DIGIPENDENCE - declare yours!

Two summers ago, four guys from Spain - Aritz Aizpurua, Avelino Lombardero, Juan M. Puerta and Mikel Arroyo - came together to create Ikso Studio which specializes in computer animation and special effects. Here is “Zapping“, a fantastic short they recently posted on their Vimeo page:

Aritz Aizpurua - Art Director
Avelino Lombardero - CG Compositor
Juan M. Puerta - CG Artist
Mikel Arroyo - CG Artist
Patxi Pelaez - Concept Artist
Rafael Tourón - Music & Sound Effects

This is it: the final part of a four part grand finale to the overcast: a machinima podcast. I think it’s the craziest, raciest, and hopefully funniest show we’ve ever done. Someone it manages to be informative as well. Ricky and I thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoy this last hurrah!

overcast #054 (download)

Ricky Grove and Phil Rice

Earlier this year, CGenie, “the digital artist’s resource”, released the results of its 2009 CG User Survey.

The survey had 2022 responses and the results were quite illuminating, and in some cases, surprising. For example, Blender was well-represented and much-praised by its users. In fact, the open source software stacked up well against products which cost thousands of dollars. After Blender’s strong showing, CGenie interviewed Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of the Blender Foundation to get his views on the results.

CGenie: Blender received overall the highest mark from its user base in the survey, despite it having a smaller share of the market than many of the bigger contenders, it certainly evokes a lot of passion from its customers, as can be seen from the comments posted both on the article and the survey itself.

Firstly, congratulations on the excellent results that you’ve received - if you didn’t know it already, it’s pretty clear you have quite a vote of confidence from your users. Was this expected?

Ton: We are certainly well aware of the passion of our artists and developers for Blender, so that’s not a surprise! What I’m very happy with is that this survey was executed independently of Blender channels or websites, so the results didn’t get polluted by orchestrated internet community floods. It gives us confirmation of successes of our strategy over the past five years -just working hard on getting the program improved and staying loyal to the original concepts behind Blender and to its user base.

And even though there are perception issues - free and open source programs typically are ‘made for the average user’ and ‘horribly designed’ - the results clearly show an increasing awareness that Blender is being made for artists with a serious interest in using 3D on a professional level. Which, like any program you’ve surveyed, just requires time and energy investment to get most of out of it.

Read the full interview.

Originally code-named ‘Apricot’, Yo Frankie! (Wikipedia) is the third open project from the Blender Institute. Unlike Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, and the forth-coming Durian, You Frankie! is a game, not a film although the main character in the game is from Big Buck Bunny. It was released under a Creative Commons Attribution license 3.0.

The original project goal was to work on a cross platform game (at least Linux, Windows, OS X), using Blender for modeling and animation, Crystal Space as 3D engine and delivery platform, and Python for some magic scripting to glue things together. The purpose was to not only make a compelling 3D game experience, but especially to improve and validate the open source 3D game creation pipeline, with industry-standard conditions. Halfway during the project, we noticed the great advances made in Blender’s internal Game Engine, so we’ve added delivering the project entirely in Blender as a target for Apricot as well.

“Here’s a new run-through of the game in the Blender game engine, this time with the music playing in the game, 4x antialiasing, and a decent frame rate. There’s also a multiplayer demo at the end. ENABLE HQ after pressing play.”

Both the game and its engine may be downloaded from here. Source files are included. There are also a number of video tutorials available, and people are encouraged to expand the game by making additions such as levels and characters. Check the project page for more information. Keep an eye on the blog too as there are contests; for example, some very nice cash prizes (1st Prize - 250 Euros, 2nd Prize - 150 Euro, 3rd Prize - 100 Euro) were recently awarded for the levels competition. And of course, all the winning entries are available for download.

There’s also a DVD that can be purchased and “by getting the DVD you’re directly supporting future Blender Foundation’s projects like this, as well as Blender’s development itself”. Here is the official documentation, and GameBlender.org is a good resource for people interested in game development with the BGE.

The Blender Institute has announced it’s third open movie project which is currently co-named ‘Durian‘. Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

The two previous projects film projects were Elephants Dream (imdb, Wikipedia), “the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine” and Big Buck Bunny (imdb, Wikipedia), “the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself”.

While the Durian team will have a lot of creative freedom, some details about the 3D animated film have already been decided: Visually, and concept-wise, the appearance will be that of a “typical “Hollywood” blockbuster or game trailer”. The project will be approximately five to eight minutes long and the main character will be female. Lots of action is planned, and of course, there will be monsters!

Besides Blender for 3D (modeling, sculpting, animation, rendering, compositing, video editing), the goal is to complete the entire project using open source tools, including Gimp and Inkscape for 2D work. When it’s completed, the movie - and its content - will be distributed free under Creative Commons Attribution.

The hunt is on for Blender talent. The 4 to 6 people selected will get to work on Durian in ]Amsterdam at the Blender Institute for 6 to 8 months, from September 2009 to April 2010, although people can work for lesser amounts of time. They’ll become an“Artist in Residence” at the Blender Institute, and be paid an honorarium for their work that should cover their living expenses for the project’s duration. And their travel and housing expenses will be covered.

The core team so far: Martin Lodewijk, Scenario (Netherlands), Colin Levy, Director (USA), David Revoy, Concept Art (France), Ton Roosendaal, Producer (Netherlands) and Brecht van Lommel, Software Developer (Belgium).

People who want to join the Core Team should thoroughly review the application page and then contact Ton Roosendaal - ton[at]blender.org - before June 20th. I note that for other projects, they had previously received applications from experienced 3D artists who didn’t have a Blender portfolio. A note on the site says that these applications might have been rejected for that reason. Also, they need developers who have contributed Blender projects. In other words, HAVE experience WITH Blender! This is important because they need people to be able to hit the ground running.

Durian is not yet fully staffed in other areas either. Besides needing the afore-mentioned Blender designers and developers with skills in Modeling/sculpting, Rigging, Animation, Texture and 2D art, Lighting / Rendering, Compositing, they are also looking for graphic designers (print, web, DVD interface), voice actors and stunt people. Check the application page for additional details.

Digipendence will report periodically, meanwhile, here is the official timeline.

P.S. Blender projects tend to be named after fruit, don’t ask me why, but I’m sure there’s an interesting story in it somewhere. You may be wondering what exactly is a ‘durian’, so here you go: “Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the “king of fruits”, the durian is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow as large as 30 centimetres (12 in) long and 15 centimetres (6 in) in diameter, and it typically weighs one to three kilograms (2 to 7 lb). Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale-yellow to red, depending on the species.” In case you want to know even more, check this link for details.