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Tech Update (July 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog July 17, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, we’ve got a few things for you to add to your tools list and some info about things you’ll be keen to watch out for… but before you check those out, we share with you a showcase of Unreal’s MetaHuman and a rather creepy demo of tendons in Blender!

Showcase

This is a creative piece, made using Unreal’s MetaHuman, that will give you goosebumps – note the very detail of the facial animation and especially the whistfulness captured in eyes of the character. You could almost see this guy opening a bank account using facial recognition tech! The short, based on a poem by Mike Antic, is called Blue Dot and has been created by Epic’s 3Lateral team in collaboration with Serbian artist Radivoje Bukvic (released 15 June) –

In this uncanny valley special demo created in Blender, Chris Jones‘ shows a ‘throwaway WIP’ – its great but if this is modelled on someone’s actual hand, well, I don’t really want to know more…

Out Now

Reallusion has released free ZBrush and Character Creator plugins. Both are excellent tools for refining your animations, and the ability to link these together makes for exciting new possibilities for improving your workflow. Here’s the link to the downloads and here’s a video explainer –

The popular open world game, No Man’s Sky is now also available for Mac. This may or not make it more accessible to creators because, of course, most of the tools folks have are still only PC but nonetheless its a start!

Onwards and Upwards

Unity, in collaboration with Apple, has devised a Beta programe for creating ‘spatial experiences’, intended to support development of content for the Apple Vision Pro. You can sign up to participate here.

Unreal features a neat demo of its massively scalable procedural generation framework (PGC), which ships with version release 5.2. This looks great – the demo is called Electric Dreams, and also illustrates its amazing Substate system. Video link here –

Worth Waiting For

Blockbuster Inc., seemingly made in the mold of that well-known machinima creator studio released way back in 2005 called The Movies, has released a demo which is now on Steam (it is being developed by indie studio, Super Sly Fox). Here’s the link – the full release date is reported as being later this year.

We’re all eagerly awaiting Blender 4.0, right (due November 2023)? As part of the release, Grease Pencil 3.0 will be included in its 2D animation toolset, originally an annotation tool that has evolved to do quite a bit more. You can read the update on Blender’s develop blog here.

Tech Update (May 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog May 15, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, our review is a roundup of new releases, some tools and tuts that add realism to productions and some interesting new tools announced for moviemakers everywhere, irrespective of creative engine preference.

Releases

Blender has released version 3.5, with an astonishing hair toolset. See the overview here –

UE5 editor for Fortnite has been released – UEFN is a PC application for designing, developing, and publishing games and experiences directly into Fortnite. You can see the release launch at GDC here –

Reallusion has released an astonishing range of 3D motions and characters for Actorcore, called Run For Your Life. Its not cheap but then again it may well be the only action set you ever need. Here’s a a demo reel –

Facegood’s Avatary (made in China) has released a desktop facial mocap system with some basic functionality for free. Here’s a nice little overview of what this version of it can do –

Realism

The quality of modelling continues to astound – I’m still blown away by Unreal’s Substrate materials system, although you need an epic system to render no doubt –

However, there are a few other releases that we’ll share with you this month too. Firstly, the UE Crashes course – not just any ole course, of course, but one where you can see how to animate ‘epic’ car crashes in UE5 (is that too many puns… sure it is) –

Secondly, Taichi Kobayashi has developed a stunning Cliffwood Village – a large-scale and beautifully detailed 3D model for UE5 –

Finally, William Faucher’s use of Reality Captures’ tech to create an arctic environment for UE5 is also something stunning to see. Check out his overview of the creative process here –

Movie-makers

An interesting development is the release of what’s being badged as The Movies mark II, called Blockbuster Inc in which “You will take total control of your very own movie studio. You will be able to construct all the facilities, hire and manage all sorts of employees and stars with the aim to produce the most prolific films and TV” (Super Sly Fox, developer). Its not yet been released, but you can find the holding page on Steam here.

Big news of the month is that Moviestorm‘s long awaited previsualisation software, FirstStage (although they need a new intro vid on their YouTube channel asap), is finally out of beta with ver 32 (our cover image for this post) –

This will surely be a useful tool for all those major creative projects, whatever the final engine used may be including film, TV and video as well as 3D environment engine-based, and it is very reasonably priced at $10/month per user (non-commercial). For those with short memories, Moviestorm (its creator channel is here fyi) launched originally in 2007 at the First European Machinima Festival as I recall and became a platform that many used to create content long before the likes of Reallusion’s iClone and Source Filmmaker got a wider foothold. One of my all-time favourites made in Moviestorm was IceAxe’s (aka Iain Friar) Clockwork (2008), a retelling of that classic tale by Anthony Burgess –

What will be interesting, however, is how it will compete with the in-engine toolsets being developed along similar lines, for example, Matt Workman’s UE Cine Tracer which delivers a similar experience. Of course, there are also individual tools, such as this camera crane by Cinematography Database for UE5 –

That’s it for this week.

S3 E71 Film Review: Heroes of Bronze: The Memory (March 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 30, 2023 Leave a reply

After we first talked about this project last April 2022, we were thrilled to see what a stunning job @MartinKlekner has made in the 21 Jan 2023 release of the first episode of Heroes of Bronze. We were not disappointed: the film and work stands up to AAA Assassin’s Creed Odyssey studio work, but with amazing detail of historical artefacts and storytelling, which is even evident in the way clothes move on characters. Damien couldn’t put our views better when he says this work inspires him to want to do better with iClone. We’re definitely looking forward to the next release – bring it on! 



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Heroes of Bronze: The Memory by Martin Klekner, released 21 January 2023 –

Martin Klekner’s project website here

Our April 2022 ep, discussing the film at 34:20 https://completelymachinima.com/2022/04/14/completely-machinima-s2-ep-35-films-discussion/

Compare with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey launch trailer, by Playstation, released 26 Sept 2018 –

Projects Update 1 (Mar 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog March 20, 2023 Leave a reply

This month, we have two weeks of projects to share with you. This week, we focus on the Unreal film projects we found. The breadth of work folks are creating with this toolset is astounding – all these films highlight a range of talent, development of workflows and the accessibility of the tools being used. The films also demonstrate what great creative storytelling talent there is among the indie creator communities across the world. Exciting times!

NOPE by Red Render

Alessio Marciello’s (aka Red Render) film NOPE uses UE5, Blender and iClone 8 to create a Jordan Peel inspired film, released on 11 December 2022. The pace and soundscape are impressive, the lucid dream of a bored schoolboy is an interesting creative choice, and we love the hint of Enterprise at the end! Check it out here –

The Perilous Wager by Ethan Nester

Ethan Nester’s The Perilous Wager, released 28 November 2022, uses UE’s Metahumans in our next short project pick. This is reminiscent of film noir and crime drama, mixed with a twist of lime. Its a well managed story with some hidden depths, only really evidenced in the buzzing of flies. It ends a little abruptly but, as its creator says, its about ideas for larger projects. It demonstrates great voice acting and we also love that Ethan voiced all the characters himself, he said using Altered.AI to create vocal deepfakes. He highlights how going through the voice acting process helped him improve his acting skills too – impressive work! We look forward to seeing how these ideas develop in due course. Here’s the link –

Gloom by Bloom

Another dark and moody project (its also our feature image for this post), Gloom was created for the Australia and New Zealand short film challenge 2022, supported by Screen NSW and Epic. The film is by Bloom, released 17 December 2022, and was created in eight weeks. The sci-fi concept is great, voice acting impressive and the story is well told with some fab jumpscares in it too. The sound design is worth taking note of but we recommend you wear a headset to get the full sense of the expansive soundscape the team have devised. Overall, a great project and we look forward to seeing more work from Bloom too –

Adarnia by Adarnia Studio

Our next project is one that turns UE characters into ancient ones – a slightly longer format project, this has elements of Star Wars, Blade Runner and just a touch of Jason and the Argonauts mixed together with an expansive cityscape to boot. Adarnia is a sci-fi fantasy created by Clemhyn Escosora and released 19 March 2021. There’s an impressive vehicle chase which perhaps goes on just a little too long, but there’s an interesting use of assets that are replicated in different ways across the various scenes that is brought together nicely towards the end of the film. The birdsong is a little distracting in places, one of those ‘nuisance scores’ we highlighted in last week’s blog post (Tech Update 2). There’s clearly a lot of work that’s gone into this, and pehaps there’s scope for a game to be made with the expansiveness demonstrated in the project, but the film’s story needs to be just a little tighter. We guess the creators agree because their YouTube channel is full of excerpts focussing on key components of this work. Check out the film here –

Superman Awakens by Antonis Fylladitis

Our final project for this week is a Superman tale, created by VFX company called Floating House. The film, released on 13 February 2023, is inspired by Kingdom Come Superman and Alex Ross and is a very interesting mix of comic styling and narrative film, with great voice acting from Daniel Zbel. Its another great illustration of the quality of the UE assets for talented storytellers –

Next week, we take a look at films made with other engines.

Tech Update 2 (Mar 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog March 13, 2023 Leave a reply

We’ve seen a number of tech developments in recent weeks that we’ll share in this post. Everything from free tools, great content packs, wrinkles for those of a certain age of course, mocap for newbies, nuisance scores, heads up on a lightweight headset, and more!

Lights, Camera, Action

A member of Chantal Harvey’s popular Machinima Mondays‘ Facebook Group posted a video recommendation by Kevin Stratvert of five free screen recording tools that all machinima and virtual production folks should have in their applications folder. He usefully goes through the process of using each of them in his tutorial here –

We highlight just a few of the exciting things we’ve seen in the last few weeks for Unreal Engine. A show and tell tutorial on making ragdoll puppets, reported in 80.lv, featuring 3D artist and animator Peter Javidpour, gives a great breakdown of the process, including how to rig the virtual camera. The process using Blueprints was used in his recent short release, My Breakfast with Barf, link here –

Also using Blueprints, Machina-Infinitum.com released a content pack for making procedural fractals. They look really beautiful – and perfect for that next cyberpunk-cum-inceptionist film. The pack isn’t free at $99, but it looks like a good investment, available on the Unreal store here. Here’s a link to their YouTube channel and tutorials for using the assets –

And also not free (£170.70), another excellent content pack. This one contains realistic building assets from what looks like the Whitechapel area of London, called a British City Pack, by Polyspherestudio.com. Here’s an overview on their YouTube channel –

Reallusion released a much awaited update to its Character Creator, introducing a dynamic wrinkle system. The plasticity of facial animations using CC4 is something we’ve often found ourselves commenting on in our film reviews, and this is a very interesting development. Check out the overview here –

Plask’s mocap app has been upgraded. This is an app we’ve mentioned before, which allows you to record, edit and animate projects in your browser. For pros, there’s a monthly fee, but for newbies, its freemium model looks like a great way to get started in mocap. Here’s an overview of it from their YouTube channel, which also contains tutorials of how to integrate the content with platforms like Blender, Unreal Engine and others –

With interoperability at its heart, ReadyPlayerMe is going from strength to strength. Its recent blog post sets out its ambition, and this highlights what great potential its avatars have to be cross-platform virtual storytellers, although as yet we’ve not seen much of that emerging.

For sound design tips, you can do no better than take a look at REAPER. Anne-Sophie Mongeau has written a great two-part article on Asoundeffect.com, which is definitely worth checking out, and whilst you’re there, you can check out the massive curated collection of sound effects on the website too.

For those exploring immersive experiences, we found another great article on Asoundeffect.com, this one discussed the impact of ‘nuisance scores‘ on the listener – we certainly have some experience of that in films we see too.

And for those seeking an alternative to the wearying headsets for virtual reality immersive experiences, Bigscreenvr.com‘s new system looks very impressive. Its just 127 grams and with a great resolution – most headsets weigh in around 450-650 grams, which is roughly a bag of sugar for those home chefs in the know – so surely will be much more usable than the current techs. It just released an overview of the new set and shipping begins in Q3 2023, and I’m more than tempted to get my order in early on this one…

You’re Welcome!

Finally this week, the Second Life endowment for the arts process is changing. For years, Second Life has been a massive advocate for its community of content creators, and the changes which give creators more time to develop their builds is another example of its fantastic support (notwithstanding the truly err colourful gif on its announcement page, our feature image this week). Here’s a link to its grant page.

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