Wednesday morning was all about that virtual reality (VR) which was the topic that has perhaps left the greatest impression on me looking back on the event. While FMX covered many incredible topics from VFX to games nothing can truly come close to the lessons and stories that were discussed as part of the conferences VR track. Virtual Reality is of course nothing new to me and I've been following Oculus' development since it's initial kickstarter, through to the Facebook buyout till today and it's recently announced consumer model coming early next year. Up until now though I've generally avoided committing myself fully to the VR hype train and I was content to simply be an observer of the technology occasionaly dipping my toes to experience the various games and environments offered by various VR developers. While immensely impressive and indeed some of my most memorable moments not only in gaming but also as a 3D artist have been possible only through virtual reality it still it took a £160 conference to finally kick me over the edge head over heals for the possibilities of VR. As I think you can probably tell I've come away with a lot of thoughts and my notebook stands as proof with the biblical amount of scribblings about the subject so in my eyes VR is worthy of it's own post which means that for this blog and for the next two I will be skimming over the multiple VR talks I attended in favour of tying the subject into a single narrative for your reading pleasure in the coming weeks.
What I found most interesting about the virtual reality track is the variety of industries that are experimenting with it as up to then I had always thought of it as an exclusively gaming oriented market so I was quite surprised to hear about the money that VFX and film companies are throwing into VR technologies. Virtual Reality was not the only prize horse in these presentations either, augmented reality (AR, devices such as Google glass) and mixed reality (MR, Microsoft's Hololens is an example of this sector) were also major points that were discussed and in general what was consistent in all the talks throughout the week was how early in these technologies' life we are and, what I think is most exciting, how little we know about how to craft experiences and stories on these platforms. This was perhaps the major theme I felt, the feeling of pioneering into an unknown technology where everyday people are making new discoveries and creating new ways for people to experience VR and how right now the gap in knowledge and experience between the giant companies and hobbyists is next to nothing. genuinely it was incredibly exciting to feel right on the cusp of the cutting edge in technology and I convinced myself while listening to the speakers that I've got to bite the bullet and buy myself an Oculus so I can started experimenting with content and creating content for it, but that's beginning to touch on what I want to write about in my VR dedicated talk so we'll leave the subject on that note.
In the Afternoon I attended two talks on pipelines both in games and VFX by Epic and MPC respectively. The former is of course something that I'm already well acquaintance over the two/three years I've been at De Montfort so while it perhaps wasn't as ground breaking as the earlier talks of the day it offered a interesting insight into Epic's workflow. As you can imagine it was very similar to how I work through asset creation as is, high to low poly, then texturing, shading work in engine, etc. Pretty much the stuff I was expecting. MPC's was more interesting as it focused on the larger picture of the production rather than a single shot and it's incredible to see how these hugely complicated projects take place across multiple shots in multiple international locations across the world and increasingly across multiple companies. Both talks were an interesting insight into the companies workings and there are definitely two or three pointers I can take on board from the Epic talk in regard to my on work within their Unreal engine.
During the day I also attended a talk on PBR hosted by NIVIDIA which if we're being blunt wasn't hugely noteworthy, it felt a little bit too much like a sales pitch to buy their iRay renderer. I also went round a few of the educational stalls but this is getting onto the second thing I want to write about coming off the backend of the event and it's (somewhat predictably) jobs, jobs, jobs. A few things have cropped up in that regard that I want to deal with on here and while I was at FMX I felt it was important to look at all the options I could, be that opportunities in visualisation, VFX or games. I also looked into what Master degrees or further education after graduation were available as perhaps another route to go down. I don't know really but I can get more in-depth with that later. Finally I was able to catch the tail end of the Toy Story panel which unfortunately conflicted with the above Epic talk. On the flip side this was the worst conflict on the schedule for me but I felt since I'm on a game course I might as well check out what game related talks FMX were hosting. I felt I made the right choice in the end and I'm content enough at what I was able to catch of Toy Story but even in the small segment I saw it was still a little wired to demystify such a treasured film of mine. I think in the end I don't really want to know too much of the story behind it, it's kinda like meeting your heroes in a way, I don't want my nostalgic view of the film to suddenly be broken down to the polygons and pixels in a manner I'm usually incredibly eager for, I want to keep the film in the pristine and innocent view that I hold it in. I don't want that to come across in a way the puts down the immense efforts of Pixar to push such a milestone not only in animation but in cinema as a whole but for I think it's a book that I'd rather keep closed. Just this once.
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