Sintel 1080p Stereoscopic 3D YT3d:Enable=True
http://xdef.tv Stereoscopic
Conversion of the
Creative Commons Film "
Sintel"
The Xdef.tv conversion process was developed by
Brandon Wirtz after years of studying how the eye and brain work to interpret depth from images. Combining this information with motion analysis a process was developed that creates stunning 3D with a low head-ache factor, suitable for cinema viewing.
Each 1 second of video takes 5 minutes to render. This rendering took roughly 3 days.
"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the
Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite
Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open
3D technology as for independent animation film.
This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the
Amsterdam Blender
Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.
"Sintel" commenced in May 2009, with producer
Ton Roosendaal establishing a core team consisting of
Colin Levy (director),
David Revoy (concept art),
Martin Lodewijk (story) and Jan
Morgenstern (composer). In August script writer
Esther Wouda was approached as a consultant, which resulted in her taking the responsibility for the entire screenplay. Esther then worked in close cooperation with
Colin, David and Ton to deliver the final script early November.
Meanwhile, Colin and David realized the first storyboards.
Based on a public call for artists -- with over
150 respondents -- the Durian artist team got established in July 2009. They first met in a pre-production week in Amsterdam in August, and all decided to join the project per
October 1st. With the final movie budget still unknown, the target then still was to finish the film within 7 months, with a team of 6 artists and 2 developers. At that time
the team still had the hopes to be able to realize the script in a 6-8 minute film.
In november, the
Netherlands Film Fund approved on a substantial subsidy for Sintel, enough to extend the project to 10 months, with possible 1 or 2 extra artist seats in the final months. It was also by this time that breakdowns and animatic edits showed that the script had to be revised to become more compact, with a story structure using a flashback
.
In the months after, Colin's work on the
Director's
Layout -- 3D animatic shots -- and final designs on the grand finale gradually made the movie longer, from 9 minutes in november, to almost 12 in May.
Proper story telling, to absorb an audience with convincing characters and action just takes time!
With the highly anticipated extra funding from the Amsterdam Cinegrid -- also funding a
4k resolution version -- Ton finally could extend the team with 5 artists and a developer in
March 2010. With 14 people the film then was completed for a first screening on July
18th in cinema
Studio K in Amsterdam.
Three artists then stayed in Amsterdam working on final shot edits, lighting design, compositing, and on the impressive 2 minute film credits. The movie ended up with a total duration of 14m:48s, 888 seconds!
Sintel will premiere on
September 27th 2010, in
Utrecht on the
Netherlands Film Festival.
The movie itself, and all of the work of the Durian team in the past
18 months will be released under the
Creative Commons Attribution license, free for everyone to distribute, learn from or re-use. The 4-disc
DVD set will provide all data to be able to recreate and rerender the film in its entirety.
Project targets
As usual -- like previously for
Orange,
Peach,
Apricot -- the Blender Foundation's interest is to organize projects that will help Blender further:
Stimulate development of advanced features.
Validation of Blender by great artists
Use and improve an open source creation pipeline
Deliver good publicity and PR for Blender
Create useful presentation and educational material in
Open Content
Last but not least, provide a fun and inspiring experience for the entire Blender community!
We do this by inviting the best of the talents from the Blender community to work in Amsterdam for half a year or more, in the studio of the Blender Institute. They get excellent working conditions, and full coverage for travel and housing, including a reasonable fee. All of tools we use here for the film are open source, and everything we create, including the final result, is being delivered as free and open content under
Creative Commons Attribution.