Steven Hong GDC 2017

Post date: Mar 17, 2017 3:36:2 AM

This was my first experience going to GDC and entering the expo floor I was surprised to see the number of booths at the event. I wanted to walk around the booths and get a feel for the expo floor. A good majority of the companies were tied with VR and had demo's of games people could play. I was a bit surprised at how quick some companies were to jump onto VR and being there made it apparent that it's definitely here to stay. Both the indie and the AAA side of the expo had some sort of interest in VR.  It was interesting how companies were expanding on the technology of VR. After walking around I became really interested in the Allgorithmic booth and was able to talk to Fabrice Piquet who's a technical artist for the company. He gave me a demo on some new features for Substance Painter 2.5 such as being able to paint a uniform layer without build up. As well as showing the skin material and how being able to tweak around with parameters. I found it interesting that in 2.5 they made it a overall focus to make skin creation in Painter an easier task. I think that implementing this will make the texturing pipeline quicker as well as carry a higher level of accuracy. 

Walking around the booth there was a second speaker giving a demo with how Substance Designer can be implemented with UE4. It appears to me that Allegorithmic is now working closely with Epic as the speaker was going over some of the shaders in Paragon. This shows Epic is now trying to make good use of the substance tools to increase productivity.

 On Wednesday I was able to be one of the first to head over to the Insomniac booth and get to meet some of the developers of the new Spiderman title. I was able to show some of my work with Ryan Benno who went over some of the work he did for Spiderman. He told me the importance of having a strong knowledge of textures and knowing how to make textures reusable and versatile was vital in recreating an entire city. A single building in spider man had a range of 60-100 different tillable textures. It made me realize there was a need for artists who had a strong knowledge and understanding of texture creation. I was then able to walk over to the other side of the convention this day and see more of the indie side of gaming. It had more experimental ways of approaching the users experience. I then head back towards the allgorithmic booth where I was sitting to watch a demo done by Bradford Smith. While waiting I struck conversation with Harrison Moore who is a shader artist at Epic. Being able to talk to him and give me some feedback he was able to give me some input. Telling me to have a strong range in roughness in an environment as well as having motion in an environment can really make it pop. As well as being aware that the industry is 5 years ahead and told me don't worry about poly counts because they are'nt crucial to a portfolio.  Bradford showed off how substance designer can be used to create material functions for painter. Such as peeled paint can be created in painter and can be done to read the curvature of a mesh through designer. This can now make creating textures for painter dynamic and adjustable using substance designer.   

On the third day I was able to talk to the art director for Hi Rez who was giving out some portfolio reviews. He gave me some feedback as well as some info on how their game is primarily focused on a more hand painted style. After getting numerous different critiques from different studios it became clear to me that every studio is going to want something different from an artist. Each studio might have a different style or a different pipeline that they want to see in a portfolio. So being aware of your target studio and their pipeline I think is really important when applying. I then was able to make it to the killer portfolio conference which held a table with some Art Directors. Giving all kinds of feedback on what students should and shouldn't put into a portfolio. I was then able to speak with the Art Director of Firaxis who became really excited at some of my work and wanted to keep in contact with some of my future projects.

I think overall my experience at GDC was very positive and re insuring that the industry is a field of passion. Most of the developers who were there loved what they did and what they worked on. They really wanted students to exceed and were welcoming for students to be a part of this industry.