Elden Ring

S3 E85 Its Just A Game (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 13, 2023 Leave a reply

Nope, its not ‘just a game’, its one of the most visually stunning Gothic story open worlds ever created (according to Ricky)! In this ep, we discuss GraysonFlows’ tribute to the world of Elden Ring, set to Max Richter’s November composition, which highlights the beauty of the game from the exhausting open sequence to the final prize, creatures, battles and voice acting.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Its Just A Game | Elden Ring ‘The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story…’ by GraysonFlows, released 19 May 2022

Otis_Inf Camera Mod Patreon channel link here

Carbot Animations – Elden Ring cartoon channel link here

Quake 1: Ray Traced Mod by sultim_t (Dec 2022)

Ricky Grove Blog December 19, 2022 Leave a reply

Even the everyday gamer knows how much graphics technology has advanced over the last few years. The days of the old, pixelated textures on walls and rocks are long gone. So much so that gamers with more advanced skills have gone back to classic games like Doom and have re-coded them to include advanced graphic technology like high-definition textures and ray-traced rendering.

I’m not going to go into detail about ray tracing in this short article. You can find a complete explanation here. Essentially it has to do with how light is reproduced in a 3D game engine. Ray-traced rendering makes everything in a 3D scene look more realistic and believable. This is why adding ray tracing to games like Doom and now Quake is so exciting. The original blocky look to the game is gone. In its place is a more believable environment that adds so much to the atmosphere of horror in the game. This is perfect for those who want to go back and play the original game: it’s a better experience. It is also great for those first-time gamers who didn’t grow up with Doom or Quake.

Although certainly not at the same level of realism as modern games like Elden Ring, the new Quake mod is pretty damn good if you ask me. The sultim_t team deserves a standing ovation for their hard work.

You can download the Quake Ray Traced Mod by clicking the link. We also have a short trailer that sultim_t put on out the mod. The comments for the video are worth a read as well. Of course, you need to buy Quake from Steam in order to get started. The mod is free.


Completely Machinima S2 Ep 43 Films (August 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 11, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Damien, Ricky and Tracy discuss four very different films.  Damien reviews an interesting explainer on witches in The Folklore of Phasmophobia game, Ricky presents us with another of Jae Solina’s tutorials, this time on path tracing in Omniverse, Tracy selects Tiny Elden Ring – yep, its tiny! And Phil, absent due to sickness, ironically picked a satirical Zombie fest, which mixed Walking Dead ‘live action’ with machinima!  The team then discuss that approach to creating films, highlighting some of the key challenges with some more fab examples of films that have used the techniques well. 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

0:57 The Folklore of Phasmophobia | Modern Mythology, by The Digital Dream Club (released 9 January 2021)

The Folklore of Phasmophobia

9:51 NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test, by JSFilmz (21 June 2022) and a nice little article on the difference between rasterization, ray tracing and path tracing that folks might find interesting, Nvidia says real-time path tracing is on the horizon, but what is it? By Eric Frederiksen, Gamespot.com, 1 May 2022

NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test

17:33 Tiny Elden Ring | Tilt Shift, by Flurdeh (11 April 2022) and here’s Flurdeh’s list of filmmaking tools https://github.com/Flurdeh/Youtube-Resources and a post-production tutorial on the tilt shift effect tutorial, How to create Tilt-Shift / Miniature World Time-lapses, by Science Filmmaking Tips (24 Jan 2017)

Tiny Elden Ring

27:27 What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like, by Pathoze (26 Jan 2022)

What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like

31:45 Discussion: using live action with machinima footage in films, what are the challenges?

Examples mentioned –

39:11 Damien’s The Great Bug War on Machinima Expo (8 December 2014)

Damien and Kim Genly

46:12 Ricky’s reference to a 2D/3D combo – Carson Mell’s TARANTULA A-1 : Nightmares (5 August 2012), shot in  Los Angeles

TARANTULA A-1: Nightmares

48:30 Phil Tippett’s stop mo film Mad God, including live action with animation (now available on Shudder TV)

Mad God

51:20 Tutsy Navarathna’s film, A Journey into the Metaverse and an interview we did with him on the podcast in Season 1

A Journey into the Metaverse

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 34 News & Discussion (April 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 7, 2022 Leave a reply

This month, Damien heads the discussion with a review of Reallusion’s latest release, iClone 8; reflects on the origin of the star fleet in Star Trek Picard; and, JSFilmz’ tutorials on Nvidia Omniverse and Unreal.  Ricky discusses Half Life Field Intensity – a mod that’s been in development for 13 years by Hazard Team; Nvidia’s GeForce RTX series available on subscription; an interesting remake upcoming of the Dead Space series; and, a review of the new Elden Ring mods for machinima.  Tracy discusses The Grannies.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

1.06 Reallusion’s iClone 8 overview (and some very old memories of iClone 2!)

8.24 Star Trek Picard assets from video games

10.39 Nvidia Omniverse tutorials by JSFilmz

13.40 Unreal 5 Preview and tutorials

14.48 Half Life Field Intensity released by Russian-Ukrainian modders, Hazard Team

Screen cap: Half Life Field Intensity mod

15.49 Nvidia GeForce RTX3080 available on subscription

16.35 Graphics market update (see Phil and Ricky’s builds from last year)

Completely Machinima Blog: How to Build a Machinima PC

17.50 Dead Space series remake scheduled for 2023 by EA Motive

18.50 Elden Ring by FromSoftware and machinima (photo) mod by Otis_inf and tutorials

24.36 The Grannies in Red Dead Redemption Online, reminiscent of Phil’s machinima Making Machinima Movies in Red Dead Redemption 2, Kotaku.com article about The Grannies, Somerset House showcase