Tears of Steel - Blender Foundation's fourth short Open Movie

[digman]

The movie was released today...

http://mango.blender.org/

There is a tiny bit more to the story past the credits....

A a lot of varied opinions on the flim already, acting, story and visuals. The main thing it was made entirely in Blender and the first Open Movie Short using the Cycles renderer.

I'm sure we will be see improvements...

[michalis]

It's strongly recommended to download the torrent. Effects look much better. The YouTube version isn't good.

I didn't like the movie, the acting, the story, animation, effects...

But, I did like the renderer. It's full of light.

And the camera tracking, which seems to be among the best tools of blender.

Anyway, technicians can't make movies, what else can I say.

The scene with the robot hand on his face was convincing though.

[AbnRanger]

It's strongly recommended to download the torrent. Effects look much better. The YouTube version isn't good.

I didn't like the movie, the acting, the story, animation, effects...

But, I did like the renderer. It's full of light.

And the camera tracking, which seems to be among the best tools of blender.

Anyway, technicians can't make movies, what else can I say.

The scene with the robot hand on his face was convincing though.

Didn't see any news about Normal Map support, in the 2.64 RC. Any clue as to where they are with that?

[digman]

Technical advancement in Blender at least give artist some more tools to work with... so even if the movie was not the greatest in terms of acting, story or visuals ( which were not bad in a number of scenes) it open the doors...

Math gives engineers the base of structure, then artist add the human element...

I have no complaints in that regards...

[philnolan3d]

Guess I have to go download it now since all of the CG news won't shut up about it for a few weeks.

[chingchong]

technically nice made,

but not really good story

[michalis]

Didn't see any news about Normal Map support, in the 2.64 RC. Any clue as to where they are with that?

Out of topic... (but as art and technicians are two different worlds... as we watched in these 10 mins of artistic atrocities) LOL

Well, you won't see n-maps support soon, some other capabilities come first. As baking is. It's more important as n-maps don't react well (or at all) with AO-GI. So, n-maps work best after baking. It makes sense.

SSS, particles-fur, hair support, volumetrics, some issues with caustics and transparency, these come first. Let's not forget that such capabilities are easy only under bi-directional path tracer, which is very difficult (or even impossible) to code under CUDA. As cuda stands now. Much easier for CPU rendering though.

(this is a long discussion Abn, GPU support of cycles reduced the speed of Cycles development a lot)

[AbnRanger]

Out of topic... (but as art and technicians are two different worlds... as we watched in these 10 mins of artistic atrocities) LOL

Well, you won't see n-maps support soon, some other capabilities come first. As baking is. It's more important as n-maps don't react well (or at all) with AO-GI. So, n-maps work best after baking. It makes sense.

SSS, particles-fur, hair support, volumetrics, some issues with caustics and transparency, these come first. Let's not forget that such capabilities are easy only under bi-directional path tracer, which is very difficult (or even impossible) to code under CUDA. As cuda stands now. Much easier for CPU rendering though.

(this is a long discussion Abn, GPU support of cycles reduced the speed of Cycles development a lot)

I'm not talking about the ability to BAKE normal maps, but to use them in the Bump node, and have it show during the render. If not, then I have a hard time taking the renderer seriously. That's elementary, ABC 1-2-3 kind of stuff for a CG app/renderer.

[Carlosan]

technically nice made,

but not really good story

+1

for me is more a test demo

and help showing to the low/medium users/production houses what its possible to do with free software

//edit

like example

Got Milk commercial done at my work using only blender

[michalis]

Can you stop this Abn? You're out of topic.

Nobody uses normal maps in film industry, and this thread is about a movie.

Cycles is developing to be a renderer for animation. This is clear enough.

If you search an opportunity to offend cycles or blender, start another topic on normal maps and modern pathtracers. I will explain further, there.

[Carlosan]

use PM please ty

[geo_n]

Very nice techdemo. The renderer looks like its production ready and passed octane render in development?

[AbnRanger]

Can you stop this Abn? You're out of topic.

Nobody uses normal maps in film industry, and this thread is about a movie.

Cycles is developing to be a renderer for animation. This is clear enough.

If you search an opportunity to offend cycles or blender, start another topic on normal maps and modern pathtracers. I will explain further, there.

No different than you bringing up Blender in every thread you possibly can, eh? We could be talking about recipes for Chocolate chip cookies and you'd find a way to mention Blender (doing it better).

Kind of reminds me of the little kid in the movie, Better off Dead. "Hey Mister....(Two Dollars) Blender!"

I was simply asking the question because the 2.64 RC was released at the same time. Thought I would ask if anything had been done in that area. Normal maps are not only used in games. It's basically a replacement for greyscale bump maps, which many use both displacement and normal maps (for the ultra fine details)

As for the new project...nice cg, but I couldn't make much of the plot/ending. Thought Big Buck Bunny was much better in terms of story.

[michalis]

Abn, you want to have the last word? So you have it.

This is a blender movie thread. I didn't start it, actually

We could be talking about recipes for Chocolate chip cookies and you'd find a way to mention Blender (doing it better).

So, what about it?

Please don't answer to me, I won't read it. You're trolling sir.

[AbnRanger]

I asked a legitimate, semi-related question. This is a thread about Blender's tech demo showing off it's toolset...to which Cycles development was involved. Seeing that 2.64RC was released at the very same time as this short, I just asked if anyone had heard anything about normal map support.

I would like to know, personally because I have held off even experimenting with it because of this lack of support. I've google-searched and haven't found any explicit answers, one way or the other. If anyone is being ill here...it's you, and I suspect it's because you cannot handle anyone saying anything even remotely negative about your beloved Blender. Wasn't trying to harm the Precious. Just asked a benign, simple question.

[haikalle]

I liked it. I wasen't planning to buy dvd set, but after seeing this short movie, I really want to see how they have done it. Mix between cg/actors was well done also.

[AbnRanger]

I liked it. I wasen't planning to buy dvd set, but after seeing this short movie, I really want to see how they have done it. Mix between cg/actors was well done also.

Actually, it seems like it would have been the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the VFX tools (Smoke/Fire/Fluids), but it appears they chose not to. The Rocket takeoff appeared to be more of materials effect on funnel objects. Wasn't very convincing, imho. The Robot models, CG backdrops and tracking looked pretty good, though.

[Carlosan]

I think this film really proves that an open source piece of software, if combined with an appropriate budget and team size, could be a viable alternative to the industry standard software. Maybe not for the biggest studios that require a lot of in-house software, but for small to medium sized studios... I don't see a significant reason they couldn't use it.

Smoke/Fire/Fluids need BIG improvements

Animation system need too

[geo_n]

Didn't see any news about Normal Map support, in the 2.64 RC. Any clue as to where they are with that?

That's a serious limitation. But I'm sure cycles will support it eventually. And films do use normalmaps. Its wierd to say they don't.

[philnolan3d]

I think this film really proves that an open source piece of software, if combined with an appropriate budget and team size, could be a viable alternative to the industry standard software. Maybe not for the biggest studios that require a lot of in-house software, but for small to medium sized studios... I don't see a significant reason they couldn't use it.

Of course we don't know exactly how long it took or what kind of troubles they may have had.

[BeatKitano]

Of course we don't know exactly how long it took or what kind of troubles they may have had.

Well you're right, but at least given how those projects have fed the developper new problems to chew on and how those issues gave birth to new effective tools (cycle is one of them), I think it's safe to say even if there were issues in the making, they won't stay issues for long.

That's the advantage of blender over, lets say autodesk products where you have to be weta or ilm to get autodesk dev to work on YOUR issues.

As for the movie itself I found it interesting, visually and even the story was cool even though the time constraint make it a bit hard to understand at times and leave you a bit in the dark. This could be cool in a long feature movie.

I think Archetype will be just that, can't wait

[michalis]

Archetype is a great short movie.

Talented people... doing the simpler and more difficult in cinema. To hide what's not important, to show what is important.

I know a lot about this film, I also admired the work of the guy who sculpted this machine. (zbrush gallery) He made this machine to look more human than the real human. A good reason to be in a gallery.

As for the money and time consuming on tears of steel, this is rather a blender development process than a film making. So let's be fair.

IMO, once again, technicians don't know how to make movies.

Art is not what you can do, it's what you need to do. Abstraction.

[Carlosan]

Of course we don't know exactly how long it took.

16 people work 8 hours a day 5 days a week 4 weeks a month for 9 month

[geo_n]

Nobody doing CG works only 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Lol!

[Roger_K]

Technically it looked great. story was pretty woeful though, also some of the later comps really let it down. I wouldn't be surprised if the end got rushed (seems to be the way with these things)

That said it seems to have done its job of improving blender. Cycles is swiftly becoming a very very nice rendering engine, and the tiled compositor/tracking/masking tools look really great. I think these open films have been a fantastic driving force behind making blender better. before them it was being developed in a vacume.

abn_ranger: why on earth would you want to use normal mapping in an offline renderer that can easily handle high polygon counts? what's your usage case? and why cant you use displacement mapping/regular bump? I know it would be nice but it sounds like your trying to use cycles for it job its not designed for.

You can get comparable results on high frequency detail with either normal maps or straight bump maps. The real strength of normal maps is baking/countering low poly shading.. which isnt an issue offline.

[AbnRanger]

Technically it looked great. story was pretty woeful though, also some of the later comps really let it down. I wouldn't be surprised if the end got rushed (seems to be the way with these things)

That said it seems to have done its job of improving blender. Cycles is swiftly becoming a very very nice rendering engine, and the tiled compositor/tracking/masking tools look really great. I think these open films have been a fantastic driving force behind making blender better. before them it was being developed in a vacume.

abn_ranger: why on earth would you want to use normal mapping in an offline renderer that can easily handle high polygon counts? what's your usage case? and why cant you use displacement mapping/regular bump? I know it would be nice but it sounds like your trying to use cycles for it job its not designed for.

You can get comparable results on high frequency detail with either normal maps or straight bump maps. The real strength of normal maps is baking/countering low poly shading.. which isnt an issue offline.

Uber displacement details can eat into render times, thus it's more efficient to let normal maps do as much as it can and let displacement maps take over from there. What was Cycles "designed" for? Modern renderer? If it doesn't support normal maps, that's hardly modern. I don't know of a single production renderer that doesn't support normal maps.

[michalis]

thus it's more efficient to let normal maps do as much as it can and let displacement maps take over from there

Or, you probably mean the opposite, right?

Uber displacement details can eat into render times

Modern engines are very fast on this.

But, Abn, you missed the point.

A cage with UVs, displacement map. Subdivide x2-3 and apply. This produces a multires mesh ~100-200k faces. These aren't much at all. And, a multires mesh serves rigging very well.

Now, add a second bump map (baked from this x2-3 resolution level) This will be the hi freq details.

Compare this with a ~5k mesh with normal maps. Or try similarly and use displacement and normal maps from this subdivision level. You'll be surprised how better bumpmaps work.

Abn, displ plus bumps method is of greater quality than nor maps. Face it.

Funny, I am among these blender users that insist for normal maps in cycles. This doesn't mean that these are better.

I also insist for baking capabilities in cycles. To bake excellent AO and GI effects on low poly meshes.

Not for rendering these low polys under cycles though. There're other render engines for low poly.

There's a long discussion on all these in zbrush central. Best results, on mentalray and vray, comes from displ+bumps use.

Abn, something new is coming, it's the microdisplacement. Are you familiar with it? It's the Pixar renderman way. It's also the Arnold way. This is what they use. Never normal maps.

[AbnRanger]

Or, you probably mean the opposite, right?

Modern engines are very fast on this.

But, Abn, you missed the point.

A cage with UVs, displacement map. Subdivide x2-3 and apply. This produces a multires mesh ~100-200k faces. These aren't much at all. And, a multires mesh serves rigging very well.

Now, add a second bump map (baked from this x2-3 resolution level) This will be the hi freq details.

Compare this with a ~5k mesh with normal maps. Or try similarly and use displacement and normal maps from this subdivision level. You'll be surprised how better bumpmaps work.

Abn, displ plus bumps method is of greater quality than nor maps. Face it.

Funny, I am among these blender users that insist for normal maps in cycles. This doesn't mean that these are better.

I also insist for baking capabilities in cycles. To bake excellent AO and GI effects on low poly meshes.

Not for rendering these low polys under cycles though. There're other render engines for low poly.

There's a long discussion on all these in zbrush central. Best results, on mentalray and vray, comes from displ+bumps use.

Abn, something new is coming, it's the microdisplacement. Are you familiar with it? It's the Pixar renderman way. It's also the Arnold way. This is what they use. Never normal maps.

I work primarily in PPP mode in 3D Coat because I rarely get any workable results in MV. That's one reason why I personally prefer normal maps. I can export a mid poly retopo mesh to give all the deformation that normal maps won't reveal and simply apply a Skin Wrap modifier (when animation is needed) in 3ds Max just prior to render time

[Javis]

Please keep the thread on topic and cordial. Thanks for your cooperation.