This week, we cover a lot of things this month, as usual, but start with a tribute to a machinima pioneer who has sadly crossed the bridge into an unknown world – Tutsy NAvArAthnA. We then go through some more fascinating projects that we want to share, more about genAI and machinima, a bunch of new tools and techniques, some wise words from some great artists, latest games and relevant updates. All links below.

YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Celebrating Tutsy NAvArAthAa / Basile Vignes’ Life

RIP Tutsy

Completely Machinima Interview with Tutsy Navarathna here https://completelymachinima.com/cm-interview-tutsy-navarathna/

Flowers of Evil filmed by Tutsy Navarathna, discussed on our episode here https://completelymachinima.com/s4-e121-cosmic-flowers-of-evil-mar-2024/

Glasz DeCuir’s tribute here –

and an interview with the man himself, recorded for the Machinima Expo –

Projects

A RDR2 inspired Minecraft animation made using Blender

An Egyptian Renaissance cinematic made in Unreal Engine –

A trailer for an upcoming movie which the creators are trying to fund and involve the original voice actors from Team Fortress 2 –

An intro to an updated game, Back to the Future 2025, made in Unreal Engine –

And a webcam test for metahuman, also in Unreal Engine –

genAI projects worth looking at –

Interesting Convos

Darren Aronofsky and Demis Hassabis on storytelling in the age of AI –

AIFF 2025, update here

Judge backs AI gen firm called Anthropic over use of copyrighted books, here

I turned down a [REDACTED] show –

New tools, techniques & how tos

Meta’s Worlds creator tool for VR, here

Eleven Labs – another update!

Creating a crowd of metahumans in Unreal –

Character Creator 5 update and connection to Unreal –

Fender Studio release for creating audio for 8 tracks, here

Martin Bell’s Unreal tutorial series –

How one detail completely changed a scene –

A LoRA for a Pierson’s Puppeteer –

NaturalVision Enhanced – release trailer –

Game Release

Dune Awakening –

Cyberpunk 2077 –

And finally…

Fortnite definition of machinima states: ‘the use of real-time computer graphics engines, like that used with Fortnite, to create a cinematic production.  The word machinima is a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema.’ 

Take a look at the interview Tracy did with Epic’s Chief Tech Officer Kim Libreri in Pioneers in Machinima!