Tom Szirtes

Rotoscoping, motion tracking, compositing...what on earth are you talking about? Well, let Amy Lulham-Young explain to you in just 80 seconds what these terms all mean. And why might this be important? Because next time you are looking to have video content produced, you can include it in your brief and get a final output with MUCH higher production values as well as being more effective for your audience. Want to know more? Well we created a handy blog for you on a whole range of video terms so you can either decipher a quote, or make your filming brief much more detailed. Blog Link - https://lnkd.in/gbvfy6db

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CAERNARVON CASTLE LEVEL WEEKEND BUILD 2.4 - Another good progress push in the weekend build department. Really made progress on the Kings gate area and the multilevel interior and surrounding area. I also started crafting a new Parkour system in Blueprints and code. Still a lot of work ahead but I enjoy seeing the progress of every step. #Leveldesign #Gamedesign #Levelblockout #UnrealEngine

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Just dropped a new post on using Jolt with flecs and Dear ImGui for game physics introspection. Post includes setup and a link to the full project code, including CMake config. Hope you find it useful! https://lnkd.in/eUapKg68 #askRodney #gamedev #cplusplus

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Two weeks ago, I attended Interactive Futures, a computer games outreach event held in Leamington Spa, UK. It changed the way I use AI in my workflow. Despite spending over 20 years in the industry, five of them locally, this was my first time at the event. I’m glad I went and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were several highlights worth mentioning: * A great introduction to the vibrant games community around Leamington Spa and the West Midlands. * Opportunities for real, practical conversations with games industry professionals. * Engaging panel talks on industry hot topics. Of these, the panel talks stayed with me the most. I was particularly interested in the discussions on the future of games, especially the role that AI will play (many thanks to Clare Green, Laura Steel, 🕹️Csaba Berenyi, James Norris, Hernan Polloni) Over the years, I’ve attended many talks on AI and have a reasonable understanding of the subject. However, one comment seemed to challenge me directly: how much have I integrated AI into my workflow? The truth was, I hadn't—at least not to the extent I could. I knew of tools, the usual suspects, but they weren’t genuinely part of my workflow habits. Not as much as they might be. Since then, I've started to recognise and integrate the practical power of current generative AI tools, which feels like the sweet spot for my personal use. I’m now incorporating AI more into my daily routine—as a sounding board, a visualiser, a time-saver, and a productivity booster. This shift has led me to rethink how I view AI right now, even if my grander hopes for the possibilities remain. Initially, I saw AI as a grand intellectual game-changer, something that would mark a paradigm shift in how we perform jobs, but essentially unfinished and kept at arm's length. It might still be that huge leap in the future, but for now, for me, it’s more of a practical tool that I can weave into my approach rather than something that completely transforms the game. From a workflow perspective, it’s less like moving from two-dimensional to three-dimensional chess, and more like the introduction of metal rackets in tennis, DRS in Formula One, or VAR in football. The game remains fundamentally the same but, to play it well, you need to understand the changes, even if they aren’t immediately apparent on the surface. Because before the huge change, as is common, there will be a number of incremental changes for those who are looking. My goal now is to ensure I’m really looking. If you are interested in further insights into AI’s impact on tools, as well as the possibilities in the future, I'll include some links in the comments.

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Want to learn how we took our card and set design process from months to hours? You should check out this webinar with Jessie Hughes from Leonardo Ai!

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Exercise in progress. Reverb is tricky. I don't wish to manually place triggerboxes and audio volumes in for example a city with alleys, tunnels and plazas interchanging, so here is a test setting levels of separate early and late reflections based on indoor/outdoor and room size using line tracing. I'm gonna expand this with a check and separate reverb for tunnel and find some way to do a smoother transition between indoor and outdoor. I wonder how the AAA-pro's do it? #unreal5 #gameaudio

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The Sumo Group closures really have broken me a bit, and I need to rant about the state of things. I'm sorry if it seems I'm glossing over all the closures before this one, but so many ex-students went there, so many ex-colleagues passed through there, and so my timeline is just filled with people looking for work. We keep talking and talking about the economic factors involved, Brexit and Covid and this and that ... the thing I can't stop thinking of is that in my life I've watched the world slowly pitch into a place of despondent capitalism. Art has become more about making stars and fame than helping people escape and reflect. A drive for "truth" and objectivity has resulted, paradoxically, in people putting more stock in spreadsheets and numbers than people. I can't help but feel that if you're bleating about finance and trade deals and business decisions, you're ignoring the fact that general support for artistic and creative endeavours has declined sharply and is still declining, even in the so-called "art world". Games are ultimately always going to be the first to fall in a culture war against creativity, because games are ultimately and profoundly pointless things. That's the whole majesty of the medium: they make us feel profound feelings, they help us explore our existence by being separate from reality, but to do so they MUST bring us nothing tangible in return. The truth is that our industry will probably bounce back to some degree, but it's not any financial structures or cost systems that will save game development as a medium and an art form - it's a cultural shift to recognise the importance of expressive and explorative subjective art in the world today, and the need to support creative endeavours without the pressure of financial recompense.

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TUESDAY EVENING 2.4.1 UPDATE - A lot of progress made tonight after work, I had so many ideas in my head for areas that are now really coming to life and creating the flow I want to see. CAERNARVON CASTLE LEVEL WEEKEND BUILD 2.4 - Another good progress push in the weekend build department. Really made progress on the Kings gate area and the multilevel interior and surrounding area. I also started crafting a new Parkour system in Blueprints and code. Still a lot of work ahead but I enjoy seeing the progress of every step. #Leveldesign #Gamedesign #Levelblockout #UnrealEngine

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100% Free Hackathon Prep Course 🚨 👇🏽 Want to prepare upcoming and ongoing XR Hackathons? It can be a frustrating experience if you don’t avoid common pitfalls ❌ You don’t know how to come up with winning ideas ❌ You submit a broken and half baked project ❌ You haven’t mastered the team workflow Say no more, we’re here to help you out! 💪🏽 All of our personal lessons and secrets we have learned over dozens hackathons ✅ All about Hackathons and how to participate ✅ Softskills and Hardskills needed to succeed ✅ Checklist to make the most out of the experience First video is out now on YouTube 👉🏽 https://lnkd.in/dwGR_QwB and you can also find the full course link here 👉🏽 https://lnkd.in/dGDTxJj5 P.S. If you haven’t already checkout our own upcoming in-person XR Hackathon in Berlin ✨ https://www.xrcc.events/ #hackathon #tech #innovation #developer #networking #competition #XR #VR #MR #AR #course #XRCC #guide #experience #technology #freecourse

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Following up on from our last video where we talked about fundamental Unreal Engine 5 concepts, Conner Torres of Dotware Games is back to walk us through the concept of games modes and blueprint communication. Game modes can feel like an obtuse extra layer of settings but they can be quite useful and easy to work with once you understand their role in a project. Similarly, setting up blueprints to be able to communicate with each other can feel daunting when it just takes a few simple steps and understandings of the blueprint and game environment. Watch the new The Interactive & Immersive HQ tutorial now on YouTube: https://iihq.tv/3xqP34o #interactiveimmersivehq #unrealengine5 #ue5 #immersivedevelopment

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My second #GDC2024 talk is now on the Vault. Emma Varjo and I discuss 'deceptive design' in video games: how interface and system design can influence player behaviour toward unexpected and unwanted outcomes. And what does it mean for a game to be 'deceptive' anyway? Link to the talk (requires Vault access): https://lnkd.in/dt38hGiZ #gamesUR #UX #gamedev

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So last week I posted about 3D printing in the Film & TV Industry. It's fascinating to see what different industries actually use 3D printing and it's various forms.   Another one I find fascinating is the Biking industry (I'm talking push bikes) 🚲   For example the company Giant Bicycles actually created 3D printed Saddle seats, not just for prototyping either but the finished design. To create this they are using a powdered nylon through a process called SLS ( Selective Laser Sintering) The laser reacts with the powder and creates a final product that mimics nylon. ( the same method used to make Thor's hammer) I have also seen 3D printed bikes become something too. Carbon-fibre being a popular choice in the way of printing due it's lightweight properties. 🚵‍♂️ Safe to say it's a very common method to prototype if anything! My husband is an avid mountain biker so the 3D Printers in our house have become useful more than once to print some form of a part or tool in order to help fix/upgrade the bike! Do you know if 3D printing has been used in any other sport? 🏅 🤔

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The idea of tipping Game Developers sounds great! ...in theory, but practically I can't imagine this would work in any way and only be a bad thing. Firstly, I'm too cynical in imagining the money made from tips would even make it to the developers themselves without being siphoned off at least in part by the company. Even if the developers themselves did actually get the tip, then I can't see help but imagine companies will see this as a way of outsourcing their bonuses. There's more to consider on this front, but I will say I'm entirely against this due to potential reprucussions. Thoughts?

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If you can get past the high queue times 😅 what Luma AI Dream Machine does exceptionally well is combine 3D spatial data with AI interpretation - meaning it does an excellent job with consistency and logic. These are just some initial tests but its clear that the team is really on to something here. I'm not sure it quite kills OpenAI's Sora, but its definitely a tremendous step above Runway and Pika so far. As always I wanted to test it with animation as well as live action, and while the results are definitely hit and miss its a very interesting entry into the text/image to video race. What are your impressions with using it, and have you found any interesting tests yet? #lumai #generativeai #ai #videoproduction #animation #openai #sora #dreammachine

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Game publishers and investors, we're looking for partners! If you're into fast-paced action and teamwork, you'll love this. Doom meets Hades meets Helldivers! Interested? Contact me... josh@studio5games.com #GamePublishing #FundingForGames #IndieGameDev #GamingIndustry #GameInvestment #GameDevelopment #GamePitching

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With the help of OpenAI's new Vision model, ElevenLabs, and some clever prompt engineering, I have turned Daisy AI into a talking art critic who can analyse your artwork and provide bespoke feedback! 🎨💬 All voice narration you can hear in the video demo below is dynamically generated based on whatever the user has drawn onto the canvas. Daisy has been fine-tuned to only focus on the positive aspects of the artwork (thank goodness in my case! 😅 🚀 ) I'm continuously impressed with the capabilities of these different AI models working together, as well as their low latency considering the tasks they are performing. I have lots more ideas I want to try, which I look forward to sharing soon. Would you like to try drawing your own doodle artwork for Daisy to give her impressions? Drop me a message in the comments below and I'll send a password for you to access as soon as I have this set up on my website! #ArticulateStoryline #Storyline360 #Articulate360 #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #OpenAI #ChatGPT #VisionAI #ElevenLabs

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