Siggraph Demoreel Released
It’s that time of the year again! Just before Siggraph we publish a compilation of the greatest Blender work to show the rest of the world what we’ve been up to and what Blender is capable of.
In the video you’ll find some great samples of Blender character animation, architectural visualisation, commercials, technical demos, realtime content and a part of Elephants Dream.
Like last year the music was composed for us by Jan Morgenstern. Jan also created the music and sound effects for Elephants Dream and of course for last year’s Siggraph Demoreel. It was a pleasure to work with you again, Jan!
I don’t have much more to say than congratulations to everyone whose work was selected, good luck downloading , and enjoy the show! (Right-click and select save as..).
- Full size [Quicktime, 223MB] – mirror one | mirror two
- Half size [Quicktime, 83MB] – mirror one | mirror two
With many thanks to Kent Mein [SirDude] and Konrad Naumann [Konne] for hosting the files!
Note: Feel free to publish re-compressed versions with other codecs and put the links in a comment; we’ll add the links to the download table. If you don’t have the bandwidth to host it, please use the contact form to get in touch and we’ll try to help you with that.
I think an all animation reel was a good choice even though we don’t see the amazing stills that are in the Blender.org gallery. The character animation featured is great. I’m also amazed to see some commercial work included – emphasizing that Blender is a pro tool. This must have taken forever to put together Bart – nice job!
Cant wait to see it!
Downlading… can’t wait to see it.
Cool :) Finally it’s out. I wish it would include some stills also ;)
Streaming @ Google: Blender Siggraph Demoreel @ Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7022566028165736393&hl=en
(Will also feature downloadable for PSP/Windows/Mac soon as Google adds these)
Strangely doesn’t look as impressive as last years demoreel. It’s still incredibly impressive. Just that I felt last years was even more incredibly impressive.
WOW, I usually dont download videos of blender animations, but I sure am glad I downloaded this. I never knew you could do this with blender. Very Nice, Very sleek, this will catch some eyes at Siggraph!
Hey very nice.
I am pleased to see Blender being used so well for various purposes :o)
I wonder if there will be an opportunity to show stills as well next year – maybe have 2 demo reels playing alterately.
Not that I think this reel represents Blender in a lesser way it’s just that has been a lot of great artwork done this year that unfortunately won’t be seen by the yet to be converted ;o)
Great reel!!
@Dave:
This year’s demo focuses on animation, not texturing/modeling.
Was expecting so much more, specially with all Animation enhancements, there are some cool bits of it, but honestly, only less then 2 minutes is high quality.
Animation is quite poor in most of the animations, it has that amateur / student feeling. I was expecting much more.
I just hope that ED can compensate for this Demo Reel.
I’m very sad to say this, I love Blender and support people who use it above all, but I was so disappointed with this video, I would rather have some stills in it. The edit is nice and so is the audio (as usual), but it lacks that Top Notch quality animation. Even when the package is good, if the Demo Reel is poor, so will the software (at least to who sees it).
Cheerz,
— Rui —
@Kernon:
I know. And it’s a fantastic demoreel.
wow i love them all I love blender !!! thank you all for your contributions !!!
Yeehaaw! But some stills would be nice :)
I totally agree with Rcas. More, no one of the last Suzanne Awards winner animations has been included, nor the Plumiferos trailer????
All in all it is an excellent demo reel.
Although there’s room for critic on the works themselves I feel that the reel reflects prefectly where Blender stands at this point of its evolution : one must never forget that Blender is not simply a tool but what the community of users makes of it.
All in all a very, very good job, well worth the 232 Mb download.
Thanks
Jean
@rcas: That’s just how it is, Blender is still mainly used by amateurs and students. If you’re not satisfied with what’s there I can only recommend creating these professional / commercial quality animations yourself.
I for my part was pretty impressed by what’s currently done with Blender.
(and I am in there, yay!)
well .. features some good works as well as some really weak ones
I don’t say that the animations are not good enough but I think Blender is more powerful than those. Of course, Elephants Dream is another story :) People just need time
…exactly. And that’s why you see more stills than animations made by non-professionals. It takes much time and dedication to produce a high qualtity short film. And it gets even harder if you’d like your cg short film to be entertaining ;-).
If I look at cgtalk and other places, it’s is just the same for all 3D applications – and I think all professional users know this.
So, in my opinion it would have been much better to show high class stills that document the visual quality of Blender’s renderer (and of course Blender/YafRay) and only animations that really demonstrate the quality of Blender’s animation tools, like for example the wonderful type writer dance from Elephants Dream, which is missing completely in this reel :-(.
Just my thoughts… Anyway – I’m sure that the Blender Siggraph team will be more than able to show that with enough talent, time and dedication you can produce wonderful stills and animations using Blender.
Cheers
Thorsten
Hi ! I’d really like to make somme comments… but I can’t play the Demo reel files…
Usually I have no problem playing Quicktime files, but I get a warning error about missing codec. The screen is white and I can play only the music…
May I know what codec has been used for these files ? Where is it available ?
I’m really sorry… thanks in advance !
Philippe.
@ROUBAL: My Quicktime player says this video is using the H.264 codec, which is a feature of Quicktime 7. Maybe you have to update your player?
@Roubal:
Try using the VLC player (google for it, it’s free) and you won’t have to be concerned about yet another codec. It actually plays Quicktime files much better than the Quicktime player (at least on my machine)! Also, unless you have a very strong graphics card, I would recommend downloading the smaller demoreel.
@Thoro and Kernon : Thank you !
I didn’t know VLC player. It works fine, even in high resolution.
Good job on the Demo reel! Some things are in an unusual style (Phantoms), and I would have never thought that it was done in Blender !
Nice movies, and good showcase for Blender.
Philippe.
Too slow of a connection here to get that video until next week… can anyone who’s seen it tell me if the Bodie Island lighthouse flyaround is on it?
Yes, it is – well done, harkyman!
Added to youTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mclzXciU5OA
i was particulary enjoyed by “Phantom of the Hirayaman”, very imaginative, i love this grain into the picture and the music was great.
The comcast clip is fun too.
This Demoreel was not bad at all.
cheers
ps: obviously big Up for Elephant’s Dream :)
I hate to say it, but I find last years more impressive too. =/
Yes, it was animation only, and made by amateurs, but the audience doesn’t need to know that. IMO showing some great stills would work better, than some other-than-professionals animation work (no offence to the people who made the animations, who probably worked their asses of for these clips).
Also, I think more of the Elephants dream, and less of Hirayaman would have displayed more of Blenders abilities (like the intro scene, that was beautiful. Or the Type writers dance, or when they’re going through that camera lense capsule thingo)
Though I don’t really agree with rcas though, some of the animation in there was pretty good. But I think the Hirayaman brought it down a whole lot (I didn’t like it, though other people may like it)
nice… I really love blender! but! In this demo reel, i only got 2 crits, and dont mind abot em’ just to tell u.. (snif.. mt poor film did’t make it)
okay
1. I was hoping on a little more “speed”, like fast music, more swich between the movies.
2. I know ED look very pro(and it is) but ist a ptty that nearly the hole film are there. just a few clips from it.
but I really like thought! good job, good music(faster faster:P)
Nice video but didn’t leave me as amazed as last years demo reel, I was expecting smaller clips for each animation so the whole thing felt a bit too drawn out.
exactly!
thats pretty dissapointing to hear that stills got left out. not only is that in my opinion stupid but also is that kinda dissapointing because of the time i put into making images ready for the submission.
i would rather have liked a clear statement from the beginning telling that only movies will be accepted.
thoro,
I strongly agree with you. In my opinion this was a wrong decission to leave out any stills, when there are just not enough quality animations to make up a decent demo reel. This demo reel has some highlights like ED and in particular “Phantom of the Hirayaman”. Those animations are just amazing. I actualy liked the last one even more. I actualy was more than surprised about the quality.
Also the product animations and commercials are great. That fits in perfectly.
Unfortunately missing sound makes some of the movies not easy to understand. The alien one has a sound clue at the end that the alien is still alive. Without sound the audience cannot know that and thus will not experience the fun of that movie.
but some other animations are very poor compared to those shooting stars. Frommy experience it is rather better to have less but good or mixed (anim/still) to ensure the same level of quality.
I’m sure the stills are used in the booth and surrounding area. having a looping reel + stills which can be viewed for as long as one would want could be a good reason for this. I don’t pretend to know anything about how they’ve set up the booth, but what few images i have seen witness some still works in the immediate area.
downloading the reel now :D
I agree with Claas. “Sometimes less is more”. Some of the animation was impressive, the commercials fit nicely but overall the reel didn’t leave me the way ’05’s reel did. A year ago I was looking at the reel (I still watch that thing occasionally) thinking, “Wow. Blender has moved a long way and moved even closer to a tool that we might find as an industry workflow standard someday”. This years left me thinking that if someone outside of the Blender community saw it they might believe it was a showcase of student projects/works.
This makes me sad due to the fact that if an employer was to walk by and glance at the reel, they might think “Hmm. That John Doe has some talent with animation. Maybe we’ll hire him as an animator. He could probably do a lot better work with a real application” instead of “A free program is capable of this? Wow. There’s some impressive talent and art in that reel. All with a free program…maybe we should consider it for our workflow”. A few of the animations would certainly impress most people but others weren’t of high enough quality to be on the reel.
The lack of stills was disheartening. I knew to expect it yet it still took me by surprise at the end when I was thinking about some of the spectacular images that people wouldn’t get to see because they’re tucked away in the Blender.org Gallery or at the BA forums.
Perhaps next year a 50/50 split should be considered (time wise) or at least 75/25. Some of the animations could’ve been left as stills and had the same impact – if not better.
The music was great and the editing job as well. The content just wasn’t as high quality as anticipated.
Don’t get us [us that are critiquing] wrong, we appreciate the fact that you guys have taken the time to make a reel for Blender and Siggraph compiled of works from the community. You do have our gratitude.
Another thing that has to be considered as well: submissions. Maybe there weren’t enough high quality submissions and certainly scouring the web finding the best ones and contacting their authors would no doubt take more time than the deadline allowed. So there’s a large portion of the responsibility that falls to the community to submit their best works for the reel to help improve the quality of it. Maybe you guys did pick the best submissions. It’d be nice if we could vote on which ones made it in but democracy isn’t known for making deadlines either.
Congrats if you read this whole thing. Thanks to everyone that had anything to do with the reel. Not trying to be a prick just trying to offer some useful insights/opinions.
Looking forward to watching the reel….any chance of getting it in window media player? Anyway, I know many companies that are there at SIGGRAPH showing off many different technologies. Can’t wait to see them in use in PS3 and Xbox 360 games.
Any chance to have some blend files of that material? :P
Reel-y important to see it, I approve!