This week we present a critique of two very contrasting machinima productions – one took literally months to make and the other just a few days. In our first pick, the creator has asked: just how big are the maps in games these days? Well, vast actually – and quite frankly it blows our minds to think that so much effort has gone into answering the question. The film is called Longest Walkable Distances in a Video Game, by How Big is the Map. Our second film is a review of a creative experiment in Unreal Engine, called The Alchemist’s Confession by Cory Williams – it was inspired by a found marketplace asset and is experimental in a number of ways, not least in the five days it took to make it. Ricky highlights the weakness in the writing albeit the film is technically masterfully produced and acted, using mocap and LinkedIn (yep, you heard that correctly!). We also start this episode with some links we hope you enjoy and a discussion about the voice characterisation of G Man in the Half Life series.
YouTube Version of This Episode
Show Notes & Links
Longest Walkable Distances in a Video Game / Maps Size Comparison by How Big is the Map, released 2 Sept 2023
An Alchemist’s Confession by Cory Williams, released 27 September
and he’s also created a how to, Behind the Scenes
Fractal Pi video mentioned by Tracy, by Chirag Dudat –
Our final post this month takes a look at more projects made in Unreal Engine. Once again, we are blown away by the incredible diversity of creative work made with this engine and the power it unleases among its ever growing community of users. It is not always cheap to do, but it can sometimes be free! Check these out.
Scaled Up
Planet Earth as an 80K digital recreation, designed for ‘orbital scenes and cinematic scenes of Earth, this model is available as a download in the Unreal Marketplace. It took creator Tuomas Hakala (aka MegaMammoth) two years to create and boy does it show. Its not a cheap asset to buy at £550+, but if this is something you want to include in high fidelity work, its surely worth it –
Leo Torres has re-created and upscaled vision of his beloved Skyrim Whiterun world. He has made some assumptions about what the world might scale to, stating that although its hard to tell just how big the population of the game might be, he is pretty sure it will exceed what was seen in the game! He’s used experience and fan facts to produce something that is ‘lore-scale’ – wonderful, even if its not playable –
Highlighted
Another Unreal short is DISTANCE by Machina Infinitum, a 3D fractal short made using a plugin the creator has built for UE5 called Essence. Their intention for using the tool is create realtime renders, typically for VR. Its on the Marketplace here at a very reasonable $40, and check out the video, released 17 Oct 2022, here –
Freedom!
We’ve been talking about no/low cost movie making since machinima.dot.one (1996 actually) so its great to see that mantra being picked up by others. In this case, Taiyaki Studios have made a short demo, called Airship DJ, in UE5 and another on how they made it. Check out the films here –
Film, released 21 July 2022 –
Explainer featuring Cory Williams, released 21 July 2022, here –
This week’s #MondayMotivation post has some more great examples of machinima and virtual production projects. We have a selection of shorts made using Unreal Engine and another entirely made in Blender, plus a couple of ‘making ofs…’ and a ‘role of…’ also worth checking out.
Projects
An artist we’ve talked about before who has created extensive work over many years in Second Life is Bryn Oh, and now she has created a nostalgic experience called Lobby Cam which is available on Steam, made using UE5. The experience is a walking tour of an extensive environment and a story told through the pages of a ripped up diary. The project has been reviewed by James Wagner Au on his blog, New World Notes here. It is described as part of a larger narrative, and here’s a video sampler of the tour produced as part of that too… an interesting approach to virtual storytelling –
Off planet, another project which contains amazing detail of other worlds is by Melody Sheep, called The Sights of Space: A Voyage to Spectacular Alien Worlds (released 29 Nov 2022). This a 30 minutes-long film of speculative depictions of space scenes based on ‘current scientific understanding’ of the Milky Way, albeit with extensive creative license. If you ever wanted to get into a new type of documentary, this is probably the one to have on your watchlist –
We were also thrilled to see what promises to be a very interesting new series launching later this year by Melody Sheep, called The Human Future, check out the trailer on the channel here.
In our next project pick, called JOYCE by GTshortStories (released 14 Dec 2022), UE5 and every available tool with it has been used to create an interesting space story. This mixes live action with some well done animation, and the integration is done really well, so its a great example to check out. Joyce is a backchatting robot exploring a facility along with Sargeant Terry Brown – there are many references to popular sci-fi tropes, so do check this one out! GTshortStories is also putting out other creative content, so check out the channel too.
Our final space project for this week is Countdown, by Andrew Klimov on the CGChannel. This is a fast paced story of a crash landing onto an alien planet, all about the crash itself, and it certainly makes you feel it. The crash is the beginning of a new series and you can find out more about that on his website here. There’s also an interesting breakdown of the filmmaking process on his Vimeo channel here.
Our next project pick goes back to the 11th Century, inspired by an Umbrian folk tale in the novel ‘E poi si fece buio’ by Matteo Bebi. It is about a dream by Imiltrude who lived in a hidden village and was sentenced to death for having caused a fire that destroyed a city. The film HIMIL is by Tiziano Fioriti and Andrea Brunetti, made using UE5 and is a fascinating first person perspective with a very well done soundscape –
Our next project pick is a Blender-made movie and another example of great storytelling, this time in a cyberpunk environment with a really nice twist in the tale. Not sure it would be Ricky’s cup of tea, to his point about emotional representation, but I certainly loved it! The story has been created by the Blender HQ team, so its by no means an indie endeavour with a team of folks behind the processes employed but definitely worth watching – check out the pace of the action and sound design in particular. The film is called Charge – Blender Open Movie (released 15 Dec 2022) and you can access the production files and making of videos for the film here.
Making of…
We always love a good homage to Star Wars, and this week we have a feature from the Reallusion Magazine, which describes how iClone and the Vicon mocap system have been used to recreate that iconic ‘I am your father’ scene from the Empire Strikes Back episode. The short has been made by Luis Cepeda from Quitasueño Studios, based in the Dominican Republic, and he provides a great step-by-step guide to how the short was made with a video overview here –
Ever wondered how to use a midi controller with UE5 that lets you use the controller for all sorts of effects in real-time just with the keyboard? Well, here’s a fantastic video tutorial for you by Taiyaki Studios featuring Cory Williams –
Role of…
And finally this week, we share Loralee Sundra’s video on the Internet Archive about the value of public domain films from her perspective as a Frontline Fellow at the Documentary Film Legal Clinic at UCLA School of Law. Her talk was part of the Internet Archive’s Public Domain Day 2023 celebration, held on 25 Jan 2023.
Tracy Harwood and Ben Grussi’s Machinima Book, On Sale Now!
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