First announced in early September, Epic has today revealed the details of what attendees can expect during this year’s event. The below sessions are geared towards game developers currently in production and are designed to help them be as successful as possible in Unreal Engine.
UPDATE: You can now watch several of the sessions online here.
The Dev Days 2018 presentations are:
Session: Unreal Engine Roadmap
Presenter: Nick Penwarden, Director, Engineering, Unreal Engine, Epic Games
We’ll kick off the day with a discussion of the features and developments coming to Unreal Engine.
Session: Overcoming Common Early Challenges in Unreal Engine
Presenter: Zak Parrish, Senior Dev Rel Tech Artist, Epic Games
This practical discussion will present an overview of common issues that arise during a studio’s first six months on a UE4 project, focusing on solutions. Topics will include general best practices, optimization guidelines, and how to avoid common pitfalls of game development.
Session: Introduction to Niagara
Presenters:
Los Angeles - Wyeth Johnson, Lead Technical Artist, Epic Games
Montreal - Alan Willard, Senior Dev Rel Tech Artist, Epic Games
In this Q&A-based session we’ll give an overview of Niagara, our new VFX simulation tool, and the philosophy behind our new VFX paradigms. We’ll talk about the Niagara feature roadmap and our new suite of content examples, and discuss the tool and its uses.
Session: Making the Most of Animation Blueprints
Presenter: Kaye Vassey, Senior Technical Animator, Epic Games
This talk will cover Fortnite’s use of animation Blueprints. We’ll cover the use of Blueprints for gluing together character parts after retargeting, dynamic solutions for low LODs, and faking dynamics in higher LODs with procedural animation techniques.
Session: Adjusting Your Content to Perform on Target Hardware
Presenter: Joe Conley, Support Engineer, Epic Games
When building new content for a given platform, or porting from one platform to another, it's very common to end up with assets that are too demanding for the target hardware. There are many tools inside of Unreal Engine that can help you align the content you made with what the hardware can actually run. In this session, we'll compare different methods for asset reduction such as polygon reduction, LODs, merging actors, and resizing textures to see which optimizations are effective in improving performance in which scenarios. We'll also discuss how to make your game load faster and hitch less through profiling and optimizing asset loading and garbage collection.
Session: What’s New for Animation in UE4
Presenter: Jay Hosfelt, Senior Animator, Epic Games
This talk will provide an overview of the latest animation tools in UE4. Topics include the Live Link and Control Rig plugins, and the Animation Retargeting feature.
Interested in attending? Registration is open via the links below.
Unreal Dev Days 2018 - Los Angeles | Thursday, October 18, 2018 | 10AM - 6PM
Unreal Dev Days 2018 - Montreal | Wednesday, November 14, 2018 | 10AM - 6PM
We hope to see you there!