Machinima, real-time filmmaking, virtual production and VR. Four veteran machinimators share news, new films & filmmakers, and discuss the past, present and future of machinima.
Phil Rice 00:20
Hey, this is Phil Rice and well Ben, we're here to talk about well, what got me particularly interested in talking to you right now is your your latest release, which is called Shockbreak. This was released on October 19. So about three weeks ago. It's made with Unreal Engine, five 5.1 actually, iClone eight and Character Creator 4 involved, of course, the Adobe suite of tools for different things Blender at some point. And you've got to Rococo soot and gloves that are part of it. I'm kind of just basing this off of the, the list of tools that you said were involved about 1300 views as of today, which is far less than it deserves. But it's, it's a, it's a nice haul, you know, it's not easy to get 1300 views on on something that doesn't lean on other people's IP at all. It's completely independent story. So at least as far as I can tell, so congrats on that, and and it's it's a beautiful piece, just great execution. And so what to start off, what was your background? And I should probably know this being involved with the Machinima community as long as I have. But what's your background with making animations like this prior to iClone, which it looks like you started up with that? A number of years ago now, but were you involved with machinima before that through The Movies? Or one of those those types of tools as well?
Ben Tuttle 01:58
It started with The Movies back in 2007. If I recall, okay, so the early 2007 Yeah, be early.
Phil Rice 02:08
Okay. Yeah. Well, what? Clearly, The Movies, the process of the movies is a lot different than, than what you're doing now. So what? Tell me a little bit about that evolution, like was it? Did you kind of get a taste for telling stories with that, frankly, a little bit easier to use tool. And, and decide, yeah, I want to lean into this and, and do more. I'm curious to know about that. Because it's, it's quite a bit more complicated process what you're doing now than what we were even able to do with The Movies back then.
Ben Tuttle 02:44
Very much actually. I first I was very sceptical of iClone back in when I think it was 2009. When I first got it, or 2010, or something around that time, I don't remember, I think it was 2011. Maybe I didn't see much production work with it. And actually, I won it in a competition I call him for. So I started like making a short then there was an old filmmaker by the name of shit, and who said no, just completely toward my first love. As some people were kind of against that, but said, No, this is actually pretty helpful advice. So I spent six months trying to make a movie out of it and seeing what people are doing. And I realised I kind of dove deep into the tools. And I realised, you know, hey, this has a lot more control. Because with the movies game, you know, you have all these little scenes here, and then you make a movie out of it. But sometimes we kind of went beyond that. Right? Where basically we use the green screen, we use mods we used so I saw iClone as an extension in a way where there was motion files from Reallusion that I can use. And then I found out I can alter it. Like I can use the motion layer tool or the puppet to kind of tell like the conversation scenes because when we were working in The Movies game, we're pretty good at matching, like conversation motions, and that have kind of an advantage, I think, right where basically you know, we I see people when they were doing stuff and I can't even tell the state where they're emoting sometimes it's way, way way off. But now with my Rococo suit, I'm gonna be honest here. I'm not the most physically active guy I can't jump around and do flips or martial arts or anything right at very well. I do have like this toy gun, this martial arts gun practising like, kind of it's close way to a real gun so I can use it to move around or stuff like that. But right. Rococo itself is one step beyond because I don't have to rely on those most conversations. I can act it out. I can do all that but it's still the same principle. applies you kind of know what to work with with iClone, you can't just have character standstill and talk there has to be some motion in the branch net. So it was kind of like a step. Like you said, there's a kind of evolutionary step along the way. iClone it very, like it was a huge step forward. But I realised, oh, I can adjust lighting, I could do camera work and all that. And I was going to school at the time for television production when I first got iClone. Oh, I didn't know. And film some film studies. Yeah, I was handling real life camera. So I was kind of knowing okay, what to work with how to compose a scene. And it was kind of a learning process on both sides, I kind of applied what I learned back and forth. Sure. And now. Now these days, it kind of sticks with me, like with Shockbreak, it was a lot of there was it was kind of very careful, like I was trying to plan everything you can tell a lot of shots were, well, sometimes like I was trying to let's use the fight scene as an example. The fight scene took a lot of planning, it took me several tries to do, I wasn't sure how to approach it. And so what I did was like I took a storyboard. And also I've kind of studied Hong Kong action films and some Hollywood stuff. And I realised, oh, I can see what they did. And not only that, but their editing style is a little different than the Americans, right? Where Americans edit on the hit, you know, when a character gets hit the Edit that where they take a couple steps back. So you see that? So I kind of applied that to that. Yeah, so sorry. Yeah, boy. And of course, no,
Phil Rice 06:37
no, an ad. Yeah, an action sequence. A mainly action sequence like that. Yeah. It's the guys who do that well, in Hollywood make it look so easy, but it's very, very complicated endeavour, and I even for live action, I think it's probably one of the more planned types of shots that have to be done because of all that can go wrong. And it's not, you're not planning in the same way, obviously, with characters that you can completely control every motion. Whereas with actors, you just have to make sure okay, don't really don't really hurt him, you know, but it is, yeah, it's there's a lot of variables and the camera angles, and then the shot selection, and how it's edited together, can completely change how the scene, you know, what the scene conveys? So, yeah, it's, I've heard a number of people over the years talk about that, man, I didn't realise how challenging it was to do an action sequence like that until I actually did it. It is it's, it's some challenging stuff,
Ben Tuttle 07:39
it was probably the most challenging scene scene in the movie easily. The first thing I kind of approach that approach to, like it was a dancing. So you kind of see characters moving along with them, right, with the music choreography, of course. And I think that's important because even the cameras kind of reflecting off of that. So that's the that's the tough thing because I see a lot of like, when this you know, a lot of the fighting scenes were from Reallusion's to fight scene pack. I had a couple of others, I was trying to mix it together even thought about like mo cap and a couple of ideas were like, I had an idea where she kind of froze them against the safe and I would do it myself, but I don't know how well the mocap suit absorbs shocks and I don't want to you know, sure. I think I've heard it actually does take you can take as long as there's some padding, it'd be okay, but I didn't want to risk it. But, you know, it's just, I see people kind of letting the camera take that take advantage of it, you know, like letting the camera draw attention to itself, they're moving around wildly, right, so I didn't want to do that I thought that would be incredibly distracting. So I just kind of let the camera hold back and if it was moving with the scene, it's gonna move with the characters. That one like you have to make sure that the characters are in the right spot for the camera so I can do quick editing. So that way you don't lose your pace. It's just it's there's so much so much to do like Mad Max Fury Road all the characters are in the centre of the frame so it's easy to cut right back and forth you ever know what's that? Mean? It's one of those things just put your cursor in the middle of the screen when their frame when you watch Mad Max Fury Road and you'll notice all the characters are in the centre because it's easy for the ice. You don't wear out people
Phil Rice 09:27
for sure. Now speaking of speaking of characters, and it seems like that at least one of the characters in this and maybe maybe multiple our faces or looks I guess that I've seen before in some of your, your demos going back even a couple of years the the the masked female character looks a lot like a masked female character that I've seen in some of your demos from a couple years back. So is this a is Shockbreak is an idea that's been brewing for, for quite a while and it's finally come to light or is it a fairly recent idea that came up? About a
Ben Tuttle 10:09
year ago, I was testing out iClone 8 a demo. And that's really where the idea started have wanted to do a heist film actually looked into a study to what jewel thieves do and how they operate and what rules they have to like, there's quite a bit of what goes into these kind of heist and what to expect. And I followed one person who's probably up there for a while before he got cut. That was probably one that he was easily in the FBI Most Wanted list like easily top 10 for a while, like an actual an actual thief. Wow. So he, he's on YouTube, if you will find him, his name's Larry Loden. So I looked at him looked at, like what he was going through. And he kind of breaks down what what the process is he doesn't, he's easily illustrates that it's not worth the life, it's not worth it. And he's like, he's like, he's been a while, so kind of studied and looked into what goes into it. And I Okay, this would be fun. Like, he mentions that insurance companies are mostly the ones who pay the price for it. So she makes a point about that. So I kind of looked into that when iClone eight came around. And this originally was supposed to be an icon eight. Because I was playing around with volumetric lights, and I met built the sets where she would fight and I realised, let's try bringing this to Unreal and see what happens. Because the set designs a lot easier to work with. That's mainly the reason why I work with Unreal, it's not so much the look, or anything like that. It's all in your lighting. But it's about how easy the set design is for Unreal and how actually, let's be honest, it's more affordable
Phil Rice 11:48
than I know no. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. And actually, that that was probably the, that's the culmination of the questions that I was going to put to you today is is and you've just answered one of them, which is the why I was very curious about that, if it was something about the render itself, or if you've answered that, that a lot of it is is set related. Now, when putting together an animated film like this. There's a lot of different moving parts, you know, characters and animation sequencing, and then the set and the props, and the lighting, and then they eventually the cameras. And yeah, you're doing this in a way that that sort of leverages the strengths of iClone and the strengths of Unreal, but what does it workflow look like? Like I was, I was trying to think, Okay, if I wanted to plan a short, that's going to end up in Unreal, but I need to use iClone, I want to use iClone over Character Creator, you know, for those things, because it's so good at that. So I guess I'm, I've got questions about what's the process there, because obviously, in iClone, you could build out the whole thing, you could build sets, and then you can animate things and have the props, and then the cameras and the lighting and all of that. But when you're doing it straddling both platforms, which stuff is done, like natively in Unreal, and which stuff is brought across, like maybe through Unreal live link or something like that? Because I know it's possible you technically I think, could export a set or at least the FBX of a set, and then bring it over into Unreal if you know what you're doing. But is that the way to do it? It sounds like maybe you're you're actually constructing the sets, they're in Unreal. But then how do you what's involved in lining up? You've got a character that needs to interact, let's say in a meaningful way with that set. So how do you judge distances and, you know, kind of get a feel for that stuff as you're planning out motion for the characters?
Ben Tuttle 13:59
Well, technically, there's two ways to approach it yet. One is live link you can you can easily like bring in you can animate your character by that but Reallusion added something not too long ago where you can take like an object from Unreal and instantly transfer it to iClone with no issue. Okay, views that many times I don't use the live link per se like to bring in animations. So Unreal is pretty much my production. You know, I do all the set work, camera, lighting, everything I build the set first and I kind of bring in certain pieces. I don't bring back everything, but only the things that the character needs to interact with. Then I can use iClone to animate around it and then I send it back through an FBX method. I don't personally like live link because I think there's too much work involved and getting everything else set up. In even though it's I'll be honest, it's probably slower to do in my way and probably not as productive but it's one I've kind of built the system around, you can do, you can do live link or my way, the FBX way. The reason why else also, is I have everything all organised. So I put everything characters sets. For, for a project I'm working on, which is about an hour long. I'm kind of doing all of the mocap work right now. I have to have seen, I'm putting all my scenes set design, everything's organised because you don't want everything on one folder, because it's gonna be really hard to put in through the sequencer when you're trying to find all what's the same, you know, when you have like a lot of motion paths to work through. Right. And with high clone, I think that I don't know if it gives you a naming thing, or just makes one name up. It's just kind of frustrating. So it helps with short productions, I think but with longest stuff you may have to do in my way. But that's just me, I haven't really experimented too much with Livelink to make a decision on that.
Phil Rice 15:56
I've seen I've seen some of your experiments with it, because I think you either streamed or maybe did a video of me at some point when you were and I've seen others too. And it seems like first of all that that live link pretty hefty system requirements to get that to perform right? You've got to be running Unreal Engine. And yeah, you can tone down the shaders and things to make it more efficient. But still, it's a heavy programme and then I clone eight is a heavy programme. I don't mean that critically, I just mean paid. It's it's doing big things. So it takes up a lot of resources. And even on a really good PC, it seems like that that live link, it'd be a challenge to get it to perform well. So I've been wondering about what the alternatives are there because my own experiments with it, or you know, have got me questioning whether this is the best way to Yeah,
Ben Tuttle 16:50
I ran into that struggle early on, because I was wondering, like I'm on a 2080 still, I don't have I've been meaning to upgrade, but I'm just kind of holding off a bit right now for the moment. But yeah, I just kind of realised Okay, the live link thing isn't working. So I do like Unreal, I do like it set design and everything. How do I kind of make a system so I was I spent at least a good three to four months, just finding a way experimenting and seeing what I could do. And I, I think after that live link thing, where you can send props into icon because I was doing everything by hand. Like I had to look where it is exactly on the right. Right, very, very tedious work. Now you don't have to deal with that anymore. But I realised the FBX method, I can still maintain, you know, a good, consistent, you know, there's no lag, there's no, everything is already animated by the time I send it. Sure. And then when I assemble everything into the sequencer I can I have a good vision, what to work with. And it's sometimes I've been known to work on projects that take I've released a project. I was like a minute long I did and four hours from completely building a project from scratch, to when it's time how I know, because I was watching the Raiders game while doing it. By the time a little afterward after the Raiders game, so I was distracted. But it's possible to make a very quick short you just Yeah, I
Phil Rice 18:21
mean, that's, I mean, yeah, four hours to one minute, that's a good ratio for for doing something from scratch. That's, that's, that's very good, actually. So are there any types of things that you try to bring over from character creator or I, like I'm thinking in terms of, especially I would think hair, certain types of hair? And maybe even assuming that you're you're dressing out your characters in character creative for then stuff with soft cloth, cloth physics? Do those translate smoothly over to to Unreal and behave properly? Or do you run into issues with that?
Ben Tuttle 19:06
And sometimes it doesn't translate at all. It's always like
Ben Tuttle 19:15
Sorry about that. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't translate this at all. It there's a the you always have to edit it, no matter what. And it's it's a lot easier to do it in Unreal. Then, then, you know, then I clone because you don't have to make those weight maps at all. Right? It's a little bit of an art you have to know what to work with. Sure. And I think they even changed unreal, did a complete rehaul of the chaos system. So I in You might have to learn it again. It might prove it might not. I haven't really looked into it myself.
Phil Rice 19:50
So for that would be the arena of things like springiness, or Yeah, the soft cloth and Things like that those behaviours basically Unreal has its own physics engine, so to speak, that handles that. So it's not really about necessarily about getting that to perform properly and iClone and then moving into Unreal and expecting the same thing, it's about Unreal has its own system for handling that stuff. And one would just need to be prepared for that. Am I understanding it? Right? Yeah,
Ben Tuttle 20:23
pretty much is just a lot of, you know, it's, it's kind of it comes down to planning. And I think that's the most important thing. Like, if you need to know what you need to have vision, it's something that you can really improve last and how otherwise it's going to give you a lot of headaches. Sure, sure.
Phil Rice 20:41
So you part of your stack of tools is, you know, the Adobe Suite, including After Effects and stuff like that, how much of what we're seeing in a short, like Shockbreak, how much of that is what comes right off the render out of Unreal versus what you've had to enhance it with for you know, atmospherics, or, you know, an obviously there's going to be some colour grading stuff that anybody from any engine has to do. But in terms of the when there are effects, is that stuff that you're handling within unreal before it gets rendered from Unreal? Or are you doing a lot more of that with like a tool like After Effects. For
Ben Tuttle 21:32
this one, it's going to be after effects. I'm starting to learn the visual effects and side of Unreal I'm slowly getting into it, but I didn't really have the time to completely, like do this self I actually did cancel the service for I cancelled red giant, complete, or whatever it was called for. Why? Because I had a year that I was working on some productions for it. And I realised with Unreal, I really didn't, I don't think I needed it anymore. So I just decided to completely cut red giant out this year. So it's not only that, but I'm kind of looking through what I need and don't need.
Phil Rice 22:14
Everything's, everything's just subscription now, isn't it? Yeah,
Ben Tuttle 22:17
yeah, it's
Phil Rice 22:19
up the budget pretty quick. It does.
Ben Tuttle 22:21
I just realised Nope, I don't need this anymore. There's some tools like I use a programme called soundly because it has a sound effects thing. It's thing is like $10 a month or something which I use quite a bit a bit. And even then I'm looking at Adobe, I'm thinking do I need Adobe? Because a lot of people
Phil Rice 22:39
are asking that right now. Yeah, there's the just because there's been kind of an explosion of, of alternative tools. And yet, Adobe, of course, is the gold standard. But yeah, people are starting to, to question and I'm hoping that the results of that will be there'll be, we'll get more competitive with how they price things.
Ben Tuttle 23:02
Yeah, and I think cuz, at some point, you just have to think like, No, I don't think I need to I was learning DaVinci Resolve for a while I thought this could be a good alternative. And I'm still on the fence of that. I have to decide, I think probably I'm kind of locked into it for a year now. So I think by next July, I have to make that decision.
Phil Rice 23:27
So you're using you're using Premiere for your your video editing
Ben Tuttle 23:31
then. Yep, pretty much.
Phil Rice 23:34
Yeah, yeah. And the favourite for sure.
23:37
It's something I'm used to. I come always used to premiere I've worked with and worked with Final Cut Pro. I worked with Avid Media Composer. I've worked with Sony Vegas. Davinci Resolve, I used to work my first editing programme was Magix. So I've kind of worked with a lot of stuff before, you know, and it's been premiere for a while.
Phil Rice 24:02
Yeah, once you use one for a while, man, it's hard to it's hard to change. I used Vegas for way longer than I should have. I mean, just just just loyal. Because I just didn't want to break, you know, my process. But when I tried to get the latest version of Vegas running on Windows 11, I just ran into all sorts of errors and problems. It kept crashing. And that's what kind of forced my hand to Well, I guess I'll I'll try DaVinci because I've never I've just never been someone who knows my way around Adobe stuff well enough to justify the expense. So I thought well, let's just try DaVinci because it does have the the resolve does have the free version. Let's just see if I can get done what I need to and I mean, I love it. I absolutely love it. But my editing needs are pretty simple. Compared to Well, I don't know how to compare it to what you do, but I mean I know that there are people who do stuff in editing that's way more complex than what I do. So I don't know if the free version satisfies that for everybody. But for the kind of stuff that I do, it's, it's, I don't miss Vegas. Finally, it's taken me about six months, but I get it. It's hard. It was so hard to switch though, and I still am right clicking where I should be hitting some other key, because that's what I did for 15 years, you know, so it can get frustrating. I get
Ben Tuttle 25:32
that like with when I was transferring between Final Cut Pro, cuz I was an avid I was cutting that for school. It was really frustrating. I was going I was looking at three different programmes, I wasn't sure premier would see five Pro and avid. So it was like, Oh, they all had different systems. So I was like, Oh, dear, come on. But yeah, it's like I was also using Adobe Audition for a lot of sound work I've been paying, I've been actually been using Photoshop, in addition, a lot more likely, and actually starting to really like those skills I'm trying to take sounded a little more seriously. Like, I'm trying to learn a little more about EQ and all that. It's been a very weak area. And there's some parts in sound shock break that can improve on when it comes to sound editing. I'm still learning. But yeah, I don't know, I
Phil Rice 26:22
don't know if any of us if we're honest, none of us. Everyone should be saying that about, about their film, that there's stuff, stuff, I can still learn how to do better on sound. I am definitely that that way. And I've been doing it a long time. Like even, you know, I mean, I went to school for some of that. And still, it's it's its own science, it really is. And it's rewarding, but it's very time consuming to learn all the ins and outs of EQ and compression and all of that it's it's I envy any team that has a dedicated sound guy, which not many do. Not many teams like us do? No,
Ben Tuttle 27:00
no. And I actually do know a couple people who do this for a living. So if I'm raising, like, I thought I'm actually at the point where I'm looking for fundraising for sharp break, right, I saw that. I'm looking around, I'm kind of stuck. Like, once I get back from holiday on December, I'll kind of take it a little more seriously and look into Okay, I need this how much? Because you know that a lot of the voice talent, you know, those are professional voice actors. And, you know, they they agreed to a reasonable price, but I thought about paying them a little more like, respectable? Sure.
Phil Rice 27:37
Yeah, you can you can, I think that for for teams that can figure out this this budget challenge, which for anybody who wants to take it seriously, but it's not a, you know, corporate back thing, like what you're doing, you know, it's that's so hard to where do you come up with the money for that, but when you do, it seems like you could really build out a nice, kind of a stable of talent, you know, for voice in particular, of people who, you know, have a versatile skill set and could be helpful on multiple productions. And, you know, you get used to working with them. And so it's communication is improved. And there's like this whole frontier of a really cool production process. But yeah, to, to, I think the days of pro grade people just volunteering, which it may be, I'm just remembering big, but it seems like back in the mid, you know, early 2000s, that it just felt like that, that the community around what was calling itself machinima had a lot of people who were like Ricky Grove, the guy is, I mean, he's got an IMDB page, the, the length of my arm, you know, I mean, he's a pro. And he's just doing it for free for whoever asks. Seems like those are harder to find. And I'm not sure why that is. Some of it, I think is the gig economy that people are able to monetize these these gifts that they have, without taking on full time jobs with it, you know, through through Fiverr or through these any number of staples like that are that are specifically for voice talent. So yeah, it's almost become a must to have some kind of funding through through Patreon or through friends and family or, you know, it really depends on how fortunate a person is to who they've got that's willing to throw a few bucks at them, but I'll be watching your efforts with that with great interest because it's, it's it's a part of, you know, doing this at a high level that it makes doing it at a high level much easier when there's even just a modest budget available, you know, yeah.
Ben Tuttle 29:59
I think it's Go ahead. It's quite, it's quite important, like, especially, you know, voice talent, it's kind of hard to like, it's kind of hard to gauge, like how to find good voice talent. A lot of people struggle with that. I'm gonna be honest, this is kind of a serious critique. On my end, I see people champion AI voices, and I just, I'm on that side, like, No, it's not going to work because your audience will know better, your audience is going to say something's wrong, or that a human can't, can easily run away with that a computer cats are sad to say, I'm not very excited about that. You know, to be honest, and you find great companies
Phil Rice 30:37
completely. I think maybe the only place that I see value in it would be in a setting of comedy, where it's like, not supposed to sound real. Or if it's supposed to be a synthetic, you know, robot voice then. Okay, maybe that helps. Yeah, but for actual, serious, or even semi serious dramatic roles. Yeah, there's just, I have a hard time seeing how AI generated is ever going to be able to bring to the table what, what a halfway decent regular actor can do.
Ben Tuttle 31:10
And I think I mean, I'll just kind of praise. You know, Crystal, who's the lead VA. She gave me efforts with now I didn't even ask for them. I forgot to win. Like, oh, wait, and then she just hadn't like another file, which was effort. So it's like three or four minutes of her fighting. You in those fight noises. I'm like, wow. Okay. That's great. And, you know, she played a pretty good performance. Oh, she
Phil Rice 31:33
was great. Yeah. I assume that she's, she's done some work before, either for video games or something. But yeah, just. Yeah, it wasn't. She's a great sound. Yes. She's,
Ben Tuttle 31:46
I think she's intention impact or something. Okay. So a lot of actors. I think a few of them are intention. Actually, I noticed. I think Damon is who voices the eighth one of the agents. He's in I think he's in it. Check his resume. But yeah, just a lot of it was scouting and a lot of good times kind of listening to like, Okay, Crystal was in a previous production line. She auditioned for this role. And she had one line where I was like, okay, yep, that's her. That's the attitude like that, sir. Ya know? And, you know, it's always fun. Like, we always bring, like, there's no one the other agent Holly. Like, I knew, boom, she's right. For the part. Yeah. Because I know, this actress for a while she was she voiced in a project to mind previously as a test and now that okay, she'll be great for this role, or this. And scouting is kind of like I have like a, like, I, I kind of immerse myself in the voice acting community for a while. So I know why, like, Okay, who to turn to just in case. Right. Right. Perfect. And yeah, I
Phil Rice 32:53
actually, I remember watching on Twitter, some of the casting interactions going on for for this film for short break. And at one point, somebody kind of got a little little testy with you thinking that you weren't offering enough money and whatnot. And they
Ben Tuttle 33:09
thought I was a pro studio. Right, right. And they were surprised. They're like, Oh, wait, you're just one guy. Oh, wow. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Like, yeah, at some point, I was like, I first I was hurt. I'm like, what? I'm just like an indie, and then I remember that. I
Phil Rice 33:25
said, I felt so bad for it. Because I'm like, Dude, it's it's like a gut punch. You know, so,
Ben Tuttle 33:30
but the other hand like everyone thinks that you think I'm a pro. I'm
Phil Rice 33:34
just doing that. Right. Yeah. So you're working on your it looks like you're well, I don't know if you've shared this with with others yet. But it sounds like you're, you're looking toward developing more to the shop break. Story. But I've also seen you mentioned another project that you appear to be working on it's at same time, or maybe it is related. I don't know but called Red strike. Is there anything that you're you're ready to tell anyone about that yet? Or is it still under wraps?
Ben Tuttle 34:05
Which is we should see it in? Probably late December. Oh, that's soon. Okay. Okay. I'm working on the mocap. I'm nearly halfway through it right now.
Phil Rice 34:16
Well, that's great. Then let's let's not risk any spoilers at all. If it's going to come that soon. I can. I can wait for that. That's That's great.
Ben Tuttle 34:24
And I was working on a major project Damien should know about it's been in production for years. It's like a running joke. It's called End Game. They've been working on mo cap for that. Yeah. God knows I think this production has been longer for 12 years off because it was just one of the most difficult projects I have ever seen. I I don't like Unreal was probably the only thing I can work with it on. It's been working with Rush Hour, which is this AI thing for, you know, trains to be close to run automatically on a track or a spline and there's so much action scenes. Like I said, I got This fake gun. So like I had to do mocap scenes with it that resolution or nobody can do. And I don't know when that's going to be done. I've been just decided, say, Okay, I'm just going to finish the mocap for it. And then once once the most recent version of Unreal by the time it's done, I'm just going to throw it in and see what happens.
Phil Rice 35:19
Okay, yeah. Very cool. So you've got a, you got a few pans on the fire at different stages. That's great. I look forward to seeing what you produce. And I appreciate that you, you have various points taken time to, to offer up tutorial videos or insights into your process, through your videos. I mean, there's there's more of those than there are narrative shorts and your thing, and it's a very generous thing. And I think it's one of the things that that keeps this community vibrant, is that sharing of, hey, here's what I've learned, this is what works for me, you know, it's, it's super handy. So I appreciate you doing that.
Ben Tuttle 36:01
From it's a new frontier, like, kind of so many requests, a lot of people are wondering how to make movies with Unreal, and yet, it's completely new territory. And one of the, I think one of the few people who do it like quite a bit where I can start sharing, not just like, Oh, here's the new toy that week or anything like that. It's more like, here's how to make a movie. Right? What you can do. There's a whole lot of YouTube channels that cover that. I agree. I
Phil Rice 36:27
know that from searching for them. I'm very, I'm very curious about it as well, I'm, I've gotten to where I feel comfortable with icon now. But I'm realising that there's going to be aspects where unreal needs to be involved to do some of what I want to do. And so it's like, okay, now I got to learn that. So I'll definitely be a viewer and supporter of any content like that you put out and I appreciate your time today, and it was it was great to talk to you. And hopefully we'll, I'd love to do this again, sometime when I've got to enough questions to keep talking for about this time. You're somebody that I've wanted to talk to you for a while. And and frankly, I know your time is precious, and mine has been pressed as well. So I'm glad we were able to work this out on relatively short notice. And it's been a pleasure to talk to you, man.
Ben Tuttle 37:22
Thank you. Pleasure to talk to you as well. It's been really fun sorry if it's if I was rambling too much, you know,
Phil Rice 37:29
no, no, that's fine, it why I've got you on here. Yeah, I've I really appreciate your time and look forward to speaking to you again.
Ben Tuttle 37:36
Thank you. Alrighty.