Rooster Teeth

S4 E124 Machinima News Omnibus (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 10, 2024 Leave a reply

A packed review this month, with some sad 🙁 better 😐 and happy news 🙂



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

Endings

The long-anticipated demise of Rooster Teeth and has been announced – as has the much anticipated final season of Red Vs Blue in this trailer –

If you are a die hard RTer, here’s a link to the Rooster Teeth team response to Warner’s announcement, its ‘Not a Final Goodbye’ –

Tracy and Ben’s Pioneers in Machinima book chapter is here too, Chapter 4: Rooster Teeth Bites.

Here’s the link to the 2007 Special Ep, Going Global, released at the First European Machinima Festival in 2007 (in Leicester, UK) –

Articles, Variety, Deadline and IGN.

Another ending, Draxtor Dupres’ Second Life series supported by Linden Labs, Drax Files: World Makers. Here’s his final report and here’s a link to a livestream he did to celebrate the achievements of the show –

Accolades

Sam Crane’s Hamlet in GTA5 won a Jury prize for best documentary at SXSW 2024, link to news coverage here, and the distribution deal awarded here.

Electro League and Weta’s War is Over has become the first UE5 film to win an Oscar, Best Animated Short –

Aye AI AI…

YouTube has updated its T&Cs, a nice article here

ConvAI has announced a partnership with Unity for NPCs, and also teamed up with Second Life. Here’s a link to Wagner James Au’s New World Notes blog – and here’s a couple of useful links –

Stability AI has introduced a 3D video generator, information here

RunwayML has partnered with Musixmatch to generate video to lyrics, link to information here

and it has also announced a new lipsync feature for generative audio, currently on early access to its creators programme members

Hume has a demo of a voice-to-voice generator, described as an Empathic Voice Interface – link to sign-up for early access here

and if you need a little overview of how all things generative AI are developing, here’s a nice video summary by Henrik Kniberg

Inspiration

To celebrate the phenomenal success of Gozilla Minus One at the 2024 Oscars, Nelson Escobar, the VFX creator of the Godzilla model, has released it as a free download for Blender. Link here –

Blockbuster Inc has announced its release date: 6 June 2024. Here’s the official gameplay trailer –

and here’s the link to Prologue on Steam

Finally, here’s the link to the interview with Denis Villeneuve, discussing his approach to making the latest Dune films –

Post Script

We are super excited to see our Podcast make the Top 3 listing of indie filmmaking podcasts on Goodpods in March 2024 – how cool is that?!

S4 E106 The Sims 4: I Abducted My Entire Neighborhood (Dec 2023)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 7, 2023 Leave a reply

We start this week’s episode with a discussion about Reallusion’s new facial mocap system, Accuface (which Phil and Damien have already invested in), move on to a brief contest update (being run by Pink Floyd no less), and then follow this up with our film review. If you liked the Saw series of films, then this is for you – its a particularly sadistic let’s play style machinima made in The Sims 4, called I Abducted My Entire Neighborhood in The Sims 4, by Lets Game It Out
 and its also just Phil’s sense of humor too! We contrast our discussion with some older references to classic machinimas, which help us to make our point about just how talented this creator is.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Reallusion’s Accuface release here.

Film, by Lets Game It Out, released 18 January 2020

Comparison films discussed –

OBIT (by Phil Rice / zsOverman, released 2022, RDR2) –

The Snow Witch (by Britannica Dreams, released 2006, Sims 2) –

RVB (Rooster Teeth, episode 1 originally released in 2003) –

Phil’s out takes video from Male Restroom Etiquette (released 2006) –

Projects Update 1 (May 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog May 22, 2023 Leave a reply

This week we share with you a couple of notable RTs (of the UnTwitter kind) and a Dynamo Dream or two. Enjoy!

Who can believe it but Rooster Teeth is now 20 years old. Its come a very long way from its RVB days, not all of it good, but its still rolling. Indeed, RT is now also in the same stable as the final remains of Machinima.com (RIP). Ben Grussi and I dedicated a chapter to the RT story in our book Pioneers in Machinima (2021) and one thing we noted was its resilience to change over the years, so here’s wishing them all the best for the next turn on their roundabout too –

Another long-time favorite on our podcast is the RT Music (formerly RT Machinima) team. This month, I’d like to share their Elden Ring Rap with you (released 12 Mar 2022). Its definitely worth watching the video, not only are these guys great at writing some toe-tappers but they also do a pretty good job of showing off their machinima skills too –

Finally this week, Ian Hubert has released two episodes of his Dynamo Dream live action/VFX series (our feature image for this post). We covered the first episode of this stunning series on the podcast back in August 2021 (audio only) but what’s quite incredible about the release of Eps 2 and 3 in such quick succession is frankly the speed at which he’s been able to release them… and of course they’re very good if ever so slightly absurdist.

A Single Point in Space – Dynamo Dream, Ep 2 (released 23 Mar 2023) –

A Pete Episode – Dynamo Dream, Ep 3 (released 6 Apr 2023) –

Next week, we have some more selections to share with you too but if you find something you’d like us to do a full review of on the podcast, do share it.

Projects Update (Nov 2022)

Tracy Harwood Blog November 14, 2022 1 Comment

This week, we take a look at some interesting projects we’ve found in our monthly search of the inter-web for all things machinima / virtual production / real-time. We bring you projects using Web3, made with a HUGE cast, mix virtual and real, and 2D and 3D animation styles

Crip Ya Enthusiasm by SnoopDogg (rel 16 Oct 2022)

Apart from the typical SnoopDogg lingo, which you either love or loathe, this is an interesting short made in Unreal Engine 5. It is not so much interesting because it is a music video by a self-confessed creative tech lover with a novel storytelling approach to putting his content out, but because it is being distrubted through Snoop’s new Web3 platform called Astro Project as a gamified experience or, to use his term, a ‘metaverse music video’. The characters used in the video have been made available on the platform’s marketplace as NFTs and other creators are being encouraged to create and share content through the platform to unlock exclusive content and hosted events. Anyone buying the characters can do anything they like with them, include them in their own creative works for example, using the blockchain tech embedded in their creation and distribution. So, whether you like the content or not, its the platform process used that is particularly interesting in this project.

As with all things NFTs, it is worth noting that really, its success is only as good as the marketing effort through which you can achieve decent audiences in order to manipulate the market parameters. Obviously SnoopDogg has an upper hand on this.

SAPIENS by Lukas Klosel (rel 7 July 2022)

This is a cinematic short about the impact on man on our planet. Its a very provocative film, which does include some disturbing scenes (so if you’re sensitive, you may want to miss watching this one). We’re not exactly sure what creative tools have been used in this one, and the description doesn’t say, but certainly there’s a fair amount of post-production as well as mixing of real and virtual content so there’s bound to have been some use of virtual production tools. We include it though because of the way it mixes virtual and real scenes, how it portrays its focal story through visual concepts (and lens focus) and clever use of sound design.

Sandstorm by Wailander (rel 13 May 2022)

A more traditional machinima made in Star Citizen, this has some great dynamics, played out by the 97 players involved in shooting the scenes included in the finished video. Its an incredibly complex set of scenes with many participants involved in portraying the details of the rather loosely defined plot. Its creative goal, however, wasn’t so much to tell a story as to bring together as many different players as it could. We certainly think it delivered on, drawing in organizations from five different countries (France, USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany) and portraying as accurately as it could how fighting unfolds in this expansive engine. The story is held together with a front end briefing against which they do periodic updates. The credits section alone is something to just take a look at. The final scene intimates a continuing saga and we look forward to seeing that and perhaps more of a story integrated into the fighting action too.

Roborovski by Rick Pearce (rel 2020)

Too sentimental for Ricky perhaps, but certainly not one for Nemo-loving children, this is short that mixes 2D and 3D animation styles very effectively. Made in Unreal Engine 4.21, primarily used in order to test the creative pipeline in the engine, the film won Flickerfest’s best animation award in 2020. It was made by Pearce’s Spectre Studio and funded by Screen Australia, so it is by no means a naive creative endeavour. The video is above in the title link, but here’s a behind the scenes look at the making of the film, which is particularly interesting too.

The Walker by AFK – The Webseries (Rel 5 Aug 2022)

Finally, this month, a revisit to a little bit of old-style fun made in Unreal Engine 5, invoking all those great memories of RVB Series 1 (Rooster Teeth, for those in the know). In this short, some incredibly well done Star Wars comedy voice-acting, told through the suits of the Empire’s Snow Troopers, located deep in the bowels of an ATAT. Enjoy!

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