In this episode: Matt’s taken on the noble job of delving a little into what it’s been like for our intrepid hero, Stephen G. Tucker, career wise as a VFX artist with over a decade of working in the film and game industries around the world.
Through his career, he’s worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from working a Houdini VFX Artist/Technical Director on fully CG (Gnomeo and Juliet, Happy Feet 2) and live action (Jack the Giant Slayer, Ender’s Game) films, to competitive multi-player (Gears of War 4, Darwin Project), and single-player games (Shape of The World, Mass Effect Andromeda, Battlefront II, Battlefield V, Season). He enjoys variety, and has on occasion branched outside VFX, hence his current assortment of job titles.
As a UX / Gameplay Designer, he focuses on designing, prototyping, and polishing various areas that contribute to the game’s overall feel, including camera behaviour, controls, haptic feedback, UI navigation, and ergonomics while constantly striving to improve the fun factor.
As a Technical Artist, he acts as a problem-solver and focus on providing and iterating on tools for the artists on the team using a combination of Houdini, Houdini Engine, Visual Studio, and Unreal Engine. Such tools may range from improving workflows for LOD and Collision Geometry generation, texture generation, to tools for generating environmental effects.
As Lead VFX Artist, he applies a range of technical and artistic skills along with personnel and project management abilities in order to drive the visual quality of a project and ensure that the game is engaging, satisfying, and eye catching, while overseeing other artists on the creation and polish of a variety of game effects.
Is it arrogant to host an interview with himself on his own website? You betcha. Is it thematical with the rest of the Vagabond Gamecast? Yeah!
If you’re interested in checking out a more technical presentation that this cat has given, his 2019 Houdini Hive presentation is still available for consumption. https://vimeo.com/326620994
Sometimes we here at the Vagabond Gamecast make a concerted effort to have a topic planned ahead of time for discussion so that we can try to spark a conversation with a direction and ensure quality bonding time for you, our audience. Sometimes despite having a topic planned ahead of time, we just let our attention spans run wild like they’ve never ran before. Well, kiddos, here’s one of those times! Read More >
We launch into this week’s episode by fondly discussing the realities of living / working near loud sounds. Think building construction is bad? I invite you to try and concentrate on your job while people dance to Under Pressure just a few meters away for the better part of a month. It’s an earth shattering experience… but only half as shattering as an actual earth quake. Matt and Steve have both been through some small tremors in their time on this planet, and can’t help but meander through their collective fear of mother nature for a bit before getting onto the main topic of the day: YouTube Copyright.
It’s a vicious world out there for the poor little “content creators” (yeah, I just slid us into that category) who “rip off” other people. So we spend a good chunk of this episode discussing Grissini Project’s YouTube / Ghibli woes before discussing the world of algorithms and how mildly silly it all is.
I blame Metallica for this mess.
Also, be sure to check out Rick Beato – his videos are rad to the max.