Excited to see this posted here, I'm the author of the Cycles for Max plugin mentioned in the article. I was delighted when I first heard it was used in RRR.
I saw it in imax at the insistence of an acquaintance. While watching I kept thinking: "ok, so this is the results when you have a massive budget, access to lots of designers and top-of-the-line tools".
I'm totally thunderstruck to learn it was all done in Blender pipeline. Bravo for making this possible.
Funnier still was a comparison between Indian Mars Orbital Mission ($73 M) and the budgets for Gravity ($100M), The Martian ($108M), Interstellar ($165M). ISRO (India's space agency) engineers missions to Mars for the price it takes Hollywood to make movies with Mars, space etc.
A good chunk of that goes to actor pay. For instance, in the $200m budgeted Gray Man, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans took home $20m each. Even net those two salaries, Gray Man was twice the budget of RRR and visually pales in comparison to it. Huge budgets mean nothing.
Its tech based. And people in tech are unfortunately somewhat union agnostic or lean anti-union. The pay is so good on an individual/self basis they are happy without looking at the bigger picture of their contributions to the content.
There was also a huge illegal wage fixing scheme (and later settlement) between George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and other big tech industry moguls to kill any kind of VFX or Tech union. Super illegal.
For now. The rest of the world is rapidly catching up in pretty much every sphere.
But take movies:
America has but a paltry 330 M people. The appetite for "American" media will wane as India, China, and other vastly more populous Asian countries begin to produce Hollywood-caliber films. American box office increasingly relies on non-domestic consumption. Chinese films are doing bigger revenues, and soon Indian films will too.
Korea is starting to sweep the Oscars, Emmy's, and Golden Globes.
Hollywood is going to be washed out by the vast talent, capital, and differing tastes beyond American borders.
The age of the "American" film has already peaked. (It's not just the market growing up. Kids today no longer want to be Hollywood stars - they want to be famous on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch.)
The same trend is observable in other fields. Science, technology, fashion, etc.
edit for downvotes: Do not confuse this post for anti-American sentiment. It's an honest current and forward-looking assessment.
> Korea is starting to sweep the Oscars, Emmy's, and Golden Globes.
I don’t think Korea won a single award at the Oscars this year. They won a single golden globe and two Emmys. It’s just parasite and squid game, so far. They are very far from sweeping the award ceremonies.
Korea is the dominant movie producing country of the last decade. Not much of this boom arrived in western cinemas, but festival goers do know.
And sooner or later the superior quality will sweep over to the mainstream.
Parasite is just a relatively minor movie compared to the really big ones. https://koreanfilm.org/ might give a good overview.
I was referring to Parasite, which won six Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture and Best Director nods. That was two years ago, but it speaks to the new high water mark Korea is now hitting at.
>The age of the "American" film has already peaked.
>edit for downvotes: Do not confuse this post for anti-American sentiment. It's an honest current and forward-looking assessment.
I don't think it's "anti-American sentiment" as much as unsubstantiated claims.
Parasite was an excellent film I thought deserves all its praise. But "Korea is starting to sweep the Oscars" is a very different statement than "Bong Joon-ho and the Parasite team swept the 2019 Oscars".
What you're claiming is that American cinema has peaked, and "Hollywood is going to be washed out". A more reasonable statement is "The age of exclusively USA/Hollywood filmmaking awards is over".
> The age of the "American" film has already peaked.
I kinda sorta agree with this sentiment. I am a huge film buff, and most of the movies I remember fondly are from the 90s (can't blame this on nostalgia since I wasn't even alive then)
Isn’t that a bit like saying that Australians are great at playing piano and singing songs and cracking jokes about religion because Tim Minchin exists?
No, it's more like observing that a region with 30%+ of the world's population is rising (economically, influence, cultural appeal wise, and so in) and another with a paltry 350M one appears to have had its heyday...
The US had a couple of Tim Minchins back in the 18th century too, and even up to the early 20th century it wasn't that much of a deal in terms of global cultural cachet.
As for GDP terms it only surpassed Great Britain around 1880 and then had its global share peak in 1960. It's been downhill since.
> The age of the "American" film has already peaked. (It's not just the market growing up. Kids today no longer want to be Hollywood stars - they want to be famous on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch.)
Currently a big next step for TikTok stars is moving into Hollywood stuff - Addison Rae, the D'Amelios - just like it was for the Kardashians a couple decades ago.
Even as you talk about American films doing less at the box office, Hollywood itself is rapidly adapting to produce more content for serialized US-market TV (primarily streaming, but this actually started in the cable era).
Many people argue that this stuff is actually better than the "blockbuster films" that are still trying to have global appeal, because of the ability to make more niche content of varying sorts.
It's hard to see Hollywood or a domestic US media market fed by US productions going anywhere. Thinking that the average US media consumption will turn into non-American stuff is the same fallacy as thinking that everywhere else in the world would have just consumed American stuff forever instead of creating their own local markets.
>Currently a big next step for TikTok stars is moving into Hollywood stuff - Addison Rae, the D'Amelios - just like it was for the Kardashians a couple decades ago.
Waning once-huge markets still attract up and comers because of the residual prestige and money - but same newcomers get their popularity from outside those markets, and people wanting to be like them are from the outside too...
But it's not about the actual values but about the momentum...
Those 330 million have highest spending capacity in the world so that makes big difference.
Are those Chinese movies making big revenues outside China? Until that happens they are just catering local market. So far Chinese movies successful in China or Chinese speaking population. I think it is just logical thing not world changing.
One can also read about Indian movie economics where movies with massive budgets sank like giant turds. Clueless directors in India are shocked that their successful formula of movies is failing so badly.
Kids today also do not want to be doctors, should I be worried that no one will be there to treat my old ass very soon?
I agree with your broad assessment that the glory days of Hollywood are over, but am not quite as optimistic on the future of Asian cinema.
Chinese media is crippled for the foreseeable future by heavy state censorship, including micromanagement of plotlines: can't do anything that lets the bad guys win or shows the state in a bad light.
I also note you don't include Japan, which is rich and has a population of 100M+, but with the arguable exception of anime has not produced any global blockbusters in decades.
China's movies have peaked in the 90s. Take a director like Zhang Yimou, he hasn't made any decent movies in the las 15 years because of state censorship. None of his best movies could be directed today: To live, Ju Dou, The Story of Qiu Ju or Raise the Red Lantern. The same with Chen Kaige or any of the great directors in Mainland China. Even a relatively recent movie like Beijing bicycle would not be possible today.
Even if a lot of those movies were banned in China on release, there were much less consequences for a director of a banned movie than nowadays.
Lol yes, I'd say the release of Heroes is precisely when I date Zhang Yimou's fall. The photography and use of colours is great for sure but it's his first movie with a mostly empty story that tries not to ruffle anyone.
thats a ridiculous extrapolation. china makes movies for China that nobody virtually cares about outside because they are so bad and so nationalistic. The same with Bollywood movies thats as much about dancing than the movie themselves.
the exception is Korea but here too they make movies for themselves that also happen to resonate well with western audiences.
nobody is going to take over the place of hollywood anytime soon.
This person also said that AI porn will destroy all the current porn companies in 10 years and that small groups of people will soon be able to make entire movies, so I wouldn't take their extrapolations too seriously.
> This person also said that AI porn will destroy all the current porn companies in 10 years and that small groups of people will soon be able to make entire movies,
Here's the thread in question [1] where I made that claim.
> so I wouldn't take their extrapolations too seriously.
Long bets 10 years $10,000. Let's go. I'm serious.
Not that this is my thing (it isn't), and not to yuck anyone's yum, but my field has a ton of adjacent, quickly growing developments in "generated porn" that I would be remiss to not know about. Each and every one of them could shape up to be a "Pornhub killer", which is what we were originally debating :
Just as these technologies and democratization threaten Hollywood, so too do they threaten the porn industry.
(My earlier comments in this thread were about the global playing field becoming equal in terms of production and consumption. This post concerns the technologies that will disrupt the existing products. Both trends are happening concurrently.)
In which world do you think the porn industry is just going to wait around doing nothing instead of exploiting these tools and resources for their own benefit?
It's typically new players that disrupt legacy incumbents.
There are exceptions, such as monopolistic conglomerates with multiple industry-spanning revenue streams to draw down.
But by and large, new tech cycles bring new blood and fresh perspectives that grow fast free of accumulated baggage.
Would existing players be willing to invest 90% of their energy in pursuing these new methods (that are risky), potentially firing the staff that maintain the existing systems? Unlikely. And so it's unlikely that they could grow as fast against a 100% agile new upstart. One that attracts talent and capital and has a promising growth narrative.
Every other day I see some new machine learning post here about how you can make a computer generate all sorts of content. A few days ago I saw an article about AI generated art winning first prize in some contest, people lost their minds when it was revealed the art was generated by AI.
I don't think holodeck style content generation technology is too far off. Maybe one day they'll generate computer code too.
Same. The movie was very fun and it was plainly obvious to me that they had a giant budget for crowds, visual effects, etc. Gobsmacked that this was an all-Blender operation.
I'm confused. What does budget have to do with using Blender? I thought a big movie budget is needed mainly for the labor and artistry, and comparatively little goes into software licensing. Is that not the case?
Plenty of good films have been made with very small budgets. If you are shooting on a consumer DSLR or even phones then Blender is a godsend.
If you have RRR's budget you can easily waste more money explaining to the lawyers and accountants that something is free. The decisions is purly on which software is better.
i have a designer friend who, after years of me prodding him to try blender recently said "i should give blender a try". this is the same guy who lives on adobe, and all that shizz...
"industry tools" he calls them. "why should i invest my time to learn a software when no one else in the industry is using them"...
glad the industry is changing behind the scenes to a point people like my friend would have to put blender in their workflow and maybe, just maybe one day work entirely off of FOSS tools.
Speaking of "lots of designers": while everything else looks very realistic to me, that tram (I think it's a tram) in the motorbike chase scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbuZQTud7YE&t=85s) looks very odd. A low floor tram in the 1920s? Is that based on any real model? Also, the overhead wire seems to be just hanging there in mid air while the poles that are actually supposed to support it are off to the side...
Haha, good catch. Would be nice to have floating tram lines.
In this other shot (https://youtu.be/wbuZQTud7YE?t=94) you can see there are actually support lines, but they have been "eaten" by the post-processing.
There is also "I Lost My Body" which is full-length movie made in Blender. An interview with the director Jérémy Clapin[1] gives a bit of the backgound of the project.
Both "RRR" [2] and
"I Lost My Body" [3] are on Netflix.
Speaking of Houdini, https://github.com/setzer22/blackjack is an excellent open source alternative that loses a ton of cruft and is scriptable in Lua. I highly recommend checking it out if this is your kind of thing
I like Blackjack and I'm even working on porting some of my Rust geometry code to Blackjack nodes. But calling it a Houdini alternative is, pardon my French, BS. :)
Blackjack atm covers less than <1% of Houdini's modeling toolset. And modeling is the least used part of Houdini in VFX (less so in games, i.e. for massive open world building etc.)
Houdini is usually used for what is called FX/effects in VFX. I.e. fire, water, explosions, destructions. Also crowd stuff is not seldomly done in Houdini.
blackjack seems like a great (initial version of a) tool for doing procedural modelling, just like geometry nodes in Blender.
However, it seems the similarities with Houdini stops there. While Houdini might be famous for the procedural nature of the tool, where it really shines is the physics, simulation and effects department. Which blackjack seems to not have any features about at all.
A single studio of many. From Wikipedia: "Srinivas Mohan is the visual effects supervisor of the film, along with Framestore and the Moving Picture Company (MPC), the film's principal visual effects studio.[112] Alzahra VFX, NY VFXWaala, Redefine, Knack Studios, Makuta VFX, Digital Domain, Rhythm and Hues Studios, Method Studios, Rodeo FX, Technicolor VFX, Legend3D, The Third Floor, Inc, Clear Angle Studios, Halon Entertainment, 4DMax, and Cinesite, among others, are responsible for some of the other visual effects in the film."
This movie is apparently available to U.S. audiences only on Netflix with a Hindi dub. I'd really like to see it in its original language with English subtitles. As well, the total size of the UHD stream is about 14 GB which isn't going to be the best quality for a 3 hour runtime.
I found it incredibly entertaining. I'd definitely recommend anyone watch at least through the second scene, at which point you'll probably know whether you'll enjoy the rest of the 3+ hour movie or not.
I love the Critical Drinker and I also loved this movie. I am not a fan of Indian movies usually, but this one was so good that it is really almost mythical in the way can tell a universal story.
For anyone unfamiliar with the movie or seeking some perspective on the film, I did very much enjoy this review/retrospective of RRR by Patrick H Willems, a channel which I generally enjoy. The same video is also on Nebula for folks with a subscription.
If only 10% of the efforts going into special effects these days went into the actual story ...
Eye candy can contribute only so much to a movie. Spend 10x the budget on special effects and the movie will get at most 1% better, sometimes it gets even worse. Superman 1 was much more enjoyable than most movies that came out of Marvel the last years.
Marvel has become worse these days, it peaked at Infinity War, then a slow decline since then. I'm looking forward to a franchise or a movie that's entertaining as the first Star Wars trilogy.
That being said, if you like the story you'd really appreciate the movie RRR. I was pleasantly surprised when I went there without any expectation.
As long as we're doing recommendations: I can't recommend Ian Hubert enough. Especially the lazy tutorial series. They aren't good beginner tutorials at all, but they are great inspiration for once you get the blender basics down. Witty enough to watch even if you're not even using blender.
Who cares if they used Blender or Maya. As an Indian (and a South Indian at that), I must say I’m embarrassed at the level of attention this movie is getting for its over the top use of cringey special effects. There are so many other worthwhile Indian films to watch and enjoy.
Why? I am so tired of certain section of Indians online pretending that somehow all entertainment should be dictated as per their sensibilities of what's acceptable and what's not. What's wrong in having movies that are over the top? Everyone has different tastes. What's worthwhile for you maybe boring for someone else. I am not saying you have to start appreciating RRR if it's not something that you enjoy, but don't invalidate an experience that millions of people clearly enjoyed. I can appreciate a K Balachander, Gopalkrishnan, Satyajit Ray masterpiece while also hooting for Bheem in RRR. The greatest achievement of Indian cinema is how varied our repertoire is and there is something for everyone to enjoy. Celebrate it, don't be embarrassed about it.
The effects sequences I saw in the video clip didn't look over the top...
Besides what's wrong with a little ridiculousness? Some of the special FX I've seen in memes of indian movies look like they take a decent amount of imagination to visualize
Note that I have not seen any indian cinema, no idea where to start with that, other than to say that the Bollywood format (and musicals in general) has little appeal to me...
Bollywood movies aren't really musicals. The way I would put it is that musicals are a genre, and Bollywood movies are all sorts of genres with songs interspersed. So you could literally edit out (or more practically, forward through) all the songs and fully watch the movie which is not really possible with musicals
Really weird that we're reviewing a movie on a tech platform. Also, your comment suggests a need for western validation which I think is not needed for Asian cinema. I just enjoy Chinese and Korean cinema for the way they are. I searched for this film and seems its loved a lot by westerners too. Sorry if I misunderstood you buddy!
Relatedly, I’ve come full circle on my feelings when it comes to Indian movies. I grew up with Bollywood/lollywood movies, and pretty much stopped watching all of this silly stuff upon arriving to America and thought the breaking out in a song in the middle of things was absurd.
I don’t know what changed but now I’m not just down with it I’m actually a big fan. I’m there to be entertained - give me Gesamtkunstwerk; I’ll suspend belief for those few brief moments, give me wonderful melodies and over-the-top sights. All types of art each have their place! I mean, we put up with soliloquys in Shakespeare plays, we cherish fanciful wordplay, why not give me songs!
Yeah I have some mixed feelings. It's good that an Indian movie is breaking over to such significant consciousness in the US but a lot of the interest is like gawking. Like: 'OMG a tiger is jumping out of a truck with the hero, I'm laughing'
So as an Indian I feel like this shouldn't be generalized as the 'image' in people's minds of what an Indian movie is. The over the top parts should be considered as a genre of its own
Indian Cinema and esp. Telugu Cinema has its own style of story telling, remember this is make believe. I find it refreshing as a Telugu speaking American that they are staying true to their traditions.
The Bombay production houses have gone Hollywood-lite making movies for affluent westernized Indian class which as it turns out is not profitable. I am for artsy Indian movies but at the end of the day, this is commercial undertaking and the film crew and its producers should make money out of it.
I care! As an open source advocate, it is important to me to see Blender being used in successful feature films, regardless of the artistic merits of the film itself.
Agreed, while the movie was fun to watch, the FX are quite poor compared to US films. In terms of something American viewers would understand: it's about the equivalent of a Disney Plus show like the Mandalorian or Ms Marvel.
As far as FX quality goes, the recently released Bhramastra sets the high watermark for Indian films. The FX are Hollywood level...probably because it's made by Disney's Indian film studios (Star Studios) and the FX were outsourced to some of the same FX studios working on Marvel films. (And as a side bonus, there isn't any of the weird fetishization of British/white women or obsequious political pandering to the India's current ultra-nationalist government like there are in RRR.)
As an example of the difference in FX quality: in RRR, you're always aware of the artificial nature of the CGI because it doesn't "blend" into the world around it; the CGI sits on top of the world and is clearly separate from the action on screen. The animal FX are especially bad. In Bhramastra, the "astra" that give people various powers blend in with, light up, and shade the world around them even though they're purely CGI.
Given the number of movies made and regions, and decades, I’d run out of breath. But I’d start here.
Malayalam Films : Known for their subtlety and craft in film making, and obsession with crime novels. Dhrishyam part 1 & 2 are like no movies I’ve seen in Hollywood.
Hindi Films: Or Bollywood movies, known for their big stars, great attention to set pieces of grand dance sequence s and decent romantic comedies / sports movies. Hard to pick one as nothing has shined recently. I’d give “Zindagi Na milega dubara” / “Chak dhe” a look. Again nothing spectacular recently unless you want to watch a classic from the seventies “Sholay”
Tamil movies : Gritty movies about inner city gangs / social upheaval or focus on stellar music/dance romantic comedies and major action blockbusters. From recent years I’d give “Vada Chennai”, or “Vikram Vedha” a chance for gritty urban movies. Or just the most recent action blockbuster “Vikram”. Which has a really good score.
Telugu movies (the original language for RRR) : I’d give “Pushpa” a look before watching CGI drenched RRR.
Malayalam films really are something else. For everyone else that isn’t Indian, the trope is Bollywood copies Malayalam films (who are known to have fantastic character development and original stories) and makes them over the top ridiculous, campy and throws in sappy love songs with a bigger budget. It’s kind of like the book was better than the movie argument.
Yeah this movie was made for a very specific audience going through a certain age and point in life, ('buddy road movie' but made for Indian millennials) hardly a great work of art.
First it was 'Dil Chahta Hai', when the Indian millennials were of college age or around that time. A movie about three friends hanging out and dreaming of the future they will have with the kind of partners they would hope to be with.
'Zindagi Na milega dobara' is about a early-mid career Indian millennials facing marriage, work issues. It's not a bad movie but the popularity and greatness of it comes from it being apropos for Indian millennials.
On the top of that there is a 'class' thing going on here, where RRR's target audience is a different class, and have an Inglorious Bastard style experience. Just like 'Dil Chahta Hai'/'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' are for the educated millennials class.
I appreciate your comment and insight. But I’m an American Gen-Xer and I enjoyed Zindagi Na Milega Dobara very much. So it can appeal to other people too.
For other folks reading I always recommend Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) as the Bollywood movie to start with. It’s a bit silly and over the top (especially the fight sequences) but it has a lot of heart. I miss old Bollywood movies like this that actually had lots of singing and dancing. And it set a record for most Filmfare awards won when it came out so critics obviously liked it too.
Sometimes I wish people would talk about really old Bollywood too. Old Devdas, Barsaat, etc. There are some great movies there. I like Satyajit Ray a lot too (I know he isn’t Bollywood) but I wish people could see greatness in old Bollywood as well. I just rewatched Guide recently for example. Still a good movie.
Ugramm (Kannada), Maanagaram (Tamil) and Aiyappanum Koshiyum (Malayalam) from top of my mind.
Note there are critically acclaimed Malayalam Movies that not everyone would like (Eg: Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, Maheshinte Prathikaram), they are so slow paced that average viewer would doze off. There's a perception that more realistic is always better. But that's not always true. IMO Tamil middle budget movies get pacing better than Malayalam, for average audience at least.
Second the reco for Pushpa.
It has really nice music, which is _mildly_ inappropriate for children (assuming you know telugu, or the song gets subs/dubbed)
I think I understand what you’re saying but it was a large spanning tale and though there may be some parts that are cringey I thought overall it kept my interest and had something for everyone.
I agree that RRR has its place. Like so many other Avenger style genre movies. The problem is that it just advances a stereotype and bias about what an American audience expects when they sit down to watch a Korean film, or a Chinese film, or an Indian film.
They are all just films, just like Hollywood makes different genres, these countries make films in every genre. At least the Indian film industry is a behemoth large enough to be able to make movies in every genre.
Should a movie largely intended for a domestic audience be responsible for not fitting into a foreign stereotype of the domestic movie industry, largely held by people who have seen literally zero movies made in India? If Americans want to decide that all movies produced in India are huge over the top ridiculous action-fests interspersed with dance sequences then that's their own problem.
You didn’t like the film and a lot of others did. What’s cringey about it? Different people different tastes. I for one enjoyed it. And enjoyment is what I go to a movie for.
Indian action films typically don't strive for believable action scenes, like American films do. Instead, they apply the effects and stunts excessively -- they go over the top in a major way.
The embarrassment is for the comparably unsophisticated tastes, and I don't share the feeling but I can understand. It's like everyone discovering that your uncle is addicted to something cheap and insubstantial that only children like, like junk food.
Being over the top is a unique characteristic of the Indian Cinema. If I wanted to watch "believable action scenes", I'd go watch a documentary. I honestly don't get this idea of standardizing everything as the West does. It's a great idea for some. For art? Come on.
I'm sorry, but the top US movies any better? Between Star Wars and Avengers, there's not much left in the way of believability. It's better when they don't take themselves as seriously.
Let's have the semi jump off the end of an unfinished highway overpass and do a barrel roll. While the truck is slo-mo flying through the air we'll cut to a ground shot of a middle-aged dad about to salt some meat on the grill, but the barrel-rolling truck overhead spills just the perfect amount of salt on his burgers so he just looks up and shrugs. Finally we'll cut back to the massive explosion as the truck hits the ground.
In American films, if someone does extreme, superhuman stunts, the filmmaker typically feels pressure to explain that the character is actually superhuman in some way and not an ordinary guy with an office job. And he or she will be in peak physical shape.
In Indian film, an utterly ordinary character in "office job" physical condition will catch bullets, run faster than a full speed train, etc. No pressure to explain the seeming contradiction with ordinary reality. The film could be considered a romance, having ordinary people as protagonists, and these characters would be doing the above-mentioned stunts as part of the plot.
These aren't hard and fast rules, both sides of the divide deviate from them, but that's been my observation.
> No pressure to explain the seeming contradiction with ordinary reality
this is a feature and not a bug. The urge for excessive exposition is so tiring. Not everything needs an origins story, explanation, or a prequel. Hollywood has been leaning on that formula and you can see it in the product - the movies have become tiresome.
Nobody needs an explanation for their “powers”. Excessively qualifying a character more likely burdens then than lifts them. RRR was such a refreshing, thrilling watch parallel to Mad Max: Fury Road.
> In Indian film, an utterly ordinary character in "office job" physical condition will catch bullets, run faster than a full speed train, etc. No pressure to explain the seeming contradiction with ordinary reality. The film could be considered a romance, having ordinary people as protagonists, and these characters would be doing the above-mentioned stunts as part of the plot.
It’s funny you should say that. RRR was the first Indian movie I’ve watched that felt like anime to me. I think it’s actually a very enlightening comparison.
Some of us are very happy to pay for entertainment like that. I consider this exuberant style a worthwhile niche of its own, like wire work in Asian films.
Exactly. When I saw the reaction to RRR, I was reminded of how “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” was received in the US back then. It would be akin to an Asian / Indian audience only watching A sub genre of movies made in Hollywood.
> Indian action films typically don't strive for believable action scenes, like American films do. Instead, they apply the effects and stunts excessively -- they go over the top in a major way.
This is precisely what Americans love about it though. Indian cinema comes from a completely different tradition than Hollywood, and it’s a breath of fresh air. Action movies should be more silly. It’s just entertainment.
A great analogy is to the Ugandan action films as well (go watch “Who Killed Captain Alex” right now if you haven’t). They are doing something completely new that breaks the Hollywood tropes. We really need more of this, because the American film industry has reached a creative dead end.
Tom Cruise actually performed that stunt. There is a highlight BTS reel showing how they composited that shot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZjsZCMBT-s one of several; just the first result in my Google search). As you can see, he's very well secured to the plane in the BTS footage; the cables and other protection are composited out in post-production. Similarly, in the water tank scene later in the movie, Cruise actually jumped 120 feet into water, and held his breath in a water tank for several minutes (though the fountain in the jump, and the arm in the tank were both composited into the scene in post).
In fact, Tom Cruise actually performs most of his stunts, especially for the MI movies. It's kind of his thing; while the context of the stunt might be CGI the action itself is real.
He's worth more than a billion dollars, so he can afford to pay specialists to train him; he supposedly spent over a year learning to hold his breath for several minutes just for the water tank scene.
American action movies aren't striving for realism these days - their output is 98% superhero movies.
Action movies have always been unashamed about having an element of lowbrow populism. You can enjoy seeing bad guys get their asses kicked in The Matrix even if you've never heard of plato's cave - and there's nothing wrong with that.
> Indian action films typically don't strive for believable action scenes, like American films do. Instead, they apply the effects and stunts excessively -- they go over the top in a major way.
It’s highly enjoyable though it is also very nationalist propaganda in parts, which foreigners won’t pick up on. For the most part it never becomes an issue because the brunt of the movie is fighting colonialism and therefore quite appropriate and incredibly good. The end credit scene is the only part that I’d consider problematic from a messaging standpoint as it takes a hard line on who they celebrate and isn’t subtle about the directors political allegiances.
Anyway would really recommend watching it. It’s a wild ride, and incredibly well done. If you’re not from India, you can largely ignore the issues with internal politics
Edit: Since people are asking for links about the politics…
Essentially it’s holding up some of the more radical freedom fighters and downplaying the more pacifist and equitable ones which reflects the directors political stance
How can you possibly seriously describe Vox as extreme? Perhaps they’re more liberally biased but “extreme”? There’s no world where that would be an accurate description
Vox is literally the definition of neolib trash. I don't understand how you can call it far left. People on the left don't actually mind the label, but don't call shitlib stuff far left. The left is explicitly opposed to neoliberalism. If you wanna read something actually on the left: https://jacobin.com/
What organizations do you consider to be sane, rational center/center-left (vox) and leftist (jacobin) media? Is it possible you consider every leftest media outlet between cookoo and deranged?
Media is mostly disingenuous and needs chaos or outrage to get viewership.
I remember when India had conducted an airstrike on terrorist camps , INDIAN channels left w and right w alike invited their Pakistani defence guests and practically taunted them to start a war! (which thankfully didn’t happen)
Rajamouli is not exactly big on subtlety. If the troubling implications need so much ink to explain, maybe the implications aren't actually there?
> Essentially it’s holding up some of the more radical freedom fighters and downplaying the more pacifist and equitable ones
Sardar Patel, Chidambaram Pillai and Tanguturi Prakasam were not radicals, they were lifelong members of the INC and were committed to Gandhian non-violence. Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose were capital S Socialists, it doesn't get more equitable than that. This argument would have held weight if someone like Savarkar was included. As it stands, it makes no sense.
I have in the countless times this has been brought up. My high school had a Bose statue and taught us a lot of his history as well to try and reaffirm his greatness.
In the end , I haven’t ever seen anyone show me anything that didn’t also require ignoring Bose’s significant ties to the Nazis to have a charitable take on the man and his followers.
> I have in the countless times this has been brought up.
And you didn't come across any references of him advocating for authoritarian socialism? This was way before he went into exile or joined hands with Hitler.
I can’t tell if you’re trying to be sarcastic? The Nazis were not socialist. The name of the party was itself a piece of propaganda. They had a burning hatred of socialists.
> The end credit scene is the only part that I’d consider problematic from a messaging standpoint as it takes a hard line on who they celebrate and isn’t subtle about the directors political allegiances.
I don't actually remember the end credit scene and I didn't pick up on any contemporary political references. Could you elaborate?
I updated my post with links for reading but it’s essentially subtle but insidious.
There’s a movement among the right to downplay the more equitable and peace friendly freedom fighters in favour of more radical ones, including ones with ties to the Axis powers.
Again, it barely takes away from the film since it’s just the final credits but it’s quite a clear signal of the directors outspoken political views
What are you talking about? The part where they refer to Indian freedom fighters? Because I thought they did a really good job of highlighting a lot of them, not just well known ones and across vast political spectrums. I mean they had Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose as well as Shivaji and Mirabai.
That scene was good till you consider a few factors:
- Bose was allied with the Nazi’s. I know it’s debatable whether the ends justify the means but he also held some fairly hostile views that are being used again
- there were notable omissions of freedom fighters who preached peace , but more importantly, those who were against the division of Pakistan and India.
I shared a couple links above in an edit, but there’s definitely an messaging to align with the directors more hardline views of modern Indian politics
A marriage of convenience like when Gandhi allied with the Ali Brothers.
> there were notable omissions of freedom fighters who preached peace
Three of them where Gandhians but OK.
> but more importantly, those who were against the division of Pakistan and India.
Nobody in the Congress wanted partion to begin with. But there was no leader against it when it became clear that it was apparent. Who exactly do you have in mind?
You don’t think it’s suspect that major figures were excluded from the list? And they just happen to be the same major figures the right wing governments try and move away from.
You don’t think being allied with the Nazis and never denouncing their views was an issue either?
Yes. Because it's a fantasy movie. Reading complex political messaging into it is rather silly.
> Your entire comment is a “so what?”
I don't think excluding Gandhi and Nehru from a cheesy dance number is the end of the world.
> never denouncing their views
Again, read what the man had to say about the Nazis after he left Germany. Also read about what Gandhi had to say about Bose and what Bose had to say about Gandhi. We've had an international airport named after him for decades. Bose is not even remotely controversial in India.
> the movie had a clear political agenda to it.
But somehow that wasn't clear to overwhelming majority of the audience who actually saw it.
God forbid 1 movie among 1000 misses Gandhi or Nehru in them.
If omitting a subset of leaders is right-wing bias, then every other movie made in India should be considered congress propaganda.
I agree that there is a streak of revisionism in the air within both academic and pop history in India at the moment. However, it is not clear if this simply a long-overdue correction to 75 years of propaganda or if somehow, all history written by the prevailing powers of the last century were perfectly unbiased.
Bose “aligned” with the Nazis so he could free the Indian POWs captured by the Japanese which he then used to build the Indian national army. Also, the Nazis were fighting the British who in India were enemy number one. He wasn’t antisemitic or racist so his alignment is pretty irrelevant.
He went to Germany to escape the British after a failed insurrection and hoped to ally with the Nazi’s to lead an invasion into India to free it. The Japanese prisoners of war
You’re conflating his later efforts in Japan with his initial allyship with the Nazi party.
This is a very common smudging of history that happens in our Indian history books (the CBSE approved books in particular do this) to make things seem more justified.
> "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose".
This is alignment in every way, so I’m not sure why you’d put that in quotes.
Great Movie. Nice to see us British from the anti-colonial standpoint, we always get cast as the nice guys but we have a shit ton of historical baggage, I think we deserve the odd movie payback to even things out.
I agree with this. I saw this in the theater in India and the overtly Hindutva stuff definitely got me laughing. It's not even subtle, hard to miss when you know the context.
I’m Indian and I saw it when I watched the movie. Your comments show you have a right wing attitude to these things and I doubt you’d have therefore picked up on it since it affirms a particular world view.
No, we're not. I believe the movie is just ridiculous in a very fun way. The other side claims that in addition to that it has subtle propaganda that promotes a Hindu nationalist agenda.
I did wonder about the Indian politics in the film. I did pick up a few bits here and there, but probably missed a lot. Care to say a bit more about that? If not, I understand.
What’s there to doubt? I’m not speculating that it will be enjoyable. I am making a statement that it was enjoyable to me (and my friends, along with many many others online who’ve raved about it)
if you don’t find it enjoyable, that doesn’t mean doubting the veracity of my stated opinion. You may however disagree
+1 on that. I only watched the action sequences in the movie as RRR is not the kind if movie I enjoy.
But the end of the movie, makes it quite clear that it is a nod to right wing Hindu nationalism. The most pointed example is the exclusion, in the end credits, of the 2 biggest icons of Indian liberation - Mahatma Gandhi and the first prime minister Nehru( the British locked him up for over a decade) who were secular liberals. Nehru happens to be the great grandfather of the main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.
As the right wing Hindu pre independence movement largely connived with the colonialists, the right wing government today is focused on appropriating a select few independence fighters and projecting them as right wing icons even though they were liberals or socialists. 3 prominent figures.
1. Bhagat Singh - a socialist who is now projected as a right wing icon and stripped of his Sikh beard
2. Sardar Patel - Nehru and Gandhis colleague who had some right wing sympathies, but actually banned RSS (Modi's organization) following the assassination of Gandhi by RSS workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Unity
3. Subhash Bose - A foolhardy military strategist who tried to partner with the Nazis to fight the British. Eventually, assisting the Japanese in Burma and helping them invade India. Gandhi was extremely wary of Bose's plans.
Towards the end, it projects the independence fight as a largely Hindu fight against British and anoints upper caste Rama as a leader of lower caste Bheem. At this point, it seems that the exclusion of muslims, sikhs and some Christians etc. From the script as freedom fighters seems deliberate.
Bheem is a nod to lower caste icon bhimrao Ambedkar, who converted from Hinduism to buddhism to escape caste hierarchies. This could have been a positive inclusion in the story, but it is flipped on its head when Bheem is shown swearing fealty to upper caste Rama in the end. The Ramayana itself, has a negative attitude towards lower castes, which makes this highly improper.
Moreover the choice of Rama is sensitive in the current political situation in India as Rama is being used as a tool to bully poor Muslims on the streets.
[1] You will notice that Shambuka is noted as an "interpolated" character in Ramayana. This almost certainly true, but the Godliness of Rama as an avatar of Vishnu is part of the same interpolation. The original smaller Ramayana is simply the story of an "ideal king". This was converted into a story of divinity by the interpolation of Godliness, sexism and casteism(uttara and bala kanda) . Wikipedia has been edited to clarify that Shambuka is a later interpolation, while the article on Rama and Ramayana simply forget to headline that the divinity of Rama is a later interpolation. The interpolation makes complete sense as the brahmins successfully solidified the caste system and inserted casteist and sexist texts into several ancient sanskrit texts to anoint the caste system with divine status. There is a small ongoing movement to refer to the current version of Hinduism as Brahminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Brahminism
> At this point, it seems that the exclusion of muslims, sikhs and some Christians etc. From the script as freedom fighters seems deliberate.
It's a fantasy based very loosely on two historical characters. Bheem for the bulk of the movie pretends to be a Muslim and is sheltered by a Muslim family that knows his true identity. Claiming that this somehow excludes non-Hindus is farcical.
> Bheem is a nod to lower caste icon bhimrao Ambedkar
That Ram can map to Alluri, but the mapping to Lord Rama is absolutely loud and vociferous.
I could be mistaken about the mapping of Bheem, but given that Komaram Bheem is also lower caste, my meta point stands virtually unchanged. And that's just one point amongst the 10 I have made with references.
Moreover, it is very easy for me to see that you are upper caste hindu - about 40% of indias population. You should ask the rest of the 60% about what they read from the movie.
> pretends to be a Muslim
Yes, I watched parts of the movie. How does this matter?
The mapping to divine Lord Rama is unmistakable, and the Godliness bestowed leaves no room for doubt. The iconography of lower caste Bheem showing fealty to lord rama is how the movie ends.
The facts I mentioned are well cited and referenced facts that are well supported. Thanks for acknowledging that you offer no contradiction.
It is also obvious from your play with words - "half minority" that you are upper caste. Eg, Hindu Jain marriages are common.
> I'm fascinated to know how you came to that conclusion.
Lower castes - SC/ST would be irritated by the supplication by Bheem in the end. Non Hindus would find the conversion of a secular independence movement to a hindu religious paen and the exclusion of secular liberal leaders (the father of the nation and first PM) offensive.
This is a typical UC thinking. The only things that are offensive are those that offend me. If someone else gets offended by something else, there is something wrong with them.
You claimed non-Hindus were excluded and went into a tangent about the Ramayana.
> It is also obvious from your play with words - "half minority" that you are upper caste. Eg, Hindu Jain marriages are common
I didn't realise OBC Veershaiva Lingayats were now considered upper caste. Apparently stating the truth was playing with words.
> Lower castes - SC/ST would be irritated by the supplication by Bheem in the end.
Bravo, you reduced Ram and Bheem to their caste. Maybe if you had watched the movie before pontificating, you would noticed something else about the characters and their relationship. And interesting how you lump SC and ST together. If you do want to look at it from a caste lens, what does a Gond have to do with SC's? Or do they all look the same to you?
> conversion of a secular independence movement to a hindu religious paen
How the hell is it a religious paen?! Is this one of your facts?
> exclusion of secular liberal leaders (the father of the nation and first PM) offensive.
Exclusion from a cheesy dance number? Really, this is what is offensive?
> If someone else gets offended by something else, there is something wrong with them.
Thank you for adding to the list of subtleties that foreigners wouldn’t pick up on. These are great points and I’m very appreciative you took the time to list them
My wife isn’t Indian and she really enjoyed the film (which I did too as an action film) but I was aware the whole time of significant choices used to push the Hindu nationalist messaging. So I’ve been using it as an example of explaining the political climate in India
As a Hindu myself , but with a mixed caste/religion family, I’ve slowly been realizing how much messaging there has been in the media we consume as I expand on this with her.
Probably the best Indian-as-indian-can-be movie that's released in a longtime. This is the highest grossing film of all time in Indian cinema, the Avengers Endgame / Jurrassic Park of India.
Pros
* Incredibly stylized and fresh (not derivative)
* great bro-drama
* arguably best dance scene EVER
* Not deeply cynical towards society like everything made today.
Cons:
* Long (but still somehow incredibly fast paced and dense, just a lot of arcs)
* over the top (but shamelessly so, and taken seriously)
______
RRR is a tectonic shift in how Indian cinema views itself. It is worth watching purely because of its place in the Movie movement zeitgeist.
IMO, This is the first Indian movie in 10 years that makes it to must watch territory for universal audiences (the last one being 3 idiots).
I loved it. It's over the top, but embraces it really well. I recommend watching with someone else because discussing the movie is really fun. Don't get put off by the runtime, it's very well paced.
I liked it. It’s like if you mix Snatch with Inglorious Bastards and then made it over-the-top cheesy.
But on the topic — I think this changes everything. Blender is now literally a viable alternative against behemoth setups that easily go in 5-digits (and 6 digits if you have hundreds of designers as some shops do). It’s now crossed that magical threshold where competent firms will choose it for their projects and any weaknesses that surface then, it will now be the, the big buys at big chops like the Mill or what-have-you, who will be contributing fixes and pushing Blender to new directions. Full alembic support, better volume-related features, some more UI touch-up, and we're almost all there.
I’m nothing short of stunned at the pace with which Blender is moving forward and it’s clear that come another 5 years, it’ll be a force to reckon with and a worthy competitor to dethrone Houdini.
Obviously that is highly subjective. I really liked it, as did my 16 year old son. Although, being British, it was weird to see my countrymen as the cartoon baddies[1]. It is completely over the top and fantastical. But that is part of the appeal. I thought it made a very refreshing change from hollywood movies.
[1] Not without reason. Read up on the depradations of the East India company
The few clips I have seen seem to have no relation to the life of the historical figure whatsoever. It is so disappointing when they make a film with a real historical figure and then distort their story out of all recognition (e.g. "Dragon" for Bruce Lee and "Imitation game" for Alan Turing).
Random digression. In wake of recent demise of the Queen, good curious how much do British see the colonion past as glorious and how much as a dark legacy?
When I went to schools (40 years ago) history was all about the saxons, romans and vikings. Plus a bit about WWI and the Russian revolution. I don't remember doing anything much about the British Empire. But it was always tacitly assumed that the British Empire was "a good thing".
I think most educated British people now know there is quite a lot that was "problematic" about the empire. Interestingly there is a very good new British podcast called "Empire" which talks in a lot of detail about what the British did in India and it is not comfortable listening.
I would say the British Empire wasn't as cruel as the Spanish, Portugese or Belgian empires. But that is a very low bar.
Unless you were a baron or a lord, I doubt many British people got any benefit. Britain and most of its old colonies are pretty multi-cultural now (more so than any other countries colonies) I think that and standard english are probably the only real benefits we can see today.
Thanks for having the awareness of the atrocities committed by the British. While British characters in the movie may look like "cartoon baddies", the kind of atrocities the British did on their colonies is no cartoon material. They really did many unspeakable things and committed genocide of millions in the subcontinent alone.
The British Empire certainly did some awful stuff. Anyone who thinks the British Empire took over other countries purely for the benefit of the locals must be a bit dim. But I'm not sure 'genocide' is a fair accusation. Certainly large numbers of Indians (and Irish and others) died due to their callous policies (e.g. Bengal and Irish famines), but I'm not sure that classifies as genocide.
It's completely over the top, with absurd action sequences, fantastical characters, dance numbers, melodrama and heartbreak, one sided caricatures of evil Englishmen, and lots and lots of fun. It's excessive in every way, down it's more than 3 hour runtime. It's a blast!
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie and found myself grinning ear to ear when it was done as I was describing it to my wife. She had been working while I watched so we plan to cue it up again and see it together.
I felt totally entertained at the conclusion. I even watched the credits roll.
Many of the CGI effects were pretty obvious but it made the movie more watchable in my opinion. The blending of real action with fake enhanced the ability to tell the story. It was great.
I enjoyed it. In fact it might be the best Indian movie I've seen in terms of just being interesting all the way through.
I'm curious what if any serious Indian movies there are. Are they common or rare? Pretty much every Indian movie I've seen is full of amazing and fun nonsense in one form or another. Not that I've seen more than 10 or 15 Indian movies, just curious what the mix is of serious drama vs, break into dance and or show crazy stunt movies is
There’s tons of very serious Indian movies. They just don’t usually capture western audiences
Sholay is a classic , in the vein of Eastwood films.
Don is our take on Godfather
Rang De Basanti and Lagaan are also great films.
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum , Dil Chahta Hai and other romantic dramas are also very serious but do have songs etc because they’re huge drivers of engagement.
In the west, people see the dancing as making the movie silly. But those musical breaks are prevalent in very serious films too. There’sa whole difference in cultural norms when it comes to cinematic language.
Like every other film industry, Bollywood movies also have a indie counterpart. I've seen quite a few, though it might not translate very well to a watcher who is not familiar with the cultural context for the movies.
Still if you want a list of movies which are "serious" but still approachable enough (i.e doesn't gaze at it's own asshole) and fairly new, I do have a few recommendations -
This list isn't some exhaustive "greatest" ever, just some oddball movies which stick out in my head.
Also keep it in mind this is just the list of Hindi/Bollywood movies which were historically known as "Indian" movies. Other regions of the country have their own list of favorites.
Netflix’s Sacred Games. It was their first domestic production and is a straight faced noir cop drama. It’s my favorite crime series of all time - I think it blends The crime boss mythology of The Usual Suspects with the multi-decade story telling of The Godfather. It is told in a way that it feels like a picture coming into focus, rather than a linear narrative.
>Pretty much every Indian movie I've seen is full of amazing and fun nonsense in one form or another.
They are the most popular genre. Production houses love them as they make them money and viewers also love to watch them as they can be watched by whole families.
>Not that I've seen more than 10 or 15 Indian movies, just curious what the mix is of serious drama vs, break into dance and or show crazy stunt movies is
Most of indian cinema is action genre with slice of life twist. There are also good serious movies with genres like drama, romcom, comedy, horror, history, sci-fi etc.
You must also know that Indian cinema is not a monolith like hollywood. There are 7 big 'woods' in india branched due to various languages. There is hindi wood (bollywood), tamil, telugu, kannad, marathi, bengali etc. Each have their own tasted with respective viewers. Over the counter action movies (like RRR) are most popular in south industries and viewers.
Satyajit Ray's entire catalog is delightful, and timeless. The Indian new wave parallel cinema movement that held such promise back then has bemoaningly since declined to a disappointing one or two entries every couple years. Distributors and studios being conservative and reluctant to change from the "bollywood doctrine" held the indian film industry hostage in a state of arrested development for the past few decades. It's kind of why I'm thankful for the rise of streaming services, they're enabling younger indie directors to break free and be bold again. It's a very hopeful time for indian cinema.
Not sure why this is in gray. It has the highest collections in 2022 after rrr. And highest among Bollywood movies so far. Clearly people liked it and it’s a very serious movie.
I think it's going to depend on what kind of movies you like.
I went in thinking it was going to be some nonstop action flick, and didn't like it at all. It seemed like an overly long musical to me, which I've never been a fan of.
My wife on the other hand thought it was beautiful and loved it.
The film certainly took the level of art and craft in Indian cinema several notches up. Pleasantly surprised that some of the visual effects used the Blender pipeline. Very cool.
Depends on the studio and the type of VFX. The most complex tend to be CPU/Memory bound as the datasets typically do not fit in GPU memory (48GB for an NVIDIA A6000). Thus you find AMD EPYC with a lot of RAM and NVME disks on the server side or AMD Threadripper Pro at artists desks.
I absolutely loved Baahubali and watched RRR last night for the first time. I'm planning to watch KFG tonight. I'd highly recommend Tumbbad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbbad too.
Part 1 has shot / camera angle changing every 2 seconds, like an American music video (movie is not musical just talking about the video)
Part 2 is more traditional with the camera angle / shot changing every 4 seconds.
And then there is some story to fill these few thousand camera shots, but your head hurts so much from the very changing screen visuals … maybe it is my age :)
Do you have any recommendations for musicals? I love the 2000s era ones with super melodic songs. Last one I loved was Janatha Garage though. I feel like Telugu movies have seized the Bollywood crown. Not a lot of the jukeboxes on YouTube have impressed me since.
I hope to have one of these articles about FreeCAD one day. Maybe the stakes are lower for movies than engineering and that's why it hasn't happened yet.
Some blockers I've encountered after spending a lot of time in FreeCAD:
- No built-in assembly workbench. If you create more than 1 object, there is no way to align/attach them together. There are several competing, incompatible, and buggy plugins.
- Topological naming problem is way worse than in paid CAD software. It's very difficult to edit old constraints without breaking new actions as they're replayed: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem
- Software dependencies are not included. Essential features like viewing the dependency graph (to unbreak your model; See above) are broken out of the box. You have to manually install specific versions of tools like graphviz (no, not the same version used by all the other software on your system) to unbreak these features first. Same goes for rendering images, exporting to some formats, using some mesh generators, etc. You really get the full "linux desktop" experience even if you are not on linux ;)
> Topological naming problem is way worse than in paid CAD software. It's very difficult to edit old constraints without breaking new actions as they're replayed: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Topological_naming_problem
This is the single, number one, absolute must fix problem in FreeCAD. All other FreeCAD work should stop until this gets fixed. Period.
Broken constraints were bad enough, but as an amateur I could live with them. However, every now and then the system would renumber and reconnect constraints wrongly. That's just not acceptable and should never happen.
Until FreeCAD fixes this not only can't I recommend it but I have to give anti-recommendations to stay far, far away from it. That pains me greatly as FreeCAD is the only piece of open-source software I have ever had to chase people away from.
I agree that this is the biggest blocker, though I wouldn't go so far as to say stay away from it. Rather it is one of the most important things one needs to understand (trust me, you will after you've run into it a few times) when using this tool and design around it. Unfortunately, this limitation renders the tool far less powerful than it could be otherwise.
> All other FreeCAD work should stop until this gets fixed. Period.
Ha ha that's exactly what would happen if FreeCAD was a company and had a product manager, but it's very unlikely that would happen organically.
Maybe some day a megacorp will get so pissed off by solidworks licensing that they fork FreeCAD, rewrite opencascade, fix the high priority bugs, and release code+binaries out of spite. A man can dream.
> Maybe the stakes are lower for movies than engineering and that’s why it hasn’t happened yet.
I really doubt that has much to do with it. The Blender team has been working the hardest on creating sustainable funding, that is the major difference. Blender’s “Get Involved” link takes you to the Blender Foundation page, which is a business entity setup and devoted to funding Blender. FreeCAD’s “Get Involved” link takes you to GitHub. The Blender site lists paid jobs, and has a one-click donate button highlighted with monthly corporate level sponsorships listed, where FreeCAD’s has only a single $5 suggestion behind a menu. There’s a further link to a list on a wiki of a couple more ways to sponsor FreeCAD, but you can feel the difference in scale just browsing the two sites. Blender got started ~8 years ahead of FreeCAD, so yeah maybe if FreeCAD focuses on growing a business model they can get there too. The Blender Foundation was launched about 20 years ago though, and it seems like it look a looong time to get the real traction they seem to have now.
I spent a solid month trying to switch from Fusion 360 to FreeCAD (as a hobbyist maker) and while I got to the point where I could pretty much make anything I needed… it never stopped being a struggle, and taking twice as long.
I really really want an OSS alternative to Fusion/etc but FreeCAD needs a lot of work before it’ll even come close.
I can't thinking that the struggles of an experienced Fusion 360 user such as yourself would be a very valuable thing to contribute to the FreeCAD project.
It's only a few years since we used to hear regular reports of people really struggling with the Blender UI too. It's great to see the improvements to Blender now paying off.
I think there's a fairly good chance that the devs aren't aware of all the rough edges or quirky choices in the same way that a power user of another CAD system would be.
(My own personal CAD experience is so dated at this point as to be pretty useless. I learnt on Unigraphics on a Sun workstation way back in the mists of time but have forget almost everything about it.)
Agreed, FreeCAD is painful to use when you’ve been spoiled by Fusion or OnShape. I’ve tried using SALOME as an OSS alternative, it’s somewhat reminiscent of FreeCAD but something of an improvement. CadQuery is another possibility, but I would miss some of the drawing tools - full parametric CAD seems too limiting.
FreeCAD's user experience is incoherent or perhaps more like chaotic for a newcomer - to FreeCAD, but experienced in CAD -. Like there was no coherent way of thinking or common approaches in it, like if hundreds of people added pieces to it here and there the way they pleased.
At least this is what I seen 5-7 years ago, gave up very quickly struggling with it - a software supposed to make things easier, not more complex, and FreeCAD made things unnecessarily difficult and complicated. Maybe I should look at it again now, hopefully things improved.
I’ve been trying to get to grips with FreeCAD for a few months and it reminds me a lot of pre-2.8 Blender - the UX is very opinionated and clunky, needs some serious re-thinking…
(I am trying to avoid using Fusion 360, which has a much more streamlined experience)
Especially because FreeCAD is a reasonably good cross-platform desktop application, and rebuilding a CAD program from scratch tends to be interpreted as “let’s build a half-assed web service/Electron app” these days.
I agree the FreeCAD UX could use some improvements, but I think even more important would be improving reliability and feature coverage in the OpenCascade CAD geometry library it uses. Slightly more complex things like fillets, lofts, nurbs surfaces are very limited and unreliable today. Mixing any of these with booleans tends to create more trouble.
Blender on the other hand is very solid in the modeling department, in my experience. The mesh based approach certainly helps, but not depending on an external organization for the core geometry functionality does not hurt either.
>> but I think even more important would be improving reliability and feature coverage in the OpenCascade CAD geometry library it uses
I've been wondering what portion of the FreeCAD "problems" people report are actually issues with OpenCascade. I don't have time to deal with any of it, just a question that pops into my head when I see complaints about FreeCAD. When I have time I spend it in Solvespace, which is decades behind commercial CAD but is so much more fun.
Completely agree with this, OpenCascade is just not a good enough foundation to build a CAD package at the same level as SolidWorks or Fusion360. The unfortunate thing is that the level of investment to build a kernel of that quality is in the 10s or millions dollars. Without a corporate backer who wants it, it won't happen.
The only way I could see it happening is if a consortium of large companies decided that they wanted to drop the big players and build an open source one. It needs a visionary in the position to decide to do it.
I've been using various CAD programs, and IMO, FreeCAD UI/UX is quite ok. If you are Inventor or Solidworks user and try to switch to SolidEdge for example, it won't be easy. Not to mention some others like VariCAD (~30 years old professional MCAD)
There are many issues with FreeCAD being OSS alternative to professional MCAD software, but UI/UX is not one of them
Love Blender, but in my experience, the biggest advantage that 3DS Max has over Blender is its ability to handle massive scenes. In VFX, especially those involving explosions, dust, crowds and suchlike, this can be a deal breaker.
You clearly haven't watched the movie mentioned in the article. Most of the movie is massive scenes including exactly the kind of elements you described.
If you look closely at the Blender file in the example, you will see that some geometry elements in the Outliner feature a small icon that looks like a chain. This signifies that it is referencing (linking in Blender parlance) that geometry in other files. Linked files cannot be edited unless you round-trip to the original files. Max would not have this problem.
Sorry if I came off as anti-Blender, but I am anything but. I have written over 100 pages of open-access Blender related learning material and was responsible for moving our school (400 design students) from max and Maya to Blender. No one regrated this move, even those who have spent their entire creative lives in Autodesk's shadow. However, it was not without cost.
My top animator loves Blender, but says that its animation tools are not yet equal to those of Max/maya. And Max/maya can crease through files which Blender (currently) chokes on.
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https://cyclesformax.net