Omniverse

S3 E49 Film Review: ‘Most Precious Gift’ by Shangyu Wang (Oct 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 19, 2022 Leave a reply

This week, Damien has picked a very interesting Eastern-made alien tale. Its been beautifully shot and rendered using Omniverse, and inspired him to try some of the techniques shown. Ricky is a little more critical of the nostalgic trope. Tracy reflects on the journey of the storytelling, and the nature of what it is to be human that is the heart of the story. Phil brings Solaris into the discussion, as only Phil can. Overall, we reflect on the different styles of animation used and how influential they were. And, finally, how on earth did the producer achieve that tendril effect?!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Link to Film

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 43 Films (August 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 11, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Damien, Ricky and Tracy discuss four very different films.  Damien reviews an interesting explainer on witches in The Folklore of Phasmophobia game, Ricky presents us with another of Jae Solina’s tutorials, this time on path tracing in Omniverse, Tracy selects Tiny Elden Ring – yep, its tiny! And Phil, absent due to sickness, ironically picked a satirical Zombie fest, which mixed Walking Dead ‘live action’ with machinima!  The team then discuss that approach to creating films, highlighting some of the key challenges with some more fab examples of films that have used the techniques well. 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

0:57 The Folklore of Phasmophobia | Modern Mythology, by The Digital Dream Club (released 9 January 2021)

The Folklore of Phasmophobia

9:51 NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test, by JSFilmz (21 June 2022) and a nice little article on the difference between rasterization, ray tracing and path tracing that folks might find interesting, Nvidia says real-time path tracing is on the horizon, but what is it? By Eric Frederiksen, Gamespot.com, 1 May 2022

NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Path Tracing Test

17:33 Tiny Elden Ring | Tilt Shift, by Flurdeh (11 April 2022) and here’s Flurdeh’s list of filmmaking tools https://github.com/Flurdeh/Youtube-Resources and a post-production tutorial on the tilt shift effect tutorial, How to create Tilt-Shift / Miniature World Time-lapses, by Science Filmmaking Tips (24 Jan 2017)

Tiny Elden Ring

27:27 What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like, by Pathoze (26 Jan 2022)

What a typical project Zomboid Run looks like

31:45 Discussion: using live action with machinima footage in films, what are the challenges?

Examples mentioned –

39:11 Damien’s The Great Bug War on Machinima Expo (8 December 2014)

Damien and Kim Genly

46:12 Ricky’s reference to a 2D/3D combo – Carson Mell’s TARANTULA A-1 : Nightmares (5 August 2012), shot in  Los Angeles

TARANTULA A-1: Nightmares

48:30 Phil Tippett’s stop mo film Mad God, including live action with animation (now available on Shudder TV)

Mad God

51:20 Tutsy Navarathna’s film, A Journey into the Metaverse and an interview we did with him on the podcast in Season 1

A Journey into the Metaverse

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 35 Films & Discussion (April 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 14, 2022 2 Comments

This month, Damien leads the Completely Machinima crew with a review and discussion of Reallusion’s iClone films.  Alongside the few amazing creative projects by Warlord, Rene Jacob and Martin Klekner we discussed, finding a broad selection has been a challenge so we were interested to reflect on why there are so few iClone movies to see.



Video Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

2.23 The Sniper by Warlord (iClone 4), released 29 August 2009

The Sniper

14:47 Alien: The Message by direx1974/Rene Jacob (iClone 7), released 27 January 2022 (also check in on our interview with Rene Jacob)

Alien: The Message

17:25 Ricky begins the discussion on ‘what is a fan film?’

25:42 Continued discussion of ‘fan films’ and ‘fan culture’

34:20 Heroes of Bronze ‘Journeys’ by Martin Klekner (iClone 7), teaser released 4 March 2021

Heroes of Bronze

Interview with Martin Klekner on Reallusion’s blog (14 April 2021)

37:00 iClone vs Blender vs Omniverse discussion

44:48 Ben Tuttle’s short course for animators

53:42 Where is the iClone community and why aren’t there more creative projects to see?

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 30 News & Discussion (February 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 3, 2022 Leave a reply

In this episode, Tracy, Ricky, Phil and Damien cover the relevance of Nvidia’s special address at CES for machinima creators, Adobe’s Project Shasta, Kerbal Space Programme, the uptake in VR kit over the Christmas period, growth in machinima, NFTs, Philip Rosedale’s return to the Second Life fold, the nail in RoosterTeeth’s RVB saga, Minecraft’s and Rockstar’s astonishing achievements, Ben Grussi’s history episodes and discuss two great questions posed by our followers: what’s the difference between machinima and animation and what’s the advice for adapting prose to visual media formats.



YouTube version of podcast

Show Links

1:10 Nvidia’s special address at CES, points relevant for machinima creators eg., Omniverse, AI

12:55 RDR2 images in the news!

13:40 Austin Film Festival

14:24 Adobe Project Shasta for audio recording

14:56 Kerbal Space Programme 2 impending launch

Kerbal Space Programme 2 screencap

16:25 Machinima growth observations

17:28 VR growth observations

19:46 NFTs observations – Peter Molyneux and John Gaeta

23:57 Philip Rosedale and the future of Second Life for creators

40:30 Halo Xbox 360 multiplayer servers close – the end of the story for Rooster Teeth’s RVB series?

42:50 Ben Grussi’s history of machinima episodes of the Completely Machinima podcast

44:34 Matthew Loris/Zeke: what are the differences between machinima and animation discussion; Completely Machinima interview with Mr Anymation, Tom Jantol

1:00:48 Rockstar’s lawsuit against a modding group

1:02:21 Minecraft’s astonishing video reach

1:03:43 Pandora’s 3d Films: adapting prose to visual media formats preliminary comments

Completely Machinima S1 Ep 26 News (December 2021)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 2, 2021 Leave a reply

This week the hosts discuss updates from the GTC event by Nvidia, with focus on Omniverse and Reallusion’s iClone 8 and Character Creator 4, the Book of Boba Fett trailer, Dune, A Sound Effect podcast, understanding NFTs (well, who does?), Nightmare Puppeteer, Blender 3.0, a natural successor to Garry’s Mod called SNBox, Promethian AI (creative process for VR) and our upcoming LIVE event on 9 December, celebrating our year in machinima.



Show Notes & Links

Book of Boba Fett trailer

Batman trailer

GTA Trilogy Remaster release update here and comparison here

A Sound Effect podcast

Article: Understanding NFTs and blockchain

Linking Reallusion to Omniverse

Nightmare Puppeteer on Steam

S&Box overview

Aidan Kelly’s YouTube channel

Promethian AI overview

ANFSCM Live in Leicester, 9 December 2021 6-7.30 – Eventbrite booking here