Also… if this doesn’t syndicate properly, here a direct link to the video on YouTube.

We finished!!

Yup yup yup. Long story short: we completed 4 minutes of 3D animation in Blender in 48 hours. And it came right down the the wire, too. We turned in our film, rendered and ready to rock with a mere 10 minutes remaining. And here’s the really remarkable thing: we started off this year with even less than we did last year. This year, all we had when the project started were two partially complete character models (they were missing their mouthbags, otherwise known as mouth interiors). These models weren’t rigged or textured or anything. Furthermore, we didn’t have a set or any props modeled, either, and a lot of our crew wasn’t available for the full 48 hours. Here’s the result, with a couple bits of polish, rendered in HD (and below that is some “making of” information):

(If for some reason it’s not playing here, you can direct download the MP4 or watch the short on YouTube or Vimeo)

It was due to the huge bucket of talent and dedication in our team that this was able to be finished. We have some absolute machines in this crew. It’s incredible how much work was done in such a short period of time. Everyone pitched in; often doing more than a single person’s fair share of work. The interesting thing is that animation didn’t really start until late, late Saturday night. An incredible number of frames was cranked out in that short period of time. I can’t say enough how honored I am to have worked with all of the people on this team. Not only that, but I’m still surprised that they actually agreed to participate in such a ridiculous idea.

To get an idea of just how hectic the weekend was, have a look at these timelapse videos that Hal Dowdy took while we were working. They’re each about 8 hours worth of footage crammed down into one minute of time. It’s pretty amazing.

There are a couple highlights that I’d really like to focus on here, though. One of them is Bassam’s new Rigamarule rig-retargeting script suite. It took Bassam roughly 5 hours to rig our Round character. However, with Rigamarule, the same rig was retargeted to Square in about 20 minutes, most of which was dedicated to cleaning up vertex weights. Without Rigamarule, we would’ve started animating much later and probably would not have turned the short in on time. Bassam just released Rigamarule 0.2 on the blog for his Tube project. If you’re a Blender rigger, I highly recommend that you check it out.

Besides our talented crew, the other element that made this production possible were our renderfarms. In particular, I’d like to mention the Animux renderfarm that Mark Puttnum runs as well as the very cool people at BlenderFabrik. Without these two farms and the small team of “farm hands” to wrangle them, there’s no way that we would’ve gotten this thing done on time. The best we’d be able to pull of would be OpenGL previews… and who wants to watch that?

A somewhat surprisingly helpful piece of technology for this project was TinyChat. Since most of our real-time production discussions happened via IRC, it wasn’t a huge production tool. However, it was great for morale. Since most of our team was located elsewhere throughout the world, it was an incredible help to be able to see everyone else working (and freaking out as the deadline loomed closer). It was also a great way for the outside world to watch our production as it happened. We actually recorded most of the video from the TinyChat session, but I haven’t really gone through all of it. Multiple cameras at over 48 hours of footage it going to take some time to look through. I promise to eventually post something, though.

All in all, I had a great time. We finished. It got screened with the other 48 Hour films, and we’ll find out the results of the judging this weekend. I’m not expecting too much. We’re at a bit of a disadvantage by doing animation for a challenge that was designed for live action filmmakers, but I feel that this was an incredible accomplishment. I can’t wait to do it again.

Hand Turkey Studios is going to allow live public access to our production as we compete this coming weekend (17-19 July) in this year’s 48 Hour Film Project in Richmond, Virginia. We assembled a team and competed last year with the ambitious goal of completing an animation as our submitted work (and, yes, we’re animating in Blender). Due to some technical difficulties last year (discussed in more detail in a presentation at the 2008 Blender Conference), we missed the deadline. However, the entire international team of talent from last year (plus some new additions!) has returned to do it again! And we’re amped to make this thing awesome.

As part of that goal, we are allowing public access to our work environment during the weekend of our production. Since our team is located throughout the world, we collaborate on our project through the Internet. We’ve opened some windows to that process so anyone can follow along as we make our animated short… four of them, to be exact:

• The Hand Turkey 48 Hour Film Project Wiki – This is our central collaborative tool. Brainstorms, sketches, designs, task lists and workflow descriptions all live here. Check out the Recent changes page to see the latest updates.
• #ht48hfp on freenode – We use IRC as our main means of real-time communication. If you have a preferred IRC client (Chatzilla, mIRC, Xchat, etc.), point it to the #ht48hfp channel on freenode.net. If you don’t have a client, you can use freenode’s web interface.
• Follow us on Twitter – The entire team has access to update that account, so any of us can let you know what’s going on.
• Streaming webcam footage – We are actually going to stream footage from webcams at the locations of some of our international team members so you can watch the craziness that ensues. We’re still hammering out the kinks on this, but we’ll have a direct link set up by Friday.

That’s it! Come watch us slave away this weekend and wish us luck! Also… if you’re in the Richmond area and you want to provide us with coffee and food, we won’t complain!! :)

• Wednesday, 17 June, 7-9 PM: I will be giving a talk on Blender at DCLUG, the Washington, D.C. Linux User Group. If you were able to make it out to my NOVALUG talk last month, it’s going to be pretty similar to that. To find out more about where the LUG meeting is being held, check out the DCLUG website. It should be fun times all around. I’m driving up from Richmond, so you should be there too!
• Friday, 19 June, 6-8 PM: This one still turns my brain inside out. I actually have a book signing (really? yeah… weird, ain’t it?) for my book, Blender For Dummies. It’s going to be at the Barnes and Noble located at Chesterfield Towne Center mall, south of Richmond, VA. Come on out and say hello, hang out, point and laugh at me… maybe even buy a book. Really, is there any other way to spend a Friday evening?

So yeah, there you have it. I have a talk on Wednesday and a book signing (really?) on Friday. If you’re not lame, you’ll show up to at least one of these.

And now… we’re back! The entire team from last year has agreed to return and we’ve even got a few more added to the mix. The event will take place on the weekend of July 17th. It’s going to be ridiculous and crazy and coffee-filled and awesome. I can’t wait.

As with before, the tutorial is available for download on blenderbasics.com, as well as YouTube and Vimeo. And for those of you too lazy to click, here’s the tutorial:

• 2 May 2009: Northern Virginia Linux Users Group (NOVALUG) meeting; Reston, Virginia – I’m giving a “Blender for the rest of us” presentation, explaining Blender, what it is, and hopefully giving attendees something useful to go home with.
• 14-17 May 2009: Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI); Kalamazoo, Michigan – I’m working with Mark Puttnam and Jeff Hipolito to give a presentation on Animux, a Linux distribution designed for animators.
• 4-7 June 2009: Connecticut Film Festival (CTFF); Danbury, Connecticut – I’ll be giving a workshop on Blender on Friday and sitting on a discussion panel with three people who are much more important than me (one being the very cool Bassam Kurdali) on Saturday.
• 3-7 August 2009: SIGGRAPH; New Orleans, Louisiana – This year it’s in New Orleans! Whooo! There’s a possibilty that there will be a small Blender booth this year, where I’ll likely hang out a lot. If you’re into computers, technology, or animation (or any combination thereof), you should totally go.
• 23-25 October 2009: Blender Conference; Amsterdam, The Netherlands – There’s always good times to be had at the Blender Conference in Amsterdam. I’m not sure if I’ll be presenting anything again this year, but I’m certainly going to try. :)

That’s what I’ve got planned so far. And of course, locally, I’ll be going to as many Project Resolutions as possible… and we’re also doing the 48 Hour Film Project again. Wheeeeeeee! Hopefully I’ll see some of you cool folks at at least one of these things. Hopefully more.

Woah… this post has a lot of links in it. Wild.

For convenience, I’ve also mirrored these tutorials on both YouTube and Vimeo. Hopefully this will alleviate any potential bandwidth sappage that may happen with my web host. However, even if you do use these mirrored videos, I still suggest you check out the ones on blenderbasics.com because in the postings there, I include the .blend file used to create each tutorial as well as a .mp4 file of the actual video tutorial itself. That way you can watch the video on your computer even if you don’t have an internet connection. How’s that for awesome?

Alrighty… and just for kicks, here are each of the video tutorials… for your viewing pleasure:

So to this end, I’ve created blenderbasics.com, the official website of Blender For Dummies. Currently on the site are all of the project files included on the Blender For Dummies CD-ROM. In the next days and weeks, I’ll be adding video tutorials and more project files to help supplement the content of each chapter and share cool tricks and features with everyone. And the even cooler thing is that it’s set up blog-style, so you can subscribe to the RSS feed and be updated whenever I add new content! Woohoo!

There you have it. If you’re interested in getting the most out of Blender For Dummies, please visit blenderbasics.com. My hope is that it not only serves as a helpful supplement to the book, but also as a valuable resource to anyone who wants to learn more about Blender.

Blender For Dummies Sample Chapter