Over the past couple weeks we’ve realized that it would be a good idea to gather some hardware info so we can determine the minimum requirements for the game. We can also find out if we can bump up the graphics or if we should dim them down.

So we made a benchmark!

A few things to note:

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After running into Ton on the street, getting a hug from Nathan, having an awesome time at the screening, talking to Colin’s dad about Suburban Plight, and all that good stuff, we got to give Colin and the team an early demo of the game the next day. This six minute video is chopped from over half an hour of footage, so it does skip abruptly at times; sorry, but we didn’t want to give too much away! (Or bore you.)

Afterwards, we also spoke with Ton about licensing, how to involve the community in the project, and the like. It was a very productive trip!

Many of you may have heard about the Finals Party the durian team are throwing to celebrate the development of Sintel. There will two screenings of the film (unfinished) and a good bye party for the Durian team.

Three members of our team will be going to Amsterdam that week to attend the screenings (James, Noah, and David J). We are excited to meet and chat with the durian team, as well as other Blender users who share our interest in Blender.

The screening is on Sunday the 18th at Studio K Cinema. Click here for more info. We hope to see you there!

Shortly after the launch of our website we received an email from a professional composer asking if he could help us create a score for our game. Since then we’ve had the fantastic opportunity to work with Phil of phreymusic.com to create the score. So far he has come up with some great music for the docks scene.

Here is a preview of what he has created:

Docks Preview
Docks With Drums Preview

Before Phil contacted us, we planned on using some CC licensed music we had found on the interwebs. It was very limited and couldn’t capture the mood and feel that we wanted to achieve in our game. Now we have the chance to create something brilliant that really captures and embraces the ‘epicness’ of Sintel.

We are very excited to be working with Phil, and we can’t wait to see what he does next!

Finally, after many late nights of working my poor vertex-pulling, texture-painting fingers to the pain, I can show you all my in-game version of Sintel! (check out the Gallery for some more, in-game, shots.)

The model itself is a much-adjusted retopology of the actual movie model, and while I used a baked ambient occlusion map as a reference later on (to make sure the diffuse map would match a baked normal map, demanded by the mean project overlords), 99.99% of the diffuse texture is my own original work. The other other .01% is the tattoo, which we decided to shamelessly rip from the movie files (in fact, the file turned up just as I was about to hand-paint my own version using an old video on the Durian site as a reference. Yes, I am crazy.)

So anyway, the whole diffuse texture is original digital painting/photo-manipulation, using every available official Durian image (weren’t many helpful ones, at times!) as reference, and textures from CGTextures.com as a starting point. From there, I created a spec map, and painstakingly baked a normal map from the movie model, which ended up needing a lot of hand-painted fixes anyway…

As you see them here, the textures still need tweaking here and there, but I feel they are near enough to completion that it’s safe to finally show off my hard work. Hope you enjoy it!

This is the website of Sintel – The Game, a game created in Blender by a small group of experienced blender users and artists. On the pages of this site and on this blog, you will be able to follow the development of the game. As we progress you will be able to download demos and little goodies that we will be releasing along the way. So, follow us on the journey of creating this game and feel free to give us constructive comments and criticism. Oh, and it can’t hurt to donate to us to help keep the site ad free.

If you have any comments, queries or suggestions, Don’t hesitate to send an email to info@sintelgame.org