VFX Apprentice at GDC 2025

Game Developers Conference (GDC) is right around the corner, so let’s talk about it! In this post, we give a quick rundown of the events our community may find interesting, and where to find the VFX Apprentice team during the conference.

GDC 2025 takes place from March 17 through March 21 and will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. There’s still time to register if you haven’t already, so get on it!

Register Here

This year is special because we are sponsoring the VFX Mixer event! Join in on Monday, March 17, 7pm - 10pm, at Monarch SF (101 6th St, San Francisco, California 94103).

Let’s review what GDC is and who could benefit from attending.

What is GDC?

GDC (Game Developers Conference) is a leading event for game industry professionals to exchange ideas and learn about the latest advancements in game development. It is an annual conference held in San Francisco, California and includes lectures, tutorials, and roundtable discussions led by industry experts, as well as networking opportunities and an exhibit hall showcasing the latest technology and tools. We at VFX Apprentice can’t stress enough how informative and beneficial events like this are for the industry.

One of the perks included with attending the conference is one-on-one meetings with other industry-leading professionals. Attendees can request meetings with any fellow attendees through the GDC event mobile app. Just be sure to search other attendees by job title, professional interest, and other filters, then send them a meeting request with a proposed date, time, and location. This is an amazing way to build your network and make beneficial connections down the road. There will also be speed networking, happy hours, and an awards reception.

So what will we be up to at the conference? Let's discuss it!

GDC 2025: Meet the VFX Apprentice Team

If you plan on attending the conference, you can meet a part of VFX Apprentice team! Jason Keyser — the founder of VFX Apprentice — will be hosting Days 1, 2 and 3 of the Visual Effects Roundtable. We will get into more details of the topics for the Roundtable in a second.

If you want, contact [email protected] to make plans/schedules for breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, or salsa dancing if you plan on going to the conference. Also, we will have lots of free VFXA mascot stickers! Who doesn’t love stickers?

Here's a GDC 2023 talk our Mentor Kees Klop held with his former co-worker Miguel Ortiz Martin:

GDC 2025: Visual Effects Roundtable Overview

The tools and techniques of Real-Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years, and it's an incredible time! Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks.

Hosts:

Jason Keyser (Founder, CEO, VFX Artist, VFX Apprentice)

David Johnson (CEO / Creative Director, Undertone FX)

DAY 1

Location: Room 312, South Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 19
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass

General topics and revisiting ground broken in the VFX Summit earlier in the week.

DAY 2

Location: Room 314, South Hall
Date: Thursday, March 20
Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass

VFX through an Artistic Lens, focusing on attendee questions about the artistic aspects of VFX. This may include art education (as students or veterans), art direction, and more.

DAY 3

Location: Room 314, South Hall
Date: Friday, March 21
Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass

The Technical Lens for creating VFX, guiding the conversation through such as graph based effect authoring, effect lighting and optimization, new mesh based techniques, VR/AR/XR, and more.

 GDC 2022 talk by Simon Trümpler, member of the VFX Apprentice Community

GDC 2025: Visual Effects Summit

Visual Effects Summit: Are You Visually Literate? Crafting Clear and Satisfying VFX

Speaker: Rachel Quitevis (VFX Artist, Beyond-FX)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 17 | 9:30 am - 10:30 am
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

The player experience is directly affected by a game’s visual literacy. Successful VFX contributes directly to the success of game design across all genres, improving player comprehension, readability, responsiveness, immersion, and satisfaction. Satisfying visual effects encourage and reward a player, even guiding them to a path of progression.

Attendees will obtain a clearer understanding of how to improve the visual literacy of their work, contributing directly to effective game design. VFX artists with little to no traditional animation experience will learn to evaluate their work with new eyes, being provided a set of principles to apply to the foundation of their approach to VFX.

Visual Effects Summit: Redefining Physical VFX Systems

Speaker: Igor Chiang (Senior Software Engineer, Havok)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 17 | 10:50 am - 11:50 am
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

In the early stage of game design, it is important to identify which elements belong to VFX, and which are part of the rigid body system and can interact with gameplay. This distinction determines the flexibility of gameplay, interactivity, and artistic feel.

In this session, the contiguous spectrum between these two systems to unlock more gameplay options for designers and show how this understanding can enhance existing frameworks is explored.

Visual Effects Summit: VFX tricks that might save your life

Speakers: Bruno Afonseca (Principal VFX Artist, Tuatara VFX)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 17 | 2:10 pm - 2:40 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

A VFX artist is expected to be able to solve a wide variety of problems. The more tools and tricks one has at their disposal, the more possibilities one has to explore to add depth and complexity to their work and achieve a better visual result, while at the same time being mindful of performance constraints.

In this session, Bruno showcases numerous VFX shader, mesh and texture techniques that he has accumulated throughout his career, that have proven useful, in a rapid fire manner, with illustrated examples.

Visual Effects Summit: Math, but Make It Cute

Speakers: Chih-Yu Hsieh (VFX Artist, Tuatara)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 17 | 3:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

VFX is a unique discipline that requires a mix of art and technical skills, and the technical aspect has always been a barrier to entry for artists interested in this field. This talk aims to show artists that just like art, math is something you can learn through practice and dedication, and a key part of VFX.

In this talk, Chih-Yu (Geodraws) will dive into useful math concepts, provide visualizations to help explain the idea, and show real VFX examples to demonstrate how math can be applied. We will act as a VFX artist tasked to make a stylized torch fire.

Visual Effects Summit: The Marriage of GPU and CPU Particles: Creating VFX by Combining the Visual Effects Graph and the Built-in Particle System in Unity 3D

Speakers:
Shaoyong (Abel) Zhang (Lead VFX Artist, Funplus games)
Yongchao Wen (Sr. VFX Artist, Funplus Games)
Jinghua Jiang (CTO, Funplus Games)
Chenlin Tong (VFX Artist, Funplus Games)

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 17 | 4:40 pm - 5:10 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

Explore the transformative impact of GPU particles in game development and learn how to seamlessly integrate them with CPU particles to create visually stunning and efficient visual effects in Unity 3D. This session will delve into the capabilities and advantages of Unity's Visual Effects Graph (VEG) and the built-in particle system, offering practical examples from the project "World-X" and addressing potential challenges and solutions when marrying CPU and GPU particles.

Attendees will gain valuable insights into effectively leveraging GPU and CPU particles to elevate the quality and performance of visual effects in game development.

Art Direction Summit: LEGO Horizon Adventures: Bringing the World to Life, Brick by Brick!

Speakers:
James Charlick (Lead Artist, Studio Gobo)
Rich Court (Principal Artist, Studio Gobo)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 18 | 9:30 am - 10:30 am
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

In this talk, James Charlick (Lead artist at Studio Gobo) and Richard Court (Principal Artist at Studio Gobo) will talk about trying to push the boundaries and achieve a new benchmark not previously seen in LEGO titles.

We will discuss how the team at Studio Gobo took on the challenge of making a world entirely out of LEGO bricks including terrain, buildings, rocks, foliage, clouds and even VFX! The talk will cover our approach, the artistic choices we made as well as mistakes and learnings that enabled us to deliver on our vision.

Art Direction Summit: Breaking Out of the Comfort Zone: A Journey from AAA to Indie Development

Speaker: Sebastien Primeau (Art Director, Yellow Brick Games)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 18 | 4:10 pm - 5:10 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

After two decades in a leading AAA studio, the time came for a change—an opportunity to step outside the comfort zone and face new challenges in the world of indie game development. In this session, Sebastien, Art Director at Yellow Brick Games, shares his experiences transitioning from managing large teams and big budgets to navigating the constraints of independent production.

Join Sebastien as he delves into the art direction of Eternal Strands, discuss the evolution of my mindset, and share insights on building trust, managing external teams, and embracing the challenges of indie development.

Making Black Hair Creation Accessible in Computer Graphics

Speaker: Isaac Olander (CEO, Tallgran)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 20 | 9:30 am - 10:30 am
Where: Room 2014, West Hall

Join Isaac Olander, CEO and Art Director at Tallgran, on his continued journey to enhance representation of POC in games. With 3 tutorials, Isaac will demonstrate how the current lack of technical support geared towards black hair and black skin creation is limiting game devs from accurately representing POC characters within games. Demonstrating how biases within academic research in computer graphics has led to limited technical support geared towards black hair and skin creation for games.

Together, we will explore those limitations and find solutions in both game and software development. We will look at the current efforts made by the game community to make Black hair creation more accessible to developers, and how this has led to better representation in games and VFX.

VFX Storytelling: How 'Hearthstone' Breathes Life into Hundreds of Cards

Speakers: Alex Cortes (Senior VFX Artist, Blizzard Entertainment)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 20 | 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Room 2006, West Hall

Gather around and take a seat as we explore how VFX artists on Hearthstone create visual stories that enhance key gameplay moments to bring delight and joy to its players. Learn how the artists craft cohesive visuals among hundreds of Hearthstone legendary animations by abstracting elements from the art to create whimsical moments and grand entrances for Hearthstone's legendary cards

See what makes a legendary animation successful and how the artists approach and ideate on unique ideas for them. Learn how to approach VFX with the goals of evoking certain emotions from the player in the presence of the effect by thinking a little bit outside the box!

Cosplay as a Game Artist

Speaker: Hannah Mackintosh (Artist, Cerebralfix)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 20 | 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

Are you looking for ways to add more worldbuilding and context to your characters and games? Well, look no further than talking to a Cosplayer to get the inside scoop on how your current designs hold up when translated into the physical space.

This talk will go over how learning about clothing and picking up cosplay can improve your own character designs and worldbuilding, cross-industry skills, and what cosplayers want artists to know about our craft.

Gaussian Splatting with Unreal Engine

Speakers: Adam Andrzejczak (Technical Director, Black Drakkar Games)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
When: Monday, March 21 | 11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Room 2016, West Hall

Forget polygons—there's a new primitive in town: 3D Gaussians! This talk introduces Gaussian Splatting, a novel approach to game graphics, and demonstrates how to integrate it into Unreal Engine 5 using Niagara particle systems. You'll learn how to create 3D models or entire scenes from everyday photos, virtual environment screenshots, unlocking new possibilities for artistic expression and game design.

The speaker will cover technical challenges, provide solutions, and showcase examples of how Gaussian Splatting enhances real-time game graphics.

To sum up, GDC is a great opportunity to meet new people and learn a lot on insights about the industry from the top professionals. See you soon!