Mass Effect Infestation
Ben Baker spent four years on this 25-minute Mass Effect fan-film modelled entirely in Blender.
For the last 4 years I’ve been working on a fanfilm based on the Mass Effect games. It’s entirely modelled, animated and rendered in Blender, with GIMP and AFX providing some help with texturing and stitching video and audio together. All the CGI was done by myself. Voice work was done by a number of my friends and the music was mostly from the games, with one track made by Justin Catalano and one by Alex Wilkins/Tom Jolley.Obviously, I’ve already started work on the next project… ;)
I have the strangest reactions to these at times. Being a long time fan of Mass Effect, I find everything in the video instantly recognizable. And being a user of the software used to make it, I’m also constantly finding instances where I can “see the Blender showing” in the textures and such, and I don’t know what causes me to see that, or if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, or if the same techniques would produce the same visual results in Maya or anything else.
Very nice work! This deserves more views and sharing. Can’t say the graphics are the best, but it still looks nice. The plot also made sense and was easier to understand, which is where most home-made films tend to fail.
And wow… you spent 3 years to make it? I sometimes spend over 1 year on some of my solo animations, and thought it’s something out of the ordinary. Would be nice if Blender gets more tools that let artists do things more easily and quickly, as their absence is a known weak spot.