Release Date: Sept 26th!

by ian - 2012/09/10 31 Comments Production, Random

So! We’re back in the studio and moving ahead- and we have a release date! Sept 26th! Just over two weeks from now. I dunno- maybe that seems like a good chunk of time to you guys, but to us it’s not much; we have to make a whole DVD before then! Ton just put up a previous blogpost listing all of the extra features we’re going to try to cram on there. Whole buncha goodies.

So mark your calendar! Tell your mom! Pay your internet bill! Look for leaked torrents! We’re finally gonna release this thing!

DVD box – contents

by ton - 2012/09/10 19 Comments Production

Today production of the DVD box has started. We aim at squeezing everything on a 4 DVD box – which gives max 24 GB of data (minus the PAL and NTSC sections). There’s still hope we can even go back to 16 GB data even – in that case we can also sell as extra service for everyone a 16 GB USB stick! That we only know end of next week probably.

Here’s the projected contents overview:

DVD VIDEO (NTSC and PAL discs)

Movie itself (subtitles in EN, DE, NL, FR, ES, RU, NO, IT)
Addition credits section for our loyal sponsors
Documentary

DVD ROM (2 x 8 GB + 2 x 4 GB optional)

Movie itself in HD, compressed in several qualities/sizes.
Movie in quad-split (or 6 split even): showing storyboards, animatic, original footage, cleaned footage, shots with preview renders, screenshots, …
Outtakes!
All used footage in JPEG2000 (HD)
Selection of original footage frames (4k OpenEXR and F65 RAW)
Press and print section: high quality renders (in 4k), backdrops, film poster
The cleaned studio database with .blend files, textures, etc.
Studio 1-week screencast (every artist was captured a full week)
Tutorials about the studio data – how to use files
How-to tutorials (how we rigged, modeled, textured, cleaned, tracked, lit, composited, graded)
Simple blends – files that load quick without external dependencies – for demo and easy sharing.
Final-edit .blend with sequencer edit of movie – using 1k .avi files (make your own cut)
Various cool stuff from the blog and what else we can find!

We’ll take 3 weeks to produce this. End of month the gold master will go to the printer!

Visit the Blender e-store to order the dvd box.

Popular use of Open Movies: tradeshows!

by ton - 2012/09/08 10 Comments Production, Random, Uncategorized

Hi everyone,

It was time for the annual IBC Conference in Amsterdam. It’s the largest Broadcasting/TV show outside of NAB Las Vegas. Always very cool to walk around and see some new development. I’ve been staring at an 8K tv showing Olympics footage… amazing.

Another fun thing to do at IBC is to spot our movies! This is a great example that illustrates the need for free and open content. It’s just a sample, in the 3 hours I was at the (only parts of the) tradeshow I saw many more. (The pics at QT and Fraunhofer show Sintel too, but not well visible).

Vanja Rukavina visit

by ton - 2012/09/07 8 Comments Production

The young star playing Thom – Vanja Rukavina – was away last week on a film shoot, so he could not attend our pre-premiere event. Today he dropped by to catch up with us, and to get amazed by the work we’ve done sofar. He totally loved it! :)

We then took time to show making-of shots. That was amazing for me too. Illustrating how to get from a final shot to the clumsy original shots… so impressive to clearly see what an amazing job everyone’s been doing here in the past months! All of that goes online soon, promised!

-Ton-

History lesson. Today: TRACES

by sebastian - 2012/09/06 16 Comments Random

Today Ton setup an old Silicon Graphics Workstation at the Institute and installed TRACES on it, the predecessor of Blender. Totally amazing, because it already was very much similar to what later became Blender 2.49, and even in the current Blender you can see these roots.
If you want to see this live and in action come to this year’s Blender Conference!