Sintel Dissection

Introduction

Sintel is the third open movie created by Blender Foundation. I chose this movie because all of us can relate to it as it is completely made in blender. Its a 14 min movie and is worth the watch. It has a tragic ending and leaves the audience with a sinking feeling at least for a couple of hours after the movie. This was possible due to the wonderful environments created which made way to brilliant story telling. At the first, second, third watch the movie looked flawless. Or may be we could say that it is so well made that you would want to ignore the flaws. But just because Blender is open source we cannot have a forgiving eye or double standards.

This movie explores the capabilities of Blender 2.5 . The movie was made by a 15 - 20 member team with a budget of $550,000 in a couple of months.

However I will talk about a few flaws and a lot of amazingly artistic things done in this movie.

Good Attributes

Lighting and shadows

Lot of effects actually come to life only with proper lighting. Given the fact there was a couple of members team created only for light. Showing good shadows in CG is one of the most difficult tasks. But it has been well achieved in this movie with the help of proper Lighting.

Models and Textures

The texture that have been used are absolutely brilliant.

Environments

This movie features a lot of realistic environments that can be rendered in Blender.

Flaws   (It is very difficult to find flaws in something you absolutely love.)

Intersection of hair

Even though the hair was made with a lot effort and to near perfection it still turned out that in one of the scenes it was a disaster. In the scene where Sintel fights with the gate keeper her hair intersects with the coat (passes through the coat.) This might have been overlooked as it is not very obvious and due to lack of time.

Sintel Animation

Sintel's jump moves and fight moves both looked brilliant. However when she walks in the last scene it looks very jittery. Her gait has a lot of breaks in between. This according to me could have been avoided if Mo Cap was used for certain bits. But again this is a small budget ($550,000) movie so it might have been ignored. 

Switching between stylized and realistic scenes

There are some scenes in the movie which are stylized to give a good effect and some that are made to look realistic. This probably is the case even with non animated movies and a lot of animated movies. But if the switch is not done in a proper way or if it is too quick it sometimes gives undesirable effects.

Flickering Textures

We can see that there are a few places where we find flickering textures.

Shadow