How Long Does It Take... - Blender Artists Community

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Support Basics & Interface internex (internex) October 9, 2005, 10:13am 1 Hi!I’m new there and I don’t really have any experience with Bledner, but I want to learn how to use it. Tell me one… or maybe two things: How long does it take to learn this program to such a level, that I could do a movie like “Midnight Snack” from www.blender.org? Next, tell me how long does it take to make an image like this one?I would be very grateful if you answer me. Sorry for mistakes that I’ve done while writing this post, but I’m still learning english language

Duthomhas (Michael Thomas Greer) October 9, 2005, 10:35am 2 Only as long as it takes to read documentation and search the forums, and think about how you are going to apply your new knowledge in your picture.In other words, think “what do I have to do (or learn) to get this particular effect?”The image you linked requires a lot of distinct things to be done (bump maps, texture maps, volumetric lighting effects/fog, use of third-party tools like Arbaro, etc.So: design the image you want to create (a simple drawing will do). Pick part of it, and work on modelling and texturing it. Continue until you have all the parts together. Next, work on lighting, and adding halos, etc.It might take a month or two the first time through (just for the sheer mass of things to learn), but if you’re persistent and keep a clear idea of what you want, you’ll get pretty close to what you want. (Perfection only comes with a life given in practice…)Hope this helps.

internex (internex) October 9, 2005, 11:04am 3 Thanks for such a long reply

According to what you said, I’m in. Tomorrow I go to the bookshop and buy a book about Blender (about 900 pages

). Hope I’ll learn it before I’ll eat my computer (nervous

). Spin (Spin) October 9, 2005, 6:20pm 4 I don’t know where Midnight Snack is, but it takes time to do an animation. It is only hard if you make it hard.I personally, love to do Blender (as a hobby) and am always learning new stuff. I haven’t “lost the fire”.Now that “Planet Picture”, can take anywhere me from 2 to 18 hours for me to create from scratch. This includes research, pictures, mapping, etc.Blender itself can take 45 minutes to one day to render the product. It is up to you on how well the quality that you want. Randy_S (Randy S) October 9, 2005, 8:55pm 5 Y’Know, I was thinking the same question.The guys working at movie studios have millions of dollars worth of equipment backing them up and they have teams of people all working toward the same goal. Then there’s me with my little ol’ 400 MHz Mac. I just can’t compete with that. Not that I ever would try to compete.However, let’s just take Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. for example. How long does it take them to model a “Sully” or a “Mike” from scratch? Once they get the characters modeled, how long does it take them to get the animation right? (Exclusive of rendering.)What about those animations that you see as titles to TV shows or graphics on the news? They are a lot less complex but no less important.Like I said, I know that there may be as many as a dozen guys working on one part of a project but knowing helps to give a sense of scale to what I’m doing.I guess what I’m asking is, “If it takes the major studios X man-hours to come up with a character in an amimated feature how long should it take me to do a small project at home?” hydravien (hydravien) October 9, 2005, 9:17pm 6 i would say it depends on your level of skill. the people at pixar have the millions of dollars of software and mainframes and the expertise to know how to do it. if you know how to use blender and you know what your output should look like, it shouldnt take you too long to come up with something. granted it wont look like sully but it may be to your liking. blender lacks the ability to do what some of the major programs can, and some features take longer with blender. even still you shouldnt worry about how long it will take you to model/render. you arent getting paid for your time and it should be more of a hobby. most people here use it for fun and it doesnt matter how long you put into it because it is enjoyable. you will always be learning with blender and even when you are advanced in it someone will always be there to answer your questionsyour project shouldnt have a time limit on it, because if you fail at it you will say geesh ive wasted so many hours why bother continue. Laurifer (Laurifer) October 9, 2005, 9:22pm 7

Y’Know, I was thinking the same question.What about those animations that you see as titles to TV shows or graphics on the news? They are a lot less complex but no less important.

My uncle works at the Golf Channel and I got to talk to the graphic guys and they said they usually have a few days to make the one-thirds (those little bars on the lower third of the screen with information on it). But sometimes, a show will be going on and they will get a call for a new one-third, and they have like 5 minutes before it needs to go live on the air. :o-Laurifer AndyD (AndyD) October 9, 2005, 10:18pm 8 In a related issue, I read that Pixar allows around 6 hours just to render a single frame - and that one scene took around 90 hours… for just one frame! And that’s with a wall of computers dedicated to nothing but rendering.In 90 hours I could’ve done them 25 oil paintings - that’s a whole second of animation!

Roffey (Roffey) October 10, 2005, 5:33am 9 Sometimes you’ve got to sacrifice something precious (most notably your own time) for art I suppose. Spin (Spin) October 10, 2005, 5:52am 10 Well, I heard on a National Public Radio interview with the director of “The Incredibles”, that it took 8 months to develop a character from an idea to a finished working model (boned, textured, RVKs etc…). Each character had a team of people working on each of these characters.Here’s one of my own projects! I worked on this animation. It took me 3 months on my spare time to create this… http://media.putfile.com/mpDIVX (1mb)I took a break during summer. I am sure it would have almost been finished by now.What you don’t see is the entire set, 2 other characters, the RVKs for full lip-syncing and facial expressions, the bone structure including fully functional fingers, (and soft-bodies too). Before being converted to DIVX, that 11 second scene was originally 25fps RAW AVI and took an average of 20 seconds per frame to render (320 x 256).It took some time to create that “studio set”, and tweak the lighting. Meshing the characters. Getting the textures sized. The lighting. Meanwhile, trying to keep the poly count low.The video clip that you see here is still just a test shot, and the final product will probably be much different. I think that clip was “timing for the walk cycle”, so I can learn how to make full body movements. I have a ton of these clips on my hard drive of the same scene.I have a complete audio track with voices for all of the characters. My next task (not challenge) is to lip-sync all of the audio. Then do the actual animantions, finally ‘Shoot the scenes’, some twice, to get different angles. Then I’ll edit all of the video clips into a short 10 minute movie.Me, myself and I will probably do this entire production in a total of 8 months, including the the break that I took during the summer. internex (internex) October 10, 2005, 7:49am 11 Ok, so, does anyone have a little project with any nice object (car, person etc. )? I want to see how it is to make/change/rebuild something in blender. I’m asking, becouse the more you write about blender, the more I’m interested in it 8) Duthomhas (Michael Thomas Greer) October 10, 2005, 10:03am 12 We’ve begun comparing apples and oranges here.Think about what’s different between a hobbyist and a production studio. Image quality? --no (well, often, but studio people are professionals) Scene complexity? --no (“The Wet Bird” by Gilles Tran is a very complex, photorealistic scene.) Artistic Merit? --of course notThe difference is only the amount of resources they can throw at something in a given timeframe. For example: Rule one of modelling and rigging is: make it have/do only what is needed. For The Incredibles, the range of motion and different uses to which the characters are put are a significant departure from normal rigging scenarios. Mike, from Monsters, Inc. is simplistic in comparison. Also, it is not uncommon to need multiply-rigged copies of the same character for different situations. Even for the difference between a long-shot and a close-up, where you have to be able to see the freckles on Fiona’s face. All this means is that production-level characters need (typically) a month or three just for rigging, texturing, and testing. My still-shot or simple animation just doesn’t need that. If I run into a wrinkle, I cheat my way past it. A large production company just can’t afford to deal with such constant inconveniences. Their characters have to be 99% usable 99% of the time.Now, a home animator can do this, but why? He’s not producing a feature film. (It’d take him forever.) We stick to simpler stuff because we simply don’t have the resources (time, money, feature coders, renderhouses, etc.) to throw at it.So don’t be discouraged. This is one of the reasons they make ‘shorts’ --five to ten minute animations. I’ve seen quite a few that have a level of quality approaching or matching feature-houses. All it takes is your dedication.A final word of advise: don’t jump in over your head and become overwhelmed. Learn to model, texture, rig, light, and animate --in roughly that order. If you have a clear, focused, idea, that will help you move along to producing a nice final animation. Animation is last because it is as big a subject as the others combined. But it is also the most rewarding, in my opinion.Be Zen. Randy_S (Randy S) October 10, 2005, 12:38pm 13 This is exactly what I’m talking about.It’s so easy to get flustered when you run into a snag in your small, little project. Just think about what happens when they can’t get “Sully’s” fur to flow the way it’s supposed to! I bet the fit hits the shan!It helps put things in perspective to know what they go through in the major studios. If it takes half a year to make one character in a mainstream motion picture, a week’s work on one of my projects at home doesn’t seem so bad, now. Does it?

Trident (Trident) October 10, 2005, 1:12pm 14

model, texture, rig, light, and animate --in roughly that order.

But how can you texture without light or know if your rig is any good if it is not used in animation? Spin (Spin) October 10, 2005, 1:42pm 15

This is exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s so easy to get flustered

Anytime I do a complex project, I do it “one inch at a time”. Then it doesn’t seem so complex anymore. Duthomhas (Michael Thomas Greer) October 10, 2005, 3:01pm 16 Spin’s answer is what I mean. We speak of modelling, texturing, etc. as if they were entirely separate things but they are all codependant.You can rig, that is: know how your rig works and the kinds of deformations it will produce and its limitiations and movements, etc., without engaging in full fledged animation. Short animations (the Blender Ctrl+Render Preview button are great for this) are useful for finding and ironing out errors in movement. You want this kind of thing to be done before you begin Animating (with a capitol A).That said, the design of your rig is dependant on what you plan to do with it. If all you want to do is pose your model chipmunk, or at least position it close enough to the acorn that you can manually tweak the rest, then a simplistic rig will do.In the case of The Incredibles, Helen (Elastigirl), the DVD commentary made special note of the number of rigs and bodies (meshes) that were required to get her to do the things she does. Think of places where cheating is better: when she’s a boat, I betcha it’s just a model of Helen shaped like a boat with a head that can smile and hair stuck on it.Erm, my point is that you have to know what is expected along the pipeline to be most effective. So, no, texturing doesn’t require lighting, but you should have at least some idea of how your materials will interact with the lighting. That’s part of texturing. Later, you design the light(s) to fit your model(s).I hope this makes sense. Don’t get hung-up on how things fit together. Learn as you go. The components aren’t orthogonal, but there is definitely an order to the design. Which is why I recommend a definite plan of attack for any sizeable project.I hope I’ve been able to allay your concern. Roffey (Roffey) October 11, 2005, 2:32am 17

Ok, so, does anyone have a little project with any nice object (car, person etc. )? I want to see how it is to make/change/rebuild something in blender. I’m asking, becouse the more you write about blender, the more I’m interested in it 8)

There’s plenty of tutorials for blender on it’s mother-site (www.blender3d.org) if you’re interested in Blender’s features. You can do so much with it, it still suprises me that it’s freeware - it’s such a beautifully made program.By the way, I read earlier on that you were learning english - where you from excatly? internex (internex) October 11, 2005, 1:35pm 18

By the way, I read earlier on that you were learning english - where you from excatly?

I’m from the capital city of Poland - Warsaw (yeah, I know that there is another Warsaw in Texas or somewhere else

). Why are you asking? Have I made such many mistakes?

Randy_S (Randy S) October 12, 2005, 12:21pm 19 I have often thought that it would be cool if there was a series of Blender projects for people to learn from. Not tutorials, per se, but a model for the “student” to study then duplicate with his own skills.The first projects would be simpler and would include a finished .blend file to compare with. The intermediate projects would only include a picture of the finished project. The final projects would include only a picture of some real object for the student to model from scratch.Each project would be progressively more difficult and would teach a new skill. For example, the first project would be modeling from primitaves. The next few would teach other modeling methods. The final projects would teach advanced modeling and texturing.I figure, after 6-10 progressively more difficult projects the student would have a good grip on how to use Blender.A lot of my job includes teaching others to operate computers and other equipment. I show the student how to do something then I have them do it. (Just for fun, I call it, “The Monkey See, Monkey Do Method.”

)The idea of making Blender projects is an extension of the idea of “Monkey See, Monkey Do.”Blender MSMD… It’s got a funky ring to it!

Spin (Spin) October 12, 2005, 7:32pm 20

Here’s some projects that I forgot that I have on my server. http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/2rings.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/3D_Toilet.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/Doorway.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/flusher.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/glasses.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/glassmug.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/mug.zip http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3nvj6/Blender/forum/ringmug.zipnext page →