This episode is Ricky’s December film pick, Artists of Second Life by Teal Aurelia, released 3 October 2022. We discuss the emerging trend of photography in virtual worlds and reflect on the significance of the compositing used by the creator of this film, which has a surprising backdrop to the runway style presentation of ‘inspiring’ characters. Plus, we reflect on the state of TV advertising today!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Links & Show Notes
Film –
and this is Teal’s editing and compositing process video we discuss in our review –
Create Studio Pro – a low cost tool for editing short form content such as adverts
This week’s Tech Update picks for machinima, virtual production and 3D content producers:
Nvidia RTX4080
Nvidia is launching two RTX 4080 graphics cards in November… you know what they say, you wait ages for a bus and then two come at once: the RTX 4080 12GB and RTX 4080 16GB. Here’s the story on PC Gamer‘s website. You can also catch up on all latest Nvidia’s announcements made in Jensen Huang’s (CEO) keyote at GTC in September in this video and on their blog here.
Ricky comments: Of course it was only a matter of time before NVidia announced the 40x series of RTX graphics cards. Two models have been announced so far, the 4080 and the 4090, with the 30x series sticking around for the lower price range. My guess is so they can focus their resources on producing more of just two high end cards instead of a whole range. Although given the prices of these new cards ($800+), I think I’ll be sticking with my 3070 for the time being.
UE 5.1.0
Unreal Engine have teased the new features coming to V5.1.0 – see the features documentation on their website here. Onsetfacilities.com has produced a nice overview – link here – and a nice explainer by JSFilmz here –
Cine Tracer
Check out the new Actor Animation system in Cine Tracer v0.7.6. This update gives the Actors a set of talking animations that can be used as an alternative to the Posing system.
Follow the socials on Instagram and download Cine Tracer on Steam
Sketchfab
Sketchfabis doing a weekly listing of top cultural heritage and history models – these are actually pretty amazing and of course downloadable (for a fee)!
DALL-E
DALL-E, one of the creative AI generators that is all the buzz at the moment, has developed a new feature called Outpainting which can help users extend an image beyond its original borders by adding visual elements in the same style, or taking a story in new directions. This could be great for background shots in virtual productions.
Second Life
Second Life have launched a puppetry project for their avatars. As Wagner James Au reports in his regular blog on all things metaverse and Second Life in particular, this is using a webcam and mocap. Check out Au’s review of it here and go directly to Second Life here to read their post about it and follow their channel on YouTube for latest updates and how-tos here.
Eleven Labs
Eleven Labs have launched Voice Conversion. This lets you transform one person’s voice into another’s. It uses a process called voice cloning to encode the target voice – ie, the voice we convert to – to generate the same message spoken in a way which matches the target speaker’s identity but preserves the original intonation. What’s interesting about this is the filmmaking potential but of course there are very clearly IP interests that have to be considered here – it has potential for machinima application but beware the guidelines on using it. Importantly, note that it is primarily going to be used as part of an identity-preserving automatic dubbing tool which Eleven is launching in 2023. More here on this and the guidlines on using Voice Conversion.
In this episode, Ricky, Tracy, Phil and Damien review latest machinima and virtual production news items: contest updates, amazing new music videos made using Unreal Engine 5, how to turn MidJourney creations into 3D objects ready for animation, bringing in3D avatars from your phone into Reallusion’s Character Creator 4, Dreamwork’s Moonray becoming open source, Nvidia Omniverse 2022.1 update, Adobe Premiere Pro’s filmmakers guide, Lynchland in Second Life and more!
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
0:27 Nvidia Omniverse Machinima Contest #madeinmachinima results, entries showreel, announcement of winners at SIGGRAPH and links to winners (via 80.lv) Simon Lavit and runners up Nicklas Lotz and Ted Saguindel
2:54 Tracy’s interview with John MacInnes on his latest Unreal Challenge contest: Mood Scene – the contest begins 1 Sept
9:36 Trailer for an upcoming fan film by Unreal Cinema, made in Unreal Engine 5: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Kotor: Episode 1 – The Spire, premiered 5 August 2022
11:31 Dreamworks announces that its Moonray platform will become open source
16:22 19-20 September, remember the Nvidia GTC event is always worth following!
In this episode, Damien, Ricky and Tracy discuss the release of Reallusion’s iClone 8 and Character Creator 4, the use of OpenAI for generating machinima scripts, legalese and Star Citizen’s users rules update, latest contests and challenges for machinima creators, technical notes and project updates, including Pooky Amsterdam’s announcement of her latest project, the world’s first Metaverse musical
YouTube Version of this Episode
Show Notes and Links
0:35 Feedback from our listeners, thanks Ben Tuttle, 3DChick, Mike Clements, CD and Pooky Amsterdam
34:10 No excuses: Nvidia Omniverse Machinima competition closes 27 June 2022 – and here’s the link to Ricky’s interview with Dane Johnston as the Machinima app was being launched last year
38:40 2nd Annual Film Festival for Fantasy Faire in Second Life, organized by Saffia Widdeshins and Chantal Harvey. Congratulations to winners – links are HERE and Pryda Parx epic fly through the Fantasy Faire sim is HERE
41:19 Especially for Ricky: Elden Ring’s new VR mod by Luke Ross (Patreon channel)
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.
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