Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar • Hacker News Board

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#111

Post by Funes- » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #110

jsheard wrote: post #12

Not only was it made with Blender, the final renders were done with Blenders semi-realtime Eevee engine rather than its max-fidelity Cycles engine. That reduced the compute required by orders of magnitude - the director said a render farm wasn't necessary because his local workstation could produce final-quality 4K frames in 0.5-10 seconds. "Proper" production renderers like Cycles do look better of course, but havin…

I just had a look at the trailer, and I'm trying not to poo on it's parade, but this thing looks... disappointing - worse than most in-game cut-scenes these days. It doesn't even feel "Artistic", and I'm definitely not a snob for "hyper realistic" types of looks. The distant and "landscape" views look very nice, and in stark contrast to the game-like and amateur rendering of close up scenes with the animals. They don…

I agree, but mainly for some other reasons I won't be listing just now. As much as I find it all very cute and I'm a sucker for this kind of shit (I can already sense I would cry my heart out watching this at some point or another--I know, I'm very sensitive), it kinda looks like a long-winded tech demo or video placeholder.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#112

Post by microflash » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

I adored this film. We have three generations at home with different depths of expertise in different languages and this transcended all those barriers making it so very enjoyable experience to watch together. Truly a family friendly film at so many levels.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#113

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

stvltvs wrote: post #40

brundolf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A takeaway may be that cutting-edge rendering doesn't really matter for cartoon-stylized films, especially for kid viewers

Yep, grew up on cartoons like Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, etc. Looking at them now, they are laughably bad in most respects, but they sparked our imaginations and didn't need to be sophisticated to do it.

You have things like Homestar Runner that were animated in Flash.

Animation tools are just part of the story-telling tools, and just because something is visually beautiful in stills (or even animated) doesn't mean that the story is well told, or the tools well used.

And often 'bad graphics' or whatever you want to call it can actually help with the story, just like low-def TV, because it covers up things that are unimportant without drawing attention to it.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#114

Post by remify » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #85

ad-astra wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made my own distributed render orchestrator that supports Cycles + custom plugins. It uses Modal’s cloud compute APIs to spawn jobs on up to 20x containers with an L40S GPU (like 80% as fast as a 4090 with tons more VRAM) each. It ain’t cheap but it’s absurdly fast, and much easier in terms of cash flow than outright buying the equivalent GPUs. https://github.com/stoicsuffering/distributed-blender-render...

That is possibly the most original README I've seen in a long time. I will admit it's a bit.. obfuscated, though?

Second title should have been named the Book of Job IMO

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#115

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #102

autoexec wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also disappointed by inside out 2. I thought it followed the story beats of the first one a bit too closely. Flow was the better film.

This is my point though. Inside Out 2 suffered from high expectations. If Pixar never existed and Inside Out 2 came from an unknown studio it would have blown you away.

Exactly. Pixar is somewhat a victim of its own success, but in this case Inside Out 2 is just Inside Out again - none of the additions or developments are really surprising.

And that's not bad! Sometimes you really do just want more of the same - after all, many wildly successful TV shows are just the same story, told differently each episode.

Flow wildly beat expectations which already gives it a leg up, but it was "new and weird" enough that I bet more of the reviewers actually watched it vs Inside Out 2 or other big-name movies.

Even the tagline of "feature length movie with no dialogue that's actually good" is enough to get people interested.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#116

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #110

jsheard wrote: post #12

Not only was it made with Blender, the final renders were done with Blenders semi-realtime Eevee engine rather than its max-fidelity Cycles engine. That reduced the compute required by orders of magnitude - the director said a render farm wasn't necessary because his local workstation could produce final-quality 4K frames in 0.5-10 seconds. "Proper" production renderers like Cycles do look better of course, but havin…

I just had a look at the trailer, and I'm trying not to poo on it's parade, but this thing looks... disappointing - worse than most in-game cut-scenes these days. It doesn't even feel "Artistic", and I'm definitely not a snob for "hyper realistic" types of looks. The distant and "landscape" views look very nice, and in stark contrast to the game-like and amateur rendering of close up scenes with the animals. They don…

There are incredible visuals in the movie, but not because of their realistic details. They are instead incredibly evocative of a mysterious depth behind the relatively small story being told in the movie.

The movie doesn’t look real, but it also doesn’t act real either.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#117

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

dkh wrote: post #51

Timwi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could they have heard of it en masse because of its success at the Golden Globes?

Historically the Golden Globes are the biggest predictor of the Oscars, so, yes, but then you have to ask how it won the Golden Globe lol

I suspect as I said elsewhere that "feature length movie with no dialogue that's actually good" was enough to get people watching it, even seeking it out. We're more than a hundred years out from silent movies, so it's a curiosity by that metric alone.

And then it turns out to be actually good!

It's similar to the Lego Movie in that respect, everyone had assumptions about what it was and then it went and was well done and hit you right in the feels.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#118

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #4

I heard him thank Blender in the first few sentences and had to Google it to see if he was talking about THAT Blender! I remember doing all the tutorials when I was younger and considering game dev.

"I would like to thank Blender, and Flexo, and Fry."

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#119

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

pbronez wrote: post #95

raverbashing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding, Shrek probably had to do with 100x less computing (per hour) than a modern production. First Toy Story probably something like 1000x less computing We did come a long way

Great example of how accumulated technical innovations unlock unexpected opportunities. Flow, Shrek and Toy Story have roughly similar technical quality but vastly different price tags. That cost reduction allows more experimentation, which delivers more compelling outcomes.

It's kind of surprising to go back and watch Toy Story in 4k today - the rendering really is quite rudimentary compared to what even video games put out now.

But - you have to be paying attention to see it, because Pixar knew the limitation of their systems. For example, rendering of the time made everything look plasticy, so they rendered ... plastic toys as the main characters! The most noticeable graphical issues are with the rendering of people, but those are put in the background.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#120

Post by mppm » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #52

thatswrong0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isn’t there to get? it’s a dead simple concept

How? I feel like I'm being trolled. None of it makes sense. There's an unexplained great flood, unexplained human ruins, weird whale-like creatures, some kind of being sucked up into heaven thing that happens to the stork-like bird. I've seen people online trying to put it into a sensible plot but it's so heavy on made up symbolism that to me it's bullshit.

Cooperation in the face of adversity and rising water levels == very moving and profound.

What's not to understand?

/s