JT Music

S5 E164 Machinima News Omnibus (Jan 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 9, 2025 Leave a reply

Whilst January’s news begins with more of the same ole genAIs doing their thang, because they can, there’s now evidence of more concerted effort to control the efforts of creators… because the corporates and policymakers can at least try to do that, right? Well, maybe, but all this has achieved in the past is even more creative energy invested in jumping through the hoops, clambering over the walls and crashing through the hedges – so Happy New Year, we’re looking forward to seeing what the amazing machinima creative communities of all engine persuasions around the World can achieve in 2025! Plus, we discuss iClone’s new update, a couple of interesting creative projects celebrating content creators in their own ways, as well as interesting milestones.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

SORA‘s launch trailer (although the AI is still not available in EU apparently) –

Runway’s Act One is as good as SORA, here’s the promo –

Face Depth Frame Mancer is similar to Act One – a $20 plug-in for UE5 – here’s the trailer and here’s the link to the download

Riot Games issuing penalties for ‘off platform’ conduct violations – here’s the notice

Epic’s Fortnite hits a new milestone of 14M concurrent players participating in Snoop Dogg/Eminem’s concert (er, well, its slightly less than the last milestone but apparently more if you add in some other metrics too…) –

RDR2‘s how to involving its horses and mocap – what could be more fun than this?!

JT Music‘s tribute to Halo, includes a nice mention of RVB, as anything that celebrates the achievements of Halo should –

Bullet Time Agent – a new VRchat combat/puzzler game by Lakuza has released. Here’s the trailer –

Reallusion‘s iClone update, overview here –

Whatever happened to Syama Pedersen, the creator of that stunning Warhammer 40K film, Astartes? Find out in this episode! And here’s the Secret Level trailer for a quick overview –

Our review episode all about the Astartes film –

S5 E156 Machinima News Omnibus (Nov 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes November 14, 2024 Leave a reply

A packed ep this month, key tools, what’s happening roundup and some fascinating projects.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

BBC Sound Archive, link here

Info about it here

Blender Procedural auto painter AI –

Google’s video search tool, info here

Gerry Anderson’s tribute to David Graham –

MOUSE: P.I. For hire | official console announcement trailer –

Kamala Harris’ campaign in WOW, information here

Pigeon Bringer of Doom and Destroyer of Humanity, by Solofilms, made using Runway and Midjourney

horrific!

The Flower that Never Dies by NewGates Entertainment –

Terminator and Cyberpunk 2077 by eli_handle_b.wav –

Warhammer, JT Music –

Ian Hubert’s Dynamo Dream Part 2 –

Star Citizen Con updates SC1.0 –

Squadron 42 gameplay reveal update –

Hubnet machinima, Overclock and EE Studios

Luminaria Kitbash 3D contest still open – more here

GTA Hamlet documentary trailer –

Reallusion 3D character contest results – stunning work!

Movies Tycoon out of early access – Steam link 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 E128 Machinima News Omnibus (May 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes May 8, 2024 Leave a reply

Our May update on machinima and virtual production related news highlights some of the latest generative AI tools, warts and all, and brings to attention several of the latest machinima potential games, including Jaws, Jurassic World Evolution, 1943: Rise of the Hydra and Harold Halibut. We discuss the challenges filmmakers face when developing games from their IP, why Kickstarter isn’t a good strategy for raising funding for smaller studios, the [almost] final instalment of the RoosterTeeth saga and Second Life’s latest film festival, Fantasy Faire. All with our usual discursive aplomb (despite Ricky being mia, reportedly on a skinny dipping retreat) and a few non machinima related asides!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

AI Genies

Art of the Problem about the history of development of generative AI – it’s a documentary including interviews with some of the scientists attributed with developing the building blocks for the techs. Link here.

Google Deepmind has created a new AI model Genie that can create playable worlds in the style of 2D platforms, using an image as a prompt, or a sketch or text description.  A twitter thread link here.

Stability AI has introduced its Stable Audio 2.0 model, that enables high quality, full tracks with musical structure up to 3 minutes long from a single text prompt –

According to some, however, its not quite as good as Suno –

Musk has announced that Grok 1.5 Vision which aims to connect the digital and physical worlds with a multi-modal model will be released imminently – here’s link to the website about it https://x.ai/blog/grok-1.5v

Here’s the original style transfer post using Joker –

and here’s a tutorial on how to replace anyone in a video stream –

And here’s a link to the Arnie style example

New games

A new JAWS experience on Roblox called JAWS: Infested Waters.  More about it here –

JT Music’s rap about Palworld –

GTA6 trailer is a nice teaser –

1943: Rise of Hydra storyworld –

Interestingly, this is the one that Kim Libreri showcased at the Game Dev Conference event a few weeks ago –

Harold Halibut, a stop-mo animation game, trailer –

Steam link https://store.steampowered.com/app/924750/Harold_Halibut/

Projects

Blackmilk Studio A 1000 Suns series is definitely worth a watch! Channel link here.

Star Wars 1950s super Panavision 70 style short made with generative AI tools, including the script.  Its been put together by Abandoned Films –

Vikings and Aliens, using Kickstarter (feature image for this post)!  Here’s a link to the teaser –

And here’s a link to the Kickstarter if you’d like to support it.

Final fantasy!

RoosterTeeth going quietly, nah –

Fantasy Faire, Second Life Film Festival hosted by Chantal Harvey and Safia Widdeshins (to follow).

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 –