This week, we share feedback on our reviews from September’s selection and discuss a video about learning production techniques, selected by Phil: ‘How I learned Unity without following tutorials’ by Mark Brown.
Youtube Version of this Episode
Show Notes & Links
0:47 Ricky highlights some of the news items we’re released in a series of blogs this month, being released on Mondays, starting with out Tech Update on 3 Oct, then Projects Update on 10 Oct, Fests & Contests Update on 17 Oct and finally a Report on Creative AI Generators on 24 Oct. You can find these on https://CompletelyMachinima.com/Blog
6:51 How I learned Unity without following tutorials (Developing 1) by Mark Brown on his Game Maker’s Toolkit channel, released 28 September 2021 – discussion, learning by rote vs learning concepts, different learning styles and role of prototyping in machinima and virtual production.
Q: What are your favourite tutorials on machinima making? Get in touch and let us know on our email or other channels
This week’s Tech Update picks for machinima, virtual production and 3D content producers:
Nvidia RTX4080
Nvidia is launching two RTX 4080 graphics cards in November… you know what they say, you wait ages for a bus and then two come at once: the RTX 4080 12GB and RTX 4080 16GB. Here’s the story on PC Gamer‘s website. You can also catch up on all latest Nvidia’s announcements made in Jensen Huang’s (CEO) keyote at GTC in September in this video and on their blog here.
Ricky comments: Of course it was only a matter of time before NVidia announced the 40x series of RTX graphics cards. Two models have been announced so far, the 4080 and the 4090, with the 30x series sticking around for the lower price range. My guess is so they can focus their resources on producing more of just two high end cards instead of a whole range. Although given the prices of these new cards ($800+), I think I’ll be sticking with my 3070 for the time being.
UE 5.1.0
Unreal Engine have teased the new features coming to V5.1.0 – see the features documentation on their website here. Onsetfacilities.com has produced a nice overview – link here – and a nice explainer by JSFilmz here –
Cine Tracer
Check out the new Actor Animation system in Cine Tracer v0.7.6. This update gives the Actors a set of talking animations that can be used as an alternative to the Posing system.
Follow the socials on Instagram and download Cine Tracer on Steam
Sketchfab
Sketchfabis doing a weekly listing of top cultural heritage and history models – these are actually pretty amazing and of course downloadable (for a fee)!
source: Sketchfab – cultural heritage and history top 10
DALL-E
DALL-E, one of the creative AI generators that is all the buzz at the moment, has developed a new feature called Outpainting which can help users extend an image beyond its original borders by adding visual elements in the same style, or taking a story in new directions. This could be great for background shots in virtual productions.
Source: DALL-E, original is Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, Outpainting by August Kamp
Second Life
Second Life have launched a puppetry project for their avatars. As Wagner James Au reports in his regular blog on all things metaverse and Second Life in particular, this is using a webcam and mocap. Check out Au’s review of it here and go directly to Second Life here to read their post about it and follow their channel on YouTube for latest updates and how-tos here.
Eleven Labs
Eleven Labs have launched Voice Conversion. This lets you transform one person’s voice into another’s. It uses a process called voice cloning to encode the target voice – ie, the voice we convert to – to generate the same message spoken in a way which matches the target speaker’s identity but preserves the original intonation. What’s interesting about this is the filmmaking potential but of course there are very clearly IP interests that have to be considered here – it has potential for machinima application but beware the guidelines on using it. Importantly, note that it is primarily going to be used as part of an identity-preserving automatic dubbing tool which Eleven is launching in 2023. More here on this and the guidlines on using Voice Conversion.
In this episode, we focus our discussion on Facing the Wolf, a series of films by Iain Douglas and Mark Coverdale, submitted to the Milan Machinima Film Festival 2022. The film presents a series of provocative ideas which provoke Ricky, Phil, Tracy and Damien to have a deep discussion on the role of information, ambiguity and audience investment. What are your thoughts on the film series?
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
Facing the Wolf, by Iain Douglas and Mark Coverdale, released 2021
1:35 Interview with Matteo Bittanti, Milan Machinima Film Festival
5:00 Ricky poses an interesting question: is machinima an animation style or a form of art that ideas can dominate, as opposed to feelings?
27:56 Discussion: for idea films, do you have to have more information than the film provides to appreciate the work? What is the role of ambiguity in filmmaking? How much time should audience invest in understanding a film?
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
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!
In this episode, Ben goes back to the archives and digs out the earliest days of Unreal…. Long before the launch of Unreal Engine, the first machinima productions were made in Unreal 1 as early as 1998. Ben then traces the lack lustre performance of Unreal machinima as a genre until such time as the Make Something Unreal Contest was launched in 2003 – then BANG!!!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
Unreal 1 Released – 22 May 1998
The Unreal engine added some interesting shorts to the Machinima community portfolio of things created under the engine. Unfortunately, things really did not go very well, the game’s AI and scripting systems caused some unexpected problems for machinima productions. Chief among them, the game struggled to reproduce a recorded scene since the AI would sometimes react differently and cause the movie to breakdown and crash the game or the movie would not play correctly – none of which was the fault of the film creator.
Machinima unfortunately didn’t make a big mark on this game, even with the release of the Unreal Movie Studio suite from UnFramed Productions. However, it was partly responsible for the creation of Unframed Productions after co-founder James ‘eVOLVE’ Hammer-Morton (years later, a professional voice actor) worked on Unreal films under the banner of Team Evolve. James teamed up with co-founder Hugh McDonald (Solo) to create UnFramed Productions which tried to salvage the Unreal machinima movement with Arcadia. The project was shelved, however, due to lack of staff.
Unreal Tournament 1 – 23 May 1999
Unreal Tournament was developed as a multiplayer heavy focused game, as was Quake 3 Arena. The game was very popular due to its highly fresh and fun gameplay but machinima development really didn’t happen with any great speed. In fact not many films were produced until a free movie-making tool developed by Internet Team Reactor4 came along, dubbed Real-Time Movie Studio or RTMS for short. RTMS enabled players to have better control in producing movies that were mostly geared to the action genre (why not, its action game isn’t it 😉 ). Unfortunately, there are no notable movies attached to this engine but there is one movie still under development which could change that.
Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
Date: 22 September 2003
Date: 16 March 2004
Unreal Tournament 2003 comes prepared for machinima enthusiasts, being prepacked with a new cut-scene producer and editor dubbed Matinee. Not much was produced with this new tool. Eric ‘Starfury’ Baktius was the first machinima film maker (outside of Epic Games) with his test film called Sucker. In a effort to stimulate the creation of new content using these tools, Unreal Tournament’s developer Epic Games launched a huge contest – the Make Something Unreal Contest aka MSUC -which was intended to promote development of user made content ranging from new models and levels to new gameplay genres. Epic also included a category for machinima productions under the title of Non-interactive Movie in the later years. The contest was originally launched for the 2003 edition of the game, since later years required mods/movies to be made in UT2004.
Friedrich Kirshner’s aka Feizi’s The Tournament, a runner-up in the contest, was also featured at the 2nd Annual Machinima Film Festival. UnFramed Productions created Lucky Man was also a runner-up. Other films that won were from previously unheard of creators such as EG_Intro from Hongman Leung and The Showdown by Accelerated Pictures.
screencap: The Journey
Key dates and Events
5 March 2000
Unreal Movie Studio also known as UMS is released by UnFramed Productions
20 July 2001
It is discovered that Steven Spielberg has used Unreal Tournament (Epic Games) for the set design of his movie AI (Artificial Intelligence)
20 July 2001
Epic releases details about its new Machinima tool for the upcoming Unreal Engine games called Matinee
7 October 2002
Starfury makes the First Unreal Tournament 2003 movie with Matinee called Sucker
3 February 2003
Unreal II: The Awakening released
4 March 2003
Ken ‘3dfilmmaker’ Thain reports that Epic is planning a contest that will include slots for machinima productions made in Unreal Tournament 2003
7 July 2003
Epic and NVIDA formally announce the $1,000,000 Make it Unreal Competition. One of the categories is Best Non-Interactive Movie with $50,000 prize for the winner. The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences also co-coordinated the machinima portion of the contest
Make Something Unreal Contest 2004
16 October 2003
Epic Games releases a FREE version of it’s Unreal Engine for use with education ional and/or non-commercial projects – a massive opportunity for machinima creators and others
Winners of the Phase 2 – Real Time Movie- Category of the ‘Make Something Unreal Contest’ were announced
1st Place – Infection
2nd Place – EG_Intro Movie
3rd Place – The Showdown
4th Place – Unreal Films: Eternal Combat
Runners Up
WrongGame Matinee
Hollow Moon
The Tournament [Version 2]
LuckyMan
FlaTClaN_TheMovie
4 July 2004
The GameOn Video project is seeking Unreal 2004 Level Editors for a Machinima project to be nationally distributed by Volvo (The Automaker) https://archive.org/details/Game_On_Short_Film
14 September 2004
Atari and Epic Games’s Make Something Unreal Contest Phase 4 Submission window closes – it received the biggest Machinima submission to date with 14 entries!
14 October 2004
Epic Games released the $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest
A short tidbit from HomeLAN Fed’s interview with the Unreal developers on the Make Something Unreal contest: “HomeLAN: on another subject, why was Journey picked as the Best Movie award winner? Steve Polge: Journey was unique and well done. It had a thoughtful story line, and unique art. It certainly didn’t look like it was running on the Unreal Engine.”
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