Softimage Short Film (Reboot)

[mc_axe]

The Softimage Short film jumps out of its own ashes, one year after, with a more mature and artistic approach, with a team more determined to succeed, a fresh start, follow this thread for more info.

In this thread, me and the core team, are going to keep up to date, anyone that wants to follow us in this journey, in order to support our beloved Softimage, with the best weapon that we have in our hands - creativity!

Hierarchy / How things will work:

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Hierarchy is everywhere in SI, so we are bring in it here also, and it goes like this:

Project Leader>Leaders>Members>Contributors

1)Project Leader is the root of this project, is responsible to create a working structure, to bring a core team together, promote the whole thing, understand the big picture, set general goals, keep things realistic, set general priority's, complete the scenario, take important decisions and find ways to improve management / co op withing the team /and projects capability's.

2)Leaders: Leaders are ruling over a sector, for example, there is going to be an animation sector, and a Lead Animator will be the lead in there, this guy will be responsible to form a team with members that specialize in animations/rigs etc. Hes team will be called the animation team and it has to be strong enough to compensate with the project. Leaders are responsible to split the work to invite more ppl etc . Out of hes team fortified boundaries he will create also side pending tasks in up to date public lists that contributors can pick up.

3)Members can join teams, for example if you willing to take more active role in the project and you know modeling, you can join the Modeling team and be a member of this team. Members will have close co-op with the lead-artist. Theoretically members have more free time than contributors and want to get more involved.

4)Contributors now! Contributors pick up pending tasks from public lists (for example single models textures animations etc), when they can if they can. Contributors are ppl that are busy most of the time. Or ppl that don't want to get more involved in conversations etc within teams. We want as many as possible to get involved as contributors cause this is a community project.

And here is the big picture of how things will operate (small colorful rectangles represent tasks ):

Core team is not yet complete! Hurry up and apply!

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What do we need:

• PRIO : A Lead Concept Artist (This guy will unify the style of the project with hes drawing skills on the first official story board. This storyboard will pave the way for the concept art in general, characters/environments etc. A lead concept artist, is giving a first glance on the final thing, so in our case he will be indirectly a director with hes camera angles). Technically a lead concept artist is leading a team that will create concept for assets/environments involved in the film. -Open Spot-
• A Lead Modeler responsible to provide all the required meshes chars/3D assets/environment, meshes, and and also responsible to produce high poly sculpts (Normal maps, for chars/3D assets/environment) -Spot Taken- Fareed Nagy
• A Lead Texture Artist. (Responsible to decide production method and to add: Texture coordinates , Textures basic maps, on existing models. He will be responsible to paint the whole thing. Lead texture artist is not making shaders and normal maps in our case. ) - Spot taken - FXDude
• A Lead Scenemaster/Rendering/Post production guy (he will choose renderer, shaders, lighting ,he will decide output passes etc, and he will composite also if needed, technically this is the guy that puts everything together at some point, so he must have a mule for a machine, and a demon within hes brain). - Spot taken - FXDude
• A Lead ICE Artist/Developer (for particles/ effects /tools/ Hair/ etc)-Open Spot-
• A Lead Animator (Responsible for Skeletons, rigs, weights, animations etc) -Open Spot-

* FXDude covers 2 Roles for now, you can still ask for one of them
* For the Concept Art lead. We need the storyboard asap so reply even if you don't want to lead)

Our main renderer is Redshift

Members of teams: mc_axe is the first member in the modeling team.

Status:

The competition for the best mini script is now open to the community. And everyone can participate! Post your mini scripts until 11 April.*This mini clip (equal or less that 1 minute duration) will be our first attempt. Before we move on on something much more ambitious.
We temporarily paused our plans for a short film with 5 mins Duration or more.

*Try to post simple mini scripts that are doable withing couple months by a small team.
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Contributors :sirdavid32, gaboraa, caledonian_tartan, julius
Contributors that own red shift licences: (I dont know if they want to get listed here, i got only emails)
Gpu Render power so far: 4x Titans, 4x gtx970, 1x gtx670

[FXDude]

Lol love the flowchart graphics

[luceric]

<replied to something that has since been deleted>

[gaboraa]

But here you're going to bet it all in one work-for-free "Occupy wallstreet"-type CG short. It's fine, I just don't think it has anything to do with Softimage. Softimage was brought to you by "powers" and "modern economic laws" in the first place, it wasn't a charity and it cost a millions to make. That's not the problem.

Your words perfectly reasonable but the point you missed that we were promised Softimage wouldn't be discontinued, not while big companies using it. But not so long after, we are slapped in the face with the notorious news. Of course everything act accordingly with economy, mankind are fiscal creatures in nature, we are governed by the laws of economy and live according to these rules but honesty and reliability are the most fundamental elements that contribute our mutual agreement of living together. IMHO without these qualities, even companies, as one living being constituted by the people working for it, are dysfunctional if I may put in my two cents worth.

[FXDude]

This has a lot more chance to be embarrassing or a dud than anything else. Those are the odds of any cg short, but they don't all try to "make a point" for Softimage. IMHO the thing you guys had to do to honor softimage was to get your stuff together and ask people to record themselve say something about softimage, or somehow document what is/was Softimage, and string it all up together in a goodbye video. But here you're going to bet it all in one work-for-free "Occupy wallstreet"-type CG short. It's fine, I just don't think it has anything to do with Softimage. Softimage was brought to you by "powers" and "modern economic laws" in the first place, it wasn't a charity and it cost a millions to make. That's not the problem.

No need to worry, the point will not be centered around a company or what may have been misplaced priorities,
just as much as it would have nothing to do with "goodbyes".

Otherwise, Softimage was arguably above all ...
"brought to you by Passion ©®"
Passion. it's only real when it is.

[mc_axe]

The point of the scipt is of course against decisions of power that bow only to modern economic laws, and are sometimes (let me point it polite) not exactly wise after all..... (against evolution it self). Also we bring a ray of hope in that film with an unexpected ending. The film will be artistically given, and more ppl will find out, that can relate to the heroes, even if they never heard about XSI. So we target a wider audience not strictly Xsi users.

This has a lot more chance to be embarrassing or a dud than anything else. Those are the odds of any cg short, but they don't all try to "make a point" for Softimage. IMHO the thing you guys had to do to honor softimage was to get your stuff together and ask people to record themselve say something about softimage, or somehow document what is/was Softimage, and string it all up together in a goodbye video. But here you're going to bet it all in one work-for-free "Occupy wallstreet"-type CG short. It's fine, I just don't think it has anything to do with Softimage. Softimage was brought to you by "powers" and "modern economic laws" in the first place, it wasn't a charity and it cost a millions to make. That's not the problem.

No we wont go suddenly activist mode against an entire system, or w/e... we just want to point some madness that occurred in our lives. How this is actually embarrassing, when we talk about making art? The same system created Soft, yes but within a healthy duo - healthy antagonism (in the past). Lastly the 'healthy' part turned to a 'no'.

This film is a metaphor meaning different people will picture different stuff on what they see. Its just a story after all.
--
As to make instead a goodbye film, like a documentary, its not a bad idea, but that's already happening in webpages, their doing pretty good job actually, so i guess they have the material to create such a documentary.

[Draise]

I would create a mockumentary of artists in studios, (real ones) or fake, turning them into stylized cg characters, and have them talk of their bright future using the tech they have and the art they are working on or doing. They are happy with the niche software, praising what it can do. Even comparing it. They mention the rich world where the artist is free by the variety of flexible tools around him. They are confident, humble yet very proud of what they do and how they do it. (good) Then they all get interrupted by a message, by an agent that whispers in their ears, or the interviewer asking about their opinion on the tech dying. The news drops. They had no idea. One breaks down in front of the camera, the other starts to curse angrily. One rephrases soberly, then walks off silently, the other stares blankly. Zoom into his eye, in a flurry of effects and disintegration, a lot of amazing work done in si begins to disintegrate. Prizes get sabotaged, productos stop happening, people lose jobs, studios close down, the world turns zombified as they all follow one product brand. Monsters grow and the world in his mind goes apocalyptic. It's really dark. We zoom out, and a tear rolls down his eye.

The interviewer asks again, "Sir, what are you going to do now that X is dead?"

[mc_axe]

I would create a mockumentary of artists in studios, (real ones) or fake, turning them into stylized cg characters, and have them talk of their bright future using the tech they have and the art they are working on or doing. They are happy with the niche software, praising what it can do. Even comparing it. They mention the rich world where the artist is free by the variety of flexible tools around him. They are confident, humble yet very proud of what they do and how they do it. (good) Then they all get interrupted by a message, by an agent that whispers in their ears, or the interviewer asking about their opinion on the tech dying. The news drops. They had no idea. One breaks down in front of the camera, the other starts to curse angrily. One rephrases soberly, then walks off silently, the other stares blankly. Zoom into his eye, in a flurry of effects and disintegration, a lot of amazing work done in si begins to disintegrate. Prizes get sabotaged, productos stop happening, people lose jobs, studios close down, the world turns zombified as they all follow one product brand. Monsters grow and the world in his mind goes apocalyptic. It's really dark. We zoom out, and a tear rolls down his eye.

The interviewer asks again, "Sir, what are you going to do now that X is dead?"

Draise your scenario is the naked truth exaggerated, and it does what short films do succesfully, i alrdy pictured it in my mind and i enjoyed it, but in the past iv seen that most ppl that get evolved (in teams like the one that we trying to form now), don't expect a film that is only enjoyable by 3D artists, or only by xsi users. (At least that was the case 1 year before.)

[mc_axe]

Update : The: "A few words on the script" is edited and pictures our goals much better. Take a read, if you like to do so

Update 2 : Added a "Status" paragraph on the bottom, so ppl can get a rly quick summary of what we are doing atm.

And we still waiting on contributors, members, and a few spots in the core team.

[mc_axe]

Change of plans (Scenario removed)

We need first to solidify the team/mobilize the community, and also we need to give more incentives so more ppl can join our efforts.

So we are back to realism. We are focusing now on a short film less than a minute.
This mini short film will work as proof of concept. A forerunner before anything else much more ambitious.

We are looking forward to hear your suggestions.
Scriptwriters can post your mini scripts until 11 of April.
At 11 April we stop accepting scripts, and we will just publicly vote for the best one!

[mc_axe]

After watching plenty mini short films, i found out that we need a litl bit more space even for simple ideas.
So now you can post scripts that can result to a mini film with duration equal or less than 1 minute.

Try to post simple ideas that are doable from a small team within couple of months (or something).

Your script can be anything there are no rules.

Now stop being quiet, i wanna see some creativity right here.

And if you cant think anything take a look on this:

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Just to start off your engines ill post ideas that come from the top of my head : You can post an exaggeration of whats happened in the truth etc and raise a question, look on draise`s scenario for example^^.You can post something funny with a good point for example big ugly factory vs small high tech factory producing same product maya/soft maybe alive factories with funny expressions. You can post something kinda deep and a litl bit artistic: for example a hooded guy waits on hes grave while clock is ticking at the end dirt falls on hes shoulders hes still alive (msg appears). You can choose to make a goodbye film . Or a goodbye film that turns to something positive in the end . You can choose to point how much history, technology, love, awards, etc SI has/had: For example a film that is actually a huge list of shortfilms made with SI that getting burned or blown away by a wind.. You can point on the madness of the decision it self . If you are mad on AD you can do a film with AD SI letters going in to a burning chamber and on the other side only Softimage remains intact. Or you can overlook the situation and make a point: for example a guy smashes a well known masterpiece in slow mo .. with sledgehammer while pieces are coming back together by some weird force.. that looks like a field that affects time evil guy dissapears , sculpt goes solid - We end up with punchline about why masterpieces cannot actually die.
Or you might dont like serious stuff like this and you want just a comedy etc ,, a rich guy stops two runners Soft was the first he says i buy both of you guys, maya and soft are worried, he says dont worry fellaz , i have a car, he points to a car Flinstone look alike. then .. others runners start catching up ,,

Point is we have countless options. Your scenario can be anything lol,,, actually ill stop here cause the last one was kinda fail xD but it had a good point

[Draise]

Loving the ideas bouncing off your head. I'll think of others..