Suno

S4 E141 Machinima News Omnibus (Aug 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 7, 2024 Leave a reply

Another packed episode of news items we found for machinima creators everywhere. We take a look at some games news including several that have released music albums recently and discuss why we think that is. We go through some of the latest AI matters, including Vimeo’s new AI content guidelines. We found one of the best Unreal master classes we ever seen, more like a work of art than a ‘how to’, but since its by the amazing Luis Andrade, we’d expect nothing less. We also found some partciularly juicy tidbits we think you’ll enjoy.



YouTube Version of This Episode

https://youtu.be/iQgqKU3O1eM

Show Notes & Links

Games, games, games…

PLEASE, if anyone has any great WoW machinima, share them with us!!! We are desperate to celebrate WoW achieving 20 years, but we just can’t find anything worth sharing…

Game developers releasing music albums, Runescape, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Tekken 8, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and Deep Rock Galactic… a sideswipe at machinima, another way to make money from content creators or a quick way to get their IP onto YouTube?

Game destruction and consumer rights… what are the unintended consequences of Accursed Farms and others attempts to clear up this mess on machinima creators? See video discussion here –

No Man’s Sky Worlds, update trailer –

Flight Simulator cities update –

AI news

Epic AI gymnastics –

ReplAI Film Festival challenges, link here

Runway Gen-3 out, link here

ElevenLabs voice cleaner, link here

Vimeo’s AI policy, link here

Suno’s creator contest results, and the winner is… Maybe!

Unreal!

Luis Andrade’s stunning ‘how to‘ video for the Firefly music video, a work of art as well as a tutorial –

Andy Davis released 5 sets of dynamic lenses now available on the Unreal Marketplace. No blueprints, only lens objects that apply to any CineCamera. When pulled from focusMin to INF, they distort dynamically. Sourced from VFX assets to work interactively within game engine, link here. This is an example of what they do, Vimeo link here

Tidbits

Lip sync tutorial for ComfUI –

Making the case for alternative content creator distribution channels, comments by Harmony Korine here

Video game actors are officially on strike (SAG AFTRA)… but those working on GTA6 are not permitted to, link here

S4 E128 Machinima News Omnibus (May 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes May 8, 2024 Leave a reply

Our May update on machinima and virtual production related news highlights some of the latest generative AI tools, warts and all, and brings to attention several of the latest machinima potential games, including Jaws, Jurassic World Evolution, 1943: Rise of the Hydra and Harold Halibut. We discuss the challenges filmmakers face when developing games from their IP, why Kickstarter isn’t a good strategy for raising funding for smaller studios, the [almost] final instalment of the RoosterTeeth saga and Second Life’s latest film festival, Fantasy Faire. All with our usual discursive aplomb (despite Ricky being mia, reportedly on a skinny dipping retreat) and a few non machinima related asides!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

AI Genies

Art of the Problem about the history of development of generative AI – it’s a documentary including interviews with some of the scientists attributed with developing the building blocks for the techs. Link here.

Google Deepmind has created a new AI model Genie that can create playable worlds in the style of 2D platforms, using an image as a prompt, or a sketch or text description.  A twitter thread link here.

Stability AI has introduced its Stable Audio 2.0 model, that enables high quality, full tracks with musical structure up to 3 minutes long from a single text prompt –

According to some, however, its not quite as good as Suno –

Musk has announced that Grok 1.5 Vision which aims to connect the digital and physical worlds with a multi-modal model will be released imminently – here’s link to the website about it https://x.ai/blog/grok-1.5v

Here’s the original style transfer post using Joker –

and here’s a tutorial on how to replace anyone in a video stream –

And here’s a link to the Arnie style example

New games

A new JAWS experience on Roblox called JAWS: Infested Waters.  More about it here –

JT Music’s rap about Palworld –

GTA6 trailer is a nice teaser –

1943: Rise of Hydra storyworld –

Interestingly, this is the one that Kim Libreri showcased at the Game Dev Conference event a few weeks ago –

Harold Halibut, a stop-mo animation game, trailer –

Steam link https://store.steampowered.com/app/924750/Harold_Halibut/

Projects

Blackmilk Studio A 1000 Suns series is definitely worth a watch! Channel link here.

Star Wars 1950s super Panavision 70 style short made with generative AI tools, including the script.  Its been put together by Abandoned Films –

Vikings and Aliens, using Kickstarter (feature image for this post)!  Here’s a link to the teaser –

And here’s a link to the Kickstarter if you’d like to support it.

Final fantasy!

RoosterTeeth going quietly, nah –

Fantasy Faire, Second Life Film Festival hosted by Chantal Harvey and Safia Widdeshins (to follow).

S4 E123 Fluxus: The Dog Days (Apr 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes April 3, 2024 Leave a reply

The Dog Days is an unusual machinima that combines the glitchiness of AI generated content composited with a Second Life avatar. Whilst not realtime, the performative aspect of this work is evident and we reflect on the fit of the current state of generative AI with the Fluxus art movement. We discuss what The Dog Days means, metaphorically and literally, and how we interpret this film concluding it is not a happy outcome for the focal character. The Dog Days evokes memories of a long-ago childhood spent with a much loved pet but the non-sense words and images are of something far more sinister, contextualized by the current general media coverage of wars in Eastern Europe, Middle East and elsewhere. We also discuss our interpretations of the fragility represented in the avatar, including the role of generative AI in becoming cyborg.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes and Links

The Dog Days by Fau Ferdinand and Elle Thorkveld, released 17 Feb 2024

Fau Ferdinand’s channel is here – https://vimeo.com/fauferdinand

Second Front arts movement here

Fau Ferdinand on Roles 4 Women here

About the Fluxus art movement here

S4 E120 Machinima News Omnibus (Mar 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes March 14, 2024 Leave a reply

This week’s podcast episode is our curated news omnibus for this month.  We cover lots, and enjoy reflecting on the significance of the stories we highlight for the world of machinima and virtual production. 

btw, the international internet pipes failed and microwaves fried our apps during this recording session, video corrupted and monsters ran loose among us, so enjoy the voice data we’ve managed to resurrect and video clips we’ve added – we’ll be back next week in full glory!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Fan communities under pressure?

Valve’s Steam policy and recent take downs for Team Fortress 2 and Portal fan projects – article on Games Radar here

Half Life 3 aka Entropy Zero (and 2) projects – Fandom.com overview here and video –

New Moviemaking Toolsets

Blockbuster Inc, Prologue version now on Steam here

Demo by Orbital Potato here –

Replikant now in free beta on the Unreal Marketplace.

Replikant has a Youtube channel with plenty of tutorials on it already, and there’s a great demo of it which gives you a sense of the animation quality it produces –

And for those wanting a quick and dirty tutorial on UE5, check this out –

Steamboatin’ Along!

Minecraft Steamboat Willie which is a fun take on it, made by Red and Blue –

Fewture Studios’ trailer for The Return of Steamboat Willie, made in Unreal Engine –

Screams

The origins and impact of the Wilhelm Scream – BBC shorts here

More about Sheb Wooley here

And another video about it here –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvZYzg7o68

AI Genies Rising

Community action against deepfakes of Taylor Swift – link to story on BBC site here

Jae Solina has done a nice overview of OpenAI’s SORA here –

and this is a link to RunwayML’s video controller toolset (and our feature image for this post) –

The Suno model, released by ElevenLabs, for music composition – here is a fun example on X –