Blender

S4 E133 Machinima News Omnibus (Jun 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 12, 2024 Leave a reply

This week we celebrate Nvidia’s investment in machinima, discuss latest AIs and give you the heads up on some great projects we want to highlight – there are just too many for us to fully review everything we’re seeing that we want to share with you these days! Do check them out, we’d love to hear your thoughts too – links and notes below.



Youtube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Homage to Nvidia’s Omniverse Machinima app by Pekka Varis, released 14 April 2024 –

Here’s a link to Omniverse USD Composer

Projects Worth Catching Up On

Endgame by Peaches Chrenko and Dark Machine Audio, sound track –

JP Ferre’s DCS: Spitfires – Cinematic, a real tribute to those brave souls in WWII –

TheDavedood (Scratby Films) animation for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon 50 years celebration – this one is for the single, Time –

Anomidae’s latest episode of the Half Life supernatural series Interloper –

Fallout inspired videos: JT Music’s Fallout rap, All in With the Fallout –

and Fallout – Dream on (tribute) by Couch Patrol –

Fables of the Foolish by Dreeko –

AI is Genie-us Init?

ElevenLabs has released a dubbing toolset tutorial, making different languages for videos even more accessible – link here

Google DeepMind has announced a new video generation model called Veo, which produces 1080p res videos for over a minute length in a whole range of different cinematic styles – link here

Stability AI has launched Stable Artisan to a wider user group on Discord – ats a tool for media generation and editing – link here

Showrunner by The Simulation, text to episode generator – link here

Winner of the 2nd AI Film Festival at Runway is by Daniel Antebi, called Get Me Out –

Luc Shurgers’ Skibidi Sam, video only on LinkedIn, created using Replikant – link here

Sony backs out of AI training with its catalogue – article here

Cor Blimey!

The real Backrooms discovered – check it out here

Another movies game, yes really! This one is called Movies Tycoon, link here

We are living in the Matrix, Black Mirror style – check out the episode Joan is Awful –

S4 E126 Music Videos: Portal | Helldivers 2 (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 17, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we cover three outstanding music videos, demonstrating different genres of music and different game engines – a re-imagined Simon and Garfunkel classic, a pop-tacular and a rap. We discuss the perfect match between the lyrics, the game and the images our three selected creators have demonstrated in these shorts. We suggest comparing and contrasting, but really we just mean enjoy them all for what they are.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Portal – the Sound of Science by Harry101UK, released 29 May 2020

Who I Am | Portal Minecraft Animated Music Video [Song by CG5] by Cubical, released 6 May 2020 –

HELLDIVERS 2 RAP by JT Music – To Liberty and Beyond, released 9 March 2024

and here is the link to Harry1010UK’s Meet the Cores 1 mentioned –

S4 E125 Its science but not as we know it… Blackholes & New York (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 17, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we discuss one of the most outstanding presentations of space science, by  @EpicSpaceman , called I put 4M Suns in a Blackhole. Made in Blender, we discuss the creative workflow adopted, from zero to hero – and why the  @BlenderOfficial  Foundation should take note. We make a few suggestions for enhancing the work even more and discuss the primary audiences for this type of conrtent. Quite simply, the narrative style and animation makes hard science relatable!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Film, I Put 4 Million Suns in a Black Hole over New York by Epic Spaceman, released 31 Jan 2024

Who is Epic Spaceman, video explainer and how he made the film here.

More about Toby Lockerbie on his website here.

S4 E124 Machinima News Omnibus (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 10, 2024 Leave a reply

A packed review this month, with some sad 🙁 better 😐 and happy news 🙂



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Endings

The long-anticipated demise of Rooster Teeth and has been announced – as has the much anticipated final season of Red Vs Blue in this trailer –

If you are a die hard RTer, here’s a link to the Rooster Teeth team response to Warner’s announcement, its ‘Not a Final Goodbye’ –

Tracy and Ben’s Pioneers in Machinima book chapter is here too, Chapter 4: Rooster Teeth Bites.

Here’s the link to the 2007 Special Ep, Going Global, released at the First European Machinima Festival in 2007 (in Leicester, UK) –

Articles, Variety, Deadline and IGN.

Another ending, Draxtor Dupres’ Second Life series supported by Linden Labs, Drax Files: World Makers. Here’s his final report and here’s a link to a livestream he did to celebrate the achievements of the show –

Accolades

Sam Crane’s Hamlet in GTA5 won a Jury prize for best documentary at SXSW 2024, link to news coverage here, and the distribution deal awarded here.

Electro League and Weta’s War is Over has become the first UE5 film to win an Oscar, Best Animated Short –

Aye AI AI…

YouTube has updated its T&Cs, a nice article here

ConvAI has announced a partnership with Unity for NPCs, and also teamed up with Second Life. Here’s a link to Wagner James Au’s New World Notes blog – and here’s a couple of useful links –

Stability AI has introduced a 3D video generator, information here

RunwayML has partnered with Musixmatch to generate video to lyrics, link to information here

and it has also announced a new lipsync feature for generative audio, currently on early access to its creators programme members

Hume has a demo of a voice-to-voice generator, described as an Empathic Voice Interface – link to sign-up for early access here

and if you need a little overview of how all things generative AI are developing, here’s a nice video summary by Henrik Kniberg

Inspiration

To celebrate the phenomenal success of Gozilla Minus One at the 2024 Oscars, Nelson Escobar, the VFX creator of the Godzilla model, has released it as a free download for Blender. Link here –

Blockbuster Inc has announced its release date: 6 June 2024. Here’s the official gameplay trailer –

and here’s the link to Prologue on Steam

Finally, here’s the link to the interview with Denis Villeneuve, discussing his approach to making the latest Dune films –

Post Script

We are super excited to see our Podcast make the Top 3 listing of indie filmmaking podcasts on Goodpods in March 2024 – how cool is that?!

S4 E115 Machinima News Omnibus (Feb 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 8, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we spend some time talking about new tools, emergent topics, AI and copyright (again), with some interesting links for you below. Check out the episode here –



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

New tool releases

iClone’s ‘clumsy moves’ pack, available at $70, can be downloaded here

Crowd simulation tools, including Reallusion’s sim bundle for CC4 and social groups for iClone 8, link here and a nice video here –

and Kenneth MacLean’s MegaHumans plugin WIP. No link for the latter, but here’s a neat show and tell video –

A free new VR mod by Praydog for Unreal Engine – here’s an overview about it –

Mickey and AI discussion

Disney’s Mickey in a horror game called Infestation Origins that will be released later this year –

and an interesting AI generated short that seems to confirm Mickey’s transmogrification into a horror character –

Princeton’s Public Domain Project released an annual report – check it out here for 2024.

Improving the quality of your machinima films with AI, check out Pryda Parx suggestions here –

and you can also check out the restored machinimas Phil did for the Machiniplex channel here, and here’s the trailer for the body of work too –

Google’s VideoPoet that turns prompts into animations without the interim stage of an image and a separate tool like Runway to animate it.  Here’s a neat example of its capabilities, focussing on a travelling raccoon –

Mods and Cockers!

The Convergence mod for Elden Ring (and many others), v 1.4 – a nice overview here –

and here’s a link to the mod for download

A case of corporate bullying? Check out the situation this Minecrafter is facing and if you’re a legal expert, do please get in touch with him to help out!