As we draw 2018 to a close, I'm updating what I have to do on the Open Movie Project. This is not a small project by any means. It spans many fields, from software development, to writing, pre-production work, 3D production and post production. Bound to keep me busy. But baby steps.

Proof of Concept

As I mentioned before I'd like to make a 30 second to 1 minute proof of concept short. This is the first fully animated series I've ever worked on. I need to figure out a workflow that suits me. A proof of concepts should do it for me. I already have a short scene written up, different from my previous post. I'm now working on storyboarding. I figure I need to do the following:

  1. Plan out the camera movement
  2. Conceptualize the set and look for references
  3. Build the models needed for the scene
  4. Story board
  5. Blocking
  6. Key Poses
  7. Record references
  8. Splining
  9. Smoothing

Obviously this is all going to be iterative. I need to really pay attention to how the final scene will work to avoid any time consuming re-work.

Software Development

In terms of Software development, there has been a few activities going on:

  1. I developed YAAM
  2. I submitted a few changes upstream to update Blender add-ons to blender 2.8, primarily A.N.T Landscape (currently under review).
  3. I updated the Cycles Material Vault add-on to work in blender 2.8, as well as a couple of other free add-ons available on the resources page.

In 2019 I hope to accomplish the following software development goals:

  1. Finish up my distributed renderer
  2. Create an integrated Screenwriting add-on for blender. My vision is to work only in blender and not to have to use different software for writing screen plays, and making storyboards etc.

There will probably be other minor updates I'll have to do over 2019.

Gonna be a busy year. We'll see if we'll have any contributors on the project.