and a fellow Blenderhead who did a decent job of it.
I’d appreciate it if we could stop the debate and stick to commenting on the animation.
Thank You
Tim
Darn,
Apparently it’s “temporarily” unavailable. Now all I have is the political debate here on Blendernation.
Well, apparently it’s back up already. It take it it’s showing the various modifications that can be made to the fire arm? BTW, how did you animate the casing ejection? Looks good.
In france people cant buy this kind of arms. And i think that no one exept professional should be able to buy some. But i agree that this is not the point. So for the crits. Imo the bacground is not the good choice. not enought contrast. the modeling is good. But the animation is not very good. it would be better with ease in ease out. or at least i suppose that some part need to be put in place quickly, but some other slowly. so just rythm trouble.
Good luck.
When I saw that modeling I was shocked, amazed, how on earth did he do it that good??! Then I saw it was provided by Colt. Oh well. Aside from the Blue background of Death, it looked fine to me. I assume this would be used for some sort of presentation on the parts of the Colt.
Many people on this forum seem to think this work is aimed at the consumer (despite the artist saying it was for specifically for a trade show).
A trade show that Colt would have a booth at is aimed at police, paramilitary and minor military organizations (I have been to several of these). For the record, you can’t simply go buy this type of weapon in the U.S. except for the modified, semi-auto automatic AR15 (and you don’t find those sitting on store shelves).
In last trade show I went to dealing with small arms, pretty much the whole world was well-represented, especially European and Eastern European arms manufacturers. HK probably had the largest presence. Pretending like there is something special about Colt or this particular piece of work is nothing more than anti-Americanism and very ignorant of the environment in which it is used (or the arms industry for that matter).
I think that many of you that are negative of the content should step back and really think about the context and the market for which it is intended. You should also ask yourself what open source actually means, as you’re going to be very unhappy with what many users are doing with Blender, especially those who are actually using it for work rather than hobby related content.
Very beautiful animation. I love Blender and weapons.
I think it’s okay for reactions to animations also cover some other points that the plain technical things once in a while. People do have opinions and while I understand the reason of wanting to keep an discussion ‘on topic’ I think it’s wrong to deny people they freedom to have an opinion and express it. It reminds me of an earlier discussion where people reacted negative about something and eventually the discussion got locked. That to me sounds like discussion is okay unless the reactions seem to be undesirable.
If people can’t express their feelings, and may not have criticism, what is an discussion really worth anyway.
It’s still a good 3D model and animation though!
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Not my cup of tea.
Beuuuuuurkkkkk!!!
Ok ok some effects are nice…but I see a job that promote weapons.
Absulutely agree with HTS and many others, Raimon, Skadge…
I think it`s sad to see Blender helping Colt professionally.
@ Roth:
Nice work on the materials. I’m looking at an M4 carbine and an M16A2 right now and the glare from the lighting is pretty accurate. I would suggest that in the future a little more attention is paid to how the spent round gets extracted, just so it doesn’t take away from your work when/if someone notices. As far as the goal of demonstrating the main differences between the military AR series rifles and essentially animating the evolution of the AR rifle from what it started out as; well done.
@ The gun debate:
Really? What about a job that demonstrates, piece by piece how an IED on the side of the road might be the last thing someone sees? It’s all in what the intentions are. Colt produces a lot of military and civilian weapons. From what the animation shows, it looked to be directed more to the military’s tactical side. Would the comments still have gone in this direction if it was demonstrating some bows and arrows? Crossbows? Same concept, right? People have hobbies that range from target shooting to hunting with both. It’s meant as a demonstration for Colt and shared with us in hopes of helping or could have been to let people know that Blender’s name is growing. I don’t know, anyone want to ask Tim?
Honestly, I see a lot of good that CAN come from this project and I hope that in the future we all can put our personal feelings out of the way, just to look at the work. If the video went more in depth it could potentially become a training aid for small arms repair personnel or an animated (dis)assembly guide covering multiple models. Maybe, just maybe, a larger company would be more open to the idea of supporting Blender in some way if they saw a real chance of it helping them. Wouldn’t it be great if Blender could get more donations and support to enable it to become the replacement for the software they’re currently using? They might write their own scripts to adapt to what they need, but it seems like it would start to look like the difference between some open source office software or operating systems and their ‘pay’ counterparts, only the benefit would be much greater on the open source side. I think it’s wonderful to see more and more professional work done for larger businesses. Not everyone knows how or has the time to learn to work with Blender. If it’s that knowledge and creative ability that helps someone put food on the table…what could be better?
That was some good article you wrote. Business Coach