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3rd Feb 2022 | Project Heist

Announcing Project Heist: a High-end Cinematic Experience

Francesco Siddi

Producer

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“No story, maximum impact” is a production mantra that Ton pitched for the first time during the development of Sintel. As we all know, that did not work as expected: there was quite a story in the end!

While it’s easy to get triggered by such a statement, there is definitely an exciting challenge in finding the balance between minimal storytelling and outstanding technical execution. Blender Studio has grown since then, and after more than a decade, it’s time to try this again!

Today the Blender Studio team is excited to announce Project Heist (development title). This project is inspired by the game cinematics and realtime demos formats, and it’s meant to be a high-visual-impact, action-packed 2-minutes-long animation.

A futuristic Iceland serves as the setting for the story. Images courtesy of Lydur Skulason, ThinkGeoEnergy (Flickr).
A futuristic Iceland serves as the setting for the story. Images courtesy of Lydur Skulason, ThinkGeoEnergy (Flickr).

The main goals for this project are:

  • Challenge Blender and the creative team to make characters and environments at an unprecedented level of realism and complexity
  • Push Blender’s capabilities in the interactive PBR workflow, improving and developing new tools (EEVEE, texture painting, baking, etc.)
  • Develop and share production assets and pipeline with Blender Studio supporters, and with the film and games industry

The short will be directed by Hjalti Hjalmarsson with production design by Andy Goralczyk and produced by the Blender Studio team. The production timeline is approximately 7 months, with the upcoming months dedicated to visual development, R&D and working with the Blender developers to align as many technical targets as possible.

Early character research sketches.
Early character research sketches.

As always, we are going share all aspects of this journey here on the Blender Studio website. You can already follow the first steps of the development at the Project Heist page.

Cartoon dog eating tasty treats

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Francesco Siddi

Producer

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26 Comments

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Helge Maus

3rd February 2022 - 17:41

Great news, excited :-)

Tahsin Aysu

4th February 2022 - 07:42

Very excited to see a project with high realism goal. This I believe will turn more heads towards Blender from the whole industry !

Steve White

3rd February 2022 - 18:39

Definitely a good plan.  One of the biggest criticisms I see often is that Blender only produces stylized output.

softyoda

4th February 2022 - 10:45

Good news, I can't wait to see what it could give with the constraints you chose! Hopefully it will help in the development !

I have a question for the whole studio. Do you think one day to make an open movie but not only realized by the people who are in the blender studio, but by the blender community. A real open movie whereas the code, everyone is "free" to participate by following a general line moderated by the responsible, who will validate each asset, give some feedback. Like pull request for the code, or wikipedia editions, which allows everyone to really invest in the project. This would of course require a pipeline to sort people out, banning if needed people who would slow down the project more than anything else. But if it works, it could prove that it is possible to make a film in a truly participative, decentralized, open source way, through collective intelligence and sharing of skills.

Francesco Siddi

5th February 2022 - 00:27

@softyoda Decentralizing creativity is quite challenging, crowdsourcing it even more so. The focus of Blender Studio is to push the limits of Blender and share production knowledge with the community. Organizing a distributed open movie production is currently not of strategic importance so it's not likely to happen in the near future.

Joe Williamsen

5th February 2022 - 03:44

@softyoda Yeah - I'd have to second Francesco's sentiments.  Crowdsourcing creative content would be a nightmare.  I worked as an Art Director for a game company for 14 years and dealt with a lot of outsourced assets.  In a lot of cases, they required more work to "fix" and critique / recycle than having the assets built in-house (and we were PAYING for this).  Given the epidemic of people who can't meet a deadline when they're being paid, let alone working "for free", the need for matching styles, quality and technical requirements, the difficulty of finding talent of adequate skill ... and someone to wrangle all the (remote) cats, it would be extremely difficult.

David mcsween

6th February 2022 - 11:55

@Joe Williamsen yeah the OP just needs to read back over the Sintel experience of crowd sourcing asssts. TLDR not good

softyoda

7th February 2022 - 14:25

@David mcsween Ok, thanks a lot for the constructive answers. Do you have any links about the crowdsourced assets of Sintel ? I wasn't in the 3D world in this age. I wish to understand more what are the real difference between crowdsourced code and article/documentation, and assets/creation. There are some platforms like HitRECord that are used in some productions to crowdsource assets for production. But I'm not very familiar with it as it isn't really in the open source philosophy and often ask for nonspecialized art like 2D illustration.

Piotr Arłukowicz

5th February 2022 - 01:05

I'm already sure this will be awesome! And I will support you guys now and always!  Good luck and god's skill, always a bit of luck is helpful! :)

Rainer Trummer

7th February 2022 - 21:08

Hjalti and Andy directing and designing a movie again - SO much looking forward to this!

Ramil Roosileht

3rd February 2022 - 19:43

Absolutely wonderful announcement, I am thrilled to both see the short and follow the development of the features needed. Community has been asking for realism-focused stuff for a while now and it's great to see Blender Studio coming up with such a project!

Gary Wright II

3rd February 2022 - 20:25

In only7 months, huh? Wow! This will be such a great learning opportunity.

Jesús Odremán

3rd February 2022 - 21:39

Great news. It is very exciting, I hope to be able to follow the process of the short film. thank you!!

Francis Jasmin

4th February 2022 - 01:49

Really excited for this one :-)  Remind me a bit of this DevTalk thread :D

Francis Jasmin

4th February 2022 - 01:49

@Francis Jasmin https://devtalk.blender.org/t/a-break-from-cartoonish-open-movies/21145 Thx a lot for your amazing work !

Ranjit Menon K

4th February 2022 - 08:14

Amazing Looking forward to it. Wish you good luck and lets some great blender action ..

Lluc Romaní Brasó

4th February 2022 - 10:56

Excellent news hope that community will have opportunities to get involved.

Jean-Pierre Brachet

4th February 2022 - 18:17

Thanks to all the Studio. I am very interested in realism and I intend to follow your project very closely.

Dan McLaughlin

4th February 2022 - 18:54

YES!! Us game developers are loving this! Blender is a pre-eminant film tool, but for game work it needs some attention, PBR, baking, texturing, so happy about this!!

Willem van der Veere

5th February 2022 - 14:03

Great news, love to see the developments to come, I will follow along. If any support of any kind is needed, just ask.

blenderdac

7th February 2022 - 20:12

wowowowowow

Fynn Grotehans

8th February 2022 - 09:58

great news, I think doing something different from time to time is great. The concept sounds very promissing

william blevins

26th February 2022 - 08:23

Can't wait to see the finished product.

Wollabebes Chocolatefudge

1st April 2022 - 14:38

Very exciting, can't wait and hope for the best!

Iván Rojo

6th April 2022 - 03:24

¡Amazing!

Michael Anderson

14th April 2022 - 18:53

I'm sure a lot of amazing things will come from this project!