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 –
I build all of my own PC’s from scratch. Have done for almost 20 years now. It’s not for everyone as there is a lot of research and detail work that you need to do. But every 3 or 4 years I either upgrade my current PC build or build a new one.
This year I decided to upgrade as money is a little tight. I figured I could re-use several key parts of my old PC build and just buy the new parts I need.
I was inspired to do this by a video I saw on YouTube: This Micro ATX PC Build Hits the Spot by Mr. Matt LeeIt is a beautiful video with no words. None of that high energy spiel that can be so annoying. Nope. Matt just shows his build process in beautifully framed shots backed by wonderful music –
Micro ATX is a much smaller form factor than the ATX size of my current build. Approximately half of the size it looks like.
I started pricing and research and decided to build around the case that Matt Lee featured: The Lian Li A3 Dan case which was about $70 on amazon. I also wanted to continue with an AMD processor because they run cooler and require less power than Intel. I bought an AMD 7600 CPU which was approximately $180.
I was thinking of going with liquid cooling, but the space at the top of the case looked tight, so I went with a two fan Arctic Cooler (cheap at $46)
I needed a new motherboard since it was going into the MicroATX form factor. This was hard since there are several good candidates, but eventually I went with a more expense mobo – Asus Rog Strix. I’ve had good experiences using Asus motherboards and this one had excellent reviews. This motherboard put me back about $299
I carried over my case fans and GPU from my old system – AMD 7800x (and excellent, but very large card). Also, I was bringing over a 1000 was power supply, but concerned about its size (ATX power and huge).
Total cost for upgrade = $600.
With all of the parts in hand, I began the build and immediately found problems with the size of my power supply. Fortunately, the Lian Li case has an adjustable power case, so I was just able to fit it in with the big GPU. Hit the on button and
Nothing.
I’ve never built a system that didn’t at least turn on when I pushed the power button for the first time. After a evening checking connections and thinking, I felt it was the power supply that was the problem, so I purchased an SFX sized (much smaller) PSU from Lian Li for $150
Started the build again from the beginning and loved how efficient and small the power supply was. Pushed the power button and the machine started right up. Booted into the bios and changed the boot order so I could install Windows 11 from a USB stick and I was off to the races.
However, fans were a problem. Only one set of fans were spinning the others (5 chassis fans) were not. This problem blossomed into 3 days of stress and frustration. You see, the Asus motherboard only has two motherboard fan headers with a third designed for a liquid cooler mother (but can be used for fans). The problem was getting all of the fans hooked into power.
After ordering two sets of fans (6 total) and a special Arctic Cooler power hub, I was able to get all of my fans working like they should. This put me back another $250. And I realized that the Matt Lee video did not cover installation of fans and their power issues. It would have saved me time and expense if he did.
Finally, after spending $850 for all of my parts, and about a week of frustration, I have an excellent PC that sits on my desk and plays Elden Ring at its highest resolution.
Advice: study your system carefully before you start spending money. I thought I did, but I missed the fan power issues and the fact that I would have to remove the GPU every time I changed the bottom 3 fan cluster. Since the MicroATX form factor is much smaller, it has fewer headers for fans. Consider a $10 fan hub from Arctic Cooler as it will solve all of your problems.
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 –
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
This week’s update is all about the virtual production pipeline and digital cultural history.
VP Pipeline
DaVinci Resolve 18.5 (and .1 fixes) has finally released, and Blackmagic Design have a comprehensive support centre you can make use of here (only for the pro version license holders). The version includes a bunch of new features for integrating AI genie content and collaboration. Here’s an overview, courtesty of MrAlexTech –
Unreal Engine has an ever-expanding and truly talented community. In this tut, Jonathan Winbush (our feature image this week) shares his approach to creating procedurally generated towns using PCG and blueprints inside UE and Cargo (Kitbash3D). Winbush has a wealth of material on his channel, all free, for anyone to pick up and work with, so there’s really no excuse not to learn Unreal Engine –
Boundless Entertainment has release a course for filmmaking, pre-viz and VFX. Its designed for taking beginners to more professional levels in 10 days… mmm, lets see! Its not free, like many of the YouTube tutorials, but for $180 it will undoubtedly suit some learning styles.
Finally, if you want to share your VP process and also learn from others, Nvidia has a new #StartToFinish challenge running til the end of August. Its focussed on those working with the Omniverse platform, with a chance to be showcased on their social media channels. You can find out more about it on their Discord server.
Digital Culture History
We were interested to see a post on the BBC’s website that reported on NoClip’s Danny O’Dwyer rescue of hundreds of hours worth video content of gaming history from landfill. The collection mostly pre-dates YouTube, and comprises of footage and media clips that were cut from being shown on TV or websites. You can see Danny talk about his gold strike here –
We look forward to seeing what Danny digs up as he goes through the material over the next 10 years or so.
Back to the Future, that classic 1980s trilogy we all love for a whole range of reasons, is BACK again. This time, its as a Musical at the Alephi Theatre in London’s West End and the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, and in 2024, a North American tour. Its also fascinating to hear the rejection story of Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ original film script – rejected over 40 times before finally being signed. There are certainly many lessons in here for creatives today, not least the process of adapting film FX to theatre, for which MoveAI/Disguise for mocap and virtual production techniques are being employed –
A first in the UK, with a 5G screen test for a dual-location virtual production method for real-time performance capture –
We’ve been following the debate on copyright, fair use and transformative use of IP for what seems like 30 years in the world of machinima (see some of our posts here, here and here) – oh, actually its 27 years…! On 18 May, the world was exercised a little further on the issue of transformative use when the Supreme Court (US) reached its decision on Andy Warhol’s use of a photograph of Prince in a magazine – a case that’s been running since 2016, following Prince’s death. Many suggested this decision is the beginning of end of transformative use – or at least ‘narrows the ‘fair use’ doctrine‘ – and will have massive detrimental impacts on all things created, such as machinima from games engines… however, with the particular scenario fully outlined, this was probably the right outcome for this case. The scenario relates to an unattributed use of an image from a private collecton of works (created and held by Warhol/foundation), where other works involving the same creatives in the collection had previously been attributed and the photographer recompensed when having been used in magazines, and the fact that both Warhol and the photographer (Lynn Goldsmith) made money from selling images individually. So, this decision is about context of use involving the individuals as much as it is ‘fair use’ per se. Justice Sotomayor stated the important factor in the fair-use analysis was that “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes” pushed the decision in favour of the photographer, arguing that “licenses, for photographs or derivatives of them, are how photographers like Goldsmith make a living. They provide an economic incentive to create original works, which is the goal of copyright.” You can read the ruling in full here – or use your favorite search tool for a link to any one of the numerous news articles covering the case.
So, until such time as the principle applied in this case is actually applied to a creator context, where income is rarely a goal of productions beyond individual recognition and perhaps the meagre YouTube % share for eyeballs it receives, and transformation is generally well beyond that originally intended by say a game dev, it feels like there’s nothing to see here.
Meta
On 23 June, Second Life turns 20 years old! There will be virtual parties, exhibitions, product sales and more – for 20 days of course, and you can find out more on the community website here. Happy Birthday to all the Lindens – the first open world environment to truly embrace metaversal themes.
If you want to catch up on some light reading, then its also worth noting that Wagner James Au’s new book releases a week later on 27 June, called Making a Metaverse that Matters. Au also regularly writes some great updates for what has to be one of the longest-running metaverse blogs. Its called New World Notes, which he founded in 2006. Au was the first metaverse journalist and marketer for SL back in 2003. Links to the book here –
Excited to tease the cover for my book, "Making a Metaverse That Matters"!
In stores next month. Please consider pre-ordering.
Nvidia are releasing a monthly update on its blog of all things Omniverse, including latest advancements for the OpenUSD framework that has so quickly become the gold standard for integrating a wide range of creator tools in a 3D workflow. Here‘s the link to the first part of the ‘Into the Omniverse’ series (our feature image for this post) which includes an overview of an update to the connector for Adobe Substance 3D Painter. Substance 3D releases its latest version 203.0 in mid June. This series is a must follow for all content creators, whether or not you own an RTX!
-Versal
For those seeking advice on devising a virtual production pipeline, Unreal Engine has helpfully released a visualisation guide here and a nice vid here –
Unreal Engine released version 5.2 on 11 May, which includes some fab new features including a preview of its still in dev Procedural Content Generation framework, enabling creators to populate large scenes more efficiently; Substrate, that supports a greater range of surface appearances such as the opalescent finish showcased in this vid –
an enhanced virtual production set of tools for realtime filmmaking support; enhanced VCam system for multi-camera control; and nDisplay extended support, which is setting the scene for the next version 5.3. A link to the release notes is here.
We also spotted a useful tool in the UE Marketplace albeit pricey at $249 for indies: MetaShoot. It includes lighting and render presets for assistance with creating sophisticated lighting setups in your VP studio, released by VINZI – Code Plugins, link here.
Also super helpful is Kitbash3D’s new Cargo asset browser, including some 10,000 searchable assets. The basic account, which is free, allows you to 1-click upload content to your project and manage the assets you have but for a fee of $65/month, the pro version will let you search and access the full model and media library. Its another layer of cost so do check out the small print.
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