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Projects Update – Not [ALL] Machinima (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog July 24, 2023 Leave a reply

Our review of inspirational projects often includes work which is NOT machinima, and this week we have picked out a couple that we’re sure our followers will enjoy too… of course, interspersed with examples of great machinima projects. Not least, this includes the podcast’s Damien’s (aka Darth Angelus) Star Wars fan series, a stalwart of the Second Life machinima creator community, Tutsy NAvArAthnA, whom Tracy interviewed a couple of years back here, and the only stereoscopic machinima we’ve actually seen!

The Classics: from Star Trek to Star Wars

Firstly, a parody of the original Star Trek series, this is the latest episode of Mark Largent’s long-running Stalled Trek project. The ep is called The City of the Edge of Foreclosure (released on YT on 25 April). It is based on Harlan Ellison’s epic episode called The City on the Edge of Forever, which originally aired in 1969 should you want to look it up on IMdB. As Largent says in those importal words ‘You cannot have your fate, and Edith too’!

Damien’s Star Wars series, Heir to the Empire, is featured on SFW Magazine’s website here. The article explains Damien’s process for animating the original novel by Timothy Zahn. You can watch the whole series on his channel, or the latest episode here –

and plus, given the recent pap interest in Damien, we can confirm that he is NOT married, or at least, he’s never declared that status to us!

Stop Mo

This is a great fun short stop-mo by Winga (released 4 May). Yes its an ad for an AI-using mobile phone image tracking stabilizer called Insta360, but definitely worth a view. The back end of the vid is an explainer of the kit and how Winga shot the film, also worth a view –

The REAL Metaverse

In this short, Mon Metaverse (released 16 Jan 2022), well-known Second Life creator and documentarian Tutsy NAvArAthna, discusses his observations on the metaverse, the promise of Second Life and the sinister ways in which some are turning the ‘digital screw’ by orchestrating our online experiences. The film features the creative work on dozens of creators (see the film credits for details). There’s an advisory warning with this but, then again, that’s the point being made (its also our featured image for this post). With Second Life having recently celebrated its 20th year, its timely to share the work too –

Double Vision?

I knew if we waited awhile someone would share a stereoscopic machinima with us… if you recall, Tracy highlighted there were very few (if any) that had been made, a point arising from the panel discussion at the Oberhausen International Film Festival earlier this year (reported here). Well, here you go. This short has been made by the uber-talented Second Life creator Ataro Asbrink. It is called Mandala Moods 3D and is a hypnotising example of what’s possible. You will need anaglyph glasses to appreciate it of course –

Tech Update (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog July 17, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, we’ve got a few things for you to add to your tools list and some info about things you’ll be keen to watch out for… but before you check those out, we share with you a showcase of Unreal’s MetaHuman and a rather creepy demo of tendons in Blender!

Showcase

This is a creative piece, made using Unreal’s MetaHuman, that will give you goosebumps – note the very detail of the facial animation and especially the whistfulness captured in eyes of the character. You could almost see this guy opening a bank account using facial recognition tech! The short, based on a poem by Mike Antic, is called Blue Dot and has been created by Epic’s 3Lateral team in collaboration with Serbian artist Radivoje Bukvic (released 15 June) –

In this uncanny valley special demo created in Blender, Chris Jones‘ shows a ‘throwaway WIP’ – its great but if this is modelled on someone’s actual hand, well, I don’t really want to know more…

Out Now

Reallusion has released free ZBrush and Character Creator plugins. Both are excellent tools for refining your animations, and the ability to link these together makes for exciting new possibilities for improving your workflow. Here’s the link to the downloads and here’s a video explainer –

The popular open world game, No Man’s Sky is now also available for Mac. This may or not make it more accessible to creators because, of course, most of the tools folks have are still only PC but nonetheless its a start!

Onwards and Upwards

Unity, in collaboration with Apple, has devised a Beta programe for creating ‘spatial experiences’, intended to support development of content for the Apple Vision Pro. You can sign up to participate here.

Unreal features a neat demo of its massively scalable procedural generation framework (PGC), which ships with version release 5.2. This looks great – the demo is called Electric Dreams, and also illustrates its amazing Substate system. Video link here –

Worth Waiting For

Blockbuster Inc., seemingly made in the mold of that well-known machinima creator studio released way back in 2005 called The Movies, has released a demo which is now on Steam (it is being developed by indie studio, Super Sly Fox). Here’s the link – the full release date is reported as being later this year.

We’re all eagerly awaiting Blender 4.0, right (due November 2023)? As part of the release, Grease Pencil 3.0 will be included in its 2D animation toolset, originally an annotation tool that has evolved to do quite a bit more. You can read the update on Blender’s develop blog here.

Projects Update 2 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 26, 2023 Leave a reply

Megabuilds and complexity are increasingly themes being promoted by the creative tool developers, and this week’s selection highlights a few projects that demonstrate what’s possible.

Who would have even thought about building our entire universe in Minecraft, let alone actually done it? This video, released 3 October 2022, is how Chris DaCow went about the project, including his preparatory trip/fall from an aircraft (IRL) for inspiration –

Covering similar themes, MelodySheep discusses Water Worlds, released 28 April (our feature image). This is not a megabuild per se but is a good illustration of the future of inter-planetary reviews. The approach is interesting, drawing inspiration from the discoveries of the James Webb Telescope: think a combination of the style of Sagan and Attenborough –

The next film is a descriptor of a 2D game called Rain World, released in 2017. The video creator, Curious Archive, outlines why he believes this game is one of the most sophisticated and complex virtual worlds ever created. The short (22 mins) is called The Most Complex Ecosystem in any Game, released 22 December 2022…. mmm, 22 is a bit of a theme here too. I’m fairly sure Ricky will disagree on this, with his elder Elden Ring hat on, but check it out and do let us have your thoughts –

Finally, this official music video, released on 5 May, shows an expansive world to tell a visually stunning story that compliments the song. The creators unfortunately do not credit the tools that have been used, which look like Unreal Engine and Blender. The song is called Angels by Frank Polucci, lyrics by Marco Genovesi and the video is by Alex Popescu. Its another short that illustrates the diversity of creative skills now being deployed for increasingly complex visualizations –

Projects Update 1 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 19, 2023 Leave a reply

Not machinima but some great projects to share with you this week.

This has to be SFX rather than cinematic… right? From what I can ascertain, this new game release trailer/taster, called Off the Grid by none other than the infamous Neil Blomkamp (District 9 director), was captured with Technoprops and edited with Dynamixyz Performer –

The short is called SWITCHER, and was released on 3 May. The game will apparently be launched later in 2023 so we can check out the stunning cinematics in more detail then, and hopefully see more shorts from this world in due course.

Our next film this week is a stop-mo Samurai spectacular. Its called Hidari, being based on the work of wooden sculpture Jingoro Hidari. It is presented in the style of a ‘Japanimation’ and is promoted as a pilot for a long-form feature film although its unclear whether or when the release will happen. Its creators are attempting to devise new visual effects that make use of the wooden materials to show texture and joints and, for example, to use sawdust gushing out instead of blood when the characters are being attacked. Here’s the short, released on 8 March –

From one horror to another, this creator has re-imagined Alien as a Pixar movie using Midjourney, ElevenLabs and ChatGPT tools – yep, you read that correctly! The short is by Yellow Medusa and was released on 27 March. Its not animation, but is an interesting visualization nonetheless – maybe all horror movies should be transformed in this way, for those with a more sensitive pallet? Here’s the link –

Finally this week, Tenacious D’s hilarious music vid about video games, is a must watch and which has apparently been so already by more than 18M viewers. Its called Tenacious D – Video Games (our feature image for this post) and was a collaboration with Oney Play, released on 11 May. Enjoy –

Tech Update 2 (June 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog June 12, 2023 1 Comment

Its a week of mono|meta|omni-versal updates!

Mono

We’ve been following the debate on copyright, fair use and transformative use of IP for what seems like 30 years in the world of machinima (see some of our posts here, here and here) – oh, actually its 27 years…! On 18 May, the world was exercised a little further on the issue of transformative use when the Supreme Court (US) reached its decision on Andy Warhol’s use of a photograph of Prince in a magazine – a case that’s been running since 2016, following Prince’s death. Many suggested this decision is the beginning of end of transformative use – or at least ‘narrows the ‘fair use’ doctrine‘ – and will have massive detrimental impacts on all things created, such as machinima from games engines… however, with the particular scenario fully outlined, this was probably the right outcome for this case. The scenario relates to an unattributed use of an image from a private collecton of works (created and held by Warhol/foundation), where other works involving the same creatives in the collection had previously been attributed and the photographer recompensed when having been used in magazines, and the fact that both Warhol and the photographer (Lynn Goldsmith) made money from selling images individually. So, this decision is about context of use involving the individuals as much as it is ‘fair use’ per se. Justice Sotomayor stated the important factor in the fair-use analysis was that “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes” pushed the decision in favour of the photographer, arguing that “licenses, for photographs or derivatives of them, are how photographers like Goldsmith make a living. They provide an economic incentive to create original works, which is the goal of copyright.” You can read the ruling in full here – or use your favorite search tool for a link to any one of the numerous news articles covering the case.

So, until such time as the principle applied in this case is actually applied to a creator context, where income is rarely a goal of productions beyond individual recognition and perhaps the meagre YouTube % share for eyeballs it receives, and transformation is generally well beyond that originally intended by say a game dev, it feels like there’s nothing to see here.

Meta

On 23 June, Second Life turns 20 years old! There will be virtual parties, exhibitions, product sales and more – for 20 days of course, and you can find out more on the community website here. Happy Birthday to all the Lindens – the first open world environment to truly embrace metaversal themes.

If you want to catch up on some light reading, then its also worth noting that Wagner James Au’s new book releases a week later on 27 June, called Making a Metaverse that Matters. Au also regularly writes some great updates for what has to be one of the longest-running metaverse blogs. Its called New World Notes, which he founded in 2006. Au was the first metaverse journalist and marketer for SL back in 2003. Links to the book here –


Omni

Nvidia are releasing a monthly update on its blog of all things Omniverse, including latest advancements for the OpenUSD framework that has so quickly become the gold standard for integrating a wide range of creator tools in a 3D workflow. Here‘s the link to the first part of the ‘Into the Omniverse’ series (our feature image for this post) which includes an overview of an update to the connector for Adobe Substance 3D Painter. Substance 3D releases its latest version 203.0 in mid June. This series is a must follow for all content creators, whether or not you own an RTX!

-Versal

For those seeking advice on devising a virtual production pipeline, Unreal Engine has helpfully released a visualisation guide here and a nice vid here –

Unreal Engine released version 5.2 on 11 May, which includes some fab new features including a preview of its still in dev Procedural Content Generation framework, enabling creators to populate large scenes more efficiently; Substrate, that supports a greater range of surface appearances such as the opalescent finish showcased in this vid –

an enhanced virtual production set of tools for realtime filmmaking support; enhanced VCam system for multi-camera control; and nDisplay extended support, which is setting the scene for the next version 5.3. A link to the release notes is here.

We also spotted a useful tool in the UE Marketplace albeit pricey at $249 for indies: MetaShoot. It includes lighting and render presets for assistance with creating sophisticated lighting setups in your VP studio, released by VINZI – Code Plugins, link here.

Also super helpful is Kitbash3D’s new Cargo asset browser, including some 10,000 searchable assets. The basic account, which is free, allows you to 1-click upload content to your project and manage the assets you have but for a fee of $65/month, the pro version will let you search and access the full model and media library. Its another layer of cost so do check out the small print.

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