SUMMARY KEYWORDS
iclone, film, machinima, blender, game, fan, people, omniverse, thought, animation, bit, alien, software, content, character, damien, ricky, sniper, create, community

SPEAKERS
Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, Phil Rice

Damien Valentine 00:20
You got to talk about that a discussion. You want to do that at the end. I'll

Ricky Grove 00:23
take care of that. Okay. It'll be during the middle of it.

Damien Valentine 00:26
All right. Hello and welcome to our April instalment of film reviews for And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I am Damien Valentine. And I'm joined by Phil Rice. Hello, Ricky Grove. Hey there, and Tracy Harwood. Hi. So this month, we are going to be looking at films made with iClone. And one of the things is kind of stood out to me, it was it's very difficult to actually choose some because there are a lot of people doing very short experimental videos, you know, to show off what they can do, but not too many people actually making films. So I think we will struggle a little bit to find something so hope you enjoy our selection. And, Ricky, would you like to start with your choice?

Ricky Grove 01:21
Yeah, I decided to shoot. You know, it was odd. After going through Second Life, we had an abundance of choices. But then coming to Reallusion's iClone machinima. We were frustrated for all the reasons that Damien just outlined. So I decided to go back a bit and get to choose an older film that won in a Reallusion of contest at the time from 2009. And I wanted to get it in contrast, so we could look at where iClone came from, to where it is today. Because some of the other some of you have all picked up contemporary films. And the film that I chose is called The Sniper by Warlord created an iClone 4 in 2009. Now I'm friends with Warlord His name is MD McCallum. And I contacted him to ask him to give me some comments about it. So after my initial comments, I'm going to read some of the things that he said about making this film. I don't think it's a great machinima film, but it's an interesting mission film. It disguises the flaws of the iClone system iClone 4 system really well. The sound editing is excellent. The story drags a bit is a little sentimental. And as that has universal problem that machinima filmmakers have which is they always move the camera. They're always you know, some some dolly shots of pushing from pull out it's always moving. So if you're a machinima filmmaker think twice about doing moving camera shots. Also, the editing, better editing would have made the film better I would have tightened the story quite a bit. There's a long section where where the sniper, It's a world war two film the sniper is assigned to take out this high level German commander. And of course he's you know, he's doing his little crawl through it. And I think there's the crawl just seems to go on forever. You know, it has a surprisingly downbeat ending. Music is really good. And it's from all things The Movies and Fallout 3. And I thought I would really read to you some of the things that MD wrote to me. He said the first thing that comes to mind when I think about The Sniper was how difficult it was to put together back in 2009. With iClone 4. He said I was spoiled by 3d Studio Max, but I chose not to use it except to make props to because because to me that was not machinima. If you use industry tools, there was not a good way to blend different motion clips and no Curve Editor, so the animation jumped from motion to motion. This was very hard to miss transitions between most motions that identify iclone work from smoother game footage. He said the newsreel opening was done in black and white to make it very easy to blend the game and icon footage with no colour grading or extra work. With no volumetric lighting I had to use flashing low opacity stretched cone to recreate the flickering in the projector light in the visual light cone. For the scene of the bombers and the fighters flying in formation, I moved the sky. Actually a prop instead of the aeroplanes as I cloned, couldn't handle moving aeroplanes. A cringe moment for me was when what became known as the crawl some of my friends. It seemed like I had the sniper crawl forever to a bombed out house that went way beyond the bounds of proper timing. For cinematic purposes, it was too long and ran the risk of losing the audience or dampening the intensity. Having been through tonnes of professional scripts as a freelancer, I should have known that timing was way off. The sniper in the officer would both die. But the story allowed me not to reveal until the end that bit to add a bit more depth, something that humanised both of them to the same level. He said all of these years, I still remember the flaws over anything, but I still think it's not a bad film. He used Call of Duty World at War gameplay footage, The Movies, music, and Fallout 3 bombed out buildings and music. And I asked him, What did he think it would be like if he could make it in iClone 7 today. And he said, Well, if I did this today, with version seven, it would be totally different experience and could be produced in a fraction of the time with more time devoted to being creative, the lighting would have been much better instead of a flat, cartoony, and motions would have been blended seamlessly. Almost all of those limitations have been removed since then. And version 8 when it's released will take production to another level. So those are his comments on the film. I wanted to get your feedback on The Sniper guys.

Tracy Harwood 06:45
I stop it No, I, I I hear what he's said on that, and what and what your comments are. And clearly, you know, it's got all the kind of classic war movie war movie tropes that you can possibly imagine. They're all kind of in there. And yes, it is long. But it definitely has a way of building the tension through that kind of soundscape design and the music selection, as well as the the way that he narrated it intermittently. So a little bit of action, a little bit of narration, a little bit of something else, it kind of, you know, so I actually thought it started out really quite slowly. But then by about halfway through, it started to take me along with it a little more. I'm guessing, after the scene where it had been crawling forever. After that, it kind of kind of speeded up a bit probably. Yeah. I actually think it really does show its date though, in terms of the aesthetic design and the animation and whatnot. But it's generally quite watchable bizarrely from my point of view, anyway,

Phil Rice 07:58
yeah, yeah. I found it I found it enjoyable and a little nostalgic, having been producing machinima at that time to the for me the newsreel section was my favourite part. It's kind of funny to hear him talking about it almost that that he went with the black and white and the flicker to to disguise you know, different sources of footage that never even occurred to me watching it. I just just thought that's, that's pretty well done. And you're right, Ricky, the sound was good, the music was a good choice. There's one scene that that kind of made me laugh because it's the kind of mistake that that I would make as well. In addition to the, the restless camera syndrome, which I struggled with for many years, but there's one of those moves in particular, where it's some soldiers in a bunker, shooting one of the big machine guns and the camera pans to where it's right in front of this shooting machine gun as it goes by and it just kind of jarred me out of you know, this this this feel of let's recreate some news footage to this impossible shot. Camera moving right into the line of fire, and it kind of made me chuckle a minute it didn't I'm not being snooty about it or anything like that. It didn't spoil the film for me by any means. But it was kind of funny 'only in machinima' kind of moment. Yeah, can you even do that really? You know or I guess animation can too so yeah, yeah, I I enjoyed a lot of things about it. You're right Ricky it's not perfect. He said so as well. But yeah, given the the tools that he had to work with back then I experimented quite a bit with iClone in that time period and yeah, There's a lot you have to cut around. Moviestorm had some of the same issues that some of the transitions are just ridiculous. Yeah. And he did a good job of it. If you see like a really from for lack of a better word, amateurish, you and I have talked about the word amateur Ricky and how it's been misused, but I mean, in terms of when you when you look at a low quality, machinima film, they don't cut around that stuff. And there's these awkward moments and all that. And it takes a lot of time and thoughtfulness to, to kind of push through and get your story through with as few of those jarring transitions in the foreground as possible. And he did an excellent job with that. Sure did. Yeah. And any platform, even today's Damien can probably testify to this, even with modern iClone, there's gonna be moments where that's not quite right. And so yeah, you, you don't let that be in the final film, you figure out a way to change the shot at the right moment to, to cover those things. That's an important skill, but that anybody who's doing this does need to learn eventually. They do that in real film, too, by the way, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that gets snipped off, you know, because the actor stepped in front of the camera or their nose or looked at the camera or whatever. You just those things happen. You just cut around. He did a great job with that. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 11:42
I really enjoy it to do things that really stood out to me was a lot of iClone films at that time had this blinding effect where the walking animation didn't match the speed of the camera, so that next would kind of do this and wasn't present in this film. Because he very carefully had things like grass. So when the characters were walking along, you couldn't see the feet and you couldn't see that they weren't necessarily aligning notice that Yeah. So I think that's a really clever workaround for that you saying cutting around the problems? Well, I did. When I was getting started with iClone I students were things having the legs and the characters out of frame. So you couldn't see their feet weren't lining up? Sure. So yeah, that's good. And the other thing that is more of an accidental thing, the way that the film's aged, because I was the iClone 4 is very dated now compared to what iClone do now is the way that the black and white footage was made, I actually felt like that added something more to the film than it was actually intended. Because like the watch real footage from World War Two, obviously, they're very limited by the cameras they had at the time. So grainy, and it's obviously it's in black and white. And that's part of the, you know, part of the style of footage, and kind of had the same thing. You're looking at old iClone footage, and it's kind of getting that age, which still kind of that's interesting. But yeah, I felt like looking at old WWII more to finish where they couldn't capture more details. And obviously that was not intended. It wasn't something that we're all just thinking about when he made it. But it's something that really stood out to me when I was watching is that is something that happened completely by accident

Ricky Grove 13:26
Great point. I think in general, you know, machinima filmmakers are problem solvers. Because unlike Pixar, in which there are no limitations to what they can do in their animation in their world creation, you have to face certain limitations that the game provides you or the game based real time programme provides you. And part and a lot of machinima is problem solving scenes. In order to get as Phil pointed out that vision, that story that you want to tell them the way you want to tell it. So I think this is a good lesson and somebody who is really smart in solving their problems in order to tell the story that they wanted to well said.

Damien Valentine 14:12
That's a good find, Ricky, and I'm glad you said he's like kind for because I was looking at it thinking, I don't know which version of iClone this is. And he didn't say in the credit. So I was kind of curious, I'm glad you were able to clear it up for me,

Ricky Grove 14:25
there was no ease in or ease out for camera moves. So if you wanted to move the camera from one place on another, it's all linear. And so you would go to someplace and stop the camera would stop and then continue on to another place. No ease of movement at all. It was fascinating.

Damien Valentine 14:47
We just had a film that was iClone's past. So we're gonna move on to my pick now which is kind of more of a current iClone project, which is an alien found film called Alien: The Message and it's based on the the Alien films. And I believe it uses assets taken from the Alien Isolation video game to social voting to icon to create the atmosphere of the film in the world that is based on is quite a long film 40 minutes I did my best to sit through all of it. I don't know if you guys did, but guess why not? So what do you guys think of this film?

Ricky Grove 15:31
Well, I'm a, I'm a sucker for Alien films, anything that has Alien in the title, I'm down. I'm ready to roll. It doesn't make any difference. It can be the worst film it can be the greatest film that you put Alien in the title and I'm a fan. But I'd had to say I groaned when I saw the length was 42 minutes. Because you know, I've been complaining over the months that machinima is really more of a short term. You know, something, I had no problems. I enjoyed the entire film. And I stayed with it from beginning to end and went back and check some other things. A lot of effort went into making this film and it shows you know. The film that you linked us to by the way, the director of the film is Rene Jacob, the link to the film that we watched on YouTube is a revised version, which has a scene cut and a new colour scheme, and he's up rendered it to 4k. However, I went back and looked at the original version of the film, and I like it better than the changes that he's made. The colour scheme adds too much mud look to the character textures, there's smudging on the body in the face. It's also too saturated, too oversaturated. Now he's the director he knows better. But I prefer the earlier simple, though. It's generally a well made film. Sometimes shots run too long. And animation can be jerky but it holds your interest. There's some questions about the plot. Why doesn't she arm herself early? If it's one of those things that you don't think about it too much, and you'll really enjoy it. I thought they captured the... and this is something that I want to talk about in greater detail is that the idea of the fan film, we've modern culture has become obsessed with fan, especially with the internet and the ability of people to write about their universes that they love. You know, the Buffy universe, the Star Trek universe, the Star Wars universe, people write all sorts of fan films. And I thought if the goal of a fan film was to recreate that experience that you had, when you originally saw the original media, then this succeeded because it created a sort of creepy atmosphere. And a frustrate you always were wondering whether she was going to get whether she was going to get caught. I liked it a lot. And I would like to after we finish the round robin review of it. I'd like to talk a little bit about what a fan film is in general, and is machinima, the entire machinima movement, a form of fan film. So that's my comments. And that's my question.

Damien Valentine 18:40
Okay, I look forward to discussing that after we get finished talking about the film.

Phil Rice 18:46
I really enjoyed it as well, I thought that that the filmmaker captured for lack of a better word, the feel of a Ridley Scott Alien, that that universe, it the mood and everything about it just it fit right into that and yeah, I had I had no trouble making it through it. I too Ricky when I saw that, the timestamp at the beginning I thought oh, no. But yeah, it was it was good. And I'm a big fan of that franchise as well. They actually even more so the the prequel series that Scott has been doing Prometheus and whatnot. Those in particular I really, really enjoy. So yeah, I mean, was it a little bit you know, I guess derivative? Well, yeah. But I think it was also kind of supposed to be it wasn't right, pretending to be something else and then borrowing a bunch of stuff from the world of Alien it was it was declared as, as an Alien fan film, and that's exactly what it was, and it did it very well. I really didn't. I don't know what when I, when I'm watching our picks, if the story really gets me involved, I find that I don't really switch on my critical faculties as readily to talk about shot selection or, or, you know, sound levels or whatever. And I found that that that this for this film, the story just just got me I feel I watched it once beginning to end. And really, at the end of it, I thought, Oh, I guess I was supposed to find something to criticise or praise here in terms of production values, and I just forgot to do so. So I think that's a credit to Yeah, it's good storytelling. You know, I'm a sucker for that. I, I would much rather be taken on a journey than watch something almost academically, like grading it or something, you know, so well done.

Ricky Grove 21:16
Yeah, I noticed that the workflow included Blender, Alien Isolation footage, iClone, and after effects as well.

Damien Valentine 21:25
Good combination of tools. And, yeah, Tracy?

Tracy Harwood 21:30
Yeah, oh, Damien.

Damien Valentine 21:33
I know, you're not found these kinds of

Tracy Harwood 21:34
I don't like these sorts of films at all. They're freaky, I got about eight minutes into this and my heart ready to start to go, it kind of really took me where all those original Alien films did. And I, you know, they're not a good place for me, I don't really like them at all. And that, and the fact that this has managed to build on that plot very well and take you further in into that sort of space and time, I suppose really shows it's not a it's not a bad example, of a fan film at all. I tell you what, I quite like the fact that, you know, the guy had, had received a considerable amount of feedback on on the first film, which Ricky does commented on, which was released in June 2020. Got that kind of feedback on some aspect of the film, and then decided to re-edit that bit out that people were particularly critical of, and put another version up. And I think that's also an example of, you know, the way that fan culture can kind of work. Why machinima is kind of so important, because it allows you to interact with your community and, and respond to what they're saying about your work. And do something about it. But without losing the original film. Damien, I know you've done something, not dissimilar to some aspect of one of the films that you put out recently, where you didn't want to lose the comments that were on the, the less than perfect version that you put out, and then you put out another version of it. Which I think is, you know, I think that's a really good aspect of what we're talking about with with machinima. Now, in terms of, you know, in terms of what made this compelling, you know, the soundtrack and some of the original from some of the, you know, the original film soundtrack was, you know, that always creeped me out. The voice acting I thought was pretty good. Yeah, it was it. You know, I was, you know, I was sold on it really? Like I said, eight minutes in and that was me. I think there's, there's, you know, I was kind of looking at the comments on it. And there was a point at which I thought, this is a bit odd, actually. And I don't know what you guys thought there was a comment by a guy called Leo or he or she sort of said, along the lines of imagine being in stasis, having your bra on for years. It's not realistic, as if it ever would be. I understand why. But people in stasis should be naked. And computers look old in the film, and why have a cassette tape recorder? And then the comment goes on and says, you know, it's great, but But shouldn't technology be somewhere where current interstellar travel is? I'm hopeful

Ricky Grove 24:49
that somebody missed missed the point. Get what the comment

Tracy Harwood 24:53
is, and it's, I don't know, it was kind of it was kind of a freaky kind of observation. But, you know, kind of intriguing that folks would go to the level of detail and commenting on some of the things that, you know, this guy has recreated to represent the Alien world, which, you know, let's face it, when when did it come out? Was 79?

Damien Valentine 25:20
Yeah.

Ricky Grove 25:21
I have the same thoughts about the cassette player. And, you know, it's the technology of the Alien films of the time. Absolutely. Not modern technology.

Tracy Harwood 25:32
Exactly. Exactly. So you know, I thought it was all of its, its time isolate done a pretty good job with it. How am I so that it really did creep me out?

Ricky Grove 25:42
How did the person what I'm curious, I don't want to ask you guys. How did they by emphasising that it's a fan film in the title. Because he actually puts fan film and Alien fan film? Is that how they get over the rights issue by using music and sound effects from the original Alien?

Damien Valentine 26:04
I don't think it has any legal basis. I think it's just a way to differentiate itself from any official thing because the current naming convention for Alien franchises alien, then the story name like Alien Covenant. So if they were going to release a story, which actually was called Alien: The Message, this is a way to differentiate itself from a potential official production. Yeah, well, Star Wars fan films now. When the film Rogue One was released, the title is Rogue One, A Star Wars Story. So now a lot of site will have their title, a Star Wars fan film, in the same sort of format. So I think that's kind of taken off that way.

Ricky Grove 26:49
I got it. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 26:51
I think it's clearly a way of positioning it with a community, isn't it? Right. Right. And you know, maybe that's, maybe we're missing a trick. Maybe we should call our podcast, a fan machinima podcast.

Ricky Grove 27:07
So what do you guys think? Is machinima a variation of the fan film?

Phil Rice 27:12
Many of them are.

Tracy Harwood 27:14
Some can be yes, I think they can be.

Ricky Grove 27:17
I mean, their their movie shot in a game engine that has a story using game elements. And oftentimes, the storyline from the game itself

Damien Valentine 27:27
If its a fan film that uses the game and the game worlds to tell a story in that game universe, something like Red versus Blue, which is poking fun at the source material is still a fan is still, you know, for Halo fans. And it's so I'd say that's a fan film or the Sims videos, there's so many of those. And obviously, the setting the world of The Sims, The Sims fan videos, or World of Warcraft. If you get something like iClone, I don't think necessarily those are fan films, because it's its own piece of software, unless you're actually making something very specific. Like I do with Star Wars. I use iClone for that, then that's a Star Wars fan if you're not an icon, fan film. Yes, yeah. I see.

Phil Rice 28:14
When specific characters, or a story world or sometimes even settings, if they're very iconic and recognisable settings, then yeah, that definitely puts it in the in the fan film category, for sure.

Ricky Grove 28:30
Yeah. Do you agree that the fan films trying to create the original experience of the film, perhaps in a new way?

Damien Valentine 28:42
Sometimes,

Tracy Harwood 28:43
yeah, I mean, I'm struggling a little bit with this one, because I think I think you can have fandoms, which are extending the, you know, the story or doing doing new things with the same assets. So it's kind of like, you know, it's not not a not a, you know, a tightly focused fan film, but maybe an you know, what you might call a fandom as a as an extent of something being based within a context. But I guess where that breaks down a little bit is if you're using that same content to tell something completely different, like, for example, if you're using Halo to tell Romeo and Juliet, of what are you a fan in that context?

Ricky Grove 29:34
Right, right.

Tracy Harwood 29:35
And it's not Halo is it? It's, it's Shakespeare.

Ricky Grove 29:41
So, so firm films, film Obit wouldn't be a fan film, but if he used recognisable characters in the game and their names and their situations, and then told a story that's part of the game, you'd call that a fan film,

Phil Rice 29:57
definitely agree 100%

Tracy Harwood 30:00
I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 30:02
That sort of blooper reel where the horse kind of goes up in the air, that would probably would be a fan of film, because you're kind of making fun of it

Phil Rice 30:10
in the game itself.

Tracy Harwood 30:11
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking at what, you know, Henry Jenkins talks about in, you know, his in his sort of fandom theory. And he's, he sort of argues that, that fans are those that enjoy media text so much that they create content based upon the text and for communities around it. Yeah. But I think you can differentiate content from context from application. And, you know, I think you can talk about fandoms. And I think you can talk about it, you know, that, well, I think you can talk about fandoms as one thing and communities or something else. And, you know, machinima has a community of followers that are fans of multiple different genres of content and context. I see within that broader umbrella. Yeah, that makes sense. In my understanding of anyway, yeah.

Ricky Grove 31:23
I get it. Well, much clearer to me.

Tracy Harwood 31:26
Does it? Yeah.

Damien Valentine 31:31
That's it interesting. Because I and we thought about that much. As a Yeah, machinima is, is we start again, is machinima, a way of producing fan films as but yeah. Is an always like, we just cast I think, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 31:50
Yeah. I mean, I guess you can be a fan of, of, of, you know, if you take if you take iClone for example, and there's loads of assets that you can use within within it, only in it say, does that mean you're you're a fan of iClone nor a fan of whatever the the context is that you're painting with the, with the toolset?

Ricky Grove 32:18
No, I think in general, most people follow Phil's version of it, which is if it uses identifiable characters, or identifiable storylines. That's when it's fan like fan fiction. Putting Scottie and Mr. Spock and the captain together as gay lovers, you know, as fiction, that's fan fiction, extreme fan fiction, but fan fiction. I worked with somebody in the Half Life universe on a store a machinima that we were worked on for months, about the woman waiting at the gate when you first arrive. And she's asking, 'did you see anybody else on train? Did you see?' Well, we imagine this whole backstory for her. And we started to work on this film. We never finished it. But that's a fan film, because we're taking a specific character or a specific storyline and extrapolating on it. However, if we took characters, they were in that in Half Life and then made our entirely new story. It wouldn't be a fan film. I don't think

Damien Valentine 33:28
Yeah. And if you're, you're not really making it. You're not really an iClone fan filmmaker, because it'd be the same as a live action film being made because the director was he really liked cameras. Right. So he's using a camera to film.

Ricky Grove 33:44
A camera fan. Yeah. And Aeroflex fan? Yeah. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. That makes sense. Thanks, guys. All right.

Damien Valentine 33:54
And so we've had the past. I don't know we're gonna go to the future. Because, Tracy, your film hasn't actually been released yet?

Tracy Harwood 34:00
No. Yeah. It's not really clear when it's going to be released yet either. I did try and ask the question, but no answer yet. Just I'm not going to release the date when I'm even going to consider releasing it, which is kind of a curious comment. Yeah. Yeah. So this is Heroes a Bronze by a chap called Martin Klekner. And the bit of it you can see is a trailer, which was released on the 4 of March last year 2021. Now, Klekner is a is a freelance director and a CG artist. He's Czech tech from Czech Republic. He's a Blender specialist, and also an instructor on something called CG Boost. But importantly, he's also an ancient Greek enthusiast. Now, what this is is a project this Heroes of Bronze is a project where he's creating his own content inspired by this period of time ancient Greek period of time, as a proof of concept, primarily for demonstrating a set of tutorials on how to do the work. So the film itself is showcasing this kind of magnificent, beautiful and horrific period of time between these kinds of two famous battles. One was was that took place at Marathon and the other at Platt platter, is it pronounced Patay, I'm not too sure. In around four 480 BC ish. And what we'll put a link to in the in the show notes, if you like, is this really quite nice interview with Martin on the Reallusion website, where he gives you a little bit more in the background of the product itself. But on his YouTube channel, you've got all these tutorials of increasing all these different scenes and character animations and, you know, creating the assets and what have you that he's using in this film. So, you know, what did you guys think? Did you have a look at it,

Ricky Grove 36:33
I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was a really interesting and smart way to do proof of concept for his courses, which are interesting. He's got a course on his entire pipeline for putting this together at gum Road, we'll put the link to that. It's a four hour course that uses Blender, Character Creator, iClone and After Effects. Now Character Creator is a fairly recent phenomenon that Reallusion used as a sort of adjunct to their iClone, which is allows you to create realistic characters. And then we and then import them directly into iClone for animation and scene creation. He did a very interesting thing. That's a phenomenon I want to talk about a bit here. Rather than use the render in iClone, he exports everything to Blender, and he renders it in Blender for his final work. Now, one of the reasons being is that the Blender 3.0 has a real time renderer. So you can you can make changes to materials, changes the lighting, changes to animation, and see them all together in the final version of the film in real time on your screen. You don't have to render it out and wait for an hour for it to come up. Whereas I don't think you can do that entirely successfully and in iClone. With the upcoming changes as Damien pointed out at the beginning, you can turn off things so that it renders more quickly in the scene. But in Blender, it does it automatically. It's much better use of the graphic, your graphics card, and I thought that was really interesting. I enjoyed it. I thought it points the way towards a future method of using iClone. Now iClones and character creators actually Realllusions connected to Omniverse is really interesting too, because the the rendering and Omniverse is raytraced, completely raytraced which means you can actually, Kleckner could export all of this material that he's made into Omniverse. And even as more higher resolution and even more beautiful render in it. And that points to a future method of Reallusion icon. Production that I think is excellent. So that's a really good choice. And I'd like to point out that the where we've come from with from The Sniper, rendering and in iClone 4 for iClone 8 and character creator today. Long, long, huge difference between the two. Congratulations to Reallusion for for making that and developing the programme. So well. Yeah,

Phil Rice 39:30
I think what this this, what he's doing demonstrates a phenomenon that's fairly recent. And it is I think we've only begun to see the outcome of it and that is these pipelines, these readily available pipelines between these different platforms and software. That was, I mean, looking back to the earlier days of machinima and real time animation, I wish I can't help but do because I'm old. That just wasn't that was always the struggle. You know, if you wanted to create your character in one software and then get it over into either you know, Valve's engine or into iClone or into Moviestorm that was the worst. It was really, it was a struggle. Yeah. And and the idea of real time animating your film in one software and rendering and elsewhere, no one was even attempting that because it was just, it was just impossible. Impossible. Yeah, it wasn't even conceived of, you know. So the fact that here, I mean, I know, I know, Damien has experienced experimented some with animating something and iClone and then doing is rendering and Omniverse. I've seen other people on Facebook, doing the same thing, trying it out with scenes and being really wowed by the results. And here. He's doing that with with Blender, it's, to me, what's significant is the ligaments, you know, the connectors, the the ability to connect between these different software's Omniverse in general is a great example of that. Reallusion has been pioneering in that direction for longer than Omniverse has existed. They they made that a priority early sometimes to the you know, scratching the head of someone observing it, who wasn't familiar with that. They would release a feature where yeah, you can bring stuff in straight from this right into iClone. And it's an extra feature. So you pay more for it. And people who hadn't been doing that. We're like, why are you wasting your time on that? Well, they knew what was up, because this is the future that we're in now, which is the best tool for the right tool for the right job. So I mean, it's interesting, because while I'm sure iClone reolusi will continue to try and improve the rendering capabilities of AI clone to some degree, the pressures kind of off. Because if these other tools are readily available, then they can focus all their energy on the biggest strength of their platform, which is that animation. Yes, the scene building?

Ricky Grove 42:29
And same building, right? Yeah.

Phil Rice 42:30
But it but but iClone doesn't need to be a 3d modeller. And it doesn't need to be a ray tracing renderer Mm hmm. If he asked me, it doesn't need to do those things anymore. It can specialise on that area where it really is. It's one of the best tools around. And yeah, all these connections that are available now between Unity and Unreal Engine and iClone and Blender and and then every 3d modelling type I think now can be brought into every single one of those platforms with relatively little trouble. And as somebody who was doing machinima 20 years ago, I gotta tell you, it was only the Gods got off. These guys who have gone on to work for the game companies that the really genius, guys, they could pull that off, you know, Ill clan could could pull something like that off, could could custom model something and bring it into Quake II and this is 20 something years ago. But for your average person, man. Not only was it difficult to learn that extra skill set of of modelling, but then what do you do with it? Then how do you even get into the game in a usable form? That was always the struggle. And look at where we are now. All these software's all these programmes can talk to each other now. And there is a tutorial online for everything. Now, everything every single step of the way, in the production process, you can find somebody out there teaching it for free on YouTube, or teaching it at a premium level. More and more of those classes we're seeing from these very talented people who are sharing their knowledge and asking for a little bit of money in return. Benjamin Tuttle, who's we've talked about his work here on the programme, and I'm pretty sure he's a regular listener. He recently launched a series of courses, I believe, focused on Unreal Engine, but it could be a little bit with iClone 2. He's had his fingers in both. He's very, very talented. He's very knowledgeable. And yeah, now he's putting out these courses and it's like a it's a pittance. You know, I mean, it's this is this is college level, you know, knowledge. And you can pay someone like Ben 40 bucks or something, I think it was last I checked for like a, a multi hour course specialising in one task, I think we're going to see more and more and more of that. That's, that's an explosion right now, the whole, that new education thing where it's not about degrees, this type of education isn't about a degree, it's about obtaining a particular skill set. Right. So boy, it is an exciting time, not only for someone who's been involved in it for a long time, like me, and there are naturally a lot of gaps in my knowledge, you know? Because I couldn't teach myself everything. Well, now, there are resources. It's, it's amazing. Now the hardest part is choosing what to learn first.

Ricky Grove 45:57
Yeah, you know, the choices. Yeah,

Phil Rice 45:59
there's so many choices. Wonderful problem to have.

Ricky Grove 46:02
Yeah,

Damien Valentine 46:04
I am. I saw this trailer last year when it was released. And my initial reaction to it then was, is this made in iClone.

Phil Rice 46:15
My reaction today,

Damien Valentine 46:17
it just doesn't look like an iClone render. Yeah. And it. What I was gonna say was, everything Phil's just said. So it's one of the things that kind of got me thinking about, well, this is when I looked into it, Blender Or how do you get your content from iPhone to some of the rendering platforms? And how do you learn it, and I started looking into it, and then details but Omniverse came along. And I thought, well, that might be the one I'm going to go for, I'm gonna wait until Omniverse is actually more details or luck come along, because even Omniverse has been released, just over a year. It's come a long way in that time, like, when it first came out, download it and try it out. And I have no idea how to do anything with it. The tutorials we're kind of limited them because, you know, and video had a few outs, and then the users were learning it themselves. So when I came to it was seven or eight months later, there was a bigger range of tutorials out there that made it very easy to pick up and learn. And I think Phil's also right that iClone does have a render, and it can do a decent job. But I think religion has realised their best use of resources is to focus on the animation side of it, rather than trying to compete with Nvidia, who are producing a platform that is mainly focused on rendering, or Blender, which also has a huge focus on the rendering quality, because there's no way that they can compete with those two. So instead of trying to create another tool that is kind of on the level of them, make a tool that works alongside them. And then you've got something that's a really good, strong platform there for people to be creative with.

Ricky Grove 48:05
Yeah, they've come a long way.

Phil Rice 48:07
Yeah, and that's an encouraging part about this, too, is we're not just talking about, you know, it'd be one thing if, you know, Blender did something like that, you know, because they're a foundation, and it's not really corporate. And so you would expect almost, that they're going to be have that open source attitude toward talking to other software. But the fact that companies like Nvidia, and Reallusion, that instead of, you know, responding to it, almost like with competitive envy, they're they're making, they're making tracks and inroads to one another, to cooperate to gather together. I mean, we, Ricky, we talked about this. It's been several episodes ago, all of us did about the involvement of these companies with the Blender Foundation, Reallusion, first and foremost, that's a big deal. You know, in the software industry is fiercely competitive. And so you would really expect an every man for himself kind of mindset. And these moves don't fit in with that these moves are more of a community thing. And yeah, and wanting to, to foster creativity,

Ricky Grove 49:37
I think Blender Foundation, and in particular, the Blender community are the one that broke the ice. You think so? Yes, I do. Because I was around, what 12, 15 years ago when Blender was just starting to come up with the notion that you could use FBX to move things around and USB to move things around on our FBX, and then formats to share, and the open source movement started to crack the ice at SIGGRAPH and different places. And you know, I knew all of the people that Reallusion when they first started out, and from the very beginning, they were very open to that kind of thing. In fact, they were all over SIGGRAPH. They were checking every other group to see what sort of technology they could work into their current version of it. And I think that idea spread so that you could be competitive and still share. Yes. You know, because for many, many businesses, they're isolated, they're locked down. There, everything is proprietary. They're not going to share anything. But they've discovered that by sharing, they bring communities together so that their market share is increased because it brings in an entirely new community to their product.

Phil Rice 51:01
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that contrast that attitude, and what we're seeing is the fruits of that, I think that contrasts very sharply with companies that I would consider having the old school mentality Autodesk, Adobe. Yeah, yeah. They're still mired in that. In that competition, only competition mindset. And frankly, I think that that, you know, it's guilty as charged for just about every video game maker to Yeah, sadly. Yeah. So that's why when someone like M Dot Strange comes along with Nightmare Puppeteer, and is doing all these things of just, he's selling it as cheap as he can possibly get away with, and is constantly developing it to interface more with other things. You know, it's it's people like him. Yep. The matter driving these decisions at these companies. You know, I think Reallusion, James and John, the Martin brothers have, you're right, Ricky, they've always been first and foremost thinking about, how can we help people make better stuff with our software? And this was an answer. And they said yes to it, and it took time. But yeah, we're what a what a wonderful time to

Ricky Grove 52:26
think it's a perfect example from software that did the Elden Ring game that I talked about in our news section. Why does it take a modder to create a photo element in the game? Certain certainly somebody making that game had to think this there's this is beautiful. This stuff is absolutely beautiful. We got to create an element in the game, where people can pause the game and take photos, but they didn't.

Damien Valentine 52:55
Especially with photo modes being so popular in games now. Yes, huge.

Phil Rice 53:00
Yeah. Cyberpunk, Red Dead Redemption game, Grand Theft Auto. Yeah, why aren't they paying attention to that? I know that they spent a lot of effort Elden Ring did on. I mean, that the story behind this game is I mean, it took years and years to make and George RR Martin was involved with it. I mean, it's they really spent a lot of time and resources on making that world immersive, making exploring it highly rewarding on a visual and a story basis, so maybe they just well, not my point is is that they didn't see Miss some simple things that could have really elevated Yeah, no,

Ricky Grove 53:42
I think is it has to do with money. It has to do with why should we spend working hours with our crew to work on something that isn't part of what we want to make in the game? Because if you think of it, that's just an extra. Yeah. But that's exactly why Reallusion is such a more interesting company than From Software's because they think about those things. Yes, that makes them I'm much more interested in that kind of company. I also, I wanted to ask you guys a quick question. Let me close here. And that we've we looked at several different types of machinima from different applications in different games. And we usually didn't have a problem and finding really good films to pick from if lucky usually was more than enough GTA, Unreal, Second Life. Why was it hard to find films for Reallusion this time? And I call

Phil Rice 54:48
it theory. You want to go first, Tracy?

Tracy Harwood 54:52
Well, no, no, you go first because you're on a roll.

Phil Rice 54:59
Thinking about some of the other platforms that we might pick and say, Okay, let's let's find films, specifically with this Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption even. Not that there's a whole lot of great stuff to choose from there, Second Life, The Sims, GTA could go on and on GTA, all of those have communities. Some of them loose. But there are communities that probably came together primarily around the game. And then offshoot from that was making movies with the game. And it's just, I think the end result of that is it's just easier to find films made with those because they are, it's not that they're all like getting together in a room somewhere or something. I'm not saying that, but just I think that all of those end up able to leverage the brand that they're associated with, to get their film found and noticed. And, you know, iClone doesn't have that. I mean, iClone only has what its users make with it, it doesn't have any pre existing edifice that was there. And then, you know, people added on to it. So I think that that that may be part of it, is there's probably a very decent number of good iClone films being made, but where do you find them, and how, you know, because nobody posts you know, Heroes of Bronze, an iCllone film, nobody puts that in the title. We're lucky if they even mentioned it deep in the description. Whereas when somebody has made a movie with GTA, they almost always put that just for SEO purposes of more people are going to stumble upon it with that, and iClone doesn't have that basis. So I think part of the challenge there is, I mean, even Moviestorm, as, you know, imperfect platform as it became over time they got from the beginning, that having a forum and a place where people could automatically post their movies all together, that that had a benefit. So I think that that Moviestorm offset that problem by having that, that community that they hosted, where, hey, if you make something with our software, upload it here, and then others who will do the same, and we will all comment they created their own little YouTube basically, are that. I'm not suggesting that that's the solution for iClone, but I think it is part of the challenge is it's kind of like sometimes, sometimes when we've talked about sound, and we say if the sound person on a movie is doing their job, well, you don't really even notice it, per se. Yeah, you know, right, right. You certainly don't ask things like, you know, what did you mix this with? Nobody cares. Because it's doing its job well, and I think that iClone has a similar challenge in that. If it does its job, right. It's invisible. You know, you don't look at it and go, Oh, that's that's iClone. I mean, we might because we've used it, but the average person won't. So yeah, I think it's largely challenges like that. I don't think it's lack of films, I think it's

Tracy Harwood 58:47
probably a bit more nuanced than that. Yeah. And really, you know, to your point about, you know, fan communities and also, your other comments to do with their strategy for fostering creativity. And, and the way that they're trying to grow the market as a consequence of that. I can't I kind of think it wouldn't surely try to grow the market without thinking about how to grow community for it. And I think it's really, you know, what we're, what we're actually picking up on is the fact that that community is looking at the, the, the market growth side of things as a revenue generating, generating opportunity, because there are quite literally, as you said, hundreds and 1000s of tutorials using every aspect of these tool sets. Excuse me, but But surprisingly little actual creative content in the process. Which I think is really bizarre but you know, clearly these guys that are putting out all these tutorials are doing it to get footfall through their channels and using that as an as a revenue generating strategy. And they're doing it over and above, or to the cost of actually producing real content. So I think we're in that kind of, we're in that that, you know, that point of at the moment when, you know, the kind of the growing demand the growing demand for it, but they, some point surely got to shift to the creative side of it. So then I kind of was kind of thinking if that's if that's the case of of what they're doing. I was wondering if we're actually looking for the content in the right places with YouTube, and Vimeo, maybe Patreon or something like that is where all the creators are actually putting their work as you know, as professional animators, is that what they have? Is that what they're calling themselves, but I couldn't actually find an awful lot of creative content there either. And then I was thinking, Well, okay, what other strategies might there be around supporting the development of the creative side of things? Well, one of the ways that we've all seen over the years is contests. So there are iClone contests. And does that mean that there's, you know, that that's a way that Reallusion is inspiring the community to create better content, but no, what they're doing is the contests, to encourage more people to play with aspects of the software. So it's still about. And it's almost worse. Think the less and less, there is more emphasis on the creative content side of things, I don't think it's going to go anywhere, it's going to, it's going to fall, fall foul of some of those other kinds of tools, and then be in competition with, you know, maybe the more you know, the more fan based stuff, or the stuff that generates more more fans by the fact that it is already themed. So say, for example, the Matrix Experience or, you know, the Star Citizen type thing. You know, where there's the basis of a story, all you got to do is create the, you know, the narrative sort of thing. So I think this is a bit more fundamental to do with the way that the the creative side of things is actually being supported at the moment, by the growth of these kinds of things. I have to say, I have to say, just alongside it, I also thought that, you know, so the software contest is one side of things, but maybe there's a role here for the film festivals in supporting the development of the creative work using this kind of thing. So I kind of had a look at, for example, you know, we've talked about these guys before the Milan, Machinima Film festival, and whether or not they permit content to be included, that is, say using things like iClone. Now, I don't know if it if it does, because, you know, what they don't allow is Second Life, which is a virtual environment. So does that also rule out sandbox environments as well? And yet, on the other hand, they say they're happy to accept game engines, game tools, assets, such as characters, items and environments. So surely that would include iClone?

Damien Valentine 1:04:14
I close it a game. You know,

Phil Rice 1:04:17
they say pacifically

Tracy Harwood 1:04:17
what game but it's, but it's a toolset, isn't it?

Damien Valentine 1:04:21
Yeah, even if you like the Alien film, where he took the assets from the game, and made a film with it, I don't think you would be able to submit that to the Milan Film Festival because even though the assets are from a game, he used a non game environment to actually make the film.

Tracy Harwood 1:04:39
But it's still a tool that you would use in a game context.

Ricky Grove 1:04:44
Sure, I see your logic there that the point of the Milan Film Festival is to align themselves with game based aesthetics and criticism and philosophy. Absolutely. But but they fit in with their college atmosphere, yeah, I

Tracy Harwood 1:05:02
get that. But I think they are missing an awful lot of content. An awful lot into that.

Damien Valentine 1:05:10
If you look to look at other film festivals, and so you might be to make something The Sims and you can submit it to the Berlin Film Festival, and Animation Festival would not be interested in a similar video, but they would be very interested in an iClone video. Yes,

Ricky Grove 1:05:28
that's true.

Tracy Harwood 1:05:29
Well, yes, I looked at

Phil Rice 1:05:30
not so much a lack of interest is that I mean, their terms and conditions, all of them now pretty much state that if you don't own everything in this film, and you can't demonstrate you have written I mean, it's the same thing from 15 years ago, you know, the rights

Ricky Grove 1:05:45
issues. Yeah,

Phil Rice 1:05:46
yeah. So yeah, I think that may be why Milan has, has a deliberately narrower focus is because it's the only place I think it's the only place you can legitimately submit old fashioned game based machinima. And it be accepted as submission. And And believe me, I've looked,

Tracy Harwood 1:06:08
yeah, I'm sure yeah. But I honestly think now, they are missing a trick. And so are these platforms, missing a trick as well, because I think they're pushing the community, which they clearly have, but down a very specific route. And it isn't about developing creative content, per se. At the moment, in my reading of it anyway.

Ricky Grove 1:06:34
Well, I do have to say that the tools that they've actually developed are with an eye towards the creative filmmaker. Absolutely. But where's there's no question. Yeah, but where's the content? That's the question. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 1:06:46
if you go to the Reallusion website, they've got the content store in the marketplace. And in the content store, this official packs, but then they opened up to developers can produce content, which is clothes and hairstyles and props, and visual effects and all kinds of other stuff, which you can buy, to use in your film. Now, people are actually buying this stuff, because people are still making this stuff. And they wouldn't keep making it if no one was buying it. Right. So people must be buying this stuff for something. So why aren't we seeing it?

Ricky Grove 1:07:15
So so in a way, you're saying that the energy that would have gone into creating a film is going into creating content for other people to use?

Damien Valentine 1:07:24
Yeah, but then those, that content is being bought by people. So you know, you want to justify your character in a specific way. someone's buying those, you know, the dress packs, or the hairstyles for using they got to use it for something. So why aren't we seeing what they're using? Yeah,

Ricky Grove 1:07:42
I do have to, embarrassingly admit something that I discovered this week that's related to this, which is, when I was looking at Unreal 5 preview, it gives you the library of everything that you've purchased in the marketplace. I purchased over 60 items from the Unreal marketplace over the last five years that I have never used.

Damien Valentine 1:08:08
Not once. I'm sure I've got content in my iClone store I've bought and then never touched

Ricky Grove 1:08:13
because sure, but I mean that the idea that you'd never you buy it because why wouldn't that be great in a movie? And then it's on? And it's on special? I'm getting a deal? Yeah, and yet I never use it. I've never used it once. So that's an interesting, that's very interesting ideas there Tracy, you're tricky. You're a very tricky thinker.

Tracy Harwood 1:08:37
I think we need iClone and Blender and what have you to promote actual film festivals.

Phil Rice 1:08:47
And that would solve or start one.

Tracy Harwood 1:08:49
Oh, it all started I think I think I think that would actually turn the tide. And I think what

Phil Rice 1:08:54
about a real time animation film festival? You would think that that would exist? And it does not doesn't? Yeah, nowhere on the planet.

Damien Valentine 1:09:05
If Reallusion were to put something together, they could have as long as it's animated iClone, it can be rendered in blender or unreal or Omniverse or anything else that people may have figured out how to do. And I would enter that. I'm sure the other people would feel like let's go and make some that contest last summer. Where is the lip sync contest? Yeah, and it wasn't produced a whole video is just to produce, you know, a short 32nd clip. But it inspired hundreds of 1000s of not hundreds of 1000s 1000s of submissions because I think I submitted an entry 27 pages worth of submissions already that were a

Phil Rice 1:09:45
lot and I regularly but I think the ultimate would be that once a year. A genuine Film Festival. Yeah, with certain parameters how I really want to do it. But yeah, that would be amazing. Yep, I think I think it would have the same effect, I think it would, if they, if people knew this is going to be an annual thing, because, you know, sometimes films take longer than that to make depending on how long they are. And if people knew it was going to be an annual thing, it would be the place to be,

Damien Valentine 1:10:19
and you can have prizes, like points to spend in the content store for your next project or for your projects for next year's festival. So, you know, you're, you're going to get some filmmakers will get something out of it as well, not just having a film on display. But you know, actual prizes and things and Reallusion have figured that out themselves, how they were going to sweat it out,

Tracy Harwood 1:10:40
it would also be a talent spotting ground as well. Yeah. Because at the moment, the only talent spotting ground that you're seeing is these tutorials. And, you know, I don't think I don't think that's good enough, actually, with what with what the tools, the tools that are being offered, the opportunities that are being offered, I think it's disappointing, that we're not seeing more people actually produce great content.

Ricky Grove 1:11:08
Well put, well put. Great comments this time, guys.

Damien Valentine 1:11:16
So I think that wraps up our film and discussion for the week. As always, it's been extra discussion with some excellent films to talk about from the past, present and future of iClone. So thank you for those choices. And we'll see we'll come up with next

Ricky Grove 1:11:36
month, make sure you check our show notes, which has links to everything. And also, we put a full text of our entire discussion with all the nasties included. So I just check Completely Machinima dot com and you'll find it there.

Damien Valentine 1:11:55
So we are doing premieres on YouTube for the video versions of our episodes. Those are on Thursdays 8pm GMT, which I believe is 12 Pacific, right? So you can come and join us there. We're there in the chat, you can interact with us and tell us we'd like about the episode, what you didn't like about the episode. Of course, we can't get any better. What we do, if you don't, you know, let us know. You can also provide feedback on to our website. And we look forward to that as well, because we haven't had too many comments yet. So please send us stuff to Yes, talk to us. Yeah. So that wraps it up. Thank you all for being here. It's been great talking to you. Thank you, Damian. See you all next time. Thanks. Bye bye