
Miyazaki Tribute - cheiVia0
https://www.blender.org/user-stories/miyazaki-tribute/
======
qwertyuiop924
I was essentially raised on Miyazaki. Some kids grew up with Toy Story and
Finding Nemo, I grew up with Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle,
and The Cat Returns. I mean, I watched other films to (a lot of other films),
but Miyazaki had a huge influence me: without him, I would have likely never
gotten into anime. To this day, his films are still some of my favorites.

Whoever made this tribute, you have my salute: The 3D CG, while quite obvious,
blends very well with the rotoscoped animation, something that doesn't always
happen (just look at some of Cowboy Bebop). It also captures the feel of
Ghibli's animation amazingly well.

I salute the animator, and I also, of course, salute Hayao Miyazaki: Farewell,
and may your legacy live on.

~~~
iotscale
My only exposure to anime is his films (friend suggested them, first I ignored
the recommendation because they were "for kids" and some time later I watched
"Spirited away" by luck and you know the rest of the story) and want to
explore more, I thought maybe you could have some suggestions from your other
favorites?

~~~
caoilte
The other peerless Miyazaki's are Princess Mononoke (the only other work with
as much depth as Spirited Away) and My Neighbour Totoro (avowedly a children's
film). Nearly all the others are also very very good.

And if that's your only exposure to anime then you should at the very least
checkout Satoshi Kon's masterpiece Paprika.

~~~
hex12648430
I wouldn't introduce someone to Satoshi Kon with Paprika. In my opinion it is
much better to watch Kon's movies in their chronological release order.
Perfect Blue is much more accessible and less surrealist than Paprika which
may confuse someone and cause them to dismiss Kon's whole cinematography as a
whole.

~~~
iotscale
I just watched "Perfect Blue", it was really great. I'll keep watching more
Satoshi Kon movies if I can find the DVDs. It's really hard to find them.

------
hardmaru
This is beautiful. Despite what critics say about Blender3D, I am constantly
amazed at what can be done with this piece of open source software. The
learning curve can be more difficult at the beginning but it is one of those
systems where once I get used to the commands, I can express myself
efficiently in the rich UI environment it offers.

~~~
astrodust
The learning curve is difficult in any 3D application and Blender is no
exception. It's challenging to learn, but a very capable application in the
right hands.

I don't get the hate for Blender. It can use RenderMan, it supports Python
scripting. It's just _different_ from what people are used to.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It 's just different from what people are used to._

It's probably _just_ this. You have the same with Vim and Emacs, and tiling
window managers - they're different from what people are commonly used to,
therefore hated. Even though the paradigms employed in those applications make
you _many times_ more efficient in using them.

It seems that a lot of people - even many professionals - have allergy for
learning. They feel they've learned enough when they first discovered how to
operate computer (yes, every single one of us had to _learn_ that at some
point), and they hate being forced to learn further, regardless of how much
benefits it brings.

~~~
Pica_soO
That allergy is called limited time. You might bump into it, once you venture
outside of university/ rich daddys attic.

Every time somebody reinvents the wheel, to save a click- and breaks my
workflow, that might seem very reasonable for those who either have lots of
money/time - and or already did that investment.

Well, i dont, i have things to create, places to be. If you re-invent a
scissor, that only trained experts can use, because its basically two razor-
blades taped to the thumb and forefinger- you accomplished all you have
dreamed off. You reduced weight, you allowed for more precise use - and the
likes of me will still call you out for missing the obvious.

PS: The Miyazaki tribute is absolutely gorgeous. Im not trying to claim, that
blender cant be a excellent tool once you have sunken the cost. Its just that
retraining for absolutely no reason..

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _That allergy is called limited time. You might bump into it, once you
> venture outside of university / rich daddys attic._

That may be one of the causes, but the allergy I talk about is internalized
myopia. Time is limited, yes, but it's worth to sacrifice some of it for
learning in order to significantly improve your efficiency at using the rest
of the time.

> _If you re-invent a scissor, that only trained experts can use, because its
> basically two razor-blades taped to the thumb and forefinger- you
> accomplished all you have dreamed off. You reduced weight, you allowed for
> more precise use - and the likes of me will still call you out for missing
> the obvious._

And I'll still be calling you misguided, if such scissors after few days of
training will allow those "trained experts" to outperform regular scissor-
wielders by factor of 2. Or even factor of 1.2 - it'll pay for itself pretty
quickly.

This approach that every tool should be made for the lowest common
denominator, so that people can master them in 5 seconds of use, is IMO
stupid. I understand that software designed by that may sell better, but for
the tools professionals choose themselves - do people _really_ think they've
learned everything humans can learn the moment they leave high school?

~~~
Pica_soO
That is why professional software usually has two stages- First the UI,
designed to be used by everyone with little training and not demanding from
everyone to become a Renaissance level expert at everything. Second stage are
short-keys and creating your own tool additions. And that is where blender
falls short- the first stage is the second stage.

~~~
Grue3
>That is why professional software usually has two stages- First the UI,
designed to be used by everyone with little training

I have never seen actual professional software that included this first stage.

~~~
antoinealb
I used Solidworks a bit and I would definitely says it has this first stage
UI. After maybe 1h of tutorials you are already designing your first parts
that you can 3D print.

~~~
floopidydoopidy
Yeah, well that steep learning curve everyone is complaining about for blender
is about an hour. After that, you'll probably be doing rigged animation.

In my opinion, people associate cost with value. Something that's free MUST be
worse than something that costs thousands of dollars.

~~~
Pica_soO
As Microsoft demonstrated - if something is equal in power and free- the cost
drops dramatically. Cant see that happen with Adobe CS or Autodesk 3dsMax.

And its not a hour, even if you know other solutions. I guess in this sort of
discussion, that is considered a defeat of the "opponent" \- winning by
him/her admitting in anecdata that he/she is stupid enough to take this or
that longer to learn. Unfortunately feeling smart , doesn't help the cause of
open source one iota.

I always wondered, why some people get full zealot for open source? Does
explaining the problems away, instead of building a user-friendly OS/ 3D
editing Software, supplies some sort of elitist "invites only Treehouse" kick?

~~~
geoka9
I consider Blender much more user-friendly than Max, Softimage, Modo and
ZBrush (to list the ones I've used). With Blender I found that I got
frustrated a lot less because the work flows for the most tasks I did were
streamlined and efficient.

~~~
astrodust
Blender does seem more internally consistent than other packages, _especially_
Zbrush.

The down-side is that most people don't appreciate this, instead they just
bitch about right click to select and give up.

------
mholt
Wow, what a beautiful tribute. I only discovered Miyazaki's stories last year
but how I wish I had grown up with them! As an adult, I even enjoy his
children's movies. This project captures the essence of some of his classics:
a touch of heartwarming character in each vignette. And bringing them together
is really a special presentation.

I was excited to see that Miyazaki is making one more movie:
[http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/hayao-miyazaki-one-last-
movie...](http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/hayao-miyazaki-one-last-movie/)

~~~
Animats
Yes, he's coming back to do one more.

Miyazaki is of the few really original thinkers in movies. A Pixar employee
once mentioned that when they get totally stuck and need an idea, they screen
a Miyazaki movie for inspiration.

~~~
hd4
good to know, i thought The Wind Rises was his swansong

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marcus_holmes
I want to know how many hours went into this.

I've played around with Blender, and this seems like it would take months of
effort. But for a professional with a decent workflow and total knowledge of
the tool, how long did it actually take?

~~~
mholt
It doesn't answer your question directly, but watch the "making of" video:
[https://vimeo.com/188964250](https://vimeo.com/188964250) \- it should give
you some idea.

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yla92
Wow. This is such an excellent work. Thank you so much for it.

This is unrelated. I recently went and watched Markoto Shinkai's latest film :
Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.). Like his previous works, it's extraordinary. I
encourage everyone to give it a try.

While Markoto Shinkai won't be Miyazaki, his work are pretty good and he's
still very young so I really hope to see him making great ones like Miyazaki.

~~~
huxley
It feels to me sometimes that the "new Miyazaki" is much like being the "new
Dylan" used to be in the music industry.

Though we lost him too young, Kon Satoshi was able to reach the level of
extraordinary several times. "Every Frame a Painting" covered his work:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE)

~~~
hashhar
Every Frame A Painting is the channel that made me feel passionate about
movies, direction and editing. The guy has some real talent in analyzing stuff
and keeping it short.

------
santaclaus
> rotoscoping is very, very time consuming

I feel like there is a cool machine learning project in here.

~~~
ericflo
This is called image segmentation - Facebook recently open sourced
DeepMask/SharpMask which does this
[https://github.com/facebookresearch/deepmask](https://github.com/facebookresearch/deepmask)

~~~
pfranz
I wonder if any of this has made it into vfx production? The few companies
I've worked at they've invested on better tools to manually rotoscope because
automated tools never lived up to the hype in production.

The most important thing in these masks are clean edges (and the "auto stuff"
usually isn't). A rough mask (called a garbage matte) is good enough in some
cases, but most often it's the first step and a clean matte is created by hand
using multiple techniques; playing with contrast, playing with color/chroma
(bluescreen), and hand animating curves or painting (rotoscoping).

------
Joeboy
Blender 2016 DemoReel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIiY6aGefvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIiY6aGefvI)

(Strictly speaking it's a Cycles showreel but presumably everything there will
have been created in Blender as Cycles is Blender's rendering engine).

~~~
ZenoArrow
I couldn't comment on that particular showreel, but it's clearly possible for
Blender to use other rendering engines. For example, the linked Miyazaki
tribute used Octane.

~~~
Joeboy
It is, and in fact the default rendering engine is still the "Blender
internal" engine. But it's not common to use Cycles without Blender.

------
pimeys
Ah, Miyazaki. Whenever I feel down and the winter is darkest, going back to
this world fills my heart with joy. I'd say already the music of Hisaishi has
some medicinal qualities.

And what a nice rendering!

------
ChicagoBoy11
> The rendering time for one frame was from 4 minutes to 15 minutes

I have zero experience in this space but this bit caught my attention. If I'm
understanding this correctly, he is saying that the production render of a
single frame would take anywhere from 4 to 15 minutes PER FRAME?

If that's the case, the fact that the video is around 200 seconds long would
imply that the lower-bound estimate of the time it would have taken to produce
the final render of this is around 320hrs assuming 24fps. That's two weeks. I
can't imagine the artist actually had to wait two weeks to render his product
-- what am I missing?

~~~
dvt
> I can't imagine the artist actually had to wait two weeks to render his
> product -- what am I missing?

You're not missing anything :) I worked briefly in the special effects
industry[0] and it takes a long time to render stuff. Monsters University took
29 hours to render a frame[1] and they had a whole _server farm_.

[0] There's an old joke that everyone in LA works in the 'biz' at least once.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-
lates...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-latest-
technological-marvel-monsters-university/)

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
Wait so 29hrs GIVEN the server farm or 29hrs of computing time, thus requiring
a server farm? Can't be the former... right? Wouldn't that mean decades of
computing to render it?

And that was part of my question too: Given the rendering time faced by dono,
would someone like he have access to technology to distribute this over a few
machines/in the cloud or is that something that just big studios have the
capacity to do?

~~~
asperous
1 frame takes 29 hours but they render frames concurrently (so the whole thing
only takes a couple months).

See:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080215205807/http://www.pixar....](https://web.archive.org/web/20080215205807/http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html)

Slide #13

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ef4
Am I the only one who saw this headline and thought "Fuck, did Miyazaki die
too?"

I am glad to see he is still with us. And nice work.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Miyazaki can't die yet: He has to finish drawing (or gettung other people to
draw) all the frames for the universe for the rest of time, so it can run
without him.

------
covercash
On December 4 & 5, select theaters will be screening Spirited Away. The 4th is
the original Japanese audio + English subs, the 5th is the dubbed English
audio version.

More details here: [http://www.fathomevents.com/event/spirited-away/more-
info/th...](http://www.fathomevents.com/event/spirited-away/more-info/theater-
locations)

~~~
Tobold
I saw it in theater when it came out (twice), and then later again a few years
back.

Except in the latter case they clearly played it from DVD, interlaced even! At
first I was like "I can't watch this!" but after 3 minutes I was so captivated
I didn't even notice anymore!

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simonebrunozzi
I would like to learn how to use Blender quite effectively.

What would be the best, non-obvious, perhaps non-googlable, path?

~~~
rangibaby
Learn how to draw or sculpt or both? The main hurdle to starting Blender is
it's odd interface, but it's possible to get comfortable in it in anything
from a week to a month depending on how quick of a learner you are. The rest
is up to your artistic ability.

~~~
ffwacom
+1 on the learn to draw/sculpt for non-obvious. A (skilled) 2d artist with no
3d experience will run rings around any beginning/intermediate 3d artist.

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nickthemagicman
Its spectacular.

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visarga
From what I know Miyazaki doesn't believe in computer generated graphics. Will
he appreciate it?

~~~
darkwinx
As far as I know, he can accept CG, but keep it on minimum.

~~~
cilea
Taken from the most recent documentary (by NHK?), Miyazaki does not use CG
himself. He might attempt a comeback, i.e. doing feature-length anime. For the
time being, Miyazaki is putting a finishing touch on a short anime (crawling
caterpillar).

------
faragon
Miyazaki movies are overwhelming: beauty, imagination, and very inspiring.
Love it.

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jordache
well done, but the painted backgrounds of ghibli's work is a huge part if its
charm... the 3d cgi robs it off that

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waymond
This is amazing. Respect

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james0001
That's excellent work, a good tribute. Thank you.

