Blender used in Venom 2 Visdev
VictorG reported a cool story about how Framestore usec Blender during the preparation stages for Venom 2:
Newton teamed up with Ben Kovar from Framestore’s art department to begin development. Together, they started from scratch, testing different kinds of inks and pencils on paper, comparing textures to find a line style that fit the film’s narrative. “Weirdly, the hardest thing from a design standpoint was getting the level of ‘artistry’ correct,” says Newton. “We knew we could go childlike and naive, but simultaneously imbuing that dark sense of malevolence and violence into the linework was a big challenge.”
Finding a unique look for the drawings and animation was a challenge. “We had nothing to base it on” says VFX supervisor Stuart Penn, “as the closest thing was probably the ‘Tale of the Three Brothers’ from the later Harry Potter films, but this was much more abstract.”
Once the team had created the right look and style, they moved to Blender; the visdev team, led by visdev supervisor Horacio Mendoza, was already well-versed in software, so they started off by creating an animatic before pushing the development of the design elements even further.
It’s always cool to see Blender used as an industry tool. I keep believing that it will slowly be the industry standard in the future. We will see, but great use of the grease pencil!
Agree. I actually think Blender is an industry standard at this point, but we just don’t realize it because it hasn’t eclipsed Maya or Max as the dominant tool in most large studio pipelines. However LightWave was an industry standard and it never eclipsed those tools either. It was used on numerous Hollywood projects, but it played a lesser role. I expect that’s how Blender is right now. There are likely a lot of studios (like ours) that are using it on projects. You just don’t hear about it. Case in point, watch the “making of The Witcher” videos on Netflix. When you see them show shots of people working, you can see Blender in the toolbar. It’s being used. May not replace Maya, but it’s finding a niche, and that’s really impressive.