Literature Review and Cool Resources

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So its been a pretty busy few weeks as I've been juggling between my literature review essay and my practical work. I found some really interesting reading from various online articles and books on materials. I thought I'd share them as they are definitely worth checking out.

GDC talk describing how material techniques and the tools used to create them have evolved as each Uncharted game was developed: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015655/The-Tricks-Up-Our-Sleeves

Game Development and Simulation with Unreal Technology by Alireza Tavakkoli is an amazing book as it shows the ins and outs of Unreal Engine 4. It's actually really interesting when he talks about materials, especially when he describes texture coordinates. However, I'm not sure if Tri-planar mapping is a texture coordinate or not. Here is the newer edition coming out on 21st December: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Development-Simulation-Unreal-Technology-Second/dp/1138092193/ref=dp_ob_title_bk 

Mastering Unreal Technology Volume I and Volume II by Jason Busby, Zak Parrish and Jeff Wilson. Although these 2 books may be for UE3/UDK, most of the principles still apply in UE4.


Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Unreal-Technology-Introduction-Beginners/dp/0672329913/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543885787&sr=1-1&keywords=mastering+unreal+technology


Volume II Advanced Level Design Concepts with Unreal Engine 3:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Unreal-Technology-II-Advanced/dp/0672329921/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543885787&sr=1-2&keywords=mastering+unreal+technology


The blog by Simon Trumpler is also fascinating. It explores Game Art Tricks that are used in games. It answers some of my 'This is amazing! How did they do this?'  moments whenever I play games. It also shows how other artists have tackled various game art challenges: https://simonschreibt.de/game-art-tricks/

Ryan Brucks is a genius as he shows how he uses Gerstner waves to make this amazingly convincing water through the use of materials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3D0Q5BlOs His past works still amaze people especially his Real-Time 3D Simulations.

Nvidia GPU Gems books (available free online) are pretty complex but fascinating. They show how to achieve certain looks in games. I'm currently looking at Gerstner waves to create uniform water waves. https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems/gpugems_pref01.html  

Time to calm down. Reflecting on the literature review I performed, I realised that my argument to research and design animation and hybrid techniques involving animation (game art tricks) in order to create new, original animated assets seems to be reasonable. Therefore, I think I will focus on this in future game design projects.

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