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Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

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Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#131

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

FpUser wrote: post #99
dkh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not care, and you don't have to, but certainly it means a lot to the Blender Foundation, who for 23 years have been actively working on something free & open-source, and now finally it is in the big leagues. Just as Flow 's win looks even more impressive when you look at the films it competed against, who produced them, and what resources they had, Blender has been a project competing for parity and to be tak…

Look, I am in no way trying to diminish work developers put in Blender. It is great product. I saw videos made in Blender that looks way better than Flow from the tech point of view. My point was that the value of Flow is in its story, both written and visual and far overshadows any technical aspect. Avatar for example is totally opposite from that point of view in my opinion. Great graphics and absolutely meh, story…

The point is that this amazing story could be produced, as a finished movie, by a team that only needed to raise about $3M. Precisely how much of that is because they used Blender is still not clear to me, but the importance of Blender's use here is that it opens the door to equivalently great (or even better!) story telling on (relatively) low budgets ($3M is still a lot to raise, it seems to me). This story would never have been made if it needed $30M or $300M to make.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#132

Post by dismalaf »

On one hand, its super cool that a Blender made film won an Oscar. On the other hand, I hate that this film is being held up as a "Blender film" since it really doesn't showcase what Blender can do. Blender is capable of far, far better visuals than what this film chose as their art style.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#133

Post by FpUser »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #131
FpUser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I am in no way trying to diminish work developers put in Blender. It is great product. I saw videos made in Blender that looks way better than Flow from the tech point of view. My point was that the value of Flow is in its story, both written and visual and far overshadows any technical aspect. Avatar for example is totally opposite from that point of view in my opinion. Great graphics and absolutely meh, story…

The point is that this amazing story could be produced, as a finished movie, by a team that only needed to raise about $3M. Precisely how much of that is because they used Blender is still not clear to me, but the importance of Blender's use here is that it opens the door to equivalently great (or even better!) story telling on (relatively) low budgets ($3M is still a lot to raise, it seems to me). This story would n…

>" but the importance of Blender's use here is that it opens the door to equivalently great (or even better!) story telling on (relatively) low budgets"

I agree that what they have achieved for "only $3M" is nothing but amazing. I have no idea how much money was saved by using Blender.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#134

Post by brundolf »

kevinventullo wrote: post #43
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

I think Nintendo figured this out years ago. Their games are not graphically cutting-edge, but they still sell like crazy.

A key there (and it sounds like in the OP) is that art direction is an order of magnitude more important than graphics technology, especially these days

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#135

Post by Clamchop »

maxglute wrote: post #14

It shows, Blender has come a long way, but FLOW doesn't look technically incredible. On the otherhand, I just rewatched Shrek recently, and complex graphics isn't everything.

Blender comes with two renderers: Cycles for production rendering, and Eevee for near-real time preview.

This movie was rendered with the latter.

Like any 3D package, you can also install other renderers.

So any perceived deficit in picture quality here is more to do with budget than some limitation of Blender.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#136

Post by snowwrestler »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #37

Was wondering this when the film started winning stuff earlier in Awards season... What is the connection between these things? Quirky meme video from awhile back: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMkyTWLpV/ I don't really understand the Blender model/meme-world crossover here - can someone explain? Similar models? Similar concept? Same creators? Kinda wacky. Complete coincidence?!

I think it’s a bummer you’re getting downvoted because there is a connection, and it’s actually quite relevant to some other comments.

The connection is not in the characters or plot, but in the expectations of the audience. People have now had many years of being entertained by poorly rendered silly stuff like this TikTok. There are thousands of variations on this theme that have racked up huge viewership numbers, despite looking super cheap with almost no narrative. In fact to some extent the crappy aesthetics are part of why people like these.

So with this cultural background, when folks see something like Flow, they are not going to reject it immediately just on aesthetics. Arguably they recognize the aesthetics as a choice, and to them, the lack of explanation along the way is aligned with that choice.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#137

Post by alanvillalobos »

jancsika wrote: post #122
leonidasv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious how the film would look if it was rendered in Cycles, there are some lighting aspects that really feel "off". Perhaps now that the film is acclaimed they could release a remaster done in Cycles.

It could be revelatory. Like the first time I played Super Mario Bros. on an LED screen. Finally I could see each pixel clearly, exactly the way the original artist didn't intend! Edit: in all seriousness, this makes me wonder: has anyone ever re-orchestrated Beethoven's Fifth? Say, in the orchestration style of Ravel or Strauss? Someone must have done this, even as a joke, and I'd love to hear it. (I know about the…

Somewhat in this vein is Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons. I liked it, but I am definitely not a purist.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#139

Post by sangnoir »

teruakohatu wrote: post #24
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 am out of touch with the latest and greatest Blender features. If best/highest fidelity renders are required, can Blender scale with a render farm? Last I heard that was the advantage of the propriety/in-house alternatives.

IIRC, the Blender Foundation's Open Source movies have been rendered on render farms from the very first one, produced over 20 years ago. This predates Cycles/Eevee, but I don't think it's something they'd regress on.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#140

Post by tzs »

bombcar wrote: post #117
dkh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don…

> 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

There have been 4 other Best Animated nominees with no dialogue.

• "Shaun the Sheep Movie" (2015) with 99% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average critic rating of 8.1/10

• "The Red Turtle" (2016) with 93% on RT and an average critic rating 8.10/10

• "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon" (2019) with 96% on RT with an average critic rating of 7.5/10

• "Robot Dreams" (2023) with 98% on RT and an average critic rating of 8.4/10

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