Volition at GDC 2009

Hey if you're at this year's Game Developers Conference, be sure to check out the talks from my co-workers. Volition has a strong showing this year, with plenty of great tech artist material.

Blowing Up the Outside World: Destruction Done the Next Gen Way
by Eric Arnold and Jeff Hanna
This session presents an in-depth look at the tools and technologies used to make a truly destructible world for RED FACTION: GUERRILLA. The presenters will share the lessons they learned and the problems they had to overcome in order to have destruction in their game.

Technical Artist Roundtable
by Jeff Hanna
This roundtable will be an animated group discussion about being an effective technical artist. Topics of discussion will include what skills a technical artist should possess, how the role differs from company to company, scripting content creation applications, shader development, asset management, and improving production pipelines.

Technical Art Techniques Panel: Tools and Pipeline
Robert Galanakis, Jeff Hanna, Seth Gibson, Christopher Evans and Ross Patel
As game pipelines, their tools, and content become more complex, technical artists have become the developers of choice for much of the planning, overseeing, and implementation of pipelines. Technical artists from BioWare, Bungie, Microsoft, and Volition discuss their solutions and practices for tools and pipeline.

Breathing LIFE into an Open World
by Scott Phillips
Examine the history of populating open worlds and a detailed description and post-mortem of the LIFE system developed by Volition for SAINTS ROW 2. Attendees will learn about the inspiration, organization, methodology, successes and failures of the LIFE system used to add life to the open world city of Stilwater.

Universal Character System in SAINTS ROW 2
by Chris Fortier
Attendees will learn how SAINTS ROW 2's character customization and random NPC generator work. Some things that will be discussed include the universal body mesh, character morphing, normal map blending, layered clothing, shader-based customization features, how we assemble NPCs and how all this character variation affects animation.