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Tech Update (May 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog May 15, 2023 Leave a reply

This week, our review is a roundup of new releases, some tools and tuts that add realism to productions and some interesting new tools announced for moviemakers everywhere, irrespective of creative engine preference.

Releases

Blender has released version 3.5, with an astonishing hair toolset. See the overview here –

UE5 editor for Fortnite has been released – UEFN is a PC application for designing, developing, and publishing games and experiences directly into Fortnite. You can see the release launch at GDC here –

Reallusion has released an astonishing range of 3D motions and characters for Actorcore, called Run For Your Life. Its not cheap but then again it may well be the only action set you ever need. Here’s a a demo reel –

Facegood’s Avatary (made in China) has released a desktop facial mocap system with some basic functionality for free. Here’s a nice little overview of what this version of it can do –

Realism

The quality of modelling continues to astound – I’m still blown away by Unreal’s Substrate materials system, although you need an epic system to render no doubt –

However, there are a few other releases that we’ll share with you this month too. Firstly, the UE Crashes course – not just any ole course, of course, but one where you can see how to animate ‘epic’ car crashes in UE5 (is that too many puns… sure it is) –

Secondly, Taichi Kobayashi has developed a stunning Cliffwood Village – a large-scale and beautifully detailed 3D model for UE5 –

Finally, William Faucher’s use of Reality Captures’ tech to create an arctic environment for UE5 is also something stunning to see. Check out his overview of the creative process here –

Movie-makers

An interesting development is the release of what’s being badged as The Movies mark II, called Blockbuster Inc in which “You will take total control of your very own movie studio. You will be able to construct all the facilities, hire and manage all sorts of employees and stars with the aim to produce the most prolific films and TV” (Super Sly Fox, developer). Its not yet been released, but you can find the holding page on Steam here.

Big news of the month is that Moviestorm‘s long awaited previsualisation software, FirstStage (although they need a new intro vid on their YouTube channel asap), is finally out of beta with ver 32 (our cover image for this post) –

This will surely be a useful tool for all those major creative projects, whatever the final engine used may be including film, TV and video as well as 3D environment engine-based, and it is very reasonably priced at $10/month per user (non-commercial). For those with short memories, Moviestorm (its creator channel is here fyi) launched originally in 2007 at the First European Machinima Festival as I recall and became a platform that many used to create content long before the likes of Reallusion’s iClone and Source Filmmaker got a wider foothold. One of my all-time favourites made in Moviestorm was IceAxe’s (aka Iain Friar) Clockwork (2008), a retelling of that classic tale by Anthony Burgess –

What will be interesting, however, is how it will compete with the in-engine toolsets being developed along similar lines, for example, Matt Workman’s UE Cine Tracer which delivers a similar experience. Of course, there are also individual tools, such as this camera crane by Cinematography Database for UE5 –

That’s it for this week.

Projects Update: Feb 2023

Tracy Harwood Blog February 20, 2023 Leave a reply

This week’s #MondayMotivation post has some more great examples of machinima and virtual production projects. We have a selection of shorts made using Unreal Engine and another entirely made in Blender, plus a couple of ‘making ofs…’ and a ‘role of…’ also worth checking out.

Projects

An artist we’ve talked about before who has created extensive work over many years in Second Life is Bryn Oh, and now she has created a nostalgic experience called Lobby Cam which is available on Steam, made using UE5. The experience is a walking tour of an extensive environment and a story told through the pages of a ripped up diary. The project has been reviewed by James Wagner Au on his blog, New World Notes here. It is described as part of a larger narrative, and here’s a video sampler of the tour produced as part of that too… an interesting approach to virtual storytelling –

Off planet, another project which contains amazing detail of other worlds is by Melody Sheep, called The Sights of Space: A Voyage to Spectacular Alien Worlds (released 29 Nov 2022). This a 30 minutes-long film of speculative depictions of space scenes based on ‘current scientific understanding’ of the Milky Way, albeit with extensive creative license. If you ever wanted to get into a new type of documentary, this is probably the one to have on your watchlist –

We were also thrilled to see what promises to be a very interesting new series launching later this year by Melody Sheep, called The Human Future, check out the trailer on the channel here.

In our next project pick, called JOYCE by GTshortStories (released 14 Dec 2022), UE5 and every available tool with it has been used to create an interesting space story. This mixes live action with some well done animation, and the integration is done really well, so its a great example to check out. Joyce is a backchatting robot exploring a facility along with Sargeant Terry Brown – there are many references to popular sci-fi tropes, so do check this one out! GTshortStories is also putting out other creative content, so check out the channel too.

Our final space project for this week is Countdown, by Andrew Klimov on the CGChannel. This is a fast paced story of a crash landing onto an alien planet, all about the crash itself, and it certainly makes you feel it. The crash is the beginning of a new series and you can find out more about that on his website here. There’s also an interesting breakdown of the filmmaking process on his Vimeo channel here.

Our next project pick goes back to the 11th Century, inspired by an Umbrian folk tale in the novel ‘E poi si fece buio’ by Matteo Bebi. It is about a dream by Imiltrude who lived in a hidden village and was sentenced to death for having caused a fire that destroyed a city. The film HIMIL is by Tiziano Fioriti and Andrea Brunetti, made using UE5 and is a fascinating first person perspective with a very well done soundscape –

Our next project pick is a Blender-made movie and another example of great storytelling, this time in a cyberpunk environment with a really nice twist in the tale. Not sure it would be Ricky’s cup of tea, to his point about emotional representation, but I certainly loved it! The story has been created by the Blender HQ team, so its by no means an indie endeavour with a team of folks behind the processes employed but definitely worth watching – check out the pace of the action and sound design in particular. The film is called Charge – Blender Open Movie (released 15 Dec 2022) and you can access the production files and making of videos for the film here.

Making of…

We always love a good homage to Star Wars, and this week we have a feature from the Reallusion Magazine, which describes how iClone and the Vicon mocap system have been used to recreate that iconic ‘I am your father’ scene from the Empire Strikes Back episode. The short has been made by Luis Cepeda from Quitasueño Studios, based in the Dominican Republic, and he provides a great step-by-step guide to how the short was made with a video overview here –

Ever wondered how to use a midi controller with UE5 that lets you use the controller for all sorts of effects in real-time just with the keyboard? Well, here’s a fantastic video tutorial for you by Taiyaki Studios featuring Cory Williams –

Role of…

And finally this week, we share Loralee Sundra’s video on the Internet Archive about the value of public domain films from her perspective as a Frontline Fellow at the Documentary Film Legal Clinic at UCLA School of Law.  Her talk was part of the Internet Archive’s Public Domain Day 2023 celebration, held on 25 Jan 2023.



Contests Update: Jan 2023

Tracy Harwood Blog January 30, 2023 Leave a reply

This week’s #MondayMotivation gives you a selection of more projects to take a look at, these are from recent contests and challenges that have been taking place across different platforms.

Unreal Short Film Challenge: Australia & NZ

This is an annual contest that provides two weeks of training on Unreal, followed by eight weeks in which to create a film. We reviewed some of the films emanating from last year’s challenge and this contest resulted in some equally stunning films. Here’s the highlights reel –

But do check out the films too. Two we particularly loved are narrated, which is not a method we see used all that often in shorts these days. This one is Revolver and Heckler’s Black Wing –

and this one of a solo dancer is beautifully done, by Adam Walker Film, called vQsv –

This one mixed 3D and 2D, mentored by Spectre Studios, who’s 2020 Roborovski we shared a couple of months ago, is also very well done – Robo Ramen, by UTS Animal Logic Academy –

There are numerous other to check on Unreal’s channel too, link here.

KitBash3D: Mission to Minerva

Another time delimited contest, KitBash3D launched a free asset pack, its Mission to Minerva, and 40 days later, 32,000 entries from 174 countries answered the call to ‘create a new Galaxy’. Films were made using Blender and Unreal for the ‘in-motion’ category, and another category of concept artwork just required stills. What an astonishing feat to go through all those entries and select just a few winners! Here’s the sizzle reel –

In-motion winners compilation –

and here’s the winner, Secret Moon by Orencloud. This is stunning to say the least and we’ll be reviewing this as part of our February podcast film review too –

In the meantime, KitBash3D’s Mission to Minerva world kit is stil available as a free download, you can access it here.

Second Life Showcase

Not a contest as such, but we wanted to share a site that’s produced by a group of SL Video Creators, aimed at inspiring residents to create. Each month, they select the best films and share them on their website – check it out in the link here

SLVideoGroup website screencap

MacInnes Studios Dance Challenge

Following hot on the heels of the outcome of the Mood Scene challenge, John MacInnes launched a TikTok challenge to create an avatar dancer. TikTok is an interesting choice for video sharing for machinima, and its one we’ll be commenting on more over the coming weeks. This contest was won by a virtual Freddie Mercury, created by Jean Campos (feature image) –

@macinnesstudios

#unrealengine#ue5#avatardancechallenge#macinnesstudios#web3#metamovie #metaverse#liminalvibes#NFT#dance#dancechallenge#avatar

♬ original sound – MacInnesStudios

Runners up were Pooky Amsterdam, Bruschi Bruschmann, Alex Sura and Sergey Vereschagin.

Projects Update (Jan 2023)

Tracy Harwood Blog January 2, 2023 Leave a reply

To kick start 2023 with a virtual BANG, we are highlighting some projects we’ve seen that are great examples of machinima and virtual production, demonstrating a breadth of techniques, a range of technologies, and comprise good ole’ short-form storytelling. We also really enjoyed Steve Cutts tale of man… let’s hope for a peaceful and happy year. Enjoy!

Force of Unreal

We were massively impressed throughout last year with the scope of creative work being produced in Unreal Engine. So, we have a few more to tell you about!

RIFT by HaZimation is a Sci-Fi Anime style film with characters created in Reallusion’s Character Creator. The film debuted at the Spark Computer Graphics Society’s Spark Animation Festival last October. We love the stylized effects that have been used here, which Haz Dulull, director/producer, describes as a combination of 2D and 3D in this article (scroll to below half way). We are also impressed that those same 3D assets and environment used in the film making process have also been integrated into a FPS game. The game is currently available free on Steam in early access here. This is another great example of creators using virtual assets in multiple ways – and builds very much on the model that Epic envisaged when they first released the City sample last year, hot on the heals of the release of The Matrix Resurrections film and The Matrix Awakens: UE5 Expeirence for which the city was created. We also love HaZimation’s strategy of co-creation for the new RIFT game experience with players – “We at HaZimation believe that a great game is only possible with direct feedback from the audience as early as possible” (Steam). We fully expect to see more creative works using the RIFT content in future too. Congrats to everyone involved.

As any of you that have been following the podcast will have gathered, we love a good alien film too, and we have found another made in UE5 that we really enjoyed. This one is called The Lab, by Haylox (released 14 Sept 2022). The director/producer builds the suspense well in this although, of course, its the same Alien trope we’ve seen many times over. Nonetheless, this has nice effects and well balanced soundscape.

We also love a good music video. The next project is a dance video made by Guru Pradeep using the music ‘Urvashi’ – Kaadhalan (A R Rahman), released 2 Aug 2022. Its a little rough around the edges, having seemingly been cobbled together with Megascans, Sketchfab and items grabbed the UE Marketplace, but the mocap is done particularly well, although we don’t know what was used, as is the editing. We look forward to seeing more from this creator in future.

Aspiring Assets

We want to highlight the amazing content that’s being developed for use in UE with Reality Capture. In this video, which is not a film but a ‘show and tell’ more than a tut, William Faucher reveals how he created a Lofoten-inspired cabin environment from the 1800s. Its impressive stuff if you have an eye of photogrammetry as well as some of the challenges for asset creation and there are lots of tips and hints in here with more detailed tutorials on his channel.

We have also been impressed with the range of fabulous assets that are being created and used in the Kitbash 3D Mission to Minerva challenge (closed 2 Dec 2022) the outcome of which will be a new galaxy of the combined concept artworks and in-motion content being submitted. There are some really nice videos which you can find using #kb3dchallenge on YouTube that are definitely worth a looksee. We liked this one, which has a nice touch of a disaster about it, by Mike Seto.

With an impressive field of judges that included talent acquisition representatives from NASA Concept Labs, Netflix, Riot Games and ILM, winners were announced on 20 Dec.

And Finally?

Let’s hope for a more progressive year in 2023 than the hate-filled traps that befell so many across a whole plethora of virtual platforms and IRL… and maybe reflect on the message contained within this great fun short, created in Clip Studio Paint with Cinema 4D and After Effects. The film is by Steve Cutts, called A Brief Disagreement, released 30 Sept 2022. Steve is not a nOOb in the world of machinima (and the earlier days of Reallusion’s CrazyTalk) – his classic comedy about the fate of Roger and Jessica Rabbit, as well as every other iconic cartoon character you can think of, even 8 years after its release is still a good laugh for those of a certain age (and its the featured image for this article in case you were wondering)!

S3 E58 Film Review: The Darkside EP1: Chrome Armor by Scott Barrett (Dec 2022)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 29, 2022 Leave a reply

Our last episode of 2022 is Damien’s Pick of the Month, The Darkside EP1: Chrome Armor by Scott Barrett, released 22 October 2022. This is a shining example of Star Wars fandom at its best, a la Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead with shades of Red Vs Blue in the mix. Its made in Unreal Engine 5 and has some excellent mocap although how the armor has been applied, we’re not too sure!



YouTube Version of this Episode

Film and Links

The Darkside EP1: Chrome Armor –

Freesound.org, great for music and soundscape designs

Check out Gildenstern and Rosencrantz Are Dead, this clip from 1990 with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman (directed by Tom Stoppard) –

and RoosterTeeth’s Red Versus Blue, episode 1 (dating from 2003) here –

Credits

Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine

Producer: Phil Rice

Editor: Ricky Grove

Music: CreateStudio Pro licensed music. fallbackcrush / whistling auld lang syne @ freesound.org https://freesound.org/people/fallbackcrush/sounds/413563/

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