Useful, free GDC talks

I thought it would be good to list some helpful Real-Time VFX talks here, that are now free/not behind a paywall. Feel free to list/link other talks you found useful for RTVFX. Some of these are a little older, but I thought I’d share in case anyone here may find them to be useful.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017660/Technical-Artist-Bootcamp-The-VFX – VFX of Diablo III with Julian Love. This talk I found especially helpful with discussions about messaging (i.e. a fast tempo in an effect helps it to feel aggressive), as well as some of the notes on utilizing shaders in Diablo III.

GDC Vault - Communication and Iteration of Visual Effects in Red Faction: Armageddon - Dave Samuel’s VFX talk from RFA. This was very insightful as to how VFX links back into player communication/messaging.

GDC Vault - The Visual Effects of inFAMOUS: Second Son a really amazing talk about the VFX techniques used to make Infamous Second Son with Matt Vainio. A really amazing talk if you haven’t seen it!

GDC Vault - Bringing Home the Bacon- Developing the VFX of "Spec Ops: The Line" as Thin Slices A cool talk about VFX development process from Florian at Yager!

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The Diablo III one is awesome, thanks for sharing that!

Here are some that albeit a little old are still relevant I think (I especially like the “thinking outside the box” of these, which I guess sums up pretty well the whole VFX process)

GDC Vault - Rock Show VFX - The Effects That Bring Brutal Legend to Life - BrĂĽtal Legend VFX breakdowns and pipeline

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015898/The-Tricks-Up-Our-Sleeves - Uncharted 3 VFX pipeline + some breakdowns

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2011/gdc_2011_grimes_nonstandard_textures.pdf - Using and making non-standard textures in Portal 2

GDC Vault - Low Complexity, High Fidelity - INSIDE Rendering - Rendering of Inside, mostly about graphics programming but some very good VFX breakdowns towards the end

(I think some of you actually made these talks, so congrats and thanks for sharing the knowledge!)

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These are great! I’m almost tempted to say we should create individual topics, but let’s just do that if anyone wants to spawn a discussion around one of the presentations. Thanks for sharing!

Adding to the list: GDC Vault - Postmortem: GPU Accelerated Effects in Borderlands 2 (Presented by NVIDIA) Older as well, but still some cool info on GPU accelerated effects in Borderlands 2.

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GDC Vault - Technical Art Culture of 'Uncharted 4' or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJQuHZQakQ
(and also: The Technical Art of Uncharted 4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjCjXFmkX-4)

These show very clever solutions that Andrew Maximov and the Naughty Dog guys found for many visual elements - wind, chest hair, grass, use of particles to drive interactions with the world, a lot of good stuff :slight_smile:

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Watching the Infamous talk again. I just can’t get enough of this…it’s completely relevant to everything.

I look at their damped curl noise and then i look at the Bungie talk. And I think this is all just trying to control spawn density in space. So the expression I would want would be a texture lookup into a spherical map that I could author.

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Yeah, they did such amazing things there, really great talk!

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Bump! :hugs:

First of all, I’d like to note that the Diablo III talk is now on YouTube.

While I’m at it, bumping an at least year old thread…

Plus… while not exactly VFX based…

With that said, confession time. I was going to make a new thread asking about GDC talks, but it turns out this pretty much fits the bill. I’m trying to make sure there isn’t something I’ve missed, free or otherwise. For the sake of asking the question; Are there any GDC talks that aren’t immediately obvious that would be helpful for someone learning VFX?

Example: GDC Vault - Technical Artist Bootcamp: Shaders 101: Foundational Shader Concepts for Tech Artists

Also… ONE. MORE. THING! While not EXACTLY a GDC talk, it is from GDC. It is a series of interviews with Tech Artists from GDC 2011. Link to the full deal is here, in case the embed here doesn’t take you there. Perhaps we can replicate this too? This was a gold mine find that I had to share.

“11 - Tech Artists - Ben Cloward - GDC11”

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Bump Again! There are now some GDC '17 talks from the Visual Effects Bootcamp on Youtube! :smiley:

Visual Effects Bootcamp: The Rise of Realtime

In this 2017 GDC talk, VFX veterans Keith Guerrette (@Keith) and Drew Skillman (@Drew) share their perspectives on where the game industry is at, where it’s heading, and why it’s critically important to foster a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration within the visual effects community.


Visual Effects Bootcamp: Artistic Principles of VFX

In this 2017 GDC talk, Blizzard’s Hadidjah Chamberlain (@hadidjah) and Riot Games’ Jason Keyser (@Keyserito) present a set of artistic fundamentals applicable when crafting visual effects that will help you no matter what kind of game you’re working on.


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Mayb i add my talk here? :slight_smile:

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