TF2

S5 E151 Machinima News Omnibus (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 9, 2024 Leave a reply

This month, we have another packed episode, iClone 8 update, Balder’s Gate 3 modding tools, Starfield expansion, projects, projects, projects, Sketchfab, Backrooms, YouTube AI disclosure and more. Check out the ep and be sure to comment too.



YouTube Version of This Eposide

Show Notes & Links

iClone 8 update

Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools, news item here

Starfield expansion pack –

Documentary machinima: focus on TF2 –

Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreesson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!). Check out the article here

Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance –

Denuvo’s release of Unbotify –

YouTube app update discussion

Nice projects: Runway Gen3 Steampunk –

Metropius deiselpunk –

Mad Max memes –

Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun –

Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

YouTube AI disclosure rules, described here

Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article here

Shameless plug: Phil’s livestream show and Damien’s livestream show

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.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Key trends observed –

  • The highest quality of machinima we’ve ever seen
  • Unreal, by comparison, doesn’t actually really compare!
  • Experimentation
  • Meme’s
  • Distribution channels
  • Generative AIs

Our reviews, mentioned during discussion in order –

And, check out the bonus episode of our very own RickyAI –

S4 E144 Assault on 2Fort (Aug 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes August 28, 2024 Leave a reply

This week we take a look at another stunning Team Fortress 2 short called Assault on 2Fort by JP Stevens aka Lolripk, a recommendation made to us by Dominzki (whose own TF2 short we reviewed in E135). What a great choice this is: we loved this film, a classic RED vs BLU tale but with a layer of emotion that is as beautifully portrayed as it is unexpected in SFM. These characters have real depth to them and we note how that’s been achieved, even though the focal character doesn’t even speak. Did we mention the fight choreography too? We reflect on the game lore, the significance of the community in the creative process, and how this story is told from an unusal perspective. We also reflect on why machinima series almost never complete… but we certainly hope Lolripk doesn’t follow the pattern!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Assault on 2Fort by Lolripk, released 9 July 2022 –

Trailer for part 2 –

About the TF2 game lore, wiki link 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 –