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Elephants Dream, the "Open" 3D Animated Movie Released On-line

elephantsdream.org — Elephants Dream is the world ’s first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license.

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  • Jerky1312, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Great program, great project and a great film. Dugg!
  • goldenratiophi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Been waiting for this for a long time.... dugg!
  • spiderworm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I can't wait to play with those production files... dugg!
  • DnasTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7dugg (my first digg too :-))
    Been following this practically since it was first announced! Can't wait for the download to finish!

    I just hope the res isn't as small as I fear it is....
    • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4the movie is 425mb big using avi compression..i dont think it will be of bad quality.
  • victorycig, on 10/12/2007, -27/+15Direct link to the avi (hosted in USA):
    http://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/blender.org/ED/ED_1024.avi
    • duniyadnd, on 10/12/2007, -10/+25No offense, but let people appreciate the presentation and hard work the folks did by at least visiting their website. Linking directly to the avi file is just going to eat up their bandwidth especially when greedy search bots just keep hitting it over and over again.
    • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17what if the website goes offline due to a digg effect? Here is a second mirror,
      http://xseed.bowiestate.edu/ED/ED_1024.avi
    • mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"what if the website goes offline due to a digg effect? "

      Torrent Love!
    • rimco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The website has been changed to nothing but links anyway due to traffic, so a link is no big deal.
    • halavais, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Come on, guys: this is what bit torrent was *made* for.
  • bartv, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16I wrote an article on the background of this project here:

    http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-worlds-first-open-movie-released/
    • listrophy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"...cluster of 240 Dual-core Xserves to render the movie. XSeed took over 125 days to render the movie, using up to 2.8GB of memory to render a single frame."

      And all the .blend files are available on the DVD (and presumed to be CC-licensed). This means that in ~20 years, your home computer will probably be capable of rendering the movie in under a day.
  • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -19/+6I hope the website's no indication of the quality of the movie... Yikes!
    • antihexe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's probably not displaying correctly for you, there are many images.
    • kimos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's cause the site's dugg. It didn't send me most of the images or the CSS file. Just some HTML.
      Check it later...
  • bleemus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Anyone have a torrent running of this thing yet?
  • superal1394, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Digg seems to have a way of killing websites...
  • ph33rm3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4http://www.elephantsdream.org.nyud.net:8090/
  • o0joshua0o, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Blender is such a fantastic program. Anyone interested in 3D animation should definitely check it out.
    • cryonix, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4i was accually going to work on this. but my skill in 3dstudio max was much higher than blender so i didnt.
  • spiderworm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16torrent is the best way to go.... the elephantsdream.com server is now probably a hulking pile of burning plastic and metal... get the torrent here: http://tribler.org/content/Elephants_Dream_1024.avi.torrent
    • jpf., on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Make sure to leave your client up for a while, this is a project worth donating some bandwidth to.
    • datagod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5When I get home, I will seed this for a LONG time. I have a dedicated "Seed Machine".
    • templest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8>> When I get home, I will seed this for a LONG time. I have a dedicated "Seed Machine".

      I call mine, "The Ole' *****-n'-Balls"


      (No, really... I have a server for torrents, sites, games, etc, on a 100Mbps connection. I'll be donating some b/w too, and it really *is* called that. Someone brought that joke up after I unwittingly called it a "seed machine" myself. It became it's christened name).
  • tapo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Just in case you've never used Blender, it's an open source 3D modelling and animation tool - in the same category as Maya.

    However, Blender is kind of like the Dvorak keyboard layout, or coffee for many 3D animators. It's an incredible pain in the ass to learn, but once you've mastered it, you can be incredibly productive. Moreso then any other animation package.

    It's available for all major platforms (at a pretty small download size of around 5 MB) from http://www.blender3d.org

    Edit: Geez, it seems that Blender3d.org is down now too...
    • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5weird..blender is a big site.. didnt think it would go down like that. It might be down for some other reason besides digg.
      Cache: http://blender3d.org.nyud.net:8090/cms/Home.2.0.html
    • Cheeseness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5A lot of people may disagree with me, but I believe that Blender's learning curve is significantly less if you don't have experience with another modeler like Max or Lightwave. It doesn't use the same conventions or paradigms, and I feel that in many ways, Blender is more intuitive.
    • nocre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 Well, I couldn't comment as to the learning curve as I did have extensive experience with both Max and Maya before trying Blender. As for the original comment, I would disagree with the statement that you're any more productive using Blender than any other package.

      In my experience, it was really just the complete lack of standards that made it somewhat difficult. The fact that it's free, open source, and such a tiny download are huge perks, though. A standard copy of Max 8 (read: not pirated and not the student edition) is going to run you a few grand.
    • spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4----A lot of people may disagree with me, but I believe that Blender's learning curve is significantly less if you don't have experience with another modeler like Max or Lightwave.

      Blender 3d is the first and only3d program I've ever learned and I didn't find it any more difficult than say autocad, photoshop, or illustrator. People just get used to a certain paradigm with other programs and then anything that doesn't match that paradigm becomes "hard" for them.
  • gnuyen, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4Um, to say this movie was made with entirely open source graphics software is a bit misleading. It was also made with Final Cut Pro and a lot of other non open source software. Yes, these are not technically graphics software, which is why the statement above is not a lie, just incredibly misleading.
    • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Who cares? It was modelled with blender3d. That was what the person was getting at.
    • bartv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Sorry, but this is incorrect. Only the music is made using 'closed' software. For the rest, *everything*, including the compositing and editing, was done with Open Source software.
    • Vokas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7You use the word incredible to easily. Getting hit in the face by a meteor and surviving...that's incredible, them using Final Cut, not so much.
    • templest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"You use the word incredible to easily. Getting hit in the face by a meteor and surviving...that's incredible"

      Goddammit! You're the second person on this site to make me belly a laugh into the mic while taking a call at work. Bastards.
  • djmiller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5There are bittorrent files here:
    http://orange.blender.org/download

    They are multiple sizes to choose from as well different audio options.

    Here is a direct link to the largest size video with aac audio:
    http://tribler.org/content/Elephants_Dream_1024-h264-st-aac.mov.torrent
  • antihexe, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3%u0CA0_%u0CA0
  • neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3dugg..just wish I could see the site..
  • decksnfx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37NNNOOOO! You can't make open source movies! Who gets the money?????? Who makes the mountains of licensed *****???? It just doesn't make SENSE!
    • Loyke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They don't make money, i'dd guess. the sales revenues are to pay the hardware from, that kind of stuff.
    • actorboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5decksnfx: There is a difference between entering a project knowing you're not going to get paid, and entering a project only to have rightful compensation taken from you.
    • Criterion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Looks like everybody that's responded so far has had their sarcasm detector switched off.
    • templest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@ Loyke & actorboy,

      I have a time travel machine I can sell you for $59.99 each.
      The crystals cost extra though.
    • actorboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1My sarcasm detector is working fine. I've just lost my sense of humor on that (off-) topic.
  • Derrekito, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2sounds great! However it seems they are in need of a better site.
  • 88iou, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Awesome. I'm going to watch it when I get the chance.
  • 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This quite an awesome accomplishment, and deserves all due accolades. It's a first, and perhaps it might spark the trend for a new way of looking at media. Bear in mind, that you can still buy the DVD (which will help support the Blender Foundation), where you get the entire content that was used to produce the movie - the models, textures, music, everything.
  • starseed420, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3What is the deal with 3d animated movies and animals ? It's bad enough every cartoon released state side has a myriad of animals as the cast. Just a thought .. bury me if you will
    • Cheeseness, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Does it have animals in it? Unfortunately the site's down and I haven't finished downloading it yet. Just because it's called Elephant's Dream doesn't necessarily mean it's got elephants in it.
    • DeckMonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Animals are easier to make look "good" in CGI than humans are. Same goes for toys, bugs, cars, aliens, superheroes, etc. The state of the art just hasn't quite progressed far enough to make photo-realistic human CGI characters. Most of them still have a vaguely creepy quality about them.
    • ChiTownHero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The Human eye has been trained since birth to recognize human skin and action. In a world where we are close to photo-realistic 3D animation but have an unaccepting audience that yells for Realism Now, studios are forced to use characters that are based in the imagination. Besides, its Animation, why bother using humans when you have have a singing purple banana =P
    • vuke69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley
    • knellotron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The Elephant is only in the title, and the leads are 2 human characters, who have a very stylized design. The only actual "animals" in the film are actually mechanical.
  • Ginjeet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This is so great! C'mon lets get this 2k+ diggs ;)!
  • mrstimpson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think this is great! cheers
  • dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Two front page stories in one day with the word "Elephant" involved. Something is odd here...

    Cheers to them using blender, my hat is off. Amazingly powerful program, but it has an Everest-like learning curve.
  • damien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Blender seems to be maturing at an amazing rate and becoming quite an impressive package. Great job on the movie!
  • caldroun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Is this something that my kid can watch (he is 4)? What is the movie about?
    • iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's just "odd".
    • qw1j1b0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My 3 year old boy was interested for about 2 minutes, just because it is 3D animation.

      I wouldn't suggest it for kids, it's pretty dark, think Nightmare Before Christmas with some HR Geiger influence, oh and it is mainly dialog driven.
    • rojaro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Why do so many people believe, just because a movie is CG or animated "it's probably for kids". No this is not a movie for kids. Even most 16 year old kids will not understand it. Go, watch it yourself (without the kid) and you'll understand, then go watch "Ghost in the Shell", "Akira" and "Ninja Scroll" (also without the kid).
  • evoix9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Anyone know if theres an HD torrent file? the HD file from germany wont load.
  • bonesbrigade, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yes if there is anyone capable of making the HD file into a torrent, please do so. Or if there is a link on the site to download a torrent file or maybe just suggest it.
  • NotBlaine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Blender has become a fantastic program. For years I was a Max user and Blender was, at best, a toy. With the last handful of releases it's become a very valid and powerful tool. The addition of cloth/soft body dynamics, static particles (to simulate hair and fur) and fluid simulation has made it very respectable in my book. I've pretty much become a convert.

    That said, the built in materials and renderer leave a lot to be desired but YAF-RAY and Pixie and the like give you Sub Surface Scattering, Photon Casting and HDRI support. A very very cool program.

    Why the HD link was never made into a torrent... I'll never know.
  • evoix9, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2I'm uploading at 800kb/s if anyone else wants to get the torrent while i'm still downloading it.
    • Phoenyx, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3doh! reply to wrong comment, just bury this.
  • Wolfman~K, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Donating bandwidth to this torrent for the next week or so.... outstanding project!!!!

    http://net-K.us
  • Ryland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4dugg simply because it's a great accomplishment, but are there some clips of the video somewhere? I don't want to download the whole thing only to find I don't like it. I'd like to see a ~1 minute example.
  • int19h, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I bought the DVD, and received it two days ago. However, I was very disappointed, since it's a very short movie, the voices are crap, many blender-files will not open and most of all, the story is terrible. The really cool part about this, is that if you don't like the movie, you can mix all the components, and make a better one yourself. Congrats to the Orange team for having the initative and courage to start this, work on this and finish this. Oh, and many of the 3d-scenes look superbly nice.
    • Pakocino, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Characters looks bad and voice are terrible but the environment is superb. Some scene are really nifty.
    • 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4What were you expecting, typical Hollywood shlock?

      I'll have to admit that I haven't seen it yet, but I fully expect it to be a little off-key (not in a negative sense, but in the sense that it may very well express an idea in a way that we're not accustomed to seeing).
    • spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6----many blender-files will not open...

      You'll likely need to wait for upcoming 2.42 release which includes the features used by the Orange team.

      http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_last_ver.727.0.html
    • williamager, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I was disappointed with the technical aspects as well - the character animation was horrible, especially in the first scene, where Proog moves around with seemingly no mass. Lipsyncing was off as well. The visuals were very nice, and the typewriter dance was well done, but even some of the background had problems (especially in the first scene).

      That said, I liked the plot quite a bit. The meaning of the film is left very much open to interpretation. I saw it as being like the machine in Forbidden Planet, with Proog _making_ all of the dangers in order to make Emo fear and respect the machine, so that Emo will be careful when creating things himself. Proog is also very obsessed with communication devices, making all of his traps involve them, yet is always imploring Emo to pay attention to him, and to listen to the machine, which I still do not quite understand! But I believe there are other completely different interpretations as well - I thought I read one which posited that Proog was guiding Emo through traps he had made long before, and I believe the website said something about Proog guiding Emo to some place in particular.
    • Pentarix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Characters looks bad and voice are terrible but the environment is superb. Some scene are really nifty."

      My thoughts percisely, the environments look amazing but the animation and voices leave much to be desired.
    • int19h, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@5blocksfree
      I wasn't expecting "a typical Hollywood shlock", but I was expecting that they would actually write a script before they made the movie. It's not only "a little off-key", unfortunately. Except from some nice visuals, this movie is just a pain to watch, as you'd find out yourself if you had actually seen it.

      @williamager
      I totally agree with your first part, but I find it strange that you like the plot, even though you find it illogical.

      -
      Note that I don't mean to bash the orange _project_ here, as I think that is great.
  • anenokoji, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1WOW! ftp is only 4.9k a second. Good thing we pay extra for our 8gb connection.

  • jbreckman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6A movie's merit should not be determined by anything other than the contents of the movie.

    If George Lucas just made Star Wars: Episode I, without having made the first three movies, Episode I would have tanked in the theaters. Instead it made $430 million. Same thing with episodes II and III. I know most people hated them, but some people genuinely did like them. However, anyone that liked them only did so because of the references back to the original star wars. The movies wouldn't have made any sense by themselves.

    If this movie was shown at a film festival, without any fanfare about how it was made, would anyone blink an eye?

    I applaud people for creating open source media, however, with the amount of attention this seems to be getting, I wonder if it would have been better to wait, and produce a GOOD movie.
    • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3considering this movie took 125 days to render using a big render farm, im not so sure about that.
  • Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The BitTorrent stream worked for me at 300+ kb/sec, so everybody should definetly use the USA torrent for it. I got the H.264 version in less than 20 minutes.

    The short is pretty good, and it especially gets rather amazing at the end. If I would have to make a complaint, the two characters in the animation have a "glow" to them that makes them look very detached from the background when the background is dark. Still, great effort....hopefully we can see a "2.0" version that corrects some of these tiny problems
  • artofwot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm glad that this made it to the front page.

    I've been following the development since the beginning - once the sight is back up you can read some of the blog posts they were making during production.

    The main benefit from this film has been that tons of new features have been added because of this project - the node editor, hair, etc.

    Ton, the leader of the Blender project has already hinted that they may make another movie with only opensource software.
  • tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Just watched it.

    The rendering, textures, modeling, and lighting were all well done but the character animation and voice work were only OK. Other than that, it was a big undertaking and the team produced a really well done animated short.

    But what is it about? I'll admit, I'm a bit confused on what exactly took place.. :)

    This is just my opinion, take it for what you will..
  • Haroldx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+252.6 of 98.8 MB at 321.67 KB/s

    Pretty good torrent. :)

    And it's going higher! :D
  • vostek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Holy snap this is beautiful in every way.
  • compressedaudio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is a very cool film. I must give special thanks to all involved in the creation and distribution. Excellent. I have never seen such high quality motion pictures on my pc before.
  • jackjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12I think I'm too far down the list for anyone to notice if I write anything, but I figured I'd comment nonetheless.

    Essentially, the animation itself seems to be superb, period. From iridescent comb-winged birds to all-too-creepy tentacle vines, the environments and the characters seem to be masterfully done.

    As it has already been voiced, however, the rest of the film is of a "lesser" quality to say the least. Timing, editing and dialogue are all a bit jarring for the viewer, making for a "less-than-human" experience. One cannot decide whether to be empathetic or annoyed by "Emo" and his older counterpart. Making a complete assumption, one could potentially interpret the "machine" to be a the fantastic depiction of the inside of the human mind, represented by reason (Proog) and blind emotion (Emo), and the conflict between them, but that's a fuzzy assumption.

    The fuzziness of this message, however, isn't necessarily because of its particularly perplexing depth. Part of the problem of the message, it seems, can be blamed on the characters inability to express their emotions. Specifically, the characters seem to be neither emotionally engaging or all that rational to the viewer, making it difficult to understand either. Moreover, the somewhat odd voice acting (does Proog really have to stutter all that much?) makes it difficult to understand the emotion one is supposed to be getting from a particular scene, much less WHY they are feeling those emotions. I could be missing some Netherlands culturally-specific cues, but I doubt it. That said, the music is gorgeous, although it also has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the only elements of the film to be made with "closed" software.

    Still, the overall end result is that of what could be called a competitive - and beautiful - short film, made almost entirely with software that is open-source. The implications for the film industry - and indeed, for the average Joe - are huge. Ultimately, although I might have irks with the film, I still thoroughly enjoyed it, which is more than I can say for a LOT of big budget Hollywood films.
    • Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes, I agree. The graphic work is next to top notch. Obviously this film doesn't have the graphical polish of a commerical work such as Final Fantasy or a Pixar film, but it's amazing how well it was done to be open source.
    • jackjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, it almost seems like the animators were learning along the way...

      On a side note, I just watched it again, and now my interpretation is entirely different. Near the end of the film, when Emo goes into his speech about it "not being there", he makes a "you're crazy" hand guesture as Proog scrambles around on the floor. This, combined with his having never seen the cables that Proog pushes him down to avoid, his nonchalant stroll through the typewriter scene, and his eerie inability to even be the least bit shaken by the elevator scene leads me to believe that the whole scenario is very simple: Proog is a crazy old man trying to convince his friend/son/random aquaintance Emo that his hallucinations are real.

      In other words, it's a crazy guy trying to convince someone he's not crazy, but the scenario is seen entirely from the vision of the crazy person.

      That, or EMO's the crazy one! *cue Twilight Zone music*

      ;)
    • brkn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2jackjenkins: Yep, you've got quite a clear picture of it now, that's the value of multiple viewings. Although the script and story may not be perfect, we also didn't want to make something totally obvious and self-explanatory. The interesting thing about having a short movie that's sold on DVDs or downloaded (as opposed to something more ephemeral that you'd see once only at a cinema) is that it's perfect for multiple viewings. I hope people that download it will watch it a few times and reflect on it for a while - that's the best way to get the most out of it.

      cheers

      Matt (one of the Orange team)
    • jackjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*grins* Thank you!

      Also, thank you for your contribution to both the open-source movement and the world of cinema. Your work truly is a turning point in both of these realms, and I simply cannot wait to see what happens next. Honestly, it's monumental work, and I applaud you and your team's efforts. Bravo! (I'm buying the DVD soon :))

      "Here's to the craxy ones..."
  • ogletree, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I downloaded the movie and I can't view it. I get an error.
  • szym, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Visually nice, relatively high res. Though I had to see it with VLC (codecs didn't load up properly). ... The "story" is kinda missing.
  • ogletree, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I got it working. Wow that was anticlimatic. The anamation is nothing new the story is boring.
    • 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Watch it again in five years and see if you feel the same way about it.
  • birkoph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4OK WTF?.. I dont' get it. Someone please explain WTF I just watched.

    So their in a machine and emo gets knocked out. Where is the plot to this video?

    Am I missing something?
    • jackjenkins, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Your guess is as good as mine, but mine is in the above post.
    • 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Sometimes creative works don't come right out and hit you over the head with the ideas being explored. Sometimes you actually have to think about it, and interpret it...decide what it means to you. I will say that younger viewers might be at a disadvantage, since they don't have much life experience they can draw on to extract some kind of meaning.
  • Noloco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It was good. I feel like I just watched a trailer and it is only begining..Ahh I want more!
  • filipp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1A shameless plug of my own review:
    http://users.emug.ee/filipp/Sites/index.html
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