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Blender/3DS Max Movie Project, Talk at Autodesk Booth/FMX

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cb_8300-1.jpgGerman animation studio Die Versilberte Eitelkeit and Arroba Films S.A. de C.V. have recently finished their 8 minute short movie 'Cosmic Balance', based on Francisco Athié's short novel. Much of the work was done in Blender.

The movie can be seen on the International FMX Conference on Animation, Effects, Realtime and Content in Stuttgart, Germany next week. The team will also be giving a presentation on the 'making of' the movie on, get this, the Autodesk tower (Turm B) on Friday 4th of May at 12 o'clock. During this presentation, they will explain how Blender and 3DS Max were used together in this production.

It looks like Die Versilberte Eitelkeit is really putting Blender on the map with some rather cool and high-profile work; check out their demoreel! (right-click, save as).

Falk Buettner writes:

cb_1102-1.jpgBlender was used in the creation of Francisco Athié's Cosmic Balance. [The movie] was created during 2006 until the beginning of 2007. Blender was used for about 98% of the modelling, mapping and texturing work. The finished models were transfered to 3D Studio MAX via the OBJ format and then animated and rendered with Mental Ray into different layers which finally were composited in Eyeon Fusion. Besides that there is one shot in the movie, which was completely animated and rendered in Blender and then composited in Fusion.

spaceshuttle_03.jpgWe also wrote a couple of Python scripts to automate certain modelling and mapping processes in Blender to speed up production. Blender turned out to be a reasonable production tool and helped us a lot to get the project done.

The movie was produced in HD 1080p. All 3D and compositing work was done in Stuttgart. Final color grading, transfer to film and final sound mixing was done at the Estudios Churubusco Azteca in Mexico City.

Due to the work we did in Cosmic Balance, we won a pitch for a international feature film production, where we will use Blender too.

labor_01.jpgWe will present Cosmic Balance in HD from the 2nd to 4th of May at the FMX in Stuttgart every day at 14 o'clock at the 3Dpowerstore booth. We will also give a talk about the making of "Cosmic Balance" at the Autodesk tower (Turm B) on Friday 4th of May at 12 o'clock, where we will also talk about how we use Blender and 3DS MAX in conjunction.

Background

Die Versilberte Eitelkeit is a Stuttgart/Germany based computer animation studio and was founded in 1998. We are working in the fields of visual effects, 3D animation and motion graphics for broadcast and film.

ruine_13_6.jpgWe started to use Blender in 2004. The reason for our interest in Blender was to save cost in the software acquisition. We compared Blender to other Open Source 3D creation tools and found that it was the most complete and competitive tool in that area. First and foremost we use Blender for modelling and mapping, but also keep an eye on the other features of the software and use those if necessary. Blender plays an important part in our daily production pipeline and helps us to keep the best cost-performance ratio for our clients.

We currently use Blender in the visual effects creation for an Mexican/French/Italian/Spanish feature film production.

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

25 Comments

  1. Hm, ich würd gern den Film Cosmic Balance sehen, aber das Demoreel haut mich jetz nicht so vom Hocker.... ganz nett eben

  2. very cool, impressive models! almost 200k on the ship! i'm scared to go past 1,500 :( don't know why, maybe a polyphobia

  3. lol. Polyphobia... I wish some of the artists at our studio had that before they break my farm with unoptimised renders.. you know who you are!!!

    Great article and the use of Blender over 3ds max's modelling tools is a strange one, I would have thought that Max would be ok. I'd be interested in seeing the reasons for using blenders modelling over Max's.

    (and I'm not being negative btw) but was it the tool of choice for the appointed modeller or was this a pipeline exercise to see how suitable blender would be in a real production environment.

    Me want to know more!

  4. very well.... but... what about those scripts? would you share them? please... think about shrek's cat's eyes... i am looking at you with that kind of sight... please...
    anyway, good news, just the fact that you can use blender in a pipeline with 3ds looks like a perfect demonstration of its professional level!
    sorry for my poor english!

  5. fingers crossed they don't buy people either, I stopped using max for a reason, this whole commercial thing etc

  6. @TXRXFX:
    We did not have enough 3DS MAX licenses, so we used Blender.
    The tight budget of the project did not allow us to buy another license.
    The appointed modellers were forced to use Blender, and managed that without any problems.
    Besides that we used this project as a pipeline test to see if our set up fits our needs, and it worked out very well.
    MAX is good for modelling without any question, but Blender is good too.
    We were able to create our models in Blender in the same time frame as we could create them in MAX.
    Of course each of the applications has its little benefits and its little special tools, but I dont see much of a disadvantage of Blender polygon modelling compared to MAX polygon modelling.
    It only depents on the artist. :-)

    @johnj:
    Of course we will share those scripts.
    Please give us a some time, so that we can write a little documentation.
    I will post here where You can download the scripts.

  7. Wow, that's very impressive, and inspiring as well!! Very good work,Faulk, and congratulations are in order!! I also really appreciate the kind words "it only depends on the artist". My sentiments exactly!!
    Blender is a very capable tool, and will be better in the future as long as the community continues to care for it and nurture it as it does now :)
    Craigo

  8. I had no doubt that Blender is equally capable and forgive my lack of reading before I blurt! I'm most excited to see Blender used in such an efficient and well proven project the results speak volumes about blenders capability to model with the rest of the big ones!

    Congrats indeed and thanks for replying to explain in full!

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