Second Life Archives - Completely Machinima

S5 E182 Machinima News Omnibus (May 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes May 14, 2025 Leave a reply

Our monthly roundup of all things we enjoy about this crazy world of machinima.

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Show Notes & Links

Projects

AFK’s Season 3 Star Wars Parody ‘supercut’, created in UE5 –

Second Life’s Fantasy Faire, Pryda Parx Studio’s run through covers 18 regions in total – as ever, great work by everyone being showcased –

and here is the Fantasy Faire Second Life YouTube channel for videos submitted to the Film Festival Machinima Competition, hosted by Chantal Harvey

The GTA6 new trailer release… check out Brian in the first few seconds!

Mans1ay3r’s Skyrim short, called Beware the Daughter of the Troll – a Bard’s Tale, a really stunning song, beautifully produced –

and ToCoSo’s song called If We All Haul Together, celebrating the community is Elite Dangerous –

Drunk Physicist’s Mission on a Tiny Planet – available on Instagram here

genAI updates

AI Animation Contest winners hosted by Curious Refuge, supported by Promise Studios and Luma AI – the show reel is worth a run through –

Films made with AI will be eligible for the Oscars, although decision-making will of course consider its role and that of human creators – article here

Flawless’ Watch the Skies AI dubbing technology is a Swedish scifi that’s now acceptable to those who can’t speak the language – impressive stuff –

Runway’s Gen-4 is also worth taking a look at, producing multiple styles for a single character –

Sora AI‘s Red Dead Redemption 2 1970s style Western Movie –

Phil’s AI copyright discussion link for Suno AI –

Tools & Resources

Reallusion’s CC5 teaser

and Solomon Jagwe‘s thoughts –

A new Star Wars game afoot?

How to create smart hair –

April Phil

Minecraft Speedrunner vs 3 Hunters –

and don’t forget to check out Phil’s latest machinima series, Ralph & Chuck –

S5 E173 Machinima News Omnibig (Mar 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 13, 2025 Leave a reply

This is our regular monthly news update on things relevant to the world of machinima. Catch the episode on audio only or on YouTube – links below

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Show Notes & Links

Esoterica‘s dysUTOPIA –

Hamilton made in Animal Crossing by GK Animations –

Cinematic of No Man’s Sky by EvilDr.Porkchop –

Phil’s Chuck Norris vs 50K Cavemen made in Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 –

John Gaeta’s Escape.ai platform for emerging artists is now in beta.

At All Costs (by Studio Far Out Games) –

Second Life AI character designer tool –

Project Odyssey awards ceremony and links to the winners, worth checking out –

BBC Radiophonic Workshop release link here

Valve’s TF2 client and server game code released, link here to article

Dune: Awakening game release trailer –

Tetris on AppleTV, trailer –

Liberty City (GTA4) ported to GTA5 –

John Martin II (Reallusion/iClone) on using Kling AI for character animation –

https://www.facebook.com/Animize/videos/608758092044056/?rdid=kMPddm0tlBjC6h4o&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2Fv%2F1BepaNLxzD%2F

Nvidia Omniverse Launcher update, link here

S5 E170 Machinima News Omnibus (Feb 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes February 20, 2025 Leave a reply

A packed news episode, with Tracy’s analysis of the AI art copyright ruling decision and a discussion with Damien about his hit fan series, Heir to the Empire – the Star Wars story that everyone always wanted to see made. Do comment on the discussion (on the YouTube channel or the Blog post).

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Show Notes & Links

RunwayML’s third annual AI Film Festival is now open to submissions until 31^st March

Second Life has been testing browser based streaming

Linden Labs has spent $1.3B building the world and paid $1.1B back to its creators

Animator’s Survival Kit, part of a Bloomsbury video series, and it has been created by Richard Williams

Gladiator II has all the kind of hallmarks you can achieve in Unreal Engine, with enough time and energy –

The Freeman Chronicles made by Ian James Duncan –

There’s also a fascinating website which documents how the film was made worth taking a look at too.

Tom Cook (aka ToCoSo) original fan song made for Elite Dangerous called ‘Mining on my Own’ by Ghost Giraffe –

A Mandalorian Cinematic Trailer made in Unreal Engine, made by Geoffrey Grandseign, it’s a showcase of his work as well as a fan film –

A Godot engine project, created in the 4.3 engine version by Jan Fidler –

The US Copyright Office’s ruling on AI art generated with text prompts.

Others asking questions about the implications of this ruling.

Announcement of a merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock

NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 family graphics cards announed here

HL3 teaser? Check this out!

Hollywood Animal trailer –

Astartes II – Official Teaser Trailer | Warhammer –

The Sims 1 & 2 re-releases – news item link here

Rooster Teeth is back?! Another news item link

Director’s comments: Heir to the Empire, Damien reflects on the series to date –

the full movies here –

S5 E160 Machinima News Omnibus (Dec 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 12, 2024 Leave a reply

Our monthly news update this month covers more genAI matters, game-related items and WoWness in the form of a 2 hour + stunning orchestral performance celebrating 20 years of musical history. Check out the news and our discussion, and do leave comments too!

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

A new AI-focussed filmmaking studio has launched, called Asteria. Its argument is that AI can change the way indies make and distribute content, providing new opportunities, and presumably new types of content – its very much the same point we made a few months back about mAIchinima. Link here.

The Silent Hill 2 Remake with a mod that turns it into a VR game, made by Praydog that gives the game more of a first person perspective. Demo video here –

Philip Rosedale has rejoined the team at Linden Labs’ Second Life as the CTO – roundtable discussion with the community in November here –

There’s also a great interview that James Wagner Au has done in two parts on his New World Notes blog here

Remarkable Life of Ibelin trailer here (feature image) –

World of Warcraft 20 years of music orchestral concert, video of performance here –

Steam Launcher update now with recording tools for machinimators. News item here.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard official launch trailer –

Half Life 2 RTX, tribute video promo here –

S4 E149 Special: Season Finale 2024

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 27, 2024 1 Comment

In this ep, we reflect on the key trends in #machinima we’ve observed during Season 4 of the Completely Machinima podcast. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the year too, so do add comments below.

During the past year, we have reviewed over 22 hours of content, and presented detailed analysis of over 50 films on this channel. As vets of the original community practices (that’s pre YouTube and the M.com/Inc days), one of the great pleasures we take in this podcast is that we get to look at machinima and virtual production across the breadth of genres and engines, by creators from anywhere in the world, and reflect on where its come from, how its evolved and is developing.

This year, we have seen amazing quality films made in popular games such as Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, Star Citizen, Warhammer 40K and Team Fortress 2; have had the pleasure of exploring work made in entirely new games, like BeamNG and Deep Rock Galactic; and others made using engines in their base form such as Unreal, iClone and Source. We’ve also started to see #genAIs become integrated into processes and works. What a year for creatives and creativity!

Our main observation is that we have noted a resurgence of interest in machinima as a terms for the creative form, and we feel creators are at long last focussing on creative practices rather than their channel return. Of course its great when these things collide but it was never what machinima was about originally: it was the passion for great storytelling, using novel processes to achieve a desired outcome and to share that with a community of equally passionate others. Other observations are why we are not seeing as many traditional short stories as we used to…

We hope you enjoy this ep as much as we have making it.

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