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Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

reuters.com

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Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#91

Post by jfengel »

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…

They aren't required to watch them, but the voters do all get screeners. They at least have the opportunity to watch it, regardless of whether they've seen it in the theater. They don't vote just for what they've heard of.

The Academy has a reputation for seeking "artistic merit" even at a cost of good entertainment. They're hoping to advance something that didn't do well at the box office. Sometimes that means giving awards to films that turn out to be dogs, but sometimes they manage to promote things that deserve attention.

A lot of Oscar-bait gets a small release at the end of the year, to qualify it for the Oscars. If it gets a nomination, they'll use that as part of a wider campaign later. That's why they send out screeners: they know that many members won't have had a chance to see it in the theater.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#92

Post by deng »

leonidasv wrote: post #26
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.

First off, switching to Cycles is probably quite a bit of work. While the renderers are supposed to be interchangeable, since AFAIK Cycles supports more features than Evee, options that previously did not matter with Evee rendering now have to be set for Cycles.

Also, having seen the film, I found the "unrealistic", cartoonish look very much to be a creative choice. Evee can produce much more "realistic" renders than what you see in the movie, but this requires also much more investment into things like assets and textures, otherwise you quickly land in the uncanny valley. So I think switching to Cycles probably would not matter much, unless the creators would also change their creative choices, which would result in a different movie, but not necessarily a better one.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#93

Post by UncleEntity »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #75
watt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I reminisced about Blender foundations first(?) effort, Tears of Steel, with the script like "Look, Celia, we have to follow our passions; you have your robotics and I just want to be awesome in space!" - "Why don’t you just admit that you’re freaked out by my robot hand?!" It's not about the textures and shadows.

"Tears of Steel" was the fourth Blender Open Movie project. The first one was 2006's "Elephants Dream", then "Big Buck Bunny" and "Sintel". From the more recent ones I highly recommend "Sprite Fright".

I don't know what they've been up to after Tears of Steel but the primary mission of the older Blender Foundation movies was to further the tech, e.g. motion tracking.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#94

Post by MisterTea »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #67
stvltvs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But some of the really old (like 1940s) cartoons were very smooth and well-done. I have DVDs of old Tom & Jerry cartoons, and they are excellent. My experience, is that the ones made in the 1970s and 1980s had crap quality. I watched this movie, and think it very much deserved the Oscar, but the character rendering was a bit “scruffy.” The environment rendering was great, and it looks like they optimized for movement…

> My experience, is that the ones made in the 1970s and 1980s had crap quality.

Because a lot of it turned into a marketing machine thanks to GI Joe. Cheap cartoons enabled kid oriented commercial slots to sell ad time for junk food and toys. The 80's were notorious for throwing all sorts of action figure selling ideas at the wall. Every 80's kid had some cartoon merchandise toy crap.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#95

Post by pbronez »

raverbashing wrote: post #30
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

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.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#96

Post by brookst »

chillee wrote: post #38
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…

A couple things: 1. The academy has had a significant increase of young voters in the past 10 years or so. Generally speaking, young voters are more likely to take animation as a "serious" medium. 2. These interviews were always somewhat overstated. Of course some voters have stupid rationales, but I don't think this dominates the academy. 3. Disney's Inside Out 2 was nowhere close to winning the award this year - Fl…

4. The results can still be valid if there’s a lot of random noise in the sample. There are about 10,000 voters here. If 9,000 vote at random and 1,000 watch the films and vote on merit, there’s about a 2% chance of getting a different result than if all 10,000 watched and voted on merit.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#97

Post by brookst »

riffraff wrote: post #31
tootie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I adored Flow. It's hard to say it was truly "better" than Inside Out 2. I think part of the calculation has to be that everyone expected Pixar to deliver something top notch so it only really met expectations. Flow was made by a no-name team from Latvia and was really something unique and interesting. I went into it kinda blind with no expectations and was blown away.

I didn't think inside out 2 was a very good movie. It had good ideas but didn't do very well with them (contrary to the first movie, which was great). I'm not surprised a movie which wasn't "just a sequel" managed to beat Moana and IO2.

The title of the movie is perfect. It’s more of the same. Which is still very good, but lacking in anything novel.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#98

Post by lucideng »

For me, Flow's greatest strength was the complete lack of voiceovers, almost like a silent film. No overbearing narrator coercing you. Flow allows you to feel on your own terms without interference.

With most media since the dawn of Hollywood, the internet and now AI, we are accustomed to being told exactly what is happening. Think about how 'laugh tracks' tell you to laugh. The search for an answer or meaning of something is largely taken away from you. Without that instruction you are left to make your own interpretation of things, no delivery of a specific message or theme. This means the movie is experienced differently by everyone. That why it's so great.

Re: Blender-made movie Flow takes Oscar

#99

Post by FpUser »

dkh wrote: post #54
FpUser wrote: post #42

I could not give a flying fuck what it was rendered with , tech level is not impressive. But what a story and presentation. I find Flow beautiful. I, my daughter and my grandson watched it and could not take our eyes away from it.

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.

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