State of Unreal | GDC 2019 Keynote

Role: Production Assistant

Key Responsibilities:

• Everything and anything I could do to help make sure the keynote went well and smooth

• Assisted with:

  • Keynote slide deck organization and visual consistency

  • Run of show planning

  • Planning meals for the 100+ devs we sent to San Francisco to finish up our tech demos

  • GDC Expo floor booth layout and content planning

Below are the various tech demos we showcased during our keynote: Rebirth, Troll, and Chaos– all of which I worked on to varying degrees.

Chaos Destruction Demo

This was on of the first projects I was put on at Epic and it was gratifying to see to demoed on stage, hear the audience’s laughter at the jokes and get excited to play it at the Unreal Engine booth. For a bit more about my contributions on Chaos check out my portfolio page for this project.

Revealed onstage at GDC 2019 during "State of Unreal," Chaos is Unreal Engine's new high-performance physics and destruction system coming in early access to Unreal Engine 4.23. This is the full play through of the real-time tech demo, which is set within the world of Robo Recall.

Troll Raytracing Demo

In collaboration with Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films. Helping a client make their dream using our game engine. For a bit more about my contributions on Troll check out my portfolio page for this project.

During the "State of Unreal" GDC opening session, Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films revealed "Troll," a real-time technology demonstration using Unreal Engine 4.22 ray tracing and camera effects, marking an unprecedented level of cinematic-quality lighting, with complex soft shadows and reflections. Download Unreal Engine 4 for free: https://unrealengine.com

Rebirth Demo

In collaboration with Quixel. Similar to the relationship with Goodbye Kansas– we were also providing advise and support on how to use Unreal Engine to achieve their goals. One of the coolest things about this demo though was that it was made entirely in the “vanilla” version of the engine and the Quixel team mainly only need our support on final visual critique rather technical support.

In addition to the awesome tech demos I helped to produce, I also assisted in the GDC Expo floor booth presence. This was the second year in a row Epic went full force with their “Games, Job, Beer” moto for the expo booth and it turned out to be a big hit once again! We gave out free food, beer, and t-shirts all while providing a huge range of awesome games to play and ways to learn more about Unreal Engine. This was one of the moments where I got to stand back and watch people enjoy the fruits all of hard work I contributed to help plan and make sure a project happens. It was a rewarding experience to see everyone happy, meet new people, and catch up with old friends at the Epic Games booth– and of course it was a ton of fun too!

Lastly, after everything was said and done, keynote was long over, expo booth disassembled, and all of our gear was back on pallet ready to get shipped back to our HQ in Cary, NC we all got together for a team dinner. The picture below is actually from the Enterprise mixer, but I can assure you there was lot of great food, smiles, conversation at both occasions!