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RANADHEERAN

34

Indian Blender studio Realworks Studios presents a stunning trailer video. I'm DEEPLY impressed by the quality of their work!

Sivaprasad Velayudhan writes:

Presenting .... RANADHEERAN - India's 1st 3D animated trailer using open source pipeline

After 756 man hours of work, 10 weeks of project time and 22500 minutes of rendering 4500 image frames

We present to you, Ranadheeran - a trailer clip which is a proof of concept that competent Computer Graphics can be produced using Open Source software production pipeline

No expensive software, only Open Source software that translated to ZERO Software cost

But YES, we did have powerful Graphic cards which were used for rendering!

Done using Blender and Cycles, other tools used were GIMP and Audacity.

 

34 Comments

  1. Fantastic! Would be good if that big spelling mistake "PROPERIETORY" at 12 seconds could be fixed "PROPRIETARY" :-)

    • just
      a string of planes between the camera and the light source, with lens
      flares elements in alpha mode.
      rendered in a separate scene with same
      camera and composited later.
      we used lot of references
      of lenses and lens flares.
      we also observed the optical flare AE plugin
      videos and tried to recreated similar elements and behaviour.
      we created a driver
      based rig for the same.
      at times we also used the osl shader for lens
      flare.
      there r lot of lens flare elements downloadable in the internet

  2. It's pretty common in blender community to leave admiring reviews on anything slightly more complicated than the default cube. And i think it's wrong.
    There is actually nothing "fantastic" of "amazing" as some say in this work. There is unbridgeable gap between "competent Computer Graphics" and this video. It reminds me of early 00's videogame intros. Only few things worth mentioning here: photography in SOME of the shots and maybe post processing.
    I'm not meant to bring you down, guys. But this amount of undeserved admiring reviews can hold you up at current level, which is frankly waaay far from being high.

    • It may not be 'amazing', but doing this in 10 weeks as a proof of concept is impressive. The team that made this isn't saying it's 'amazing'. People like myself, that'd be proud to make something like this, are saying it's 'amazing'. Early in the video, I was nit-picking character animations,(like the guy working the plow, with his butt sticking up) but by the end, I couldn't find anything to complain about....I was too busy looking at the little things in the scenes that impressed me.

      "I'm not meant to bring you down, guys. But this amount of undeserved
      admiring reviews can hold you up at current level, which is frankly
      waaay far from being high."

      With all the hyperbole in the comment, it's hard to think this is why you posted. Instead of just dumping on it, and people who were impressed, offer some constructive criticism? And 10 or so people saying it's 'amazing' is too many 'undeserved
      admiring reviews'? No offense, but it's hard to take you seriously.

      The hyperbole is strong here at blendernation....if only Bart could monetize it.

      • Ten comments HERE, but look at a comment section at youtube. Many says "almost perfect animation". Seriously?
        There is no point in critisizing some specific aspects in this video, because they are pretty obvious. Average animation, average modelling, average render, average pretty much everything. And i would not bother to write this comment if only authors werent position their work as something outta row and as they say "competent computer graphics". I would say "hm, that is okay" if i see in description something like this "i'm studying computer graphics and made this video by myself in a couple of month", but... gee, so much pathos for this... i dunno

        • Dear sergusster, we said "competent" not "the best in the world". and this was done to prove that FOSS could be used in production.

          we setup a centralized workflow with linking and parallel workflow
          we had to test our own render scheduler software,
          we had to move to new 2.7 version of blender
          we were testing our grading workflow as well
          we were testing our network capabilities and much more

          here is the result, If we could do this in a small town in India, big studios could do wonders with this. thats the reason we posted it online.

          this was not meant to be benchmark for character modeling, cloth simulation, facial articulation, rigging or lighting.

          this was to prove that with all these in a scene, everything worked fine in this pipeline.

          we very well know that it is not perfect and we assure you that we are not carried away because of all this attention.

          and moreover we are not comparing this work with anybody's creation

          we have always been learning from our mistakes, and we would continue to do so.

          if you are too much offended about the word "competent" we shall look at alternatives.

          • Well, i probably did mislead you guys with my pretty rough comment. Sorry for that, but it was not about quality of your work, but about overreacting of other commenters :) Anyway, you guys have a lot of potentional, of that i'm sure (i cant recall any single studio, that would produce this kind of product here in my country). So best of luck to you!

          • Sivaprasad, knowing that this was a proof that Open Source can be used in production, I too share similar views about the quality.
            In short, you have done a fantastic job.I am really impressed by almost all of the shots. There's so much life in them and they look great. All your hard work and dedication in producing them shows.
            On the other side of the coin, there's a lot you can improve.
            (Everyone is learning, growing, evolving)
            Continue the path you have taken and explore the depths of CG production. It's rich and filled with goodies.
            Let your passion drive you and your team. All the best :D

    • I do get your point (and trust me, it's a general sentiment that I carry about the Blender community at large--we often see over-praise for work no other community heralds as special, because Blender has a non-professional majority as its demographic), but I do think in certain cases, you do have to consider context of the achievement.

      For a small team, probably without much professional training, using nothing but free open-source software, presenting a proof of concept in just 10 weeks of (presumably) unpaid work, this work's a pretty decent effort, all things considering. The trailer shows room to grow with the team, but still, a reasonable grasp on CG basics is present.

      Are there noticeable areas where it can be improved? Sure. But is there promise in the work? Yes. Criticism's easier than effort. And I think folks tend to forget just how much "digital make-up" even professional work relies heavily upon. This project didn't benefit from a large team of dedicated role. They didn't have a first-class ensemble of software like After Effects, Nuke, Motionbuilder, high-end renderers like Renderman, and Photoshop.

      If any of these guys were to use this trailer as a portfolio piece, it'd be quite sufficient material for landing an entry position. They've shown enough experience here to show that they'd be capable of starting and growing in a larger studio. I've seen artists with this level of work than this trailer get industry jobs. So, all things considering, keeping in context, it's a decent effort.

      I think what this short rather presents is just a glimpse at what potential such an open-source pipeline can provide. I think it's likely not enough to rely on other software users envious of an open-source pipeline. But the trailer is perhaps enough to make some reconsider and say, "Hey, those free tools are really coming along. Not bad." I think the potential of the the FOSS pipeline is the bigger deal here, rather than just the respectable final results.

    • I'm only on the fringes of the Blender community, so I can't have an opinion on their past reviews, but I think you have picked the wrong forum to express your cynicism. Before you decided to post your derisive comments, did you do any research at all into Realworks Studios? I mean, they *could* be a bunch of deluded and pretentious wankers, right?

      Let's assume for a moment you didn't, and that the people who created this work are part of a typical small to medium-sized Indian enterprise which, in all likelihood, had significant material constraints which might not have occurred to you. For instance, you may be ever-so-conveniently forgetting the fact that the extremely clever and successful programmers who made those 00's video game intros where heavily constrained by the capabilities of the available hardware. They did *amazing* things using significantly less computing power than you are likely to have in your phone.

      My uneducated guess is that Realworks Studios probably don't have a huge render-farm packed with the latest tech on hand, and perhaps they had to make careful decisions about what they could and could not do with their limited resources.

      Just think of what might have been achieved by those 00's if only they'd access to today's top-of-the-line hardware. And then perhaps take a moment to consider what Realworks Studios could accomplish if they had the same!

      (b.t.w. your comment made you seem like a dick)

  3. I can understand some people being surprised at the disproportionately enthusiastic comments on this, so let me provide a bit of context. Globally, the bar for even decent quality CG has been set quite high. While there were tremendous improvements in CG techniques recently, here in India, we have a very different story to tell. Millions (I kid you not) of students are pushed into learning animation every month from feeble and ill-equipped institutions. The tutors themselves are youngsters who just completed the programme they are about to teach. The few good institutes and studios in India are mostly interested in work outsourced from the west. The rest are simply too amateur to compete with global standards of CG. Worse yet, here CG is taught like software, and not as art. There are graduates of commece I have encountered, who were eager to learn animation, just because "It's good to know a bit of software, it looks good on the resume."

    I could drone on, but let it suffice to say that disinterested institutions and half-baked tutors only lead to disillusioned students. You can guess the kind of quality of CG the Indian CG/Animation industry has come to accept as acceptable, let alone decent.

    Efforts like the video in question are a breath of fresh(ish) air in a truly lamentable scenario, here in India. I absolutely agree that they have a lot to learn and so will they, no doubt. Us Indian CG artists have a long way to go, efforts like this are, hopefully, pointing in the right direction.

    • Now it makes sense from this point of view. Actually we have somehow similar situation with a movie industry here in russia, and even worse with 3D animation in particular. So, yeah, a see what you mean

    • This does shed some light on the industry in India. Interestingly though, I have heard smaller companies outsourcing their work to India, presumably due to cost.

  4. ??????? ??????? on

    கட்டற்ற மென்பொருள் துணையுடன் உங்களின் இந்த முயற்சிக்கு வாழ்த்துகள் கோவை நண்பர்களே! கோவை தமிழர்களின் திறமை நம்மை மகிழ்ச்சியில் ஆழ்த்துகிறது. ஆனால் தலைப்பில் தமிழ் இல்லாதது கவலை அளிக்கிறது. தமிழர்கள் உலகில் பல்கலைகளில் சிறப்புடன் வெளிப்படுகின்றனர். ஆனால் தாய்மொழிப் பற்றின்றி வாழ்கின்றனர். மொழி அழிந்தால் இனம் அழியும். உலகில் மாந்தனின் முதன் மொழியான தமிழ்மொழியை ஒவ்வொரு தமிழரும் புகழ்ந்து போற்றிட வேண்டும். இகழ்ந்தார்க்கு எழுமையும் இல் - தமிழ்மறை குறள். தேமதுரத் தமிழ் உலகெல்லாம் பரவும் வகை செய்தல் வேண்டும்.

  5. Fantastique! I love the crowd simulation (although probably not crowd simulation in the true sense of the word), absolutely wonderful :D

  6. Fabulous! I thoroughly enjoyed what you all have clearly put so much work into. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you are soon working on something really substantial. I thought some of the animation was really spectacular, in particular the dancing Ranadheeran shots were really nice.

    The writer(s), director(s), and editor(s) also did a very nice job at pulling together a compelling narrative. I'd love to see what this team could do with a 'block-buster' budget!

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