New work from Blur

[Leonard]

Hi guys,

Some latest work from Blur Studio.

http://marvelkids.marvel.com/hires

Tony Stark and Hulk are all animated with Face Robot.

Great work here.

Best,

Leo

[Adrian Lazar]

looks great! to bad that's for marvel kids, I would love a more dark/violent version.

[scaron]

it was to give kids an idea of who ironman is. so ya we couldn't make it too dark.

notice how we play down spiderman and play up ironman and hulk. since spiderman already has 3 movies we wanted to give ironman and hulk the lime light, and since it was the daily bugle at the end there is no way jona is going to put a positive spiderman story on the front page.

also this shows the kids what ironman is good at, like his utility and ability to add to his suit whatever is needed to fit a task. ie ice cannon to counter the flame thrower, the fusion lance as an anti missile weapon. lastly we wanted to show his repulsor weapon on his chest.

we didn't just use face robot, we did the character rigging and animation in xsi.

steven

[wurp]

nice work indeed

I've been wondering if you rig and animate in xsi and then bring it over to max to render in mental ray/brazil, why not just do the rendering in xsi too? I'm sure you have a tight pipeline setup over there but it seems like an extra step that's not needed relying on pointcaching everything?

anyway, looking forward to see more work from blur

[scaron]

cause we would have a revolt :)

these guys have been using a 3ds product for 13 years (dos then max) you can't change that too fast or you ruin productivity. also that part of the pipe wasn't in question, when they evaluated softimage, and it still isn't. we are using more mental ray now so it could be feasible to switch but more than half of the talent here are masters at max it wouldn't be a good idea to switch right before a feature film :)

steven

edit.. btw we would point cache anyways, they point cached when it was just max. we point cached at the two other places i worked before too.

[wurp]

thats fair enough, i've been very hesitant myself about switching, i used max in the past but then made the switch to xsi. switching 3d apps can be a major pain, even more so for oldtimers.

cause we would have a revolt :)

these guys have been using a 3ds product for 13 years (dos then max) you can't change that too fast or you ruin productivity. also that part of the pipe wasn't in question, when they evaluated softimage, and it still isn't. we are using more mental ray now so it could be feasible to switch but more than half of the talent here are masters at max it wouldn't be a good idea to switch right before a feature film :)

steven

edit.. btw we would point cache anyways, they point cached when it was just max. we point cached at the two other places i worked before too.

[Paul Wood]

Personally I would love it if all Comic movies where done in complete 3D like this. The Compositing with live actors looks funny, especially with the new HDTVs. Also 3D looks better then real life.

[Firefox]

Awesome work Blur..... :)

Looking forward for a behind the scene feature sometime soon for this.

Cheers

[scaron]

i doubt we will do a behind the scenes, we work on a lot of stuff and this is old news now cause it was finished late last year.

i can answer any questions you have though.

s

[Florinmocanu]

Do you render with Mental Ray standalone? or with the one that ships with Max?

And i have to say myself, awesome work guys, we need more :)

[mocaw]

Very cool work indeed.

I thought the rendering in max part was mainly a "back burner" issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but depending on your needs that can reduce your mr expenses quite a bit... I know very little of this directly- so don't believe everything that you read...esp. from me!

[scaron]

Do you render with Mental Ray standalone? or with the one that ships with Max?

we render .max files, not .mi files... so the one that ships with max.

[scaron]

I thought the rendering in max part was mainly a "back burner" issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but depending on your needs that can reduce your mr expenses quite a bit...

we dont use backburner, we have a proprietary render management software that works with most softwares we use, including batch jobs for xsi for writing point caches out. so we dont have an "issue" with rendering in max, we just dont export .mi files for rendering with mental ray. it would be an unnecessary extra step that, from what i understand, would cost more money to do.

[mocaw]

OK, so I take it with your system you also have a way of editing the .max files to get at what would normally be in a mr file? Things like object level AA and ray count settings etc. right?

Sounds like a very nice, cost effective setup!

[scaron]

OK, so I take it with your system you also have a way of editing the .max files to get at what would normally be in a mr file? Things like object level AA and ray count settings etc. right?

what for, statistics? we gather that info upon submission. if we want to change most settings you need to reopen the scene and resubmit. same goes for rendering in a standalone mental ray environment, of course you have command line arguments but you have those with any decent render management software also.

[mocaw]

...same goes for rendering in a standalone mental ray environment, of course you have command line arguments but you have those with any decent render management software also.

That's all I meant- being able to go in and add command line features that aren't exposed in all the host applications.

So when do you guys start marketing your render management software!

[scaron]

...So when do you guys start marketing your render management software!

not my place to say, but i know there are other companies using it here in LA