Blender and Special FX in feature film

Post by **ton** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:33 pm

(news submitted by Marc Ume)

"Friday or another day" : the first Belgian 35mm feature film with all special effects made with Blender on Linux workstations, a prize-winning film at Locarno Film Festival.

We are very proud to announce that the Belgian 35 mm feature movie "Friday or another day / Vendredi ou un autre jour" - Director Yvan Le Moine have received last week the Independant Critic Prize at the 58th Locarno Film Festival.

All special effects in this film are made with Blender on Linux workstations by Digital Graphics, Belgium (http://www.digitalgraphics.be).

You can find some informations on web:

SFX : http://www.softanim.com/vendredi/index.html (High bandwith recommended).
Blender SFX : http://users.skynet.be/mume//vendredi/blender.html
Official : http://www.lefilm.net/vendredi.html

For our French friends this movie make the opening in 4th International Best of short films Festivals -La Ciotat France (15/18 september 2005)
For Belgian, XX e Festival Francophone de Namur - Belgium (23-30 September 2005)
For the others, still waiting.

Marc & Serge UME

joeri · Post by **joeri** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 1:29 pm

woot

Any change on getting this on the 10 years dvd?

umbroth · Post by **umbroth** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 6:02 pm

Hi joeri,

Thanks for asking.

Lacking time, I think it's complicated to ask to our five producers about copyright. I prefer to present at the Blender Conference 2005 our work in full detail.

See you soon,

Marc Ume

joeri · Post by **joeri** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 9:18 am

If you send me their email(s) / snailmail(s), I can ask them.
I think it's worth the try. It would be a nice closing clip.
Maybe the trailer?

levon · Post by **levon** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 10:29 am

i wonder what renderman exporter they used? it would be great if they could tell everyone more details bout the progress and work flow.. but im sure that will come in time.

graet work, it looks amazing.

ideasman · Post by **ideasman** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:15 pm

rendermans good- but im surprised, they used it- the state of exporting scenes through python isnt the best.

I assume they developed there own renderman exporter, or worked on an existing one.

- Cam

umbroth · Post by **umbroth** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 10:21 pm

Hi,

We use Pixie for all SFX preview thanks to ambient occlusion which is faster than Blender Render or Yafray. It's a mean to show to the Director a high quality modelization without the complication of lighting. Some samples here :
http://www.softanim.com/pixie/Ship_Pixie.jpg
http://www.softanim.com/pixie/Wreck_001.jpg

We modified Blenderman script to export to RIB files for Pixie. After we change all Blender materials by own Renderman shaders.

We are convinced that Pixie (or other : Aqsis,...) is suitable for rendering huge projects in feature movies thanks to displacement on demand, texture baking, level of detail, global illumination, ...

For example, in a other movie that we are finnishing, there is a sequence where we fly very close to a mountain and a castle. Renderman compatible render is the only tool to do this job

Marc UME

Caronte · Post by **Caronte** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 11:14 pm

Your thought about sharing modified script?

umbroth · Post by **umbroth** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 9:02 pm

May be, when our next film will be finished (end of september), I'll try to do something in this way.

M@dcow · Post by **M@dcow** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 4:26 am

umbroth wrote:May be, when our next film will be finished (end of september), I'll try to do something in this way.

That doesn't sound very promising.

Nice looking effects all round.

umbroth · Post by **umbroth** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 12:20 pm

Hi,

You can find the Blender to Pixie script with needed shaders, here

http://www.softanim.com/pixie/BlenderPixie.tar.gz

Happy Blendering and Pixiing

Marc UME

poutsa · Post by **poutsa** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:44 pm

Thanks for the Python Script Pixie-Blender umbroth!!!

dumbf · Post by **dumbf** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 2:50 pm

downloading..

many thanks Marc can't wait to give it ago on Linux. been waiting hoping you'd release the script, but shaders as well, fantastic.

I hate to ask this but will the script and shaders work on windows, if so can someone untar them or point me to a untar prog.

thanks in advance once again.

kidb · Post by **kidb** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:00 pm

dumbf wrote: I hate to ask this but will the script and shaders work on windows, if so can someone untar them or point me to a untar prog.

If you need it as zip.
http://blendertestbuilds.de/index.php?d ... xieScript/

dumbf · Post by **dumbf** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:04 pm

kidb: many thanks for the link