Today was the first day of NZGDC. In the morning I got to the Skytower not knowing exactly where it was. I ended up going to the casino before finding the convention center. Once I got there I got my battle pass lanyard and found a friend from second year and hung out with him for a bit. Then the Limbus team showed up and I joined there circle. Niagara VFX in UE4.20 was the talk for the morning. Because of demand, the GDC organizers had a secondary, less advertised sign up section. Because of this I was backfill and would get let in if there was space after the VIPs.
It was interesting but I was tired from waking up so early. I took quite a few notes and copied as many material graphs as I could onto the little pad paper from skycity.
Niagra VFX in UE4.20
Modules -> emitters -> particle fx
Currently in beta release. Don't use to ship
Time line has emitters
emitters have stacks
Stacks have modules
modules have flow script editors
editors have HLSL
The attribute spreadsheet is available for debugging
Look at fight scene example with the two robots.
Vector from float node breaks vectors into floats for operations such as multiplication.
I went back to colab for lunch and was really glad I had an excuse to not be in studio asked be actually learning something interesting.
The afternoon was environment art in UE4. Again, I only just got in. For the first hour or so was material instances and landscapes. A lot of this I already knew (which I can be quietly proud of) but I took some notes and drew some graphs anyway. It got more technical and I'm glad I got back into landscape materials as recently as yesterday.
It was a very fun day and much needed break from the usual studio.
Environment Art in Unreal Engine
Material slots in the asset inspection window have highlight and isolate functions.
SetMaterialAttributes has less overhead than MakeMaterialAttributes.
Saturate is a cheaper version of a clamp.
Mask RGBA can be used to split up a Vector4 for multiplication.
ML needs "inputUVtileing" to have inputs within the master graph.
Use ML for substance textures.
Dynamic lighting for large landscapes for less overhead.
Distance field AO
Movable direction light
Directional light has checkbox called atmosphere fog/sunlight.
Square brackets change landscape brush size.
Investigate adding strata lines to a landscape material on dirt layer based on slope.
Alt Shift O opens a popup content browser.
Preview weight will stop the preview of a landscape material from being black.
Landscape grass type can be set up and referenced in material editor as landscape grass. This requires a grass mask.
Wetness layer material doesn't go into the layer blend.
WorldPositionOffest does not add verts but World displacement does.
Investigate Auto LOD groups and rules.
Proxy LOD for optimising distance meshes/buildings
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Friday was the last day of NZGDC18. It was a lot of fun and really interesting to see the state of the industry Ive been studying in a broader context that's greater than the little white room Ive been in for two years at the top of my uni tower. This post is part two because the notes from Wednesday are at uni and I’m home for the weekend. I’ll do part one later.
Concept Art Ashen - Arorra44
Fogs purpose is to desaturate the background and add depth by contrasting the background with the foreground.
Ask for a prop sheet from the concept artist as well as the usual concept art
Art Workflows - Weta Gameshop
Thick model edge champhers are better looking when mipmapped
-\_/- is better than -I_I-
Slight angles are better for normal baking
Quads are better for spherical surfaces. Use smooth or bevel with a value of 1
Investigate maya's hard and soft normals
Investigate the UV tools: Unitize, move and sew and unfold V
Separate unjoined parts pre bake
Headpose within HMD - Magic Leap
Headpose = the transform and rotation data of a HMD
When using head as a direct control
Head variability can be high
Good for short, momentary actions
Low resolution better
A variety of social non-verbal gestures can be deduced solely from the headpose of the HMD
IT Networking and security - Rocketworks
3-2-1 rule for network security
Three backups, two different formats and one offsite storage
Words -> DNS -> ip address numbers
VLAN: a physical LAN divided up virtually into multiple isolated networks
