Ricky Grove

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 40 News (July 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 7, 2022 Leave a reply

Despite being encouraged to create an episode of just 15 minutes duration by one of our followers, the team have this month extended their coverage – hear Tracy, Damien and Phil discuss vtubing, Ricky’s Duke Henry the Red character in the game Evil Dead, the FTC’s proposed updates to social media guidelines, Unreal’s review of the Matrix Awakens Experience, John Gaeta’s latest exploits, metaquette, Reallusion’s iClone 8 and CC4 and a number of other exciting developments relevant to the world of real-time filmmaking and machinima.  Thankfully, you can use the timestamps to jump to the bits your most interested in!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Time stamps, links and show notes

1:34 Feedback from our followers: 3DChick, Al Scotch, Spentaneous, Mike Clements, Circu Virtu, Notagamer3d

8:14 Vtubing and Face Rig app (Steam), VTuber Studio – real time puppeteering using faceware

17:41 Interactive video on Vimeo, branching narrative storylines

20:23 Ukranian films of the recent war, showcased at Milan Machinima Film Festival website

24:17 Evil Dead and the character Duke Henry the Red played by Ricky Grove and IP generally, Ricky Grove on IMDb

Ricky vs Ricky

39:29 FTC updating ‘disclosures 101 for social media infuencers’ guide’ discussion, the relationship between brands, platforms and influencers and see also [Company] Rulez! (Phil Rice aka zsOverman & Evan Ryan aka Krad Productions).  Here is PC Gamers’ comments and proposals to update the guidelines

54:55 Competition updates: Nvidia Omniverse Machinima promo video ‘Top Goose’ | A NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima Short #MadeInMachinima, released 9 June 2022, and Unreal competition.  Here is Ben Tuttle’s The Amazing Comet (Unreal Engine/iClone) (4413 Media), released 9 June 2022.  And here’s a link to William Faucher’s YouTube channel.

screencap Ben Tuttle’s The Amazing Comet

58:03 Making of Unreal’s Matrix Awakens Experience, Behind the Scenes on The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, released 6 June 2022, and Tracy’s interview with John Gaeta, VFX, The Matrix films, released 17 February 2022.  Living Cities is a new metaverse mirror world, website link and Visual Effects Giant John Gaeta joins Inworld AI as Chief Creative Officer, 1 June 2022 and Inworld AI teaser video, released 28 April 2022

screencap Behind the Scene of Matrix Awakens Experience

1:00:16 Pooky Amsterdam’s blog on metaverse etiquette, called Metaquette website link

1:00:39 Reallusion’s iClone 8 character animation processes including Character Creator 4 Launch by Reallusion (released 26 May 2022) and iClone 8 Demo Video by Reallusion (released 26 May 2022)

1:13:08 Mesh to MetaHuman in Unreal Engine by Unreal Engine, released 9 June 2022

1:13:33 Meta’s new model allows creating photoreal avatars with an iPhone, 80.lv, 14 June 2022 and full research publication

1:14:02 Mocap with the MoCats: Livestreaming with Multiple Actors (Faceware & Movella/Xsens) by Faceware, released 7 June 2022

1:14:29 Love, Death & Robots, Jibaro character creation Love, Death + Robots | Inside the Animation: Jibaro, Netflix, released 9 June 2022 and Art Dump: stunning projects made for Love, Death + Robots, 80.LV website link

1:16:48 Jonathon Nimmons WriteSeen.com, launched June 2022, website connecting creative writers with industry professionals (upload written content, attach a video pitch, audio clips, video clips and a link to a prototype if required)

1:19:08 A word of thanks to our sponsors

Completely Machinima S2 Ep 36 News (May 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes May 4, 2022 2 Comments

In this episode, Phil leads the month’s news for machinima creators.  We kick off with the Nvidia’s Machinima Contest, the Omniverse Create and Machinima apps, GTC conference recordings, the addition of Reallusion’s ActorCore library to the Omniverse platform and ask ‘how well do laptops cope with RTX cards’ (what do you think)?  Damien reviews Concert Creator AI for piano with a rendition of Battlestar Galactica’s Kara Remembers piece, Tracy talks about another of her projects demonstrating creative applications of AI (the Art AI Festival) and Ricky highlight’s Phil Tippett’s completed Mad God film project.  Other film contests reviewed are the Real Time Shorts Challenge and the Milan Machinima Film Festival and the news of an upcoming Shakespearean performance in GTA Online by Sam Crane.  Tracy reviews Draxtor Dupres’ major pandemic machinima film project comparing virtual life in Second Life and Animal Crossing.  We discuss the Unreal 5 City Sample, Unity’s Enemies (hiding under the UE bushel) and Ricky’s Paperback Show.  Phil also teases us with rumours about GTA6.      



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

2.35 Nvidia Omniverse Machinima contest, assets and prizes

4.18 Nvidia’s GTC conference recordings – worth the watch!

6.23 How are RTX cards coping with heat in laptops?

6.34 Nvidia Omniverse Create and Machinima apps

10.17 Reallusion’s ActorCore library now available for Nvidia Omniverse

12.51 Concert Creator AI creator for music and Damien’s animation of Kara Remembers (Battlestar Galactica) test

screencap: Damien’s test of Concern Creator AI

16.16 Art AI Festival in Leicester, creative application of AI including a YouTube channel of presentations

19.49 Mad God by Phil Tippett, film now completed and available on Shudder TV (subscription-based horror streaming channel)

screencap: Mad God (teaser)

22.43 Real Time Shorts Challenge competition (John MacInnes) overview

25.29 Milan Machinima Film Festival overview and Critics’ Choice Award, We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On (Shakespear’s Tempest performance) by Sam Crane (GTA Online) and current project to perform Hamlet in GTA Online

28.57 Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times by Draxtor Depres, comparison of life in the metaverses, Second Life and Animal Crossing, during the pandemic

34.47 Matrix Awakens Experience City Sample available for PC

screencap: City Sample (Unreal Engine)

39.52 Unreal 5 update is great for machinima creators (Kim Libreri’s keynote and The Matrix Awakens: creating a world tech talk)

42.10 GTA 6 rumours!

43.20 Unity realtime cinematic, Enemies and Unity for machinima

screencap: Enemies (Unity) teaser

46.23 Don’t forget to read!  Phil’s recommendation: Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, acquired from Ricky’s Paperback Show and book store

Completely Machinima History with Ben Grussi (January)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 27, 2022 2 Comments

Ben reviews some of the major happenings during the month of January in the early days of machinima. Starting with 1997 there’s Operation Bay-Shield. 1998 has the First Quake 2 movie – The Mad Bomber. Rematic, a machinima tool by Anthony Bailey is released in 1999. Also in this year Phil Rice released his notable film, Father Frags Best – a machinima classic. 2000 sees Machinima.com founded and Quad God film was released along with several other notable films. 2002 saw the Reel-Time Challenge contest along with Psyk’s Popcorn Jungle retiring (a big machinima review site). 2003 Anachronox the Movie Part 1 was released. 2004 Red vs Blue second season launched. In 2005 the first noveletta about machinima was written by Mike Hoefflinger called Moving Pictures. In 2006, Hugh Hancock, founder of Machinima.com stepped away from the site to focus on his filmmaking.



youtube version of podcast

Operation Bay-shield (1997) by WendCA

Eschaton: Darkness Twilight (1998) by Strange Company

First Quake 2 Movie: The Mad Bomber (1998)

Rematic (1999) tool created by Anthony Bailey (Quake Done Quick Team). The tool enabled reshoots of existing Quake (1) demos from new perspectives

Father Frags Best (1999) by Phil Rice aka ZS Overman

Quad God (2000) by Tritin Films

A Warrior’s Life (2000) by Donnovan

Ozymandias (2000) by Strange Company

Anachronox: The Movie Part 1 (2003) by Jake Hughes

Rebel Vs Thug (2003) by Ken “3DFilmmaker” Thain – a commercial project with Public Enemy’s Chuck D side project

The Gamer’s Benchmark (2003) by Futuremark released a teaser movies for 3DMark03 – the link is to the full movie after release

Bang the Machine: Computer Gaming Art and Artifacts (17 Jan to 4 April 2004) and The Game Scenes exhibition was created by Stanford Humanities Laboratory and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University presented on ‘the pervasive influence of computer game culture’, curated by Galen Davis and Henry Lowood.

Lenny and Larry Lumberjack (2004) by The ILL Clan – a video of excerpts from their premiere performance of On The Campaign Trail at Void in New York City

“Moving Pictures” (2005), a novelette by Mike Hoefflinger, published by Packet Switched Press – the novel is about a group of people who start their own machinima production with the desire to make it to the big time!

I Surrender (2005) by Tristan Pope is mentioned on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft main website page

The Los Angeles Machinima Collective (LAMC) announces their first machinima production William Shakespear’s Mechbeth – the film was never produced!  Ricky was here?!

Ricky Was Here!

Epic Games’ winners of the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal Contest (MSUC) for the Non-Interactive Movie Category 2005 –

– The Journey, 1st Place ($25,000)

– Bot, 2nd Place ($15,000)

– Sparked Memory, 3rd Place ($5,000)

– Scrap, 4th Place ($3,000)

– Damnation, 5th Place ($1,500)

Adventures in Dating, first episode (PG13 series) entitled Frustration (2005) by Decorgal

Let’s Play – Shooting a scene in Nightmare Puppeteer

Ricky Grove Blog August 26, 2021 Leave a reply

All four of us at Completely Machinima decided to each to a short Let’s Play video. My choice was to shoot a scene in M dot Strange’s game Nightmare Puppeteer (on Steam at $4.99). After creating a puppet in Adobe Character Animator (another program I like very much), I use that character to narrate my Let’s Play inside of Nightmare Puppeteer. If you are interested in either of the programs just click the highlights and you can find out more.

If you are having trouble seeing the video, try this link: https://youtu.be/8qZonW7xyNo