Morevna Project

I am proud to announce new version of “Remake” – unified build system for animation projects. It’s purpose to automatically track changes in your project files and update rendered footage.

Download remake-0.2.tar.gz

What’s new:

• Support for the Blender 2.5x.
• New “-t” option to run multiple jobs in parallel when rendering footage.
• New “snapshot” feature – you can save the current rendering as video file to track your “work in progress” changes. This feature is especially useful when your project is under version control. See manual page for more information.

See also:

• About Remake
• Tutorial

During the process of adaptation of Morevna repositories for the new build system we have decided to get rid of complex repository structure involving submodules. The purpose of using submodules was to have the ability to watch the histories of many repositories in sync. I have to admit now, that “git-submodules” approach is a fail.

Now all repositories are the “same level” – there’s no “super-repository” anymore. The “production” repository is replaced  by the “lib” repository, which is now of the same level as the “demo” one. For the cases when we need “synced” history view, that problem is gracefully solved by “git-subtree” and that results in much simpler structure and workflow.

Current repository users need to re-fetch all data according to new structure. Please wait while we updating “Contributor’s Guide” with new instructions.

EDIT: “Contributor’s Guide” updated. Have fun!

I am happy to announce the first release of “Remake” – unified build system for animation projects.

As I wrote some time ago, it’s purpose to automatically track changes in your project files and update rendered footage where needed.

“Remake” is released under GNU GPLv3 and available for download here.

There’s also nice tutorial about its usage.

For more information please visit project homepage.

Sometimes people ask me why do we keep Morevna’s repositories private? Why not have them out in the open the way free-software projects do? I decided to write this post to clarify the situation.

We are successfully applying the principles of free software development to animation production, and for that reason some people used to think that those processes should be followed completely, but I think this is not correct. Let me point to some differences between the two activities.

(more…)

It’s been a long time since I’m wrote something useful here. Though, lots of things happened during that period and I feel a need to share with you, my dear readers, some random thoughts.

Last time I have a lot of work with Synfig Studio. Making Production Cuts video and directing some external Synfig animation projects lead me to the idea of improving morevnaproject’s rendering system.

Currently the rendering system is based on pure “make” and works the same way as typical build system used to compile Linux software: you write rules in special “Makefiles”, describing how to compile (in our case – render) your files. (more…)

When you are about to contribute to any project the main question is where to begin with. Working in collaboration on the Morevna project implies the use of various open-source tools. Git, wiki, make… All this stuff could confuse even the ones who are more or less familiar with open source development model. Also, to keep stuff in order and manage the project data effectively we should follow certain policies. This manual was written with the purpose to guide you into the depths of Morevna Project’s infrastructure and help to understand the main principles of contributor workflow.

read more…

Developing a project it is necessary to clearly understand a consequence and relations between the different stages. For that purpose we made a graphical schema of production pipeline for Morevna Project.

Production Pipeline (click on image to enlarge)

Arrow, pointing from a task block A to a task block B, means what you need to complete task A before doing task B.

EDIT: You can download source OpenOffice.org Draw file here.

Synfig has no feature to manipulate camera view. Me and Genete arranged a workaround to have a camera fake using logarithm convert type and the zoom layer.

Download

Here’s the latest version of camera widget: camera-view-0.3.sifz.

License: Public Domain.

You could find instructions on it’s usage below.

(more…)

Today let me make a journey into the past and tell about how our collaboration workflow look like before we have switched to git.

(more…)

BTW, we have set up a git repository for the project. It is currently in private mode, but if someone wants to get access, feel free to contact us.