Hello Everyone,

I’m Josh, one of new crew members for tube.  I travelled over to the US from England last week, and I’m here until mid September undertaking cultural studies, and working on the models for the film.  While I attempt to mediate transatlantic differences (such as introducing the rest of the team to Branston Pickle and Marmite, explaining the etymology of ‘bangers and mash’, and justifying why I need a knitted cosy for my teapot), my hosts are offering an American exchange programme complete with drive-in movies, fried dough, Independence Day Celebrations and Root Beer.  In my time away from the screen I’ve been out enjoying the fresh air, beautiful countryside and very un-British weather.  I’ve been running to and from work each day (8 ½ miles each way), and when I had a few hours to spare last weekend I biked up to the Sugarloaf Mountain.

Fresh out of finishing a long and traumatic Architecture degree at Cambridge University, I vowed never to work in the industry again.  My first task in the studio, however, was to design the station roof and columns, and to provide general advice to the rest of the team on all things architectural!  Being British, and naturally strongly resistant to change, I was slightly thrown when I realised the team was working with up to the minute svn builds of Blender.  Back home in my own work I’d been hanging on to the 2.49 vintage with its historical interface not unlike the quirky 400 year old tumbledown cottage I lived in at uni.  2.5 comes with its own breed of glossy newness, an impersonal homogeneity with other 3D apps akin to the monotony of the skyscrapers in downtown LA and a feature set which sprawls on and on like the city-edge of Phoenix, Arizona.

Bewildered at first, I was tempted away from the path of the righteous by the glowing red devil’s tail of Maya on one side and the swirling captivating vortex of 3DS on the other, but eventually I found my way through the valley of darkness.  I still miss many of the 2.49 features which haven’t yet been ported – skinning loops and multi-knife-cuts to name a few, and in my first few days I’ve spent a considerable amount of time filing bug reports, hopefully for the greater good.

There are still some very simple features I wish had been integrated into the new release.  As what Pirsig might call a ‘mechanic of the photographic mind school’, all of my previous organisation and labelling systems have been tainted with a certain amount of… dyslexic logic.  To make life easier for everyone else on the project I have to name every object, bone, group and file according to a strictly prescribed style, not least so our python automation knows what’s going on!  While I don’t mind accumulating road miles on my way to and from Amherst every day, I hate the unnecessary mouse miles blender’s UI demands.  I’ve illustrated one of the key issues (which could be solved by a simple hotkey and under-mouse-dialog) using an analogy that will be familiar even to non-blender users.

After breaking free from summers spent as a CAD-monkey in local architecture firms, I now find myself pining for the logical and consistent snapping and tracking systems I was so familiar with from hours spent in front of Rhino, Vectorworks, AutoCAD and the like.  At least the resulting ‘errors’ present in my incapable use of Blender’s snaps often results in a more derelict and aged look!  Here’s a work-in-progress snapshot of the interior of the train which I’ve been working on today, by virtually bashing it up:

That’s all for now,

Josh

Hi everybody,

First, let me introduce myself, I’m Henri Hebeisen from France and I’ll work as a 3d intern for the two months. I arrived last week after a long plane trip, so I`m still discovering the `american way of live`.Living here seems really great!

I’ve been working on the  project for less than one week now and it’s very exciting to work on it. Everybody is really nice and that’s a pleasure to work here. Bassam showed the animatic last friday, the story is just…incredible!!The final result will be “epic”! (a popular word for blenderheads these times )

So my first task here was to do some tests for a shot Bassam had in mind. The idea was to play with the curves of the metro rail and have nice shapes when the camera is flying over really fast. So as we wanted to have the impression of movement really early, I just did some basic drawings with Inkscape and then projected these drawings on planes in blender.

Using Inkscape was quite useful because it allowed me to do several variations of the curvy tracks fairly fastly, just had to play with layers and positioning curves and

And then back to blender, it became very easy to position the camera, control the speed and so on… Here is a picture of what it looks like in blender :

As you can see, it’s very simple and it’s a good way to visualize the curves in movement.

Once we had a strong idea of what the shot would look like, I started to model the tracks in 3d and made them fit it with the inkscape drawings. Et voila, that’s it!

Our own Malefico — Claudio Andaur — has co-authored a new guide to movie production, focused around the Licuadora short film, Mercator.

Recently well reviewed at Blender Nation, check it out!

Blender Studio Projects: Digital Movie Making

We’ll miss you dearly my friend.

So, we’re going to the Libre Planet meeting this weekend in Boston  (we being Bassam, Fateh, Pablo and Jarred.) Mainly we’ll be attending talks, working on Tube at the hackfest, helping out with the event, meeting people, catching up with friends at the event and in town, etc. We’ll see at least one regular of our irc channel in person for the first time (hey chris!) If you’re reading this, and going to the event, come say hi

What we’ll likely be working on: Rigging and scripting rigs in Blender 2.5, Concepts in Gimp, Animatic in Gimp and Blender.

Oh and this is Pablo and Jarred’s first visit to Boston/Cambridge. Any tips? Things we shouldn’t miss?

At the Bit Films blog, our compadre Chris Perry has posted multi-stage details of his cool project to create a Digital Cinema Package for The Incident at Tower 37.

DCP is the digital cinema distribution format, delivered via hard drives which plug directly into theater projectors. Realizing that “we’re really just talking about some fancy conversions to a non-proprietary format,” rather than resorting to expensive commercial solutions, Chris set out to mine the resources free/libre software offers the independent filmmaker.

Bassam’s small contribution was to cry “FFmpeg!” when Chris wished, “If only there was a tool to automatically output PNGs from a QuickTime movie…”

Check out the climax and how-to, or head to the beginning for Making a DCP, Part 1.

Well, first of all, I’m gonna to introduce my self: I’m Pablo Lizardo from Argentina, to be more accurate I’m from here! sooo far away!! As Fateh and Bassam told in the latest post, I was accepted as intern to “work” for the next 3 months in this awesome project called “Tube”

I came just six days ago, so all is new for me, luckily all the people in the team and at the hampshire college are great and really kind. So there wasn’t problems with the adaptation time. Before I start talking about the project, I want to make a special mention to Bassam, Fateh and Jarred who give me all I need, and are always asking if there’s all going right!

Well, do I’ve mentioned that the town/city (Northampton, MA) is really beautifull? i think not! All the buildings and houses are like the movies

Another little thing to mention is that all has a lot of patience with me , because my english is really bad XD, I guess that get laughs at my back! But i think that i’m learning a lot, so i think that in … 3 months I’ll be ready to communicate with english people

Lets talk about important things! The food is really strange, I miss the argentinean food! but I must adapt to this new forms of eat! I feel lucky because I came with Yerba Mate.

From the first day I start to work in the Nerdodrome,It’s a very nice place where a lot of cool things happen!, There’s also a project called Caldera which is produced in the same place, fortunately here we have a lot of new computers to do all the work together without disturb to anybody.

In the project, I’m mostly dedicated to draw some boards for the animatic. So I’m doing a lot of 2d stuff, sometimes i have things to do in 3d but not too much. I don’t have problem with that because I love to draw and make sketches!

Here’s some images that I did in this few days. Keep on touch for more blog updates!

- Pablo

Hey this is malefico writing.

Bassam kindly invited me to write something about Plumiferos’ release happening this week. It might sound strange to read something about Plumiferos here but in fact it is not.

Some of us in the team, Bassam, Juan Angel and myself were part of the biggest film project done in Blender so far, and here’s the good news: it is finished. And it is showing in the theaters in Argentina as you read. The first Blender made feature film. Ever.

We are very proud of have been part of it

It was because of Plumiferos that I met Bassam, Juan and other wonderful people like Andy and VenomGFX. And for that I’m certainly grateful and happy.

Here’s Juan Angel writing…

I agree with Malefico, about learning from it… The best part of it, instead the experience, the learning (technical and human), and getting new knowledge and skills…

But the best part, as the Plumifero’s director (Daniel De Felippo) told me… was knowing those couple of amazing people… Malefico, Pico, Ivan, Diego, VenomGFX, Bassam!, Andy!, Daniel… and some others too…

Cheers… and some hugs… and here some pics !

For some the calendar is based on the sun; for some, the moon. For we of the Tube project, the calendar is loosely tethered to the inscrutable workings of the Hampshire College academic year. Hosted as we are by its Computer Graphics Incubator Space, the project has fallen under the influence of local rhythms. In the crunch to get ready for the ambitious schedule on which we embark with the start of this new term, the blog has fallen a bit quiet — so there is a backlog of cool developments to relate!

Tube is in part an experiment in distributed collaboration, with a team spread all over the globe, but we also have a great and growing cluster of people collected at the “drome”. Look out for numerous additions to the ‘team’ page, including several satisfying adjustments to the chromosomal divide. We have also been very pleased to welcome Jarred de Beer back from South Africa for a second stint, upgraded from Intern 3D Generalist to Senior Vice Volunteer. And in more good news, yesterday his travel papers came through, so Pablo Lizardo joins us next week from Argentina!

Before things really heat up around here, Bassam and I took a little holiday to visit family in the UAE. On the way back, a long layover in Amsterdam allowed us to drop in at the Blender Institute where the Durian open movie is underway.

Ton kindly made us coffee and invited us to Durian’s morning meeting. They are hard into the grind, and we wish our brave compadres all the best with their fantastical enterprise!

Updates about the exciting progress of our own work will follow soon, stay tuned.

Calling all students (18+) and recent graduates:

Applications are open to join Bassam and his crew for Spring internships, hosted by the very cool Bit Films Incubator Program at Hampshire College, Massachusetts.

Helmed by Chris Perry, formerly of Pixar and Rhythm & Hues, the program draws together a number of interesting projects and a lot of talent, so although the internships are unpaid, it promises to be a very stimulating and fruitful space.

The internship period runs from January 25 through May 14. Please note that applications are due (via email) no later than Monday, January 4 at 5pm (EST).

More information at Bit Films. Still have questions? Comment!