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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.

99 Comments

  3. MickiPixel on

    Nice one guys.
    The project is coming along nicely. I've been a very big admirer of your studio for some years now, and have seen the artists', producers and developers grow from strength to strength.

    All those long hours of work, frustration, and good days you've spent working on a long-form animation project really pay-off when you start seeing your baby come to life, those first few sweet sweet renders.

    I'm currently working on 1800 shot long animated feature-film, here in South Africa, as a stereo-editor, so i know first hand the rewards of working in our beloved animation industry.

    Once again, HUGE big-up to to everyone involved, you're all heading to the top

    Reply
  4. Darrin on

    Wonderful!! Great job! "Everything is proceeding as I have forseen." We are all looking forward to seeing the finished product. Keep up the great work!!!

    Reply
  9. Jos on

    Wow! It really looks nice! The animation and sound are superb!!! Great work! I'm so looking forward to the finished movie!

    Reply
  10. A saurus1 on

    Wow guys. SOOOO much better than the stills.
    And think that this is only 1 minute. Imagine 10 more minutes and you start to get the feeling that a miracle is happening in Amsterdam. Great job.

    Reply
  12. Daniel Z on

    I like it a lot ! The woman, the landscapse, the old man, the animation... The only thing I found really awful is that tiny creature that is kidnapped... really it's really weird... I don't like it at all.

    Reply
  16. Dillbob on

    Wow! I have been waiting for a teaser for so long! AND ITS FINALLY HERE! AND ITS EVEN BETTER THAN I THOUGHT! can't wait to see the rest! Keep up the good work!

    Reply
  20. nobody on

    Vivid and lively! Only minor would (still) be 'the old dude' with fake zillion-similar-ring-fishhat and the unrealistic 'nosebone'.
    Looking forward to the finished film.

    Reply
  22. Olaf on

    Wow! Impressive! Looks very promising!

    At first glance it looks a lot better than Big Buck Bunny. The movements of the characters seems very natural and life-like. Nice photopgraphy too.

    Reply
  24. Dave Heinemann on

    It's coming along about as expected, ie. crazy awesome!

    The hair movement jumped out at me as low-detail, but this is just a preview.
    Needs a sand texture on those dunes.

    Wow.

    Reply
  27. DimitrisC on

    Love it! My only minor issue is that the female actress gives a great performance but her voice doesn't fit Sintels look/age.

    Reply
  28. BigWings on

    I agree on Sintels voice being too old, the Dutch accent doesn't help either. Other than that, pretty cool stuff!

    Reply
  38. 3DTinkerer on

    Let me offer a different opinion.

    Sintel looks like she is suffering from a disease. Is she? If not you need to make her look more attractive or else we have another Delgo in the making.

    You need to make her look Final Fantasy attractive.

    The shot where Sintel is opening a door seems more like a game than a feature film.

    Something is wrong with the old mans skin. He looks more like a puppet from the Muppet show than a CG character.

    Just my honest opinion to help improve this film.

    I'm rooting for you guys.

    Reply
  39. Peng You on

    I don't really like the humans character design (especially the old man)
    the don't look inspired, like in the first open-movie.. but atmosphere, voices and music are - at the moment - awesome!
    good luck

    Reply
  40. BlendNmix on

    JoOngle: Please, don't exagerate! Uncharted 2 is at another level, far, far beyond. :)
    You can enjoy something without trying to sell your feelings by all means.

    For my part, i find this teaser very good, the bet can finally be won!
    Okay, it's not perfect at the chara-design level but the overall piece is quite solid.

    Congrats Durian team!

    Reply
  44. Wehrdo on

    I agree with all the comments here that this is amazing! I do think that the animation when she opens the door looks very strange. Like she's exaggerating her movements. I really can't wait until it finally comes out!

    Reply
  45. Xero on

    That was sooooooooooooooo freaking awesome. I hitting the play button over and over.
    Somebody give these guys a cookie. A really big cookie for a job well done.

    Reply
  48. D. Waschow on

    Very nice work! Everything looks great... except the scene in the alley. It looks like we cut from a motion picture to a game engine, and then back again. I'm sure lots of work will be done between now and the final release. But something definitely has to be done about the alley; it just looks like a video game! Fantastic trailer, though. I'm telling all my friends! Can't wait to see the finished work.

    Reply
  50. Aaron on

    THE IS PURE AWESOMENESS!!! The characters are amazing, the voices fit, ALL the dragons are epic, the whole thing is just amazing!!!

    wow.

    Reply
  51. flagus on

    Hello. You guys have really made a great job. I'm really impressed by the rendering, the atmosphere. The music is awesome as the voices. The general feeling of it is really great. I rarely make critics but one thing is bothering me. The hair of Sintel. I can't really pinpoint why but, theres a little something missing for it to look real. My friends thinks the same.

    I just can't wait to test 2.5 beta. When I see what you guys are doing with it. When its gonna be out I'll progessively leave 2.49 behind.

    All the best for what next.

    Reply
  55. blndrusr on

    Engaging!

    Emotional!

    EPIC!

    ---

    If the story lives up to the trailer - as I'm sure it will - then it's time NOW to start testing download mirrors for Blender!

    Sintel is going to democratize 3D by introducing people to Blender MORE than Ton ever dreamed!

    Congrat's to Ton, Team Sintel, and the Community for the AWESOMENESS!

    !

    Reply
  57. maray on

    One word: EPIC!
    Jan Morgenstern did a outstanding job on the sound, it fits in perfectly.
    Congratulations to all developers and the durian team for this monumental teaser.

    I can't wait to see the full movie. :D

    Reply
  58. moomoo on

    Wait, everyone's talking about the animation when she 'opens the door'.. I don't see her opening any doors. I see her moving some big piece of wood at about 0:20, but it's not a door, and it doesn't look like the animation is exaggerated for what she's doing.. it looks heavy.

    Reply
  63. Reaction on

    Nice sound and voices / voiceovers. But like 3DTinkerer suggested above, why does the main character have to look so, errr, 'cartoony'? The females in Final Fantasy (almost a decade ago) looked disturbingly attractive for CGI characters - man, did they set the bar high! Otherwise, great scenery and artistry - can't wait to see the final thing.

    Reply
  64. Rorkimaru on

    I liked it in parts and in parts I didn't. The close up stuff looked good and I liked the old man but parts like where she moves the planks of wood look a bit odd. Also, I'm not entirely enamored with the dragon design but I would imagine that it could be more powerful if the storyline manages to get you to like an ugly creature. I think that transformation of opinion can be interesting.

    I'm looking forward to seeing the final piece.

    Reply
  66. Jaggies in the time domain on

    Fantastic work by all the artists, it hurts to see it ruined by the poor use of motion blur, something wich doesn't come from lack of skill or knowledge in the Durian team but a serious limitation in the core design of the Blender internal render.

    As we all know antialiasing is essential for displaying information on the sub-pixel level.
    Just as antialiasing is absolutely crucial for reducing jaggies in the 2d image domain, motion blur is essential for reducing jaggies in the time domain.

    24 frames per second is a very limited format for expressing motion, and for our brains to pick up what's happening in between those frames, we need a way to display subframe information.
    In the real world you get this for free through the shutter on the camera, as the image is exposed over time, light hits the film over time and motion is captured in a still image.
    Some directors manipulate the shutter for artistic effect, like in the movie Gladiator, wich appears stuttering in fast moving scenes thanks to the low level of motion blur.

    The Sintel trailer suffers from som serious jaggies in the time domain, especially noticable in the scene with the baby dragon flapping it's wings, it appears stuttering and almost game-graphics-like.

    Looks like they;
    * Used vector blur
    * Decreased the "Blur:" amount to less than 1.000 in the vector blur node OR manipulated the "Speed:" "Min:" "Max:" values
    * Composited the motion blur ontop of non-motion blurred images with transparency

    This is probably due to the limitations in the vector blur technique itself, since vector blur;
    * Distorts the artists animation (i.e. it is horribly inaccurate, so displays sub-frame information incorrectly)
    * It's splotchy and smeary
    * Doesn't display ENOUGH information on the sub-frame level
    * Doesn't motion blur animated textures, shadows, reflections, animated light intensity, and so on.

    The Durian team probably didn't have the choice to use "Full Sample Motion Blur" since, altough it's as physically accurate as can be given enough Motion Samples, it also multiplies the rendering time by the amount of samples, so say a 32 sample Full Sample Motion blur would multiply the total rendering time by 32.
    So 2 weeks rendering time would suddently become 16 months(!!!).

    Increasing the renderingfarm 32x probably doesn't fit the budget :)

    The CG industry in hollywood uses a more optimized technique found in the REYES arcitechture in various Renderman renderers (Like Pixar PRMan), or raytraced motion blur in mental ray, vray and many others.
    The REYES design in particular is very effective at this task, and very physically accurate and artifact-free motion blur can be achieved with minimal impact on render time.

    But unfortunately Blender's render architecture makes this a huge task to implement, if at all possible at this time.

    Seeing as the Yafray project didn't get the GSOC Raytraced Motion blur accepted by google the future for Blender and animation is looking pretty dark at the moment :(

    Perhaps if someone writes a good Blender to Renderman exporter or some other external renderer there might be some hope, but chances are we won't be seeing that in a long time.

    But from the Durian team, the effort was fantastic given the limitations, fantastic work all around, looking forward to the DVD!

    Reply
  67. JF on

    Hi,
    I’m a cg artist with ten years of experiences in film. I’m working with XSI or Maya but follow blender developpement and projects since two years. Really nice trailer with a free software in developpement and a limited team with limited time. With some work for compositing and lighting integration for some shot , more of motionblur and depth of field can improve this project a lot.Trailer of a film is always a “test” for improving the final project. I like the shot with the shaman , really nice ambiance ( add a bit of smoke with Blender 2.5 ? ). I really excited to see the final product and show it to some of my collegue at work. A lot of professional is sceptic about blender ( me the first a couples of years ago ) but when i show some artwork or project like yours , many of them are very impressed. Continue your nice work and ignore bad and non-constructive criticism. Some people just don’t know how many works is behind a projects like this.

    Congrulation !

    Reply
  70. Pauly on

    Wow you guys are doing such a great job in such a short time. Very impressed and an extra kudos to the sound designer for giving me goose bumps!

    Reply
  71. Michael on

    Get this! Me and my brother was watching this at school and one of the students asked me if it was a Final Fantasy thing. We said no but we were laughing because the quality was that good! Great job guys. LOL ;)

    Reply
  72. ktrammell on

    Team Durian --

    I recently became a blender fanatic (as a maya native) and to see what you guys are doing with this software...incredible; simply incredible. PLEASE keep up the good work! Looking very forward to this release! Again -- PLEASE KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!! beautiful stuff!

    Reply
  73. DiecastArts on

    WOW. just wow and can you see the goosebumps.. I been excited about this new movie you all have been working on. Now I am hundred times more excited I cannot wait to see the final product.

    Reply
  75. Pixalz on

    This is awesome! Now the industry can't turn a blind side from blender 2.5. Blender is going to change the way pros work. Keep it going!!

    Reply
  77. AltoBanor on

    WOW!!! THAT IS A INSPIRATION TO ME!!! I wondered if Blender could handle a full scale movie as far as animation and rendering and you proved it to me. It may have not been perfect but what is on the first shot!! YOU HAVE INSPIRED ME!!

    Great Job Team!!

    Brian

    Reply
  78. Bobster on

    I'm typing this after first reading the Durian team response to this, and then actually watching the video. Now I'm disappointed. I don't have many nits to pick. The trailer was very good. I don't think its just the fault of the Durian team though, I think the trailer was good at least partly because Blender is getting good (I don't mean to dismiss the skills of the artists though, without them, you get a running gingerbread man). Blender currently though, currently leaves many people wanting more. Read 3 comments or so prior to mine about jaggies in the time frame and whatnot. There was muttering about how something is not possible, blah blah. Sadly, I've studied, understand what "Turing complete" means, and know that what is doable in one piece of software is doable in another piece of software. There is no 'not possible'. Blender is better than its ever been. Professionals will note its flaws, and we know they are there and also know they will be fixed (critical feedback is useful), but sometimes its better to take a step and slip or even fall a bit rather than being safe and just stand there. Progress involves taking steps. From Elephants Dream, to Big Buck Bunny, to Sintel, Blender is making strides. I don't quite care if its ready or not, I would care if we all waited till everyone thought it was safe to take a step. It also helps progress to take on challenges beyond what is comfortable. The artists are a bit uncomfortable. Its exactly where they are supposed to be.

    Reply
  81. LoafMag on

    Bobster: It's not about wanting more small features, it's about wanting a nescessary/required/essential feature for animation, wich has been around since the 1980's when REYES was born.
    It's just as essential as antialiasing itself and an essential part of any 3d animation package.

    The REYES ones are probably the most effective ones, good implementations like 3delight and PIXAR PRman gives full 3d motion blur and depth of field without dramatic render time increase. The raytraced motion blur on some renderers are varying in effectiveness, but still enormously better quality-rendertime ratio than multi-pass motion blur.

    These are some of the renderers with a usable motion blur and depth of field implementation:

    +VRay (Raytraced motion blur)
    +Mental Ray (Raytraced motion blur and alternatives)
    +Pixar PRMan (renderman/REYES)
    +BMRT (renderman/REYES)
    +3delight (renderman/REYES)
    +Air (renderman/REYES)
    +Pixie (renderman/REYES)
    +Aqsis (renderman/REYES)
    +RenderDotC (renderman/REYES)
    +Maxwell (Raytraced motion blur)
    +FinalRender (Raytraced motion blur)
    +Lighwave internal render (Raytraced motion blur, in 9.5+, also has the old multipass and vector alternatives)
    +Houdini Mantra(Micropoly AND raytraced, two alternatives, possible also vector blur as alternative)
    +Gelato (Renderman/REYES-like)
    +Arnold (Raytraced motion blur, in-house renderer by SONY)
    +CGI Studio (Raytraced motionblur, in-house renderer from Blu Sky studios)
    +Rythm & Hues in-house renderer
    +Indigo render (Raytraced motion blur)
    +Luxrender (Raytraced motion blur, lacking deformation blur though)

    And these the ones that lacks them, wich either has the full sample motion blur or 2.5d hack vector blur method:
    -Blender internal
    -Cinema4d internal
    -PMG Messiah Studio internal (does however have a quite effective multipass method, try the demo)
    -Yafaray
    -Max Scanline (atleast a few years ago, haven't checked recently, MentalRay comes packaged with Max/Maya/XSI anyways)

    I'm unsure of HASH Animation Master, think it's a micropoly renderer so probably has something simlar to REYES.

    Anyways, there's a reason why virtually all hollywood CG shots are rendered through a REYES renderer, sure the shading language, flexibility, effectiveness with huge displacements and huge amounts of data certainly helps, but the performance gains would be null if it didn't have effective motionblur and depth of field, I can assure you renderman would never have become the defacto standard without it.

    There's a blender->renderman exporter for 2.5 on the horizon, ribmosaic is getting ported.

    Reply
  82. Leif Andersen on

    Agreed, that is amazing. Although I'm saddened by the fact that I don't think any of my computers are capable of showing a smooth video in 1080p (let alone the fact that I don't think any of my screens are capable of it either). Still was amazing in 720p though.

    Reply
  85. nrk on

    Every effort added is cumulative to a whole which slowly chips away at an inevitable ability to tell a story, open for everyone. The day will come when anyone can tell there story and you are gving to us one byte at a time. Applause and hope for a bright future resounds... thank you all.

    Reply
  87. REZ on

    I'm sorry, but Jan Morgenstein is the man. Has he done any other notable films- his sound design is phenom!!! I wish I could afford to hire him for some of my short film projects.

    Reply
  89. Olaf on

    Let's not forget the epic music by Jan Morgenstern! Another great score which perfectly suits the movie IMHO.

    Reply
  90. Lucas H. on

    This is realy great !!!

    Im looking forward to the release.
    Thanks for your work - its realy awesome.

    Thanks to everyone of you - you are realy important for the development and the renown
    of Blender.

    I wish you the best of luck and succes with this movie.
    Keep working like this - You are a inspiration for me and lots of other Blender-Artists

    PS:
    The score is realy epic. I love it and all i showed this teaser to also loved it.

    Reply
  94. simon on

    Wow! This is looking awesome! Inspirational stuff

    It does indeed look professional and studio/commercial grade

    I am really looking forward to this release.

    Reply
  98. Corniger on

    Damn, I have to watch that movie, much "worse", I'll have to BUY it! Definitely the by far most advanced Blender animation work I've ever seen! Character design seems fantastic, and the mood created draws me into the film magnetically. This is a GOOD sign, guys, cause I'm not a Blender fanboy and I genuinely like it. Also Mr.WaveMage has done an awesome Job again. Time to charge PayPal.
    Keep it coming! Best team ever!

    Reply

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