Jackson Wang

Projects Update (Jan 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog January 23, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, we have some more interesting project updates to share with you.

Recognition

We were thrilled to hear that Sam Crane’s GTA Online version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been recognized, being shortlisted for an award for innovation at the The Stage Awards 2023 – we love that they spelled Auto incorrectly too (Audio)! Awards are announced on 30 January and hopefully Sam (aka Rustic Mascara) will keep us posted on his Twitter feed during the event. All the best, Sam! You can still find the performance on YouTube, link here –

Unreal

Using Unreal Engine, this short is another example of how beautiful this toolset is. This short by The Blender Bender team (Thomas Thielemann and Alexander Korabelnikov), released 26 Sept 2022, was inspired by David Attenborough’s Our Planet series, and with an even more stark message than the original series –

Also using Unreal Engine, we were interested to see that Sava Zivkovic, who’s film Irradiation we reviewed back in October 2021, is working on a new project, this one called Beckoning. He’s also just been awarded an Epic Megagrant to support development of the project – well deserved for sure. Here’s the link to the trailer for the new project – must say, very much looking forward to seeing the finished work.

Not Unreal but seriously unreal, this is an ‘insane battle’ scene demonstrating the astonishing simulation capability of the Epic Battle Simulator 2 engine. This one, SPECIAL FORCES ARE LANDING ON THE ISLAND OCCUPIED BY SAURON, was released 5 November 2022, by the Battle Simulator Center team –

Virtual Production

A short film, called Goliath by DonBittersil (screencap is our featured image for this post), has showcased virtual production tools using Unreal Engine, having been shot at LA’s Orbital Virtual Studios. For those advancing from purely screen based production techniques, this is an interesting insight into scaled-up processes – check out the film and the ‘making of’ videos here –

You may remember we shared Jackson Wang’s beautifully choreographed music video called Cruel a few weeks back, well this is another one from his Magic Man album, using virtual production techniques. Its also a stunning example of his creative work and the usefulness of the VP process –

Avant Garde?

An interesting article appeared on MUBI’s website about a cutscene collective, called Total Refusal. This team of gamers do what machinima creators have done for 25+ years, that is, use the game for some other creative purpose. Its nice to see that MUBI is keeping up with the times of course, and they would certainly do well to follow our friends at the Milan Machinima Film Festival to keep up to date with this particular ‘Avant Garde’ scene format. In the meantime, this is an example of Total’s Refusal’s creative works, a trailer for Hardly Working (RDR2) –

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 44 News (September 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 1, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Ricky, Tracy, Phil and Damien review latest machinima and virtual production news items: contest updates, amazing new music videos made using Unreal Engine 5, how to turn MidJourney creations into 3D objects ready for animation, bringing in3D avatars from your phone into Reallusion’s Character Creator 4, Dreamwork’s Moonray becoming open source, Nvidia Omniverse 2022.1 update, Adobe Premiere Pro’s filmmakers guide, Lynchland in Second Life and more! 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

0:27 Nvidia Omniverse Machinima Contest #madeinmachinima results, entries showreel, announcement of winners at SIGGRAPH and links to winners (via 80.lv) Simon Lavit and runners up Nicklas Lotz and Ted Saguindel

2:54 Tracy’s interview with John MacInnes on his latest Unreal Challenge contest: Mood Scene – the contest begins 1 Sept

5:44 Unreal Engine’s Better Light Than Never contest results sizzle reel and 80.lv article about winners

6:19 Jackson Wang’s Cruel video, using Unreal in his virtual production process

Jackson Wang’s Cruel

7:01 Also using Unreal in a music video, Sagans on Coherence using Katherine Crowson’s software Disco Fusion

7:28 Pavel Oliva’s desert kit mod

7:48 Game Art Experiments’ tutorial on turning AI generated images from MidJourney into 3D format

8:32 Turning in3D Avatars into Reallusion’s Character Creator 4 avatars with just a quick scan using your mobile phone!

9:36 Trailer for an upcoming fan film by Unreal Cinema, made in Unreal Engine 5: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Kotor: Episode 1 – The Spire, premiered 5 August 2022

Kotor: Episode 1 – The Spire

11:31 Dreamworks announces that its Moonray platform will become open source

16:22 19-20 September, remember the Nvidia GTC event is always worth following!

17:50 Film Music.io website update

23:00 Nvidia Omniverse Audio2Face update 2022.1 – using emotions

28:19 Adobe’s Premiere Pro guide for filmmakers

32:04 Lynch-land in Second Life – for all those lovers of David Lynch films

33:09 Update: changing our news episodes format – what do you think to our plans?