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S5 E160 Machinima News Omnibus (Dec 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes December 12, 2024 Leave a reply

Our monthly news update this month covers more genAI matters, game-related items and WoWness in the form of a 2 hour + stunning orchestral performance celebrating 20 years of musical history. Check out the news and our discussion, and do leave comments too!



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

A new AI-focussed filmmaking studio has launched, called Asteria.  Its argument is that AI can change the way indies make and distribute content, providing new opportunities, and presumably new types of content – its very much the same point we made a few months back about mAIchinima. Link here.

The Silent Hill 2 Remake with a mod that turns it into a VR game, made by Praydog that gives the game more of a first person perspective.  Demo video here –

Philip Rosedale has rejoined the team at Linden Labs’ Second Life as the CTO – roundtable discussion with the community in November here –

There’s also a great interview that James Wagner Au has done in two parts on his New World Notes blog here

Remarkable Life of Ibelin trailer here (feature image) –

World of Warcraft 20 years of music orchestral concert, video of performance here –

Steam Launcher update now with recording tools for machinimators. News item here.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard official launch trailer –

Half Life 2 RTX, tribute video promo here –

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 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 E98 World of Warcraft/Cyberpunk 2077: Neo Stormwind

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 11, 2023 Leave a reply

WOW! Our collective adjective for this World of Warcraft / Cyberpunk 2077 mashup. This is a stunningly edited urban observational film, set in a strange new world the like of which we have never seen before – a cacophany in a good way. Shades of Blade Runner, Robocop and Mad Max run through the film, with a soundscape and accompanying music that are a perfect fit. We also loved that  @DurenMachinima  has cited his inspiration, mentioning the late, great  @Phixor2000  among others.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Neo Stormwind (WoW Machinima) by Duren, released 4 Aug 2023 –

Olibith series called Never Stay Tuned, an hilarious commentary on popular culture within the World of Warcraft –

IK edit, Secrets of Ulduar, which is a cinematic of Wow that has been remastered –

S3 Special: Machiniplex Intro

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes July 28, 2023 Leave a reply

In this episode, Phil introduces the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection, a curated selection of machinimas from the early years. Machiniplex was a site created to host classic machinimas at the point that Machinima [dot] com began to assert its energies over the community as a corporate entity. The site was a community endeavour, with both Ricky and Phil playing a pivitol role in managing the project to preserve the original content the community had contributed to the early original Machinima website… until such time as it ran its course. In this ep, Phil and Ricky reminisce about the origins of Machiniplex and its contributors.

To celebrate the release of the curated collection, we have each selected a film we recall with particular fondness and discuss its significance. Phil has remastered each of the films using AI, not always a perfect process, so we also discuss his approach and techniques in bringing the original works up to 4K standard.

We encourage machinima fans everywhere to check out these films, not only were they brilliant in their day but in terms of storytelling, remain some of our favourite creative works against which we often draw comparisons when reviewing latest films.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Blahbalicious by Wendigo and Avatar, 1997 –

BOT by Digital Yoke, 2005? –

Edge of Remorse by Riot Films, 2006 –

The Snow Witch by Britannica Dreams, 2006 –

Phil’s trailer for the Machiniplex [Remastered] Channel –

Go to the Machiniplex [Remastered] Collection on Phil’s Vimeo channel here – website https://bit.ly/machiniplex or access the playlist here –

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Tracy Harwood and Ben Grussi’s Machinima Book, On Sale Now!