Half Life

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S5 E150 Dead on Cue: Fake Science

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 4, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we take a deep dive into a film from one of the original machinima creator studios, Dead on Cue. This comprised the duo Mike Holochwost and Brian Mayberry. The film, Fake Science, had a couple more iterations, including one that allowed it to be played in the game itself, which was Half Life. It was released some 3 years before YouTube, and is another great example of how games could be used to produce artworks. Its wide recognition led to careers in games dev and production for both Mike and Brian, the former working on RoosterTeeth’s RWBY series and the latter on cinematics for games like the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and Defiance. Brian is still active in the games dev industry and is working on his first game, called Gone Camping. Check out the discussion and memories we share.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Dead on Cue, made in Half Life, was released on 13 Sept 2002 – the original versions can be found on the Internet Archive here.

BuddyDoQ (Brian Mayberry) has posted a YouTube version of the film here –

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 E120 Machinima News Omnibus (Mar 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 14, 2024 Leave a reply

This week’s podcast episode is our curated news omnibus for this month.  We cover lots, and enjoy reflecting on the significance of the stories we highlight for the world of machinima and virtual production. 

btw, the international internet pipes failed and microwaves fried our apps during this recording session, video corrupted and monsters ran loose among us, so enjoy the voice data we’ve managed to resurrect and video clips we’ve added – we’ll be back next week in full glory!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Fan communities under pressure?

Valve’s Steam policy and recent take downs for Team Fortress 2 and Portal fan projects – article on Games Radar here

Half Life 3 aka Entropy Zero (and 2) projects – Fandom.com overview here and video –

New Moviemaking Toolsets

Blockbuster Inc, Prologue version now on Steam here

Demo by Orbital Potato here –

Replikant now in free beta on the Unreal Marketplace.

Replikant has a Youtube channel with plenty of tutorials on it already, and there’s a great demo of it which gives you a sense of the animation quality it produces –

And for those wanting a quick and dirty tutorial on UE5, check this out –

Steamboatin’ Along!

Minecraft Steamboat Willie which is a fun take on it, made by Red and Blue –

Fewture Studios’ trailer for The Return of Steamboat Willie, made in Unreal Engine –

Screams

The origins and impact of the Wilhelm Scream – BBC shorts here

More about Sheb Wooley here

And another video about it here –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvZYzg7o68

AI Genies Rising

Community action against deepfakes of Taylor Swift – link to story on BBC site here

Jae Solina has done a nice overview of OpenAI’s SORA here –

and this is a link to RunwayML’s video controller toolset (and our feature image for this post) –

The Suno model, released by ElevenLabs, for music composition – here is a fun example on X –

S4 E103 Longest Walkable Distances (in a game) | UE: The Alchemist’s Confession (Nov 2023

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes November 16, 2023 Leave a reply

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 –

All G Man’s speeches, by No Click –

Projects Update 2 (May 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog May 29, 2023 Leave a reply

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.

Combined by Virlance (released 19 Mar 2021) –

Perimeter by Komegatze (released 14 Feb 2023) –

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