Auteur : Emily and Andrew

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Twine

Twine is an open-source visual coding platform for creating interactive stories online. At its most basic it serves as a way to craft a story that requires user interactivity to experience. You don’t need to have coding experience to create stories in Twine but the possibilities open up with some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Twine is a great option for prototyping branching narrative and nonlinear storytelling as well as experimenting with interactive user experiences. The level of interactivity ranges from simply clicking to trigger the next portion of the story – similar to flipping the page of a book, to something more akin to “choose your own adventure” novels or text-based video games.

COST: Free

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Unity

Unity is a game design engine developed by Unity technologies. Originally only for MacOS it is available for Windows as well and can create games for the most modern game and VR consoles as well as for most mobile and desktop platforms.

Similar to Unreal, Unity is capable of creating real-time visuals for games (both 2D and 3D) as well as interactive simulations, film layouts, and other experiences.

Unity has less of a learning curve to get started than Unreal and it is easier to create web-based experiences with it. The backbone of Unity is C#, though users can get started without any coding experience. It is harder though to create photorealistic graphics with Unity than Unreal.

There is a robust asset store with 3D and 2D assets.

COST:

  • Free for students or until a company generates $100 000 annually or if released on closed console systems (PlayStation, Switch, etc.)

  • After this, $1800/yr/seat or higher depending on the tier

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Unreal

Unreal is at its core, a game engine created by Epic Games but it has a large swath of applications in the live performance industry. Unreal offers an excellent real-time 3D environment that can create stunning visuals without rendering.  Programming can be done either with its built-in nodes or directly in C++.  It is capable of releasing on most modern gaming and VR systems as well as Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. 

Unreal is used extensively in virtual production pipelines and can be connected to either professional tracking gear or more consumer-grade options such as the HTC Vive.

There are substantial assets available both paid or for free available on the Epic Marketplace and the engine comes with example content built into it.

While there are many great tutorials available online (both from Epic and from the creator community) Unreal has a fairly steep learning curve and requires pretty hefty computer resources to run.

COST: Free until a project makes 1 million dollars in gross lifetime revenue

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VDO.ninja

VDO.ninja (formally OBS.ninja) is a utility for transporting video feeds from a smartphone, tablet, or remote computer into programs like OBS Studio or any other browser-enabled software. It offers high-quality, low-latency video feeds and supports virtual backgrounds, basic avatars, and screen/media file sharing.

An excellent option for creating video work with remote collaborators or event streaming as it works pretty seamlessly with OBS.  

It needs to have one person in charge of the room (the director).  The director of the room has control over who can see each other, can see the audio and video settings of each participant, and can create scenes with specific users in them.  Video or Scene feeds can then be pulled directly into OBS or any other program that allows for browser feeds.

VDO.ninja is great for bringing guests into a stream in part because the user experience is fairly simple and web-based.  

COST: Free

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Voicemeeter Potato

Voicemeter Potato is a virtual audio mixer utility for internal audio routing and creating virtual audio devices. It is the most advanced member of the Voicemeeter family and has options for Internal FX and External AUX through a send/return workflow. Potato is particularly useful if you want to route audio from one program (such as chrome) to another (like zoom) and it functions by creating 3 virtual input and 3 virtual output devices. Anywhere that can take a mic input can now be fed whatever audio you desire. It also comes with slots for 5 physical inputs and 5 physical outputs. Voicemeter contains a basic recording function. 

Additionally, Voicemeeter Potato contains a VBAN (or VB-Audio Network) utility. By enabling the VBAN you can send audio from one computer to another over a shared local network (an excellent solution if you want to all be in one zoom meeting and don’t want feedback). VB audio also makes additional iOS & Android apps to add VBAN functionality to mobile devices.

COST:

  • Voicemeeter is built off a donationware model

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VPN

Stands for virtual private network.  VPNs extend a private network across a public network (such as the internet).  Many folks use VPNs to change their IP address for security or streaming purposes or to log into a remote office but they have many artistic possibilities as well.  Users on the same VPN can send direct network commands (such as OSC or rtpMIDI) to control software, trigger cues, etc even if they are not in the same physical space.   VPNs can be set up manually but there are also various existing utilities that have free tiers such as VPN Hamachi or ZeroTier.

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