I recall a post on Twitter by Scott Robertson talking about NVIDIA Canvas a while back… Scott is well known as a Concept Designer, Author/Educator, Artist, and is an early adopter of new tools and solutions that can aid the… Continue Reading
Machines can design machines? Yes, they can. This message is reinforced by the latest in reinforcement learning, the publication yesterday of an article in Nature. A team of Google and Stanford researchers describe a reinforcement learning system that has designed the next generation of tensor processing units. The paper itself was written by humans, and many at that: 20 authors, and another 15 people acknowledged for help and support. Continue Reading
The concept of “Metaverse” has been the subject of science fiction for some time, and we are now starting to see manifestations beginning to emerge. Continue Reading
A superintelligent computer is taking over the world. How do video games fit into the master plan? MIT physics professor, Max Tegmark, gives us insight into this question in his 2017 book on artificial intelligence: Life 3.0. In the… Continue Reading
As an undergraduate studying graphic design, I remember a professor in a crit saying that another student’s poster had “the look of meaning”. As students, we had our antennae out for snarky comments, but it turned out that this was meant as a compliment. We then used this phrase over and over. It somehow got to the heart of graphic design, whose reference theory is semiotics. Syntax is the look, semantics is the words, and pragmatics is the effect the design has – the actions that follow. Should the graphic designer strive to create form with an understated typography that stays out of the way of the meaning? Continue Reading
Non-fungible tokens can be used to create different ownership scenarios. Such tokens are like speech acts: they declare ownership. Furthermore, they prove ownership through their cryptographic features. They also can be used to entirely separate the intermixed concepts of ownership… Continue Reading
In a previous blog, we discussed how procedural generation helps game designers create video game content at unprecedented scale and how coming up with good procedurally generated content is an art. The list of games using procedural generation is growing… Continue Reading
As we pointed out in a previous post, beautiful, creative game design has become easier due to software, hardware, and workflow advancements. Is procedural generation one of the approaches that can help? Or does it get in the way of beautiful, creative work? Continue Reading
This past decade has seen the birth several key technologies and applications which have empowered digital artists to author work at an unprecedented level of realism. Effects that once required deep knowledge across teams of specialists can now be created by generalists that deal with all aspects of their creations. Innovations like physically-based shading, GPU advancements, and workflow enhancements all played a part. In this article I’d like to highlight, and celebrate, how we have arrived at where we are today. Continue Reading
Although all sorts of companies are looking to learn from their products – video game developers are ahead of most other industries. In our recent study of Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Wildlands project team (published in the California Management Review), we identified three ways that Ubisoft learns from its products. Continue Reading