Week 1

Before-Class Readings

• The pipeline of VFX production:

  1. Sketch - Broad exploration of the look of the effect; the core point of discussion for what an effect should look like, and this can be either one sketch or a sheet of sketches for effect concepts.

  2. Tie-down - Selecting the best choices out of the sketches and refining them—tying them down. This means adding more visual to the sketch to give a better idea of what the effect should look like.

  3. Style target - The concept art stage, where the favourite of the tie-downs is chosen and you really flesh it out to its completed look.

  4. Call-out - Taking your concept art and doing "call-outs" on them; showing where things are going to be, how you're going to build the effect; effectively planning the effect, like a blueprint. This is also a consideration point for optimisation.

  5. Block-in - The prototype of the effect, built inside of the game, with things like simple shapes being used to put more focus on getting the timing and details right.

  6. Creation - The actual building stage of the game, where you're creating the final version of the effect, using systems such as the particle system and building the textures, meshes, etc.

  7. Implementation - Setting up the effect to be produced in the game, e.g. being generated after an attack or environmental effects.

  8. Optimisation - Keeping the framerate and load time high to provide a smooth playing experience; most important when there's a lot of effects on screen. E.g. texture size, system complexity, etc.

  9. Bug-fixing - Fixing bugs in the effects, often with info sent by the QA team.

• The three main sections of the VFX pipeline are "pre-production", "production" and "post-production".