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
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.
We are often asked “What game developer meetups do you regularly attend?”. Unfortunately for us in Southern Vermont, most of the “local” meetups are in the Boston, MA area with the exception of a couple non-game specific events in Western MA. Fortunately for Vermont Digital Arts, we also work in Cambridge, MA at the Indie Game Collective and thus attend a lot of game development events out there.
Our personal top 5 Boston area game developer meetups are (in alphabetical order):
Please let us know if you have any favorite game developer meetups in the Boston area that we may have missed. I’d be great to have a giant comprehensive list to share online perhaps as a wiki.
We hope there will be more going on in the Vermont / Western MA area to populate a list half this long in a few years! VERMONT / Western MA -> Let’s make it happen!
Check out all the session videos by members of the Boston Indie Game Collective at Unite 2013! Michael over at the IGC put together a page with the talks by Disco Pixel, Owlchemy Labs, Popcannibal and Vermont Digital Arts! Check it out here!
Do you make 3D art, animation and or use Unity to make multiplatform Games? Anyone can download or make 3D art assets and anyone can make games in Unity. It is another story when it comes to creating an art pipeline that accounts for efficiency, flexibility, multiple resolutions for multiplatform optimizations. Art optimization begin in the tools one chooses to uses for content creation. Optimization is also dependent on the way tools are utilized and how they export assets for Unity. Finally, art optimization happen within the Unity editor, which varies for individual targeted platforms, with best art practices and smart coding.
Elliott Mitchell, co-founder of Vermont Digital Arts and the Boston Unity User Group, gave a Unite 2013 (Unity Developer’s Conference) talk on this topic last August in Vancouver, BC. Check out the video of his talk and check back here to see a series of blog posts on topics covered as well as the plethora of areas he didn’t have to touch upon in his talk at Unite.
Special thanks goes to Anzovin Studio for providing The Setup Machine for Games to Elliott and Vermont Digital Arts. In addition, Anzovin provided their expertise by rigging the Elliott’s 3D Samsquanch character as well as animating an Idle and Walk cycle for this demo!
Remember, there is no optimized game without good coding even if your art is exceptional. Make friends with talented engineers or learn to code yourself! It takes both sides of the brain to make great games!
Vermont Digital Arts is back from Unite 2013! What a conference!
Elliott Mitchell (founder of Vermont Digital Arts) presented on Successfully Avoiding Common Pathways to Heartbreak and Disasters in Your Art Pipeline last week at Unite. Due to popular demand, keep a posted on a series of upcoming mini-posts relating to Elliott’s talk.
Overall I feel my talk was well received by the audience at Unite 2013. The audience was an interesting mix of artists and developers with various levels of experience in Unity and art pipelines. I realized I only had time to cover a fraction of the content I thought was important so I just went with the flow and covered what I could in the allocated time. I’m looking forward to authoring a series of posts covering my talk and points beyond!
-Elliott Mitchell (Founder Vermont Digital Arts)
Also we wanted to give a shout out to Anzovin Studio for the rigging and animation on Samsquanch with TSMG!
