Today I received my 2 disk set of "Elephants dream" from the blendershop
(by buying the item i.e.ordering & paying for it in advance one could
finance part of the open animation movie project of the "orange" team
who did the film). Excellent work which could serve as a measuring stick
for the features a character animation tool really is in need of ;-) ....
For those interested in seeing without buying - just wait a couple of
days more before downloading it, as the authors posted a warning on
their webside:
"Despite Ton’s request to wait with posting Elephants Dream on the
Internet until the Orange team has had a chance to publish a good
quality version, you can already view it on YouTube. In itself this is
not a problem (in fact, you’re encouraged to share it!), but the Orange
team is quite disappointed by the quality of it. As they will be
releasing a series of high-quality downloads in the next few days, I can
only recommend that you wait for those to get the best possible first
impression that you can."
More info at:
http://orange.blender.org
and for those in a hurry who just want to get a first impression:
http://orange.blender.org/wp-content/themes/orange/images/blog/switchbridge.jpg
Another point of interest for those character animation aficionados
among us is, that during the production a set of new structures & tools
were developed for Blender, among them a a unique Blur tool which uses a
3D model based on quads and vectors to deliver the effect in far less
time at a far higher quality than the "classical" approach.
All those new developments will be integrated in the next Blender
release (you can get a preview of them at
http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_last_ver.727.0.html
).
I sincerely hope that the realsoft community will also profit by having
a look at the movie & the tools used by it (EVERYTHING was made by using
free software even the compositing :-) ....)
Have a nice day
Wolfram
