Today is the day of the announcement of the Oscar or Academy Award winners. A notable point for the open-source world is that the film “Flow” won the animation category. This film utilized Blender software for rendering in a three-dimensional open-source environment.
Gints Zilbalodis, the writer, director, and lighting designer of the film, revealed in an interview with Blender that he decided to use Blender from the beginning of the project. Previously, he had been using Maya since his learning days.
Zilbalodis began the project “Flow” in 2019, starting with a small team and fundraising for the film. He started using Blender 2.8 alpha as the first tool because he wanted to utilize the EEVEE engine for real-time rendering to achieve realistic graphics. Despite encountering some initial difficulties with the software, the team was able to learn it within a week.
The Flow team used both PC and Mac systems. One of the challenges they faced was transferring files across platforms, which often caused broken links. Eventually, the team decided to keep everything in a single file, resulting in large scene files ranging from hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes. However, the rendering process was fast and efficient.
Additionally, the team continuously upgraded the software without encountering significant issues. But when the animators worked at full capacity in 2023, they stuck with Blender 3.3 version until the completion of the project. Afterward, Zilbalodis imported the project into Blender 3.6 for further lighting adjustments.
Source: Reuters, Blender
TLDR: The film “Flow” won the animation category at the Oscars, created using Blender software by Gints Zilbalodis, showcasing the benefits and challenges of open-source tools in filmmaking.
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