Unity Asset Store Gives Waggle Words That Extra Polish

Check out this video of Vermont Digital Art’s co-founder, Elliott Mitchell, as well as Adam Simonar (NVYVE Studios) & Evan Doody (Darkwind Media) talk about their favorite Unity Asset Store products. Elliott is using Circular Gravity Force, Koreographer, and Chromatica Studio in Waggle Words for VR and mobile. Check out the game footage!

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Circular Gravity Force

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Koreographer

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Chromatica Studio

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Vermont Digital Arts at Unite Boston 2015

Unite Boston 2015

Unite 2015, the annual Unity game developer conference, is scheduled to be held in Boston, MA, September 21st – 23rd! Isn’t that exciting?!?

I’m Elliott Mitchell, co-founder of Vermont Digital Arts and the Boston Unity Group. I am honored to announce that I will be presenting at Unite for the fourth consecutive year! My session, Unity Maximus: Art Optimizations for Maximum Performance in Unity 5, was announced on a list of talks published on Unity’s blog yesterday. This talk will be geared towards helping artists and designers who are beginners with Unity 5 art optimizations.

Unity Maximus: Art Optimizations for Maximum Performance in Unity 5, is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd, 5:00-5:30, Ballroom A.

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Many platforms, like VR and mobile, place high demands on developers to meet acceptable frame rates or else risk failure. Often, the art assets in a Unity project look fantastic but no matter how optimized the code base is, the build just doesn’t meet the desired frame rate. Unoptimized art assets, including some art which may be purchased on the Asset Store, can seriously hinder performance on demanding platforms. In this session, we will highlight some red flags to look out for in a variety of art asset types and identify key optimizations that can be implemented into your art pipeline to significantly increase performance on demanding platforms. Art asset types covered will include:

  • 3D Models, Animations and Rigs
  • 2D Textures and Sprites
  • Materials and Shaders

I’ll likely cover a few more topics like lightmapping & post process effects.

I hope to see you at Unite 2015 Boston!

Best,

-Elliott

EDIT 9/18: Changed the time and location to Tuesday, September 22nd, 5:00-5:30, Ballroom A.

Empowering Artists Designers and Non-Technical Types to Make Games in Unity – Elliott Mitchell, Unite Seattle 2014

*Re-posted from what Elliott Mitchell wrote on the Indie Game Collective blog on August 24, 2014.

Elliott Mitchell speaking about Shader Forge at Unite 2014

Elliott Mitchell speaking about Shader Forge at Unite 2014

As is too often the case, non-technical people think that they can’t create games in the Unity game development engine because they lack coding expertise. Elliott Mitchell, co-founder of Vermont Digital Arts and the Boston Unity User Group, debunked this myth in his Unite 2014 talk: Empowering Artists, Designers and Non-Technical Types to Make Games in Unity.

Elliott Mitchell speaking about playMaker at Unite 2014

Elliott Mitchell speaking about playMaker at Unite 2014

During his talk Elliott discussed:

  • Games such as The Counting Kingdom by Little Worlds Interactive that were developed without much coding
  • Specific coding concepts and aspects of the Core Unity editor that are necessary to know before making a game in Unity
  • Tools, scripts and other helpful assets on Unity’s Asset Store which help ease the pain of not knowing how to code well
  • Community resources for people developing in Unity


Watch the video of Elliott Mitchell’s Unite 2014 talk: Empowering Artists, Designers and Non-Technical Types to Make Games in Unity, here, if the embedded video above does not work.

 

Alienware Presents: Going Indie

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Alienware, maker of high-end gaming PCs, is making a bold and decisive push into the living room with it’s newly announced Steam Machine. Vermont Digital Arts, along with many other indie studios, is very excited that Alienware is stepping up to deliver a new console experience for  Steam. In the following short film by Alienware, Elliott Mitchell, co-founder of Vermont Digital Arts and Indie Game Collective member, gives a few reasons why Alienware’s new Steam Machine will rock for indies. Also look for some previously unseen live gameplay footage of our Samsqanch mascot trudging through Vermont’s frozen tundra in a new VR game we are working on!