Dio's GDC 2017 Extravaganza

Post date: Mar 07, 2017 8:15:36 AM

General Synopsis

GDC 2017 was a more relaxed yet better experience for me overall. Having gone the year prior I knew exactly what to expect and what to not do that would be a waste of time at the EXPO. Having arrived on Tuesday I immediately went to the Tech Artist Mixer as well as the Github Mixer. Amongst the many cool things I learned, some that stood out included the possibilities of implementing Houdini into the real-time gaming pipeline for destruction and baked effects in general. I also gained some tips about implementing hands for VR from a Senior Engineer at Intel which I will definitely implement into my senior thesis.

Wednesday was the day to touch base with all of the connections I had already established from the previous GDC. This is extremely important as some of these connections will pan out and actually give you potential internship opportunities for the summer. This is also the day where I like to go around and get a feel of where the industry is leaning towards to better understand my own standing. To a great personal benefit, 90 percent of the show had some sort of VR display or demo. This reassured my decision to develop for VR which gives me a lot of avenues to go through once I graduate, whether it be in tech or developing for the space in general.

Thursday was my day of looking at demos and trying to learn as much as possible from the talented artists surrounding me. I sat into the substance booth for a while and watched both Brad Smith’s and Harrison Moore’s talks. (I’ll break this experience down separately.) Apart from that I played and talked to some indie dev's at Day of the Dev’s section. In contrast to AAA studios they really prefer a wider range of skills. Also it was just great seeing Rime at such a polished state being its very troubled development. Apart from day of the Dev’s, the steam booth had some great indie games that you could sign up and play. I had a conversation with the programmer for SuperHyperCube about the future of VR and pushing the boundaries of perception. Their game did this in a great way buy forcing the player to use their body motion to see what comes next.

Friday was pretty much just closing up anything I hadn't done at the expo. Aside from that it was encapsulated with the Killer Portfolio Talk which gave a lot of great info on how to break into the AAA scene mostly. Some of their major points were to specialize on your niche and then diversify yourself once you’ve broken through that barrier. After you are already in the industry it's a lot easier to move around from job to job. This was doubled down in my portfolio with Wyeth Johnson (Principal Technical Artist at Epic Games) who has been a long time idol of mine.

All in all this GDC was great place for making new friends and more so creating connections for a life-time. If they like you they will definitely lean towards giving you a job over the other guy who may be competing for the same job. In my closing notes, I will definitely say to follow up with everyone and remember that these developers you, just a couple years down the line.

Algorithmic Booth

• • At algorithmic booth I sat in on both Brad Smith & Harrison Moore’s talk about their character material pipeline (Designer>Painter>Unreal) for Epic Game’s paragon.

  • I learned about the way that they make small tools, presets and libraries to speed up their workflow.

  • In addition I learned that graphs don’t need to be extremely complicated as long as they look good and serve their purpose.

  • Now I’ll be cleaning up a bunch of old graphs and creating small export pipelines for my texture workflow. This will allow me to speed up my iteration time and more effectively create textures for multitude of my assets.

Portfolio Review with Wyeth Johnson (Principal Technical Artist at Epic Games)

Things that he said:

• • Told me to lead with the tools instead of the art if that’s what I wanted to do.

  • Make 5 awesome tools and really break down my thought process with them.

  • Can even drop the tools into already existing content. It’s all about showing functionality, flexibility,and workflow.

  • If I’m aiming to be a technical artist my tools and whatever I choose for my secondary specialization will make me stand out. (whether it be materials/shaders etc.)

My Analysis:

• • My work was very visually driven and It doesn’t look like much of a technical artist portfolio.

  • Need to push more into heavier tools without compromising the visuals.

  • Showing the way that I think is extremely important for a technical artist. I need to efficiently communicate that while creating great tools and implementations.

  • Look into known fractal systems as well as things that exist in society and in nature and attempt to recreate them procedurally.

  • Ask artists what they would like to help their workflow and implement it.

My Upcoming Actions:

• • Will lean more on Substance Designer and Photogrammetry implemented into an efficient workflow.

• Create a variety of tools that will improve my workflow first. These will range from in engine materials to scripts.