Damien Valentine 00:35
Hello and welcome to another installment of her now for something completely machinima this week, we'll be covering the news, and I'm joined by my co host, Tracy Harwood, who has returned from her trip to the moon. No, it was Mars, wasn't it? Yeah, you're the first woman on Mars,

Tracy Harwood 01:00
something like that.

Damien Valentine 01:05
Though, I hope you had a great trip, and I did, indeed,

Tracy Harwood 01:07
and I use this strange portal. Can you tell? Yeah,

Damien Valentine 01:11
well, we did miss you during the film reviews, we kind of had to struggle to share what we could find about those films. That's very kind.

Tracy Harwood 01:23
Yeah, it looked like you had some great films to review. I was I was very disappointed not to be there to talk about them.

Damien Valentine 01:28
Yeah, but next month you can get your verdicts back on the next section. So look forward to it, right? So when we record this, it's beginning of February, and we've collected news over the course of January. And I was thinking it's going to be really hard, because January is usually a very quiet time, and, you know, coming from the holidays, not much happens. We're going to really struggle to find anything worth talking about. And I'm looking at all the news you've got posted. And I think I've got more news stories to cover than I've ever had before. And, of course, you've got plenty to come talk about as well. So I was very wrong when I thought that

Tracy Harwood 02:13
it was been a busy month, hasn't it? January has been a massively busy month, and it's, it's such a lot going on that's so relevant to the community at the moment, I think, yeah.

Damien Valentine 02:21
Anyway, I will let you get started with your news, and then I'll do mine after so, sure,

Tracy Harwood 02:27
sure. Well, okay, so last week, as we were as we record end of March, end of January, I saw the, really, you know, one of those great sort of film festivals putting a call out for contributions. And this is a competition that I think machines should get involved with, particularly if they are using generative AI tools at all. This is runway MLS, third annual AI Film Festival, which is now open to submissions right up until the end of of March. And it's free. It's free to submit. It will take place this year in New York and LA and is part presented by Tribeca festival, IMAX, the Gotham dot monks, Nvidia, Goldman, Sachs, and also the American cinema editors. Films must be between sort of one and 10 minutes long, but are actually category agnostic. They select 10 finalists. And these films will be showcased in a gala series of gala events in New York and LA and there are 60,000 pounds, $60,000 worth of of awards. Now, I think it's really worth having a look at some of the previous winners, just to get an idea of the sort of thing that was it, you know, it's been created with this I was, I was, I think all year, last year, I was talking about last year's winner. It's an absolutely incredible story, and beautifully told with these generative tools, which I will put a link to so that you can have a look and see what you think about it. But I definitely encourage folks to submit to this. It's one of those sort of competitions that I think will just grow and grow. So yeah, that's it. That's the contest. And then in other news, and again, with Philip Rosedale back at the helm, it's not really surprising to see these things starting to take shape a bit more. But Second Life has been testing browser based streaming, which I think can only really enhance our experience by basically increasing the frame rate. And we've long commented on the glitchiness of the animations in machinimas, which I think really has hindered the kind of work that we might expect to see these days, because, you know, the quality of the renders aren't just not really standing up to other forms of animation that we're seeing out of. Other game engines, frankly, and I suppose really, it would be fair to say that it doesn't really seem to have held the community back, just perhaps people like ourselves looking for high quality examples to discuss on this show. So it's quite it's quite good to see that that investment is now sort of coming through in different ways of capturing the content. And then, of course, another aspect that I was particularly interested to know is a report over the last month that Linden Labs has spent something like $1.3 billion building the world, world and paid back to its creators 1.1 billion. I mean, that's an astonishing achievement. And to think that the creators have benefited from, from that, you know, that investment and that community is, is just, you know, so it's a really heartwarming thing to sort of discover. I think so rock on Second Life,

Damien Valentine 06:00
yeah, I think I saw those numbers. I don't know how many creators there are in Second Life these days, but I can't imagine. There's millions. There must be 1000s. Yeah, that, if you start splitting it up, that all those creators getting a quite a sizable chunk of cash there. Yeah, absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 06:19
Well, it was long the case that, you know, the first sort of Millionaire was created out of a virtual game long ago. So I can well imagine that there are, you know, probably, you know, very small minority that make a living out of it. But with, you know, with that kind of level of investment, you would expect that it would attract a lot, a lot of potential users, even just taking a little bit out of it. But yeah, it's really, I really think that's a good story. I like, I like to see that. I'm not so sure it's true in other virtual environments that we're looking at these days. But yeah, pretty impressed with that one. I also found a great video library that you might want to check out. It's free to use, but you do need to create an account. And it's an animators survival kit, which is part of a Bloomsbury video series. It's been created by a guy called Richard Williams. There are many videos on different animation techniques in that series, and for those of you that don't know Richard is actually a three times winner of an Academy Award for his animation, and probably best known for his direction of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. So it's definitely recommended to check out that video series. And then moving on to some projects, I saw some fascinating shorts which illustrate how Industrial Light and Magic created. The VFX in the gladiator two movie. It has all the hallmarks, I think, from everything that we've seen in Unreal Engine, whether, whether that is what's been used or not, I don't really know, and probably you'd need to spend a lot more a lot of time and energy in creating it, but it's a cracking video to watch. It's actually only four minutes long. Given how much interest there is in Gladiator sequels, I'm quite surprised. It's not quite a bit longer, but there you go. It's it's worth watching and catching up with.

Damien Valentine 08:19
I watched that. I haven't seen gladiator two myself because, oh, it's great. I watched the train. I was also watching House of the Dragon at the same time. I thought this is kind of so similar to what I've watched. I don't really have the interest in watching gladiator two on the big screen. I will get to at some point. Yeah, um, I did notice when I watched the behind the scenes, it looks stunning that the effects work they did, but Industrial Light and Magic have similar videos for a number of other films that were released. So there's one form which I'm sure you're dying to see, alien Romulus. Oh, so that's film I have seen. So it's interesting to see how they put that together and blended the practical model effects with the CGI to Yeah, and it's not all creature effects. I mean, it's just the spaceships and those kind of effects. Oh, okay,

Tracy Harwood 09:07
maybe I can tolerate it then, yeah. Well, there you go. I mean, yeah, it's a good film. I, I was, I wasn't too sure if I would enjoy it so much. And it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a riff on, on, well, on, on Ridley Scott's other films, as well as gladiator but, but also, I don't know if you remember all those sword and sandal films from the 60s, you know, the the Ben Hur and Spartacus and all that sort of stuff. There's touches of that in it as well. So it's, it's, you know, if you love all that kind of stuff, I'm sure you'll love gladiator too. It's just different enough as well to to have something to, you know, something additional over and above the Russell Crowe version, although, of course, it's nothing like the Russell Crowe version. Yeah, in terms of, you know, the acting quality, I think really, anyway, definitely check it out. And then another live action I found was a half life indie film, like real, real life film called The Freeman Chronicles, and it's made by a guy called Ian James Duncan. And it turns out that he and his crew have been working on it for several years, and in the description, he says he's made it, hoping that someday it would be turned into full length video game series like The Last of Us. But you know what? I think actually there are 1000s of machinimas that have been created in half life. And these are really the Lost series, spread out over hundreds of channels, all bound together, really, by the love of the game central characters. And it kind of made me question, is there actually any need for a real life series in the in the vein of Last of Us? I don't really think so. A film, yes, but not a series. So this is certainly one to check out if you're a half life fan, and if not just follow the the Machinima that riff on it. It's, it's, it's, it's worth watching. It's quite it's really quite good actually, as well. And then there's also alongside it, there's a there's a really good website that they've linked to, which documents how the film was made. So I recommend having a look at that as well, because it just illustrates the way in which they put that project together. And then I I found some other projects which made me think of all of you guys. I found a fantastic Tom Cook, original fan song made in Elite Dangerous called mining on my own. It's by by ghost giraffe. It's brilliant. It's really well, well made song. And that made me think of Phil Of course. And then for you, Damien, I found a Mandalorian cinematic trailer made in Unreal made by a guy called Jeffrey grand scene, and it's basically a showcase of his work as well as a fan film. But it's really it's really good. It's worth checking out. And then for Ricky, I found a goddo engine project. It's just basically a walk through in an environment that's been created in in 4.3 version of the engine. But it's really quite stunning detail. It's been created by a guy called Jan or Jan fiddler. And I actually really can't wait to see what this this creator does with that in in due course. And then I want to wrap up my updates for this month with a with a few thoughts about the latest AI developments. And this literally was out at the end of January, as I, as we sit here, sort of first week of February. Have to say, I've been quite intrigued by the US copyright offices ruling on AI art generated with text prompts, which I guess many of you also been following. It's something we've been talking about on this show for some time, and I dare say we'll be talking about it for some time yet to come. So what they ruled was that art of any form cannot be copyrighted from a text prompt, even if there have been multiple iterations of work before an artist is satisfied with the final work, and that decision has apparently been reached through extensive engagement with what they say is over 10,000 comments representing opinions from hundreds of different types of Creator as well as tech companies and other interested parties. Now I am actually waiting to see more detailed analysis on the findings, but in the meantime, I've been reflecting on what I think are going to be some unintended consequences from the decision, bearing in mind that the bulk of output from the various generative AI tools is basically stock images used in all sorts of low cost promotionals and business slide shows that don't really merit the expense of creating original works. And you're probably asked, well, what's the evidence for this? And surely it's all about the artist, because that's what that ruling is primarily stating that it's all about. Well, I would ask, How many more are now describing themselves as artists than before these tools were available. There are now 1000s, if not millions, of folks using these tools, and I would say they are not artists, but users of creative work. Some are, indeed, indie creators, and we talk about this a little bit in, you know, the various films that we review that include elements of generative AI. And those indie creators are using the tools in a pipeline they are scrabbling to put together, really, but many are using the. Tools in whatever production pipeline they have for their work and their daily lives in sectors that are not typically described as creative industries. So copyright free output means any ability to earn a short buck from published work is going to shift, I think, in emphasis from the potential for sale of output to specific cost for input. Now, the intent was that this decision emphasizes the human element of creativity, placing it in terms of authorship skills, but that's likely to result in accessibility challenges. I think, where AI as a service is available only to those who can afford it, where the platforms are going to be placing higher premium on the ability to author good prompts, perhaps by restricting word count or number of actions or some other means. And if that's the case, ultimately, it will be the indie creator that is going to pay the cost and the processing and use of tools to earn their stripes as a de facto creator. I mean, ever that was the case, but now there is a clear pathway, I think, for that to be emphasized within the business models of the various tech companies. Now, we've commented before on how these tools use content of creators, and that the real issue isn't so much about the output, but how the content used should be compensated for its inclusion in the outputs. Once again, in the reports that tech devs claim that ascribing an allocation for how a work is used in an output is not possible, excuse me. But it is this area that they should be made to consider. Of course, it's possible. It's just that its net effect in action will be to turn those companies, those tech companies, into banks processing millions of small transactions to creators. But isn't that what the likes of Getty and Shutterstock already do? Let me also just comment on the artist perspective. One of the key points when the ruling is to do with how, one of the key points, rather, is to do with how, the how, how it is the the output is distinguishable in terms of AI assistance in creating the work from Ai generated or created work. And this is fundamentally about the pipeline that an artist uses to make a decision on which version of output he or she prefers. And over the years of running the art AI festival here in the UK, which I which, which I've been directing, it's been very evident that the output selected is an esthetic choice and the preference of an artist, but without the generative process of the machine they've used, which they've often acknowledged is well beyond their human ability to create the work is simply not possible at all. The AI is quite simply not an assistant, but of the world's just, for example, some of the world's leading digital artists refer to AI not as an assistant, but as a co creator. So I think really, the debate has been hijacked in some way, and possibly in favor of the corporate benefit over the creative class, who are often at the base of the triangle of beneficiaries.

Tracy Harwood 18:29
Maybe that's just me being cynical. Of course, I'm not the only one asking questions about the implications of this ruling, but I am very much looking forward to seeing more critical analysis of what this means in terms of the creative practice that we're already seeing emerge with the use of these tools, for example, the likes of the RunwayML Film Festival that I talked about right at the top of the show, being backed by some of The biggest names in film festivals and production today. So it will be interesting to see how this one evolves. And I think super ironically, earlier last month, in the beginning of January, you may have seen an announcement of a merger between Getty and Shutterstock, whose rationale is partly so they can maximize investment in and return from what they describe as customer facing technologies such as generative AI in a wider range of formats, including, but not limited to images, music, 3d content, and what they describe as other types of asset, whatever they might be, whilst it's been at the forefront on restricting uploads of content made with generative AI tools, I would say these guys have certainly not been slow in benefiting from licensing artist and creator content to the language model developers, and I'd suggest it's well positioned, therefore, to continue to benefit from the copyright ruling or. Albeit somewhat less clear how royalties from content using outputs will be paid back to contributors, which I think is the key gap here. Maybe it's a one shot process in the licensing. That's probably what I would expect. That's the sort of thing that I talked about when I was discussing how how happy Ben and I would be for the use of our book, for example, but we're not necessarily talking about text here. We're talking about image primarily, or creative content. But I think what's going on at the moment actually really does fail the creators, and it's the pipeline that is most needed and actually quite feasible with the development and further advancement of AI, I'd be really happy to hear what other folks have got to say about that. I don't know if you've got any immediate observations Damian,

Damien Valentine 20:52
no, because I haven't been following it closely enough to really have anything to say about it, but I'll say it now, because it usually goes at the end. But if you do have any comments about this AI story, please send them in to talk at complete machine learning.com and we can talk about them next month when we record again. I'll see that again at the end of the episode. But you know, it'd be interesting to get some feedback on that.

Tracy Harwood 21:17
Yeah. Well, that's it for me this month. That's all I kind of picked up on, okay,

Damien Valentine 21:22
well, I'll get started on my long stream of stuff as well. So the first thing that came up as the NVIDIA have announced the 50 series of RTX graphics cards. They were revealed at the CES Consumer Electronics Show back at the beginning of January, the 1590 and 5080s have already been released in the time between that and recording. I believe the 1590s sold out instantly in the UK. The stock levels were in single digits for some of the retailers, so I'm not surprised. They disappeared very quickly. The 5070s are going to be released sometime in February. By the time you listen to this, they may already come out. I don't have a date yet. I did have a look. They don't seem to have announced anything. I think it seems to be a case of you find out the day before that they're going to be available. So if you're interested in a new graphics card, then you might want to keep an eye on those. They do seem to have a very significant leap over the previous generation. I believe the 5070 is equal in terms of power to the 1590 the 4090 from the last generation, but without, obviously the huge price tag that goes for the 90s. But yeah, we'll have to see how those turn out, because obviously they're not available at the time of recording. But I'm quite interested to see what happens there. Yeah, it's especially useful for machinima, for, you know, for the graphics rendering. And if you're using Nvidia Omniverse, that's going to be something that's quite important, because you can't use Omniverse without an RTX graphics card. So the next thing was also another New Year's related thing. It's kind of a tease about the future of the half life games. The voice actor who played the G Man released a video bringing in the new year. But you know what cryptic way that might suggest that he's been doing some new recordings for half life? But obviously you can't really talk about it beyond that. So who knows what that's going to be. But obviously, Half Life is an important game for the missionary community. So if there is a new installment of some kind, I think happy worth keeping an eye out. But again, at the time recording, that's all we've got to go on. It could be these just knows that people are eager for Half Life three, and he's teasing them. So yeah, probably he does seem to have that kind of sense of humor from the things I've seen him do. The next one is a video game. It's called Hollywood animal, and it seems to be a sort of spiritual successor to the movies video game, but not the movie making side of it. This is only focused entirely on the business side of the game, but it um, so you can't make machinima movies with it, but I thought it's worth reporting, because I did enjoy the management side of the movies as well. I played through the campaign all the way through only the once, but I had fun with it. And this, I watched the trailer, and it looks like it's got a really dark sense of humor. But if you've got, if you like black humor, this is one for you, because you can do all kinds of nasty things to your competitors, like get their actors beaten up and stuff. The review, the preview, said that they they. He had an actor from a rival studio beaten up, and then the rival studio, in retaliation, had hit men sent out to kill the players, actors. So they've got a really twisted set of humor of this, and you can go to some really dark places, but in a way that it's not meant to be serious, so who knows. Anyway, it looks like it'd be fun. I don't think it's out yet. Leave a quick look. I think it's out soon, April. Yeah, 10th of April, it will be released in early access on Steam. So yeah, not a machine at all. But if you want to play managing your own Hollywood studio that could be fun,

Tracy Harwood 25:46
debauchery and dark deeds. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 25:49
you have to satisfy some of the dark impulses that your stars have, which I won't guarantee you have to do your research and have a look at that. Back in January, there was the Tmu tribute show to Ken White, who sadly passed away several years ago. I did go on the show and talked a little bit about my work and my memories of being on various tme shows and Ken, unfortunately, at the time recording, they don't seem to have made it available to listen to. It was a It was broadcast live. I don't know if it was recorded or if it's going to be shared again. I hope it is shared again for those who missed it, because it was a fun show to listen to, and it's nice to see so many people from the Tmu community get back together and talk about, you know, the experiences that community, because that was a big part of the world. So hopefully we'll get to see that again. Astartes, which is a warhammer machima We discussed a while back. None of us have a clue about what happened, but we were very impressed by the film. Yeah, when we discussed it had been, it was not a recent film. I can't remember exactly when it was released, but it was seven or eight years ago, something like that. Yeah. And the Creator disappeared, and then we found out that he'd actually been hired by Games Workshop to produce content, and one of those things was the Warhammer Video, Warhammer episode for secret level, which was released back in December. I did watch that is very impressively animated, a huge leap over of starters in terms of visual quality and the software they must have given him to work on it, but yeah, that's a very specific thing. And then about a week or so ago, who released the teaser trailer for Astartes two, which has the same visual style as a secret level episode, so it's got that quality to it. But this is a sequel to his original film. It's being released officially by a Games Workshop. So it's not a fan film, but it's an actual official production that's going to tell the story of in the Warhammer world, which I still don't know that much about, but I thought it's worth mentioning because it's nice to see a machinima creator that we covered, even though we've discovered a film long after you made it to see where he's ended up, yeah, making a fan film, which is now resulted in him producing official content for that world he obviously loves. And I look forward to seeing the film almost there, the Sims one and two. Friend of mine got very excited posting this on Facebook, so I saw the video and then just read up. The Sims one and two have been re released on Steam as part of the 25th anniversary of the game series, which is hard to believe I still remember playing the first game building this really elaborate house, spent my entire starting budget on it, moved the family in, and then realized I've forgotten to put a toilet in. I had no money to put one in, so they had a very miserable few days, good for four to get one. But anyway, both games have been released separately. The packs have got all the expansions for The Sims, one and two. I think the two might missing the IKEA pack, which is some extra furniture. I think that's because of some rights issue or something, but you get everything else, like you're not missing out on a huge amount of content by not having that IKEA pack. Now, obviously the Sims two was a another big part of the Machinima community. A lot of people make the Sims machinima, probably not so much with the first game, but I do know that Sims two was very popular. So if you're feeling astonishing. For those old Sims two days now this is a good chance to snap it up, because that content packet has got all of the expansion everything. So that's a lot of content to work with. So that's nice to see. Oh, and the other thing is, they have been modified to work on modern computers, because my understanding is they're not necessarily the most stable on Windows 10 and 11. So that's the only change that EA have made. There's no they haven't enhanced the visuals. Have done anything else like that. It's just the original games modified to work on modern systems with all the expansion packs included, I have to buy them separately, but there's still a bargain, I think, if you want to get those games.

Tracy Harwood 30:49
Yeah, and it's also worth remembering that Todd Stallkamp, who was a machinima creator in Sims two, is and and has since those early days, been the Creative Director for Sims. So there's a direct machinima link there to the, you know, to community development, really, as well, which is great, yeah. And

Damien Valentine 31:17
because this year is the 25th anniversary, imagine the sim is four, which is the most recent installment. It's going to be a lot of new content as well, yes, as well for I

Tracy Harwood 31:28
can't wait to see what Phil does with it. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 31:33
Alright. The final piece of news, which came as a surprise, Rooster Teeth, is back. So we know that Rooster Teeth was brought out by Warner Brothers. I'm not exactly sure when they got acquired, but they produced lots of content, and then Warner Brothers shut them down last year, which I can't say I'm a huge Rooster Teeth fan. I did enjoy red versus blue for a while, but, you know, there are still a big part of mission community, so it was sad to see Warner Brothers shut them down. Well, Burnie Burns has reacquired the rights for Rooster Teeth, which he announced a few days ago. It's unclear what he's actually going to do with it. Obviously, I imagine he's going to produce more content with the rooster tooth name, but he's going back, and so we'll have to wait and see what he does with it.

Tracy Harwood 32:32
Rock on Burnie, yeah. So nice to see

Damien Valentine 32:36
he's got the name back, which is something he created or CO created. And look forward to seeing you do with it. Burnie, so good luck.

Tracy Harwood 32:45
Brilliant. Yeah, no great Gosh. What a lot. What

Damien Valentine 32:51
busy January, yeah, so live up to it next month. Now, yeah, it's going

Tracy Harwood 32:55
to be a tough one, really. I think, listen, there's one more thing that we haven't talked about, and I'd really like to hear where you're going with it, but you've just finished Heir to the Empire, Empire after how many years

Damien Valentine 33:12
more than I really want to think about. Come on, spit it out. All right, so 2019 I released the first chapter. And I think I told this story before I first finished the project, and I want you to think short. I wanted to thank short had a space battle in it, just to test out and practice my skills at animating space battles, because I wasn't really happy with what I'd done previously, and I thought, what can I do? So I was looking around the room, and my I settled on the bookshelf, and there was Heir to the Empire sitting there, and I thought I remember the first chapter. There's a space battle in it, and only three speaking characters, no four speaking characters. So I don't have to find a huge cast of voice actors. I can focus on just doing the space battle. So I did it, and when it was finished, I put it I thought, Okay, that was fun. I put up on YouTube, and I hope some people enjoy it, not expecting the reaction it did get, which was it kind of became viral with Star Wars fans, and I had so many requests for more, which is not something I'd actually set out to do. I was already planning my next original project, and I was writing it, collecting voices for it, and stuff like that. And I thought, well, I don't really want to do 32 chapters of a book. But then the request kept coming. I thought, okay, I started thinking about, what could I do it? Well, the first thing to do is, can I make the characters look like the ones from the films? Because, you know, that's important, that and Luke and they look like themselves. And then you've got characters like Chewbacca and C3PO which you can't create those in icons character created because they have very specific looks that you need proper rendering software. So I found some character models for them that I could import into icon and and give them the same skeleton so they could move the same way. Then, of course, you got to get they have to sound right as well. All the speaking characters, like Han Solo has to sound like charisma. For Luke Skywalkers to sound like Mark camel, Carrie ley has to sound like Carrie Fisher and so on. So I had to find people that you know could do their voices. And luckily, I found this guy. His name's matt finish, and he did all the male character for some movies. He did the he had this video on his channel where he does impersonations, and he just did all the Star Wars. Thought, oh, that's the guy I'm going to ask. So I sent him an email, as showed in the first chapter, I said, Oh, this is what's happening. I'm trying to do the next four chapters, thinking, yeah, people get bored after that, because that's they'll lose interest. And he said he opened up for it. So I sent him the script, and he started sending me the recordings back. And I was really blown away listening to what he did, because I this is one of my favorite books when I was a kid. So here in the lines spoken by someone who sounded like the actual, uh, original characters. It made it very moving, in a way that if you're a big fan of the book, you get it, yeah, or it's and so, yeah, we did it. And I thought, okay, chapter four, I wrote the script up to Chapter thought, for thinking. Now people get bored after this because one had the battle in it, and then 3423, and four, mostly conversation, mostly just long conversations, not a lot of action. So I thought people lose interest. But no, I risk chapter two, and it became even more viral than the first one. So I got to chapter three, I thought, okay, I probably gonna have to keep on after four. So I thought, Okay, I'll do up to 10, and then people lose interest. And then, of course, by the end of 10, I thought, no, they're not losing interest. They want more. And the pandemic was in full force at that point, so I was working on it during lockdown. And it was nice to have something like this I could work on when you couldn't get anywhere. So I just wrote the script for the rest of the book. And finally, just before Christmas last year, reached chapter 32 which is the very end of the book.

Tracy Harwood 37:35
Oh, my God. And now you're putting you've put it together into a film.

Damien Valentine 37:41
Yeah? So halfway through, I put together chapter one to 16 as a movie edit, and that really took off. That's the most popular incarnation. Oh, wow. Of it. This

Tracy Harwood 37:56
was a couple of years ago. Yeah, that one? Yeah. I released

Damien Valentine 37:59
it just before Christmas. 22

Tracy Harwood 38:03
two, yeah, yeah,

Damien Valentine 38:07
and yeah. So that's it crossed 1.1 half million views a few days ago. So I thought, okay, when I finished the end of the when I finished the second half, I'm gonna do the same thing. So there's a part two movie as well. It hasn't quite reached one and a half million views just yet. It's got a way to catch up, but it's still proving quite popular. Visually, it looks a lot better because at that point, I switched over to Nvidia Omniverse for rendering. So when you finish part one and go straight into part two, it suddenly looks a lot different. So, yeah, that's four hours worth of movies or episodes, if you want to watch them individually,

Tracy Harwood 38:52
that's amazing. That's something that's a one hell of a creative endeavor. I think, I guess so having done, I mean, because that, I know you've lived and breathed that for for years. I mean, what's that? Six years? Yeah,

Damien Valentine 39:09
well, I will say there was a huge gap between Episode One and Two because of that time spent thinking I'm not going to do it, and then figuring out if I could do it, and finding the people. So most of the episodes had about a month between on average, yeah, but there's a long gap of about nine months between them, because that's how long it took me to figure out doing it all.

Tracy Harwood 39:36
Yeah. And then how many awards have you had for this series?

Damien Valentine 39:42
10. It's so I submit it to 10 film festivals that it's been accepted at, so Summit's just been screened at or listed as was it? What's the phrase?

Tracy Harwood 39:58
Just a pick, just a it's. Just

Damien Valentine 40:00
picked, yeah, what I've selected, that's it, yeah, and a few of them, it's actually won awards at two like best voice cast, which I was very pleased about, and I was very happy to share that with my cast. I think they did such a great job bringing these characters to life, because without these people, I couldn't have done it. I know AI voice generation is an option. It wasn't when I started this.

Tracy Harwood 40:24
No, that's right, yeah. And,

Damien Valentine 40:27
and I, I'm very happy to say that I used the same cast all the way through, and look forward to continue to work with them. Some people I've worked with before, like Ricky and Phil, yeah. And then this guy, Matt, I met him through this I've met him in person. He lives in America. Don't know if I will ever meet him, but it's still nice to have this guy that is really talented, and hope he goes far with voice acting. I know he's done people of making mods for Star Wars games have gone to him to get him to do the famous characters in their mods as well. So he's done some Obi Wan in the Jedi Knight games and stuff like that. So that's exciting. He'll share those with me and see you can play, you can play as me and stuff like that. So fantastic. Yeah, and there's still some more to come, which I don't know what the results are going to be there. So

Tracy Harwood 41:18
you've got it in other festivals. You say, yeah. And what's the one that you got just before Christmas? Was that a Star Wars I want

Damien Valentine 41:25
it was the, well, the festival hasn't actually taken place yet, but I was able to announce that it was selected and up for best animation at the Los Angeles Fan Film Festival. Well, congratulations. Thank you. This was going to be a live event. Understandably, they moved online after the recent fires, which is a bit of relief, because now I can actually attend it.

Tracy Harwood 41:54
Oh, you mean you weren't going to go to Los Angeles.

Damien Valentine 41:59
It's a long way to go for one evening. Yeah, uh, although it would have been nice to if I had one to get up on the stage and done the thank everyone for it. But, you know, this is makes a little bit cheaper to attend, so sure, but you

Tracy Harwood 42:14
could have met Ricky as well and had a beer and all the rest of it.

Damien Valentine 42:17
That's true, but I'll settle for the online one, and that does mean that other people can watch it as well. So

Tracy Harwood 42:24
Well, best of luck with that. And I hope it's hope it finishes in the top. I'm sure it will. Actually, I'm sure it will. Well, okay, so what you know, given this was such a massive endeavor, what are you going to do next? But the

Damien Valentine 42:40
immediate thing I'm doing is those early chapters don't officially look as good as the most recent ones, because I was using I cloned six when I got started. I think it was six, then it was just seven. No, it was an early version of seven, and then they had a big overhaul with the characters when I got to chapter three, so suddenly the characters look different then and then, of course, in I clone eight came out halfway through which I was then able to move into exporting to Omniverse. So what I'm doing at the moment is re rendering everything so I can do a special edition and release an episode every week, once I've got enough finished, uh, while I read the second book and write the script for that, because he Empire is only book one of the trilogy. Oh, uh, thankfully, it's a bit shorter than air to the Empire, but not by much,

Tracy Harwood 43:37
so we've got another few years to go yet. Then on Star Wars from you. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 43:43
and I'd like to do some original stuff as well, if I could squeeze that in. But even the Star Wars stuff is very popular, I'm quite happy to continue making it, and I do have a lot of fun with it. So

Tracy Harwood 43:54
yeah, and you go to a lot of cons as well, don't you? Because I know you're big into that sort of scene.

Damien Valentine 43:59
Yeah, I actually cos played One of the characters I went to a Star Wars convention in August. And strangely enough, the only person who knew who I was dressed as, because he's in a book, he's not actually in any of the animated or film or live action stuff, the only person that recognized who I was was one of the actors in this one, the guest guest because she said she read all the books before she got cast in Ahsoka because she wanted to understand Grand Avenue Thrawn. Knowing that her character is working for him, she wants to know why her character would be so impressive. So she read everything that he was in. So she recognized me as the character, incredible, but not the fans knew who like was, which I thought was really funny, but they

Tracy Harwood 44:49
do now, if they watch, if they see new series, and they're going to know who it is, aren't they? Yeah, brilliant. That was fun. Yeah, great. So when are we going to see the. Re renderings, I

Damien Valentine 45:01
don't know yet, because I'm still in the process of doing it. I I've got, let me check my thing. I've got nearly five episodes completed, but they're not in order. And what I really want to do is have enough of them completed so I can start releasing them, and then it doesn't matter about the last few because I can finish them off as people are watching, because it's going to take 32 weeks if I release them weekly.

Tracy Harwood 45:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 45:33
Because I had all the files set up for the last one, I did render that one again, first in high resolution. So I've got the end of the very end of the book rendered as a special edition, but I saw so you go the last one I actually released. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 45:47
I imagine going back six years is going to be a tough one to to do and retrieve.

Damien Valentine 45:55
Actually, it's not so bad for the most part. All of the project files still work, and where I've updated the character models, all I have to do is drag them off from the con i got icon as a thing where all your content is there, so just drag the character, drag it over to the display, onto the one you want to replace. It will do its thing has swapped, the character model, all the animation is transferred over automatically. Oh, okay, so most of the time it takes about half an hour to do this, transferring and updating, and then I'll export it over to Omniverse, and then have to change the lighting, because the ray trace lighting works differently from icons lighting that, again, that sort of takes about that's included in that half an hour I was talking about. It doesn't take long to change the lighting. Gets a little bit trickier with the action scenes, because, you know, icons, explosions and special effects don't transfer ever to Omniverse at all. So I have to redo the effects, and I have to redo them so that the time with the sounds, so I don't have to redo all the sound energy. Yeah, because it'd be nice to not have to do that as well. But it's not that, it's not that many shots that require that. So I can't say exactly yet when it's gonna be finished, because I don't know yet. I'm too early into it.

Tracy Harwood 47:30
Yeah, yeah. It sounds a bit of a faff to be honest. It's

Damien Valentine 47:33
not too bad. But when I can leave it rendering, I leave it rendering overnight. So or if I go out and do something, or, you know, just a computer, yeah, read another script, yeah, I can do all of that stuff with rendering. I know when I'd like to release it, but I'm not going to say just yet, because it's it really does depend on how long it takes to get because the rendering times are still pretty long, though, weirdly, I found that so one of the things I'm not just rendering at the original resolution, I'm rendering it higher. It's not 4k because I don't have a screen big enough to test that on, but higher than it was. I accidentally rendered a scene at 1080p I thought, no, it needs to be higher than this. It's 140 4p 14 140 P. I don't know how they say it. That's, that's the resolution I'm going for. So when I rendered it again at the high resolution, it was faster than when I rented it at 1080p and I do not know why, because all it is is high resolution, if you think it would take longer. And I've noticed that I did some experiments with that, and I've noticed that. So I don't know why. I'm sure if I rented it at 4k it wouldn't be really fast. Maybe I should try that as well at some point, though, just to see go the whole hog and go 8k. I had someone ask me for that.

Tracy Harwood 49:10
Yeah, you will, won't you when you finished? Doesn't matter how good the quality is that you render it out on, there's always going to be somebody say, No, it needs to be better. I need it on this 16k. Yeah, why not? I don't think you see this. Yeah. Oh, well, it sounds like you're still going strong with it, though, that's the amazing thing. Yeah, and I guess you're gonna have to put it in more film festivals. Then there's a as the the higher res version of it, yeah,

Damien Valentine 49:40
I guess I will. The whole four hour version is one long Super Cup,

Tracy Harwood 49:44
yeah, yeah. And then, of course, you know, we've had all the interest in Heir to the Empire from the the Martin family, yeah, what's going to happen with that? Do you think?

Damien Valentine 49:58
Um. I don't know we have to see, yeah, well,

Tracy Harwood 50:05
I look forward to seeing what they do, actually, because I can only think that that will ultimately generate more interest in what you've done with yours. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. Well, not that you not that it's not succeeded amazingly well, because I think you know for it to have reached the the audience that it has is no mean feat, and it's continued to do that over an extended period of time, which is brilliant. Yeah, great stuff. All right. Well, I haven't got any more questions. I just wanted to ask you what you were doing next.

Damien Valentine 50:37
Oh, that's it. Well, I will say that I looked at the one of the in chapter two. One of the scenes I was originally very proud of was the balcony, and it's got Princess Leia looking out over the city, and got the wind is blowing her gown slightly, because, you know, these are high buildings, so there's going to be a breeze up there. It's just kind of look at there that's blowing and hair's blowing a little bit, and you got the city and all the lights in the background. I was really proud of that scene when I first did it, but obviously it looks really dated now, because I was using that such an old version of iClone. Um, I can say that looking at the new one, which I have rendered. Now, I again, really proud of that, but I can do other things, like the floor that she's standing on because ray trace, I've made it slightly shiny so you got her reflection, like marble in it, so she you can see her standing there, and you got her shadow, but also her reflection in the in the marble floor, and so when her dress is blowing, you've got the reflection of it there, and you got traffic in the background, which wasn't really that visible before. I again, I can't wait to show you that off. So when it's time to show off these new renders, that's gonna be one of the first shots. Is here's the original and then here's the new one. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 52:02
great. So you're going to do a comparative evaluation, and when you present it, that's going to be lovely. I think

Damien Valentine 52:08
the trailer will be something like that. It's you seem like this, but now and do a sort of wipe across, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 52:13
well, it's going to be a bit like Blade Runner, isn't it? The first and the and the latest version of it with

Damien Valentine 52:24
Blade Runner. There's five different versions of it that are available. Apparently, there's a sixth. One inch is not available and probably won't ever be, but it's one that fans really want. Yeah, I don't think I'll go that far with it, but

Tracy Harwood 52:42
awesome. Well, it's lovely to chat to you about that. And what inspired me to ask you about it was your message from the director end of the book video. So I'll put a link in, in the show notes, to that, and to you, to your channel, for your for your whole film, first and second sections of it.

Damien Valentine 53:06
Yeah, there's message from director vs were, yeah, good way to talk to the community, absolutely, together, updates on what was happening with the project.

Tracy Harwood 53:15
So it's a good it's lovely. I like it, yeah,

Damien Valentine 53:18
all right, well, I think we've covered the news, and we've discussed the Heir to the Empire a little bit there, so I think we were wrapped things up. It's nice that you're back from Mars now,

Tracy Harwood 53:31
yeah, Zagreb,

Damien Valentine 53:33
and we're back next week with my pick. Which

Tracy Harwood 53:39
is it your bit? Yes, it is. Yeah, I think

Damien Valentine 53:41
dangerous, which I'm really excited because it's a little bit different the way I've done things. So

Tracy Harwood 53:48
look forward to seeing that.

Damien Valentine 53:50
Yeah, thank you again. If you have any comments about any of the news or Heir to the Empire or the show in general, please send us an email at talk at complete the machine row com, and you can read our blog at complete the mission road com, and com, and we'll see you again next week. Take care. Bye, bye, bye, bye.