This month, we have another packed episode, iClone 8 update, Balder’s Gate 3 modding tools, Starfield expansion, projects, projects, projects, Sketchfab, Backrooms, YouTube AI disclosure and more. Check out the ep and be sure to comment too.
Our May update on machinima and virtual production related news highlights some of the latest generative AI tools, warts and all, and brings to attention several of the latest machinima potential games, including Jaws, Jurassic World Evolution, 1943: Rise of the Hydra and Harold Halibut. We discuss the challenges filmmakers face when developing games from their IP, why Kickstarter isn’t a good strategy for raising funding for smaller studios, the [almost] final instalment of the RoosterTeeth saga and Second Life’s latest film festival, Fantasy Faire. All with our usual discursive aplomb (despite Ricky being mia, reportedly on a skinny dipping retreat) and a few non machinima related asides!
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Show Notes & Links
AI Genies
Art of the Problem about the history of development of generative AI – it’s a documentary including interviews with some of the scientists attributed with developing the building blocks for the techs. Link here.
Google Deepmind has created a new AI model Genie that can create playable worlds in the style of 2D platforms, using an image as a prompt, or a sketch or text description. A twitter thread link here.
Stability AI has introduced its Stable Audio 2.0 model, that enables high quality, full tracks with musical structure up to 3 minutes long from a single text prompt –
According to some, however, its not quite as good as Suno –
Musk has announced that Grok 1.5 Vision which aims to connect the digital and physical worlds with a multi-modal model will be released imminently – here’s link to the website about it https://x.ai/blog/grok-1.5v
Here’s the original style transfer post using Joker –
Celebrating our 100th episode on the CM podcast/YouTube show, we reflect on how far machinima has come and some of the recent trends we’ve observed in our film reviews.
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Show Notes & Links
We list here a selection of the film review episodes we mention in our discussion during this episode.
Kicking off Season 4 of the podcast, we review a Monty Python inspired film, integrating one of their greatest films with Elden Ring – Holy Grail. The film has been made by The Escapist in collaboration with eli_handle_b.wav and is a brilliantly edited and composited mashup. It is also a very appropriate pick for this episode since Monty Python were the inspiration for this podcast in the first place, so we reflect in the show that we’ve now been working on this podcast longer than the original Star Trek series ran + another 20 years collaborating on top of that too!
We also discuss news items: the launch of Starfield; Nexus Mods; Unity’s faux pas with the community of creators; Ricky’s attempt to install an AMD 7800T graphics card; and, the Sims Machinima & Animation Convention.
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Show Notes and Links
Monty Python & the Elden Ring | Multiverse by The Escapist, released 8 August 2023
The Escapist is a website by gamers, for gamers, about gamers, releasing new videos every day at its website: http://www.escapistmagazine.com
A ‘how to’ using AI with largely free tools including Adobe Express to remove the background of images and put anything generated by AI back into the image, by Guy Parsons – https://twitter.com/GuyP/status/1704886297649631324
From AI to sci-fi to dystopian world stories, this week’s selection demonstrates creative tools and processes being used to realize these shorts.
Our first selection this week is a beautifully rendered morphing AI film called The High Seas, made using 60fps/4K by Drew Medina (released 9 Apr 2023) – one of the few we’ve seen so far. Embedding has been disabled, but please do follow the link here.
Constelar is by Oskar Alvardo (score by Lee Daish), released 4 Feb 2023. This has been made using Blender and an interesting approach to storytelling, with an almost 1970s noir feel to it –
The next film is a cinematic tribute to the makers of StarCraft, called Judgment Cinematic by Nakma, released 23 Mar 2023. The music (which we note is uncredited) adds much to the story telling but it also needs some understanding of the StarCraft world to fully appreciate the nuances in the plot which is vaguely Star Wars-ish. Nonetheless, a great effort, especially since it took just three months to make this machinima – there are some great shots and editing is well done –
The dystopian world of Valve’s Half Life, made using Source Filmmaker, has been used in our next two film selections. The first is called Combined and draws on the lore in the game. It is quite violent but does well to ‘humanise’ the characters. The animation looks surprisingly old-style, even if it is only 2021 – a reflection on just how quickly the cinematic aesthetic has changed in such a short period of time. In Perimeter (our feature image for this post), which also portrays the Combine, there is quite a different aesthetic finish to it. What’s interesting about this film is the inspiration it drew from: concept art by Vyacheslav Gluhov. Both these films are great examples of how a game inspires creators to take one aspect, in this case the Combine character in HL, and extend the narrative into new and interesting directions.
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