GDC Slides?

I’ve received a few requests for the GDC 06 lecture slides, and as much as I’d like to do that – the truth is that there just isn’t that much to release! The Powerpoint itself was only about 10 pages, the rest was life program demos in XSI, similar to what I did in 05. Last year I compensated by recording videos of what I did, but that won’t be possible this year. I’ll look into what can be arranged, but in the end the demo was one of those unfortunate “had to be there” affairs, I’m afraid. Sorry!

GDC 2006

Well, that was an interesting GDC for sure. Take one part San Jose, one part company demo/deadline, two parts moving, and mix it with a healthy dose of GDC lecture. Bake it for a week and you have this year’s crazy schedule.

We’d been working on an internal Lair deadline that dragged into the wee hours of the GDC week, so when I arrived in San Jose on Wednesday morning I’d only had 8 hours of sleep for the last three days. Oh, and my talk – the talk that I had started mid-January to avoid any GDC stress – that talk wasn’t finished yet. I spent most of Wednesday in my hotel room – sleeping, working on the lecture and enjoying Victoria’s company, who had come down for emotional support.

The lecture was on Thursday morning, and it went over really well. The talk description hadn’t made it into the conference schedule (not even the white sheet addendum they add to the bags!) and I was worried that not many people would come. I mean, would you get to the show at 9 in the morning for something you didn’t even know existed? But surprisingly I had a full house and people had to be turned away at the door. Okay, it was a small room. But it’s still a nice feeling to have. I showed two Lair demos on my PS3 devkit and looked at various production assets in detail, fielded questions and even managed to finish on time (that’s a first for me!). From what I hear the feedback has been very positive, and Softimage seemed to be happy with it, as well.
After the talk Victoria and I drove back to Sonoma to move in some of her stuff because Vicky’s dad had come down to bring/hook up the washer and dryer. I unloaded some boxes, stopped by my (soon to be old) apartment to take care of the birds and drove back to San Jose for some…uhm, sophisticated GDC partying. Level 99 was fun, got to talk to some interesting people and got to catch up with my old boss, Bob Bates. Me and a bunch of F5 people tried to go to Bioware/Pandemic’s event next, but apparently the line to get in went around the corner of the building, and that didn’t seem to be worth it. We went straight to the GDC suite instead for more beer and socializing. I think I got back to my hotel room around 4 in the morning. Details are sketchy

On Friday I got up early to catch (most of) Clint Hocking’s talk (after all I’d gotten used to the 4 hour sleep thing), quickly walked the show floor to meet up with some (but not all) vendors I wanted to visit, and left San Jose early to drive back to Sonoma. More moving. We’ve started with my apartment today. I’ll hopefully have some pictures of the new house soon!

All in all not a bad GDC, but I’ll be damned if this wasn’t some of the most stressful time of my life. I met my share of cool people and got to see some cool stuff, but only managed to attend two sessions. Next year will have to be a lot less stressful again!

GDC Talk

Softimage have published their GDC 2006 plans, among them the Visual Arts talk by yours truly:

FrankenDragon Flies Again! Creating Playstation 3 Art for Lair
Special Guest: Factor 5.

Location: Room C4
Time: 09:00-10:00AM
Presenter: Matthias Worch

A big part of the industry now knows what it means to create “next-generation content”, but many lessons that come with the new workflow are still learned the hard way. In this presentation, Matthias Worch from Factor 5 looks at the highly detailed creatures and environments of Lair, Factor 5′s upcoming Playstation 3 title, and how Factor 5 used SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.5.0 to solve various problems that cropped up during development.

About Factor 5:
Based in San Rafael, California, originally founded in Germany in 1987 and privately held, Factor 5 LLC is a leading developer of interactive entertainment software and technology for a variety of console and computer platforms. Among the company’s many successful titles is the multi-million selling Star Wars®: Rogue Squadron™ line of games for LucasArts Entertainment Company and the classic Turrican® series.
With the imminent arrival of the next generation of console and handheld technology Factor 5 has multiple game and technology projects in production for major console manufacturers.

For more information, visit www.factor5.com

Hope to see you there. The GDC page should be updated soon, as well.

GDC 2006 Talk

GDC. And Me. Thursday morning, 9:00am. This will be a sponsored session by Softimage and the talk description hasn’t been updated yet on the GDC page, but I will be doing another talk about asset creation for next-generation (Playstation 3) games this year. And this time I get to use lots of Lair assets for examples! Hope to see you there.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

I wasn’t planning anything for this year (my proposed level design panel got turned down), but another visual Arts GDC 2006 lecture is looking like a distinct possibility now. More details soon.

IGDA Chapter Report

The official report for the IGDA meeting is now up. Includes some pictures from the event, too. This should end the recent onslaught of IGDA news. I will now fade back into obscurity and work on stuff so that I have something to talk about when the next opportunity arises. I submitted a level design proposal for GDC 2006, but I don’t know yet if it has been accepted or not.

IGDA Recap

Gamasutra wrote a comprehensive overview of the IGDA talk. Check it out! Thanks for everybody who came out on Tuesday, the response was overwhelming. We had to turn away people at the door because the theater was at full capacity Feel free to leave whatever thoughts you had on the talk in the comments.

IGDA

I’m putting the finishing touches on the IGDA presentation. It should be a lot of fun – I get to talk about everything I talked about at GDC, but this time I won’t have to beat about the bush and can use the actual game content. I’m going to have a kick-ass dragon maquette on display as well as a realtime demo of the trailer to explain various elements of it. Crossing my fingers that everything works out okay!

IGDA Page Updated

The SF IGDA page has been updated with more comprehensive description of my talk on October 4.

IGDA Talk: Next-Generation Asset Creation for PS3

The San Francisco IGDA page has been updated with an initial description of my Playstation 3 talk. Hope to see you on October 4 at the Metreon!