Dreaming in 3D
Because of my background in an animation studio, I knew that when developing a 3D tool with the complexity of Blender, it's important to be very close to the artists. They are the people who should define how the software should work. That's very difficult to extract from the thousands of feature requests on a website. What would be the most wanted or most useful addition to the software? There are a lot of things you could work on. From my practise, I know that if you give a team an assignment, of making a movie short in six months, they will quickly find out that maybe 90% of the feature requests are nice, but you don't need them to make a movie. So the artists quickly go to the core, key things that you really have to fix, otherwise you can't make the movie. That focus is incredible, and also inspires the developers to help this small team of artists to get it done. That's why I would love to have more projects like Elephants Dream.
We started the Elephants Dream project by partnering with a Dutch art institute that specialised in video art - very crazy, weird stuff, like dripping water for five hours. They also challenged us to make something that had an abstract, artistic level; experiment with alternative or non-linear storytelling, develop our own concepts. That's what I'm really proud of, because I worked first behind the scenes to get the whole organisation set up, including the financing. So before I even announced it in public, I knew that this project was going to be realised. Because of the financing, there was no burden for the team to make something commercial, or something that would sell. It was up to them - they could decide what to make, and it was their personal vision.
I talked at SIGGRAPH this summer to a couple of people from the movie industry. The biggest compliment they made is that they said 'Wow, it looks good!' The animation quality, rendering quality, modelling, looks like it's been done with a professional product. For Blender, that's a big leap forward, definitely. A couple of people criticised the story, the editing; it's sometimes a little bit jerky. But that's OK - they should have been there during production! The team put six people together who didn't know each other before. They had to finish something in six months.
Before you have a team of people who can work together, it takes a lot of time. Actually, the movie had to be made in two, or two and a half months. The first three or four months we used for design and ideas, getting up to speed and getting the software ready. In the end, people were making one or two minutes of animation in a week, which is a lot. I would have loved to keep the team together for another year; then we could have made a whole movie!
Also, it was obvious at the end that the scenes we did at the beginning lacked quality. It's a luxury we didn't have, but you should go back to the editing room, cut the movie in pieces, establish it again, and make some more scenes. But we only had a limited amount of money, so that was it.
Preparation time isn't usually included in the production time of a movie. Most movies start one or two years before the production starts, on the script, storyboarding and pre-visualisation, that kind of thing - you can do everything right. We had to do all of that in six months. For the next project I will try to have better pre-production, so that when the team is together we can get into actual production. It depends on a new partner, how long we can work on it and how big the team is.
28 Comments
Cool and huge interview...but I think thats a little bit not true that blender in 1995-2000 was absolutely freeware...it was freeware on Solaris, BSD and other UNIX platforms, but for MS windows it was as shareware (the saving was not possible if you don't pay 100$:)..it;s clearly written in 1.60 release notes .but it;s just kinda
small thing...anyway
cool interview!
It's a good time to update the Ton Roosendaal article at wikipedia ;-)
Awesome interview, I never read large amounts of text, but I this case I readed it all and that on a early morning at school. :)
Awesome! It was quite nostalgic to read the first part about the freeware, closed-source blender. I remember it!
Excellent interview. Thanks Bart, the magazine, and of course Ton!
This is a very good interview.
I´ve always read about Blender´s history via a bunch of sites, but nothing is better than read Ton himself tell us about his point of view of everything related to our beloved Blender. =D
Thanks a lot!
cheers
Can't see anything about future usability projects. Event system recode could help, but it's only one part of it.
What a great interview, kept me interested for the whole six pages! Thanks Ton, Bart, and Daniel.
I'm delighted to read that other open movie projects are planned soon. It's great what came out of the last one, I have no doubt that the next one will be grat also and push Blender forward in the process.
Though with only a small user base compared to the modelling/rendering side, I would love to see some sort of open game project sometimes. Perhaps after the Ogre integration and the other exciting additions to the game engine that could be an interesting project.
second what sanne said.
Long live the King!
Great interview! :)
For all of us old schoolers it brings back memories....
I remember the old website blender was on...black backgrond..it was so ugly
I agree with Enriqolonius - in this "fast times" i think blender have an intresting and "long" history
and an very intresting future in front.
and
third what sanne said! ;)
Good Read!
Excellent Interview
Very good!
//Mathias
Read it, part that I like a lot is the open studio idea. Also wondering how they would qualify people for orange 2.
Great interveiw! It's always interesting to see what the main developer has to say about Blender's history.
Fantastic Interview!!!
Haha, very Ton indeed.
btw. The old website never was on black.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://neogeo.nl
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blender.nl
Great interview, very interesting... yeah, I was wondering how on earth Ton could keep doing all the things he has been doing. I feel relief that Ton is going to delegate some more of his responsibilities to others , just so that he doesn't burn out or worse have a stroke.
Ton, your the programmer of programmers I am sure, thanks for giving us this marvelous tool to work with. ANd thanks Bart and Daniel James for sharing this with us!!!!
Every time Ton talks about Blender I felt more secure about the open source project and the strong of the way Blender took.
Every time I felt more confident that Blender will change the 3D world forever with the open source ItÅ› not so a question of being free, itÅ› a question of the quality of the software itself. Open source is made with love, for all and to everyone.
This article was so crispy! :D We love Ton.
Oh, and I'm the bloke that remarked many times about non-open audio. I still think it's important that Blender start looking at audio more. Is anyone with me? Maybe we can make it happen! Audio is actually very easy conceptually.
Ton!
If you are in need of a professional in Blender who will work for love of the project (i.e. no fee whatsoever), let me know.
Just ask on this blender forum for "Dude man" (or this email - my real email this time, he he ;) )
I always appreciated what you and the other developers did, and since I'm such a lousy programmer - but an excellent modeller/animator/FX - I should put my efforts where it will pay off best.
Call me when the time comes, give me some early notice, and I'll see if I can clear my busy schedule for ya!
Take care, and thanks!!!!
Dude man
i second what Bmud said, i am a very beginner programmer and thats why i didnt got any further yet with my "dreams" on this side but once i proposed a blender and puredata integration to give the blender users contact to a audio interface also not only graphics, maybe i was wrong maybe not but the truth is im to amateur as a program yet to go for it so i am better improving my skills as a programmer before any attempts on this side, but if someday i have the knowledge to do something like that i would be very proud of it.
Very cool interview and the studio idea is something that can really grow and benefit the whole OSS comunity, not only blender, thanks for sharing.
Quite an awesome interview, and the cool part is that Ton has already been on the leading edge once with the first release of an open movie, but if the open studio becomes a reality, it will be another first!
Very very cool Interview.
I think the best resumé of ever for all the Blender saga from the beginning.
My compliments Ton! ;-)
Very nice interview! I'ts always awesome to dig little bits of info about Blender's history and development =)
Best regards