Jim Brown

85% of studios have ditched degree requirements. So why is it still so hard to find the right people? Because "no degree" doesn't mean "no standards." It means we're finally prioritizing demonstrable skill and grit over a piece of paper. But without the right lens to evaluate that experience, you're just sifting through more noise. In a skills-based economy, surgical recruitment is the only way to identify who can actually ship a game and who just talks a good game. #HiringTrends #GameDevelopment #SkillsBasedHiring #GameRecruiter

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If you’ve ever worked with smoke, fog, fire, or terrain in Houdini, you’ve used VDBs—whether you knew it or not. But VDBs aren't just "better volumes." They changed how we think about space. 🧬 Here is a quick breakdown of what you need to know about the VDB 🧬 Did VDB Came out of the blue? VDB comes from OpenVDB, which originally developed at DreamWorks Animation to handle massive volumetric data efficiently. The key idea behind it is simple 👉 Don’t store empty space. Only look into the parts that actually contains data. That’s why VDB scales so well. 🧊 The VDB Family members The most common VDB type is the SDF (Signed Distance Field): this type main concern is the distance to the nearest surface Positive = outside Negative = inside Zero = surface which make it gold mine for Mesh analysis, collisions, Boolean operations, and fluid surfaces. But there are some other important VDB types: • Fog VDB → and it focus on density value of 0 is empty while 1 is full opaque commonly used with (smoke, clouds, fire) • Velocity VDB → vector fields for motion usuly used for advection (moving smoke with wind), and guiding particles. • Color VDB → stores Cd / RGB values great for Shading, fire temperature (blackbody radiation), and texture projection. • Mask VDB → that is a "Logic" A specialized, lightweight grid (often Boolean or Integer) so the Values: Often just On/Off (1/0) great for controlling where smoothing happens, limiting a simulation to a specific area, or "culling" data to save memory. Think of VDBs as fields, not just shapes. 🎮 VDB in Real-Time: 2026 Story shortly They are Just friends 💔 for now. While it still doesn't render raw files like a path-tracer, But we have Heterogeneous Volumes system to bridge the gap. ⚡ The Modern Way (Sparse Volume Textures - SVT) In UE 5.4/5.5, you can drag and drop the file directly into the Content Browser and it will converted into a SVT and then use a Heterogeneous Volume Actor to render it in the viewport. ☂️ The Classic Way (Flipbooks/Pseudo-3D) For mobile or high-performance games, bake it into 2D textures this is much cheaper on the GPU. ☄️ The Niagara Way Lookup for particles, Niagara system can sample a VDB to know where to spawn particles or how to move (Velocity VDB). But from Cost POV: VDBs/SVTs are memory-hungry. A long animated sequence can easily eat up several gigabytes of VRAM. Rendering It uses Ray Marching, which is expensive. If you have 10 large VDBs on screen, your frame rate will tank. The Verdict Great for cinematics and hero effects; still "too heavy" for generic background smoke in a competitive shooter. "VDB is for the lab; Baked is for the field." 🎯 Final Thought VDB didn’t just improve volumes. It gave us a way to think in space, distance, and influence. What’s your golden tip on VDB #VDB #OpenVDB #Houdini #FX #Proceduralism #TechnicalArtist #PipelineTD #VFX #GameDev #RealtimeFX #Volumes #OpenToWork

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Game art asset factories aren’t enough anymore. Pretty models mean nothing if the shaders won’t compile. True co-development requires technical art literacy. If an external team can’t debug a pipeline, they aren’t helping. They’re generating high-fidelity technical debt. At Artchop!, we build with integration in mind from day one. The real question is whether studios are looking for true integration partners or just capacity. #GDC #CoDev #TechnicalArt

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Following up on my last post about Unreal’s Modular Rig, I tried a small experiment: using it to animate a simple, one-off environment prop. The goal wasn’t to replace DCC pipelines, but to see whether Modular Rig could help reduce unnecessary round-trips especially for assets that don’t justify a full Maya setup. A few takeaways from building a quick sci-fi door rig and animating it entirely in Unreal: ➤ What worked well ✅ Animating a Control Rig in a level Sequencer felt lighter than expected ✅ Having common controls and animation tools available is handy ✅ Adding skeletons, skin weights, and simple dynamics/controls to simple props feels efficient ➤ Where friction showed up ⚠️ Folders get dirty quickly and need extra care to remain clean ⚠️ Default Rotator based rotation constantly getting into gimble lock issues ➤ The bigger takeaway For me, this reinforced that Modular Rig can make sense for simple, one-off props. Being able to create a skeleton, paint skin weights, rig, and animate entirely inside Unreal makes Modular Rig feel less like a “character tool” and more like a lightweight in-engine animation path. This matters because these props often don’t justify a full DCC round-trip. Even when Maya-based pipelines are fast, they introduce context switching, asset tracking overhead, and friction for designers who are already iterating directly in the level. In that sense, Modular Rig is a meaningful tool about enabling small, contained animation tasks to stay where the work already happens. #UnrealEngine #UE5 #TechnicalAnimation #GameDev #TechnicalArt #LevelDesign #ControlRig #AnimationPipeline

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As a freelance rigger, I need to make sure my builds have a lot of flexibility. So I've recently reworked my lid modules to add variable joint counts. By utilizing a curve-based output I can changed the amount of joints used based on the needs of the project. Higher joint counts for fidelity and control, lower counts for simplicity and optimization. Or I can test and iterate to find a happy middle ground. So animators using my rigs on film or game projects can enjoy the same features, such as: - Automated lid follow with eye movement - Main controls to position the lids through translation and sculpt the curvature with rotation/scale  - Secondary controls for finer detail (If there are enough joints to support it) - Manual or automated blinking. Animate controls, or activate the automated meet point between your posed lids for a perfect seal I've been using iterations of this system over my last few projects, both commercials and games. The core elements of this system have been floating around in my head since 2018, so it's been great to finally put it to the test. 

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CDPR plan to release The Witcher 4, 5, and 6 within a six year period using Unreal Engine. Another RPG that did this in the past? Biowares Mass Effect. Those with a birth year that starts with a 19 may recall what BioWare accomplished with the original Mass Effect trilogy. 3 Mass Effect were built and shipped within one console generation, powered by Unreal Engine 3, and supported by a production pipeline that was battle tested. That trilogy became a model for narrative continuity in AAA games because each entry arrived quickly enough for players to stay attached to the characters, the world, and the evolving choices that defined the saga. CD Projekt Red looks to chsae a similar rhythm. By shifting to Unreal Engine 5, the studio is trying to avoid the technical complications that slowed development on Cyberpunk and to create a shared foundation for multiple teams working on overlapping projects. The Witcher 4 has already been in development for four years, and CDPR has said it will not release before 2027. This framing positions the trilogy plan not as a hype statement but as a structured production approach that depends on a common engine, shared assets, and predictable pipelines. If the studio hits its plan, players could receive a new Witcher entry every three years. For Mass Effect, players never drifted away from the experience, and each new game extended the momentum of the last. Systems improved without losing their identity, and the narrative carried emotional weight because it never disappeared from the cultural conversation. CD Projekt Red could be aiming for the same effect. A steady three year cycle would let the next Witcher saga evolve in a connected way while keeping fan investment high. CDPRs ambition places them directly alongside one of the most respected production feats in modern gaming history.

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We've been implementing Neural Texture compression in #Assassinscreedmirage. The overall benefit results in better quality textures for less GPU memory usage (links in the first comment). If you followed the topic since our GDC2024 presentation ,this a very practical application of La Forge's mission to bridge the academic world with Ubisoft. #ubisoft #ubisoftlaforge #innovation 👇 "If you've been thinking, like I have, that we're still some way off seeing AI being used in games for more than just upscaling or frame generation, then it's time to think again" (...) "Enter stage left, neural texture compression to cut down on that memory demand. Given the state of the DRAM and SSD market right now, you can bet your last dollar that a whole heap of game developers will be looking closely at what Ubisoft has done to see if it can help out in their games, too"

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The aim for us, McCarthy Brothers, is to remove uncertainty starting at pre production and a focused forward momentum, design justifications and reasonings so teams designing from our architecture know intent, direction, complexity, all before adding a single line of code. Our aim is to help teams avoid production hell and shorten time and money spent in their productions. Years we have invested into solving these problems in our own work and its now mature enough that we can scale it into others. We have typically been known for our 3D and Tech art work in the games industry and now we have more to share in new roles in the industry.

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