Summer Updates, DJ Sets and News Items

 

Good morning everyone, or as Jiyo would say: hi poggies~ . Last week was mental. Code orange was officially declared by government  (no football pun intended, because if it were, code orange would last for at least a few more days). Code red didn't want to be left out and thought: 'that's cute, hold my beer', with the weather reaching temperatures almost 40 degrees and beyond. We've had two of the craziest thunderstorms coming over the city in years. Temperatures have luckily returned to much more digestible numbers. This blogpost is pretty much going to be another caffeine-fueled rambling madness (in luckily an air-conditioned teachers lounge). I love it. 

 

Everything summarized, it's been quite an interesting period over the past few months. Ever since I dove into the rabbit hole that is known as VRChat somewhere last February, I've been spending quite a lot of time within its virtual realms (see previous blogpost). I still keep uncovering new things every so often. I love how this game is used for various way of creative- and technical expression. One day I found myself walking into a beautifully crafted Japanese garden with players from around the world. The other day I am visiting a friends'  Hip-Hop and R&B liveset in a digital club and conversing with people from all around the world, wanting to go to sleep afterwards, and receiving yet another notification from another group that there's another event about to start. And, of course, just before finally deciding on a definitive date to start my first set, I stumble across a venue that is able to work with the actual DMX protocol, which means: custom lightshows. Performance delayed, must investigate. The work never stops, research is never fully complete, and my brain, funny enough, will never shut off. Lots of things going on, lots of work to be done. Too less time to do everything, which sucks.

 

 

 

 

In other news, today:

• A conversation between DJ Jiyo and Prof. Matteo Bittanti, including a future outlook;
• Grand Theft Auto V Machinima Dev Streams: a recap, more information, and news articles;
• VRChat Poster made for Twitch Front-Page Event;

 

 

A conversation between DJ Jiyo and Prof. Matteo Bittanti 

I have introduced my female alter-ego DJ Jiyo a while ago in my previous blogpost. This did not remain unnoticed. The Patreon channel of the Milan Machinima Festival has featured DJ Jiyo not only once, but twice! In the first article, DJ Jiyo was introduced with direct links to all of the conducted livesets, alongside a number of interesting phenomena that were at play such as my choice for a female model and the positioning of Jiyo within my work as a machinima artist. The second article contained a full-on interview with Professor Bittanti and myself and highlights several types of subjects from a deeper, thought-provoking (sometimes almost philosophical) perspective: such as the concept of digital gender, digitized club culture, the future of DJ Jiyo, Jiyo potentially entering the spaces of vTubing and said potential implications, giving Jiyo a close-up follow cam as a social experiment, the similarities between myself and my female alter-ego, the sources of inspiration that allowed Jiyo to be, and my own stance/memories regarding music and club culture among many other things. Feel free to check it out.

For everyone's convenience, I have embedded all five live sets underneath.

 

I have managed to get the first live set up and running again. There was one specific song used within the set that was allowed on Twitch but posed problems on YouTube: causing the whole video to be blocked. The area (13 - 17 minutes) is now muted and the stream should be available again. I will leave this song out in future sets so that VOD's remain fully available (such a shame, because this song is absolute fire). It took a few days for the video to reappear on the channel and in the algorithm, but it should be good now. No worries, there will be more Hardcore and Hardstyle sets in the future. 

The second Patreon article revolving around DJ Jiyo contained a number of 'behind-the-scenes' clips of test-captures, a 40-minute test DJ set and some physbone tests, to name a few. I had uploaded these on Streamable, unbeknown that clips on Streamable will be deleted after a month or two. To ensure that the clips remain available for everyone, I have uploaded them again in one single video in this post. The current thumbnail is not bad (Gemini made it) but definitely not in the style as I intend it to be. Rest assured, once I ever get around to it, I will make a new shiny type of thumbnail specifically for the clip compilations.

 

 

Overview of clips:

Clip 1: Early video's taken around late March after Jiyo's first physbone adjustments. She is still using her default outfit in the standard colour scheme. Note how the physics on her hair are somewhat over the place, and how her sleeves are still rigid. Map: Trico's Premier by Bigby

Clip 2: Similar video, first physbone adjustments. Map: Trico's Premier by Bigby 

Clip 3: Taken on April 9th. Jiyo is still using her default outfit. Test video to show off her adjusted and improved physbones. The chest now has a collider set for her front bangs (they bend while looking down). Her skirt collider was adjusted as her legs were clipping through the skirt at times. She's still using older settings for the eye, face and mouth sliders. Map: Trico's Premier by Bigby

Clip 4: Testclip serving as a 'stress test' for the computer: simultaneously running VRChat and OBS. Captured on April 18th, a mere few hours before Jiyo's first real (practice) live set. Map: The Lux by Bigby

Clip 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10: Multiple clips taken from Jiyo's very first practice set, two hours later, still taking place on April 18th. The practice set was streamed live on Twitch and lasted 38 minutes in total. Mainly conducted to conduct a deeper stress test on the stream and the computer, and to see the effect of the stream inside of the LED wall for the first time. Some slowdowns were reported, this was due to Virtual DJ hogging a lot of memory as I often used its built-in stem isolation features. After signaling this I stopped using said features, but this still resulted in a number of slowdowns. After this set I decided to move on to the open-source DJ software MIXXX. A number of songs played during this practice set were eventually played sometime during the five official CHARADE sets, Map: The Lux by Bigby

 Clip 11: Camera movement test clip, recorded in the early hours somewhere late April (April 27-29?). I was testing potential camera movement during the livestreams. I recorded this before I had realized that the VRChat camera had access to three static camera positions by default through the use of camera pins. Map: Neon Catnip by DJ Megu

Clip 12: Another camera movement practice clip, this time I'm using VRChat camera pins. Date of Recording: May 4th. This was four days before the first official CHARADE set took place. This is not a live performance, but the playback of a recording of the CHARADE practice session uploaded on Mixcloud. This clip could be seen as Jiyo's first dress rehearsal. Map: Neon Catnip by DJ Megu

Clip 13:  The last camera movement practice clip, recorded the next day on May 5th. This was done using Club Orion's dynamic camera feature. I ended up not using it as sometimes characters might look 'two-dimensional' with the camera, depending on the position of both camera and the avatar. Possible workaround possible, of course, with the paid VRC+ subscription (camera drone and camera dolly). Clip created to showcase the potential of the feature. The clip plays the same Charade practice set found on Mixcloud. This clip serves as Jiyo's final and definitive technical rehearsal before the first set took place three days later. Map: Club Orion by AcChosen

Clip 14: Captured on May 17th, shortly before the fifth CHARADE set took place on Tuesday May 19th and actually utilized the use of Jiyo's follow- and face-cam. This last clip was captured to practice her new follow cam and served as a rehearsal for that particular stream. The clip contains a few dance attempts and viewer interactions. Map: Dumpster by _Lightning

 

 

 

 

 Grand Theft Auto V Machinima Dev Streams: a recap, more information, and news articles

 

Just a quick recap of the two Machinima Dev streams I conducted late april. It has almost been two months, but there's still plenty of things to note about them. First I would like to thank everyone for their kindhearted comments after the stream. I really appreciate every single one of you who took the time, no matter how long, to tune in and experience the machinima production process together (and all of the hardships that came with it). Y'all rock. The first stream was obviously the more popular one: reaching over 300 viewers, yet I had noted that there was a solid stream of viewers during the second stream too ever after clicking the start stream button. Both streams are considered a succes. 

 

I initially had the idea for a third stream during which I wanted to capture the final clips and move on towards camera manipulation. Unfortunately I couldn't find the time for a third stream around April and May to do the third live stream. As I did manage to wrap up production for the 'short form GTAV project', a third stream will revolve mainly around camera manipulation. I have started the camera manipulation process already inside of the Rockstar Editor. Depending on how far I'll get with this process over the course of the summer, there might be a third GTA V Machinima Dev stream somewhere after the summer. If not, not to worry, there's plenty of ideas for other Machinima Dev streams: more about those at a later point in time. Keep an eye out on the YouTube Channel or the blog whenever new Dev Streams are going to surface.

 

The GTA V Machinima Dev streams were noticed by the media too. PC Gamer UK reached out me to have the streams featured in a news article. Of course, I said yes. Behold, the result underneath. The article was posted around a week ago. I'd like to extend my sincerest gratitude to PC Gamer UK for featuring the Machinima Dev Streams on their platform and all of the new members of the A Pixelated Point of View YouTube channel that have subscribed due to the exposure on PC Gamer and VRAL. There's another media channel that has reached out to me regarding the Regression-series. More about that in a later stage when that's finalized. Not much I can say about this right now, unfortunately.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/this-gta-5-filmmaker-is-livestreaming-every-step-of-machinima-production-from-location-scouting-to-live-debugging-when-the-game-inevitably-crashes/ 

 

  

 By the way, did you know more streams like this exist? I conducted some experiments with the Photo Mode found within Hogwarts Legacy on Nintendo Switch. back in 2024 whenever the update first came out.

 

 

Back to the 'GTA V Machinima Dev project'  I was working on over the course of the streams. I can't say what the film is going to be about, but I can share a few details:

•  It will be a short form project. The film will be between 1 to 3 minutes long.
•  The film follows an exact script, hence why I was referring to 'acts' over the course of the production process.
• Hints have been dropped over the course of the two streams.

 

To conclude, here's an impression of some of the shots. The screenshots were taken directly from the dailies inside of the Rockstar Editor:

 

 

 

VRChat Poster made for Twitch Front-Page Event

I made little poster for Trico-chan's Twitch Front-Page Event that took place recently on June 21st. Nothing special design-wise, but it was well received, and that's the most important thing for me. 

 

 

The poster was placed in her VRChat Homeworld: Trico's Premier for a limited period of time to draw attention to this amazing milestone. Well done Trico-chan!

 

Until the next update!