Greetings! I have been working on a Star Wars Blender project for the last few years, and I’m only now in the process of getting close to the end of the project. I uploaded my teaser for it on May the 4th, see video below. Not only am I looking for some feedback on it, but I’m trying to help this video flourish with a lot more views. Is there any help that the Blender community would be willing to assist with for a Blender project such as mine? Thank you in advance.
Hey mate.
Nice animation you got there. I can see you put a lot of time and effort into this animation.
Keep up the good work man!
Take care.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s a very generic response, and not very informative on specific areas of the animation. Per my original post, I am also seeking out people in the community that can help me to spread this around on youtube more, maybe even put it on another location on the Blender Artist forums where it will get a lot more views. Can someone assist with this please? This is the Blender community and from one Blender user to another, this is supposed to be a much more supportive group who has each others backs.
Wow WCS. You are well on your way to alienating…everyone with replies like that.
- This is a very supportive group. I’ve been helped more times than I can count.
- Nobody owes you anything.
- The fact that you’ve not gotten 100 replies with promises to promote your video all over the place has zero to do with how supportive this community is.
- Vandorius is probably not going to be a big fan of yours. He gave what he felt he could, or wanted to give you. You will not receive point by point critiques from everyone. Some people just want to show you support.
- There are a lot of people doing a lot of work in the Blender universe. You are not better or or more deserving than the other tens of thousands of Blender users out there.
I can just see you sitting there, hitting refresh every few minutes, waiting for your video to go viral, and for the legions of Blender Artists users to give you detailed analysis of your video, and to give you a link of where they’ve promoted your video. I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You’ve done a nice job. It isn’t exceptional. It isn’t earth shattering - and that’s ok. It doesn’t need to be. It’s pretty well done. There are a lot of people here doing exceptional work who don’t make your kinds of demands.
Relax, be grateful for the replies you get, and don’t say this isn’t a supportive community because you aren’t getting exactly what you want immediately.
3dmedieval,
NO!! That is not okay. Posts like that are EXACTLY why a lot of people in forums have the reputation that they do! I will address your response, whether you will choose to actually listen and take responsibility is a completely different story.
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First things first, your reply is designed to raise people’s anxiety levels, you are not helping at all sir and I resent you speaking to me the way you did rather than just remaining professional.
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With as much money through donations and also support of my volunteer work for this community… YES!! For that, I absolutely do deserve something from the community that I have continued to support over the years. Just because I don’t spend as much time in the forums as you do and make over 4 thousand posts, doesn’t mean that I haven’t helped to carry this community, so stop acting like you know me, because you clearly have no respect for people who give much of themselves to others.
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Your quote, “I can just see you sitting there, hitting refresh every few minutes, waiting for your video to go viral, and for the legions of Blender Artists user to give you detailed analysis of your video.”
How dare you!! I don’t do anything like that and again, this is you intentionally trying to get under people’s skin and that kind of behavior is not helpful at all. -
I was completely relaxed the other day when I made my post. Read it again if you need to and see the respect and professional wording that I used. Then, I witnessed a number of views and no responses, when all other posts were getting responses. Then, I left an additional note, which was removed from the forum. Then, I simply made an observation based on how my posts were treated when I came on here. Vandorius’s response was not anything like the other feedback that people are receiving on here and it was in fact designed to push me aside. Between all of these things, I had a right to be a little perturbed.
However, then you decided to post with your message to me, intentionally trying to get me all worked up by making comments that weren’t even accurate about me. Things I had not done and you most likely knew that when you commented! You speak of alienating ones self, yet you have problem whatsoever treating me like complete garbage after everything I’ve given to this community. That, sir is the absolute most injustice that I can take for one day and I’m done talk to you. I will not read anything else posted at this point.
If anyone else wants to help me out, my original post is at the top. My opinion of the blender community as a whole has been forever changed and I will no longer support with more donations, or provide any more volunteer work. The treatment I’ve received is going to be known to others who inquire about the Blender community in the future. I’m done.
If you want specifics, lighting and apparent scale of the spaceships looks off
The shadow looks out of place. If this was in space, what light would be so close to create such a clear shadow. Also it looks way too big, either the flying craft is very large or the ship in the background is much smaller that I was expecting, especially the next second or so when the craft flies across the ship.
Your post was not removed. I moved it from this forum (not the correct place for such a post) to the Blenderartists Website support forum
I think you need to chill out a bit mate. I don’t care what anyone has or hasn’t done for any kind of community, it’s none of my business. You can have a 10000 views, no one has an obligation to take time out to respond and no one should be getting pissed off if they don’t.
wcs,
Not sure if you are trying to achieve some kind of special effect, but the stars in the background seem off to me. In some of the scenes the stars appear to be flying by relatively quickly and in some instances even on top of the ship as if they are right there next to the objects in the foreground as opposed to being extremely far away like stars are. The stars should be more static and in the background IMO.
Aside from that specific critique point, I would say that your animation is good and probably appreciated by anyone who works in animations like this as they know what all goes into it. I’m not sure, however, what a layman’s perspective of this video would be. Maybe harder for them to fully appreciate.
I think its ok for you to ask for critiques and sharing of your work, but not to demand it.
I apologize for the refresh key remark. Everything else is just good advice. I’m not trying to rattle your cage. If you want to leave in a huff, I think you’ll be sorry. Give it some time, and don’t compare views to replies. Every post ever posted will have many more views than replies. The fact is, some people like Poekmon, not Star Wars. Some people come in for a glance and leave. Some people will give you a quick nod of support. Fewer people will give you a detailed critique. Even fewer will help promote your video.
I get that you poured your soul into this, and then uploaded the video and hit post. Then that terrible wait - we all do it. It is human nature to want a reaction to our hard work. I have to resist checking my posts several times per day. We all understand that.
Bear with me a moment if you will. I want to tell you a quick story I hope will help. I’m a custom furniture maker. I design and build hand-crafted furniture, and charge a very large amount of money for it. I also spend a long time on each piece. I’ve built hundreds of pieces of furniture and been involved in millions of dollars worth of projects. I’m not boasting - hold on a moment if you will. So, after spending months on a piece of furniture, I’ll post a picture on my Facebook page. I get some likes, usually 10 or so, and maybe some shares. My girlfriend and my mother mostly. Then I scroll down and see some junky thing made out of crates, which has thousands of likes and shares. It makes me want to scream.
So yes, I get it man. But my advise is the same - be grateful to the people who do give you a thumbs up.
Here’s a desk I built. It got a few likes on Facebook when I posted it, and a few shares. Most friends I’ve known most of my life don’t bother with my posts. Why? I don’t know.
really stunning work!!! BIG star wars fan.
your teaser said ‘‘coming soon’’. when do we get to see the whole thing.
shaun
Huge Star Wars fan here too. The amount of effort you put into this labor of love is impressive for sure, and you’ve composed and rendered some lovely shots for the trailer. However, when a project this enormous is near completion is not the time to ask for critiques. Did you have a WIP thread that I missed? Or are you asking for critique on something other than looks, eg the editing? I assume you don’t want to put in more weeks of rendering at this point.
Since you wanted a critical analysis, here goes:
The spacecraft in general look really good, and detailed.
0:12: Interior is very basic. Looks very out of place.
0:27: Spacecraft movement is very high acceleration. Would look better to take a bit more time and smooth down the movement.
0:31: Death star looks very basic. Looks like a sphere with a diffuse map laid on top.
0:33: texture of the close up of the death star looks too simple. My guess would be that it is procedureal with a noise overlaid on a musgrave texture. Should be more panel-type (i.e. sheets of rectangular metal), although it will probably work just as well with a single color and more detail (greebles).
0:49: looks like a low poly destroyer, since the dome is not smoothed. Smooth it.
0:54: Scale is off between destroyer and X-wings
Overall
camera work is a bit jerky, in that it has very rapid movements. Try and smooth it out with less acceleration.
To be honest, it looks like it has been done by threepeople. One is very good, the other ok, the third basic. Whereas the X-wing and Y-wings (I think they are called) are really detailed, and the destroyer is ok (looks more like a work in progress), there are large aspects that look rather basic. The use of simple texturing to hide simple modelling is rather simplistic.
Again, as a work in progress, it looks good, but as a final product it is too inconsistent.
I think, more importantly, what do you want to achieve?
This looks the same as the original Star Wars IV: A New Hope ending with the battle on the death star. There is nothing original with this, so I am unclear as to what you want.
I am seeing some parallax and size/perspective issues here.
@55 seconds and 59 seconds
The motion of the camera vs the large craft and the small crafts leaves me unable to get a clear perspective of size and distance of ether the small crafts or the large one.
@12 seconds
Why are the stars moving? Considering the distance away they are they should be stationary (or nearly) objects in perspective to the moving fighter and the large round ship.
@16 it feels like you are trying to present that you are looking at the world though the pilots perspective. But when the camera turns it feels like the objective lens is directly on the pivot point. Normally when I see something like that is the movies I get the sense that the camera is several inches in-front of the pivot point.
@20 use objects more like the planets in second 8 if you want to give some perspective of motion, Stars as a whole tend to be light years away from one another, and to see stars moving like they do @20 makes it feel more like the stars are fireflies in a farmers field.
So after complaining that nobody gives proper feeback, you then don’t reply to the people giving feedback…
Well, to be scrupulously fair, all the ‘proper’ feedback was posted after 10:01 15 May 2015, when the OP gave his Goodby Cruel World post and said: I’m done. Looks like he actually meant it.
I suppose Star Wars fanatics get all googly eyed over anything Star Wars related, but, quite frankly, I don’t see anything in the trailer worth promoting. It’s fan art, so nothing is original. There is nothing outstanding in the camera work, lighting, modeling or special effects to catch the attention of experienced Blender Artists and make them sit up and go, ‘wow’. There don’t seem to be any characters involved, so any story will be carried by voice overs, probably staticy to bring to mind space battlefield communications (like they haven’t been digitized since 2100…). I don’t see any particular reason to promote what looks like a space battle animation. I’ve got some credibility at stake here, too.
The audience for this is, obviously, those googly eyed Star Wars fanatics, not Blender Artists. I’d suggest the OP do some research, find out where those people hang out on the web, and try to promote his work there.
Add some Mass Effect feel into it. Be creative, combine Mass Effect, Halo and Star Wars.