News update: interjecting our normal weekly service for a short special - Damien discusses the latest Kitbash contest. Links in the show notes.

Credits -
Speaker/Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

We have another packed news update ep this week, check out the show notes for links to our discussion points -
1:14 iClone 8 update discussion, and Phil picks the discussion up again at 34:38 on broken grass

6:30 Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools release discussion

8:20 Starfield expansion pack discussion

10:00 Documentary machinima: focus on TF2

10:45 Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreasson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!)

12:27 Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance

12:50 Denuvo’s release of Unbotify and discussion

25:00 YouTube app update discussion

27:30 Nice projects to take a look at, genAI and Metropius, an example of a deiselpunk world-based story with numerous creative treatments – worth taking a look at for its interesting monetisation strategy

32:00 Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun!

37:36 Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

45:15 YouTube AI disclosure rules – how are we complicit in a new citizen science project? We extend the discussion reflecting on the algorithm detection processes and what impact this may have on AI generated music and AI cloned voices.

1:06:50 Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article

1:07:47 Shameless plug: Phil and Damien’s channel livestreams, respectively on Sunday and Monday

Credits
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice

This week, we take a deep dive into a film from one of the original machinima creator studios, Dead on Cue. This comprised the duo Mike Holochwost and Brian Mayberry. The film, Fake Science, had a couple more iterations, including one that allowed it to be played in the game itself, which was Half Life. It was released some 3 years before YouTube, and is another great example of how games could be used to produce artworks. Its wide recognition led to careers in games dev and production for both Mike and Brian, the former working on RoosterTeeth's RWBY series and the latter on cinematics for games like the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and Defiance. Brian is still active in the games dev industry and is working on his first game, called Gone Camping. Check out the discussion and memories we share.

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

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.

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week we review two films and again attempt to work with a rather impressive AI genie who covers things we just could not... The first film selected is a Deep Rock Galactic music video machinima called We All Lift Together, using the Futuna theme song Warframe, made by Szczebrzeszyniarz Brzeczyszczyczmosszyski (yep, that's why we needed a genie). The second is a stunning visualisation of Helsreach made in Warhammer 40K by Richard Boylan, using a brilliant reading of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's novel by Jonathan Keeble. Whilst the graphic style presented us with some challenges, which we discuss at length, the quality of this is outstanding.

2:15 We All Lift Together music video discussion
17:47 Helsreach adaptation, made in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, discussion

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine, AI genie
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this ep, we discuss a film by Patrick Zeugirdor, which uses the game BeamNG to simulate realistic freeway crashes. The game features advanced physics and modding capabilities, allowing for detailed crash simulations. The film shows various crash scenarios, each with multiple camera perspectives, highlighting the game's recamming feature. We debate the film's educational value, its potential to encourage poor driving behavior, and its popularity due to morbid curiosity - a good combination? Suffice to say, it evokes some strong emotions from us! We also discuss the game's potential for use in narrative storytelling and its realistic portrayal of accidents.

2:33 Phil introduces the film
8:33 Ricky’s comments: crash test dummies; machinima as spectacle; is this educational?
14:13 Damien’s comments: it’s not a comedy! and limitations of the game
18:16 Tracy’s comments: from a nice driving vid to a compete horror story to has this just gone too far?
30:13 We discuss the pros and cons of the film and its effects

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

This week is our monthly news ep. We discuss various developments in the machinima and virtual production community. Tracy mentions the Reallusions 2024 3D Character Contest, highlighting Stefan Dufour's entry. Phil and Tracy discuss the potential of AI in character creation. Damien reports on Activision shutting down a Call of Duty mod and the impact of AI on modding. We also cover the Dragon Age: The Veil Guard game, the Secret Level series on Amazon Prime, and the new game inZOI. Phil introduces Daz AI Studio, a generative AI platform for DAZ Studio, and reflects on the impact of AI on the music industry, sharing the story of composer Sasha transitioning to AI-generated music.

1:14 Reallusion’s 3D Character Creator contest

3:41 Skibidi Toilet being made into a move with Michael Bay? No way!

5:03 Sandbox, the spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod

8:42 Celebrating TF2 community – a great fan-made trailer promo

9:21 Activision shuts down a key CoD mod – not the best choice, and we discuss how the community is responding to this, free mods and review bombs

16:58 Gamescon notes… Dragon Age; Secret Level on Amazon Prime; Inzoy

22:34 DAZ Studio has a great AI tool in it

25:25 Filmmusic.io update – the real impact of generative AI?

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Rice
Producer/editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

What is #machinima?! Good question these days, and this week we review a new video essay on tackling just that question... which is always interesting for us pioneers and vets to reflect on in this podcast. In the vid we review, Collin Aull introduces a few thoughts we've not really considered before, plus some comments we've discussed many times over the years, so its worth a listen as well as if you want to spot some of the older machinimas from those very early years in the narrative edit.

1:14 Ricky discusses his latest performance award success
8:49 Shout out for @Mr_Matt_Lee - some of the best build tuts around
11:22 Ricky introduces Collin Aull's video essay: The Game of Video
15:52 Damien's comments
17:27 Phil's comments
24:05 Tracy's comments
our conclusions... the biggest problem today is finding good machinima (because we know it exists as evidenced in EVERY episode of this show)!

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer/Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats