Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar • Hacker News Board

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#21

Post by CmdrKrool » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:20 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #9

That's kind of surprising. Academy members are not required to watch all the nominees for Best Animated Feature before voting. In fact they are not require to watch any of them. Several years ago I remember that after a year where the movie that won best animated was not the one that those in the animation industry overwhelming thought was sure to win some animation industry magazine survived Academy members asking w…

Interesting. I loved Flow and I'm glad the stars aligned for it on this particular occasion. This article [1] lists a bunch of other Oscar-related firsts:

* Gints Zilbalodis, who is 30 years old, is the youngest director to win the Oscar for best animated feature.

* Flow is the first fully-European produced and funded film to win the feture animation Oscar.

* Flow is the first dialogue-less film to win the feature animation Oscar.

* Flow, made for under $4 million, is by far the lowest-budget film to ever win the category.

It also says the winner of the animated short category, In the Shadow of the Cypress, was unexpected since the Iranian filmmakers couldn't do any of the usual in-person campaigning of Academy voters due to visa problems.

[1] https://www.cartoonbrew.com/awards/underdogs-win-latvias-flo...

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#22

Post by madars » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:30 AM UTC

LostMyLogin wrote: post #8

Loved the film and was so happy to see it win. First nomination for Latvia I believe.

First two nominations, in fact - Flow also got nominated for Best International Feature Film which went to Brazil's "I'm Still Here." Flow is a beautiful film and I can wholeheartedly recommend HN audience to watch it. It also has 97% audience rating and 98% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#23

Post by legitster » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:32 AM UTC

I did not find Flow to be a technically impressive movie. The animation was very imperfect. The rendering (especially shadows and textures) were off. The whole movie looked like a video game cut scene.

But oh boy, what an amazing cutscene to watch. I'm worried that the story the media is putting forward is that this was an innovative and cutting edge movie - based only on a superficial appreciation of the (stunning) art design. But the real story is how the director worked within his limitations to make something equally enjoyable and meaningful as the other guys.

Most importantly, this movie passed the Actual Kid (TM) test. My 7 year old and his friends sat raptured through the entire movie without any slapstick, pop music numbers, or even dialogue! Not once, but 4 times now!

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#24

Post by teruakohatu » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:45 AM UTC

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.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#25

Post by hamaluik » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:53 AM UTC

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.

Yup! https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/home Is a great community example of this.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#26

Post by leonidasv » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#27

Post by crooked-v » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:05 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #23

I did not find Flow to be a technically impressive movie. The animation was very imperfect. The rendering (especially shadows and textures) were off. The whole movie looked like a video game cut scene. But oh boy, what an amazing cutscene to watch. I'm worried that the story the media is putting forward is that this was an innovative and cutting edge movie - based only on a superficial appreciation of the (stunning)…

I feel like it kind of fits in the same category as Hundreds of Beavers (also a fantastic film), as something using the roughness of low-cost methods as a genuine part of the artistic style.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#28

Post by namuol » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

Hey look, the good guys won! It was well-deserved. Three generations within my family all loved it start to finish, including the snobs like me - that’s no small feat.

(Nothing against the other nominees though of course, just seeing the little guy take a huge W makes me feel good and … I feel a bit starved of this kind of W lately? Just me?)

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#29

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

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…

Honestly yeah it won't be "perfect" but neither is a videogame being rendered in real time and it looks pretty good

Since they're not going crazy with effects it seems like a good compromise

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#30

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

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.

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