November 11, 2015

Unreal Engine at MIGS 2015

By Joe Kreiner

Friends of Unreal Engine, nos frères à Montréal, we’re coming to MIGS (Montreal International Game Summit) November 15-17! Epic has several things planned for the show:

Conference sessions

Monday, Nov 16

2:30pm - 5:30pm - Profiling, Optimizing, and Making the Most of Unreal Engine 4

Zak Parrish, Sr. Dev Rel Tech Artist, Epic Games.

In this masterclass we will demonstrate a variety of tools and techniques to help you get the most performance out of your Unreal Engine projects. From in-editor profiling tools to special console commands, we take you through a range of in-depth data the engine provides to help you see what improvements can be made. Next, we will walk you through common pitfalls and trouble areas for early through late development, including optimizations for lighting, materials, effects, post processing, scripted objects, and more.

11:00am - 6:00pm - Neuroscience and UX Applied to Video Game Development

Celia Hodent, Director of User Experience, Epic Games.

User experience (UX) and neuroscience are becoming trendy in the industry, but how can these disciplines concretely help a team to develop and improve a video game? UX and neuroscience combined are at the service of the intended design, and can provide very concrete and easy-to-use tips to anticipate and solve problems, sometimes even before the playtesting phase. This Masterclass proposes to delve into how the human brain works in terms of perception, attention, and memory (critical elements for UX) and offers a UX framework to use neuroscience/psychology knowledge and UX guidelines concretely during the different development stages. The ultimate goal of this Masterclass is to provide tools to significantly improve the experience of the game you are developing, as perceived by your targeted audience.

Tuesday, 17

11:30am - 12:30pm - UE4 Component Design From Blueprint Prototype to C++ 

Zak Parrish, Sr. Dev Rel Tech Artist, Epic Games.

In this session viewers will see how to create their own functionality components within Unreal Engine 4, from prototyping to native implementation. Starting with UE4's powerful visual scripting language Blueprint, we will create a customized physics component prototype, generating the desired functionality right inside the editor. Next, we will create a C++ implementation of that prototype, gaining all the performance benefits of native code over a scripting language. In this way, viewers will learn how easy UE4 makes it for artists and designers to develop the tools they need, and how programmers can then turn those designs into elegant native code.

Also, on Tuesday, you can catch Keith Guerette, freelance veteran game developer and FX artist, in his masterclass shaders in FX using UE4.

11:00am - 6:00pm - The Power in Shaders for FX

Keith Guerrette, Freelance

The tools of our industry are shifting to empower the individual artists, allowing them the flexibility (and responsibility) to create unique solutions for their art. This is especially true in the field of effects, where the push for realism competes with the need for interaction, player feedback, and design information. In this class, Keith gives an introduction to the custom shader approach to real-time special effects, works the way through the basic implementations in Unreal, and if the students are up for it, pushes through a handful of incredible tricks and solutions to take their effects one step closer to interactive realism.

Expo Booth

Stop by the Unreal Engine booth if you're at the show. The following will be around to answer your questions and help you out:

Head of licensing, Americas, Joe Kreiner, Sr. Developer Relations Technical Artist, Zak Parrish and Sr. Developer Relations Engineer, Joe Graf.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there. And thanks to all the studios in Montreal using Unreal Engine (partial list):

  • Spearhead Games
  • Compulsion Games
  • WB Games Montréal
  • Minority Media
  • Panache Digital Games
  • Behaviour Interactive
  • Immersive Design Studios