Currently the animatic is set up a little weird!
We’ve linked in scenes from every blend file into a master timeline in the video sequence editor (making significant use of the mapping cameras to timeline markers)- which is both cool and not-so-cool. On the plus side, it gives immediate updates. Whenever anyone updates an animation or a model, all we have to do is update SVN and bam! It’s in the animatic.
The mango project was almost single handedly finished by Sebastian today.
Click here to see the incredible video!
Thanks for all your support, guys. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Can I in good conscience suggest you watch this video? No. And yet- it is here.
13 minutes of almost completely unedited Mango action; mostly filmed during times that have almost nothing to do with mango, and featuring an absurdly disproportionate amount of Ian’s face.
May I present:
Really Far Behind the Scenes
The video has nothing to do with the rest of this post :P. I was sketching “defensive tombstones”, and Sebastian walked by and said, “I have the perfect shot tracked for that!” so I threw some in! I’ll wait to develop them until we know if we have a specific place for them, though.
It’s also the first video on our new Mango-Specific YouTube channel. There are some videos we want to post, but aren’t really deserving of the massive traffic the BlenderFoundation channel gets, so it’s more for scraps and the like. If that’s your thing, though, feel free to subscribe-or-whatever.
Anyway! Anyways? Anywaying?
As part of our new even-opener initiative, we’re releasing everything but the last minute (and the script)- that means we’re releasing a ton of storyboards!
Feel free to swing over and take a look here at the gallery. Or download the pdf with high resolution images (20 MB).
BAM! Here we are, the finished kickoff film, only 5 days after starting.
Is it perfect? Nooooooo- we’d tweak this thing forever if we could- but we finished all the big stuff, and made a short film!
Today was a day of last minute tweaks and battling the render farm. At one point we had every computer in the place up and running rendering shots, along with the render farm. I suspect we would have been rendering on folk’s cellphones if we could.
Francesco is going to be cleaning up the SVN database this weekend, and we’ll be putting that all up for all of you to browse! The models and everything we made will be going up then as well.
We’re also going to be rendering a full HD version of this thing over the weekend. We ran into deadlines (as can happen! When render farms! Are! On fire!)- so some of this stuff is only 50% full res (nothing you’d miss on YouTube, probably :P). But yeah, the “Official Artist’s Version” is coming early next week.
And with that- it is time for dinner! And Mango proper! Because, just again, this isn’t Mango! It’s a short kickoff project to test the pipeline and get to know each other and figure out what needs to be worked on! And pester Sergey with requests!
We’re releasing today’s video amidst quiet protests from the team. Once you get this close to done, it’s hard to release it before it’s all polished and perfect (and understandably so! The closer we get to the end, the harder it is for the community to know what’s done or not). But! We’re uploading the video every day, and here’s where we’re at! As usual, lots of shots are actually further along than they appear; most all the destruction simulation and shards are completed- they just aren’t rendering at the moment.
A lot of work left for Friday, but definitely manageable! We’re making sure everything necessary is being sent to the render farm tonight, so we can lay in the image sequences tomorrow! We still have one shot left that really needs a bit of work, but with everyone working together tomorrow morning, it should totally come together.
Stay tuned for the final!
The movie we are currently making isn’t Mango! Mango is going to take us more than a few days!
We’re currently doing a 5 day kickoff film to work through the entire pipeline- the end goal hopefully being that all those mistakes and lessons we’d have learned from Mango, we’re making and learning now. It’s also cool from a momentum aspect (us artists would spend the first 5 days just calibrating our monitors, if we got the chance)- and gives us a much better sense of perspective in terms of time estimation. We’re learning first hand how long certain tasks take. Just a sec- lunchtime.
Back! To see the original script and Ton’s initial announcement, check here!
So yes, full fledged Mango pre-production continues next week! If you check back later today, you’ll see some cool robot-y updates.
Day 3!
The hump! Everything’s coming together, but we’re at the dangerous point where we go, “Psh! Filmed and edited in 2 days! We have nothing but time!” I suspect we’re going to wake up tomorrow, look at everything that’s left, and start sprinting.
Totally amazed by everyone’s skills today. Destruction and dust simulations, tons of motion tracking, even more bug fixes, insane compositing- it’s wild. And I’m not just saying that in the polite, “Go team! Everyone’s great!” way- no. My day was a daze of revelations and discovery!
And the Video Sequence Editor is surprisingly awesome!
Huge CG jump coming tomorrow!
Below is my current wallpaper.
BAM!
So we filmed the script this morning. The current edit is looking pretty darn similar to the animatic from yesterday (with a few minor exceptions). Everybody was awesome! This is a pretty incredible team.
Destruction simulations, amazing robot texturing, 3d motion tracking, editing, great animation, and insane bug fixing abound! The film has really taken shape- but tomorrow the CG shots should really start looking closer to finalized! Also! Getting audio locked down!
If this is where we’re at by the end of the 2nd day, with any luck we’re going to be able to do all the polishing we need!
