GDC Bianca

Post date: Mar 18, 2017 3:58:13 AM

Missed my flight Sunday, got there Monday & went to the Advanced Graphics Tech "Cinematic Depth of Field" & "Advanced Particle Simulation in Compute" which I'll admit was a talk more tech savvy then I could understand, but I tried to keep up. 

Afterward I went to Reveal the magic in VR: Behind the scenes of fantastic beasts VR' Experience

-Lidar scanned assets from film set was used to make a pbr background that matched up with Cinematic

-3D mapping early on to plan space and figure out what the viewer is being exposed to

What are things the people want to interact with? 

= Daily user testing establishes what to place efforts in 

-Gives the player freedom to explore, & sense of purpose but story is never forced on player  

-Unity- pre-rendered background, real time objects 

-pre-rendered creatures & actions but mixed up so it feels like genuine interaction 

 Then I went to the 

VRDC mixer where met a lot of cool people & practiced talking to strangers 

Afterward I texted some classmates & heard they were at Thirsty Bear, so I went to meet up, but by the time I got there they were about to leave, so I decided to just stay there & have a drink. While there I started talking to some people working in educational games; & they told me about an Ubisoft party that was going to happen there in a bit. So I stayed & continued drinking. Not long after I met Greg Foertsch & his team, James Taylor, Keith Self-Ballard and several other really cool people. 

Tuesday I went to a few visual effects bootcamps but my favorite was Like a Mace to the Face: Leaving the Battlefield to go it Alone:

Battlefield 1, 60 fps, Changing Weather, 64players

Engine- Frostbite 3 

No normal maps on particles 

Mostly texture sequences 

Very few particle shaders

LODs 

Limit particle instances

Pyrotechnics 

-essentially a looping smoke ball with emissive 

-control alpha to make it re-usable 

-Glow sleeves -sets the area for where there should be fire 

Terrain snapping 

-rolling fog that snaps to terrain 

Mud, blood & cloud sprites in Houdini 

-make fluid sim - then mesh it -then optimize the mesh

Volume looping in Houdini -changing color is easy 

Wedging 

-a node for volumetric explosion 

Other great tools:

Popcorn FX

Facedown FX

I also went to Experience in Social VR, which explored the various ways one could use VR to connect with others, such as a VR Rave dance party & the technical obstacles they faced making that happen 

Afterward I went to the polycount mixer, the github mixer, met up with some Ringling Alumni and some programmers from Massive

Wednesday I went to the Crystal Dynamics event, debatably worth the wait, but I got some feedback. Then I wandered the expo floor looking at games. One I really liked, had a mouse as the player character avoiding rat guards, I think it was called Mouse of Atin, but that might be wrong. Later on I went to the Ringling mixer, met up with some classmates and Ringling Alumni and went to the Epic party.

Thursday I mistakenly went to a couple programmer talks. I could not keep up, I took notes, but I have no comprehension of what I wrote. Then I went the NVIDIA GameWorks Animation Technologies in Unreal Engine 4, where they discussed the new in engine cloth simulation available in UE4 4.16. Afterward I went to the Real Time VFX mixer and met some effects artists from Blizzard

Friday I went to a portfolio talk where I met back up with Greg Foertsch and got his detailed feedback on my portfolio.