GameDev Tools weekly made by Alexander Pirogov and Victor Stepanov.

---

We are looking for GDC Tools Summit talks

• Announcement

If you have been working on a GameDev Tools technology why not share your work with GameDev Tools community at the GDC Tools Summit?

We are looking for great talks about Tools Tech and Tools Design/UX

Send your talk ideas to Geoff Evans And David Lightbown

---

Eskil Steenberg’s home grown 3D modeler

• Tools
• UX
• 3D Modeling

I finally released an updated version of my DSD modeler Loq Airou. The rendering and visuals have been redesigned. and there are a bunch of new features. I want to add more but I'm considering a rewrite to be based around HxA first. https://t.co/7U4oyhyF0b pic.twitter.com/tC3qbuGC2z

— Quel Solaar (@quelsolaar) March 4, 2021

---

Promethean AI Keynote

• AI assist
• ML

An awesome update from the Promethean AI team. Make sure to check out how they are innovating the content production space.

Hey Friends! Despite the challenges of 2020 we've been very busy. And we want to share everything with you.

Join us Friday March 5th, 2021 for the first ever Promethean AI Keynote! 12PM PST / 3PM EST / 20:00 GMT

Right here:https://t.co/nrlaVEBZlB
Don't miss and see you soon! pic.twitter.com/c4Bg7ig2AX

— Promethean AI (@PrometheanAI) March 1, 2021

---

Walk Through The History Of Game Development Tools At GDC Showcase

• GDC

Don’t miss out on this excellent opportunity to learn from the past!

Walk through the history of game development tools at GDC Showcase with @davidlightbownhttps://t.co/KUzSppoQac

— Official_GDC (@Official_GDC) March 5, 2021

---

New Episode of the Our Machinery Podcast

• Our Machinery
• Engine

Need to know the current #TheMachinery roadmap? We discuss it in this week's #podcast #gamedev https://t.co/HuypVBjpSd

— Our Machinery (@ourmachinery) March 5, 2021

---

Return more than an integer error code

• API
• C++

I think returning a struct { char[128] } is an interesting option that is often overlooked. You avoid heap allocation, the error is return in-band (as opposed to in a log). And returning 128 bytes of stack data is not a big deal for high level API functions.

— Niklas Gray (@niklasfrykholm) March 2, 2021

---

C/C++ tooling and data layout

• performance
• C++

Nice butler analogy in how C/C++ tooling basically does nothing at all to optimize data layout. https://t.co/ypBmJtm0i2 pic.twitter.com/CHeAGNmuSd

— Aras Pranckevičius (@aras_p) February 28, 2021

---

Data alignment is not really an issue?

• performance
• C++

In a highly cached environment, data alignment is not really an issue. https://t.co/vtZjz6gKT4

— victor yodaiken (@vyodaiken) March 3, 2021

---

The Last of Us Part II Siggraph 2020 presentations

• Tech Art

Check out the Tech Art presentation for a glimpse into the Naughty Dog pipeline.

All "The Last of Us Part II" Siggraph 2020 presentations are now available at Naughty Dog's website, all of them are great and packed with useful information. https://t.co/ARnTGvBawA #graphicslinkoftheday

— Kostas Anagnostou (@KostasAAA) March 3, 2021

---

Tooltip UX

• UX
• doc

I've been rewriting the tooltips in my UI toolkit Seduce and it will go in to all future releases of my software. It dynamically tries to fit the screen and shows two levels information so that you can get proper help if needed. pic.twitter.com/hzTIVrRTXy

— Quel Solaar (@quelsolaar) March 3, 2021

---

Multimodal Neurons in Artificial Neural Networks

• computer vision

We've found that our latest vision model, CLIP, contains neurons that connect images, drawings and text about related concepts. https://t.co/zV6N4yvYcG

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 4, 2021

---

Thoughts on the C standard

• C lang

Good paper on C and the broken C standard https://t.co/iguOjHEQn3

— victor yodaiken (@vyodaiken) February 28, 2021

---

OpenTracing - logging API for distributed systems

• framework
• logging

Mentioned by Tiago @ Toolsmihts Discord server

Distributed tracing, also called distributed request tracing, is a method used to profile and monitor applications, especially those built using a microservices architecture. Distributed tracing helps pinpoint where failures occur and what causes poor performance.

https://opentracing.io/

---

Spreadsheet editor for Blender - introspection for Blender files

• tools
• Blender

Spreadsheet editor for Blender, initial design. We are working on this for the #geometrynodes project, but this is also useful for the rest of Blender.

The design still needs approval, but an initial prototype is on https://t.co/hC4R8LBowG #b3d #devfund pic.twitter.com/3cQ9zxHiB1

— Dalai Felinto (@dfelinto) March 4, 2021

---

Groom editor for Unity

• Unity
• Editor

Source: Technically Art: Issue 89 (05.03.2021) by Harry Alisavakis

Sneak peek of the groom editor in @unity3d #screenshotsaturday #madewithunity #gamedev Coming to the Asset Store later this year. pic.twitter.com/oDqlBjUz5R

— Daniel Zeller (@zellah) February 27, 2021

---

Custom roads in Houdini

• Houdini
• Tech Art
• Procedural Workflow

Source: Technically Art: Issue 89 (05.03.2021) by Harry Alisavakis

The #houdini starter kit got an update.
Here is how quickly you can make a custom road layout for your city. Dragging in the tool -> blockout with basic shapes -> instant roadshttps://t.co/by23NkT4F7
(works for both #Unity and #UE4) pic.twitter.com/E3pW5bSwTV

— Simon (@Simon_Houdini) March 2, 2021

---

Trimming texturing in Houdini

• Houdini
• Tech Art
• Procedural Workflow

Source: Technically Art: Issue 89 (05.03.2021) by Harry Alisavakis

This tool is mind-blowing, Auto Trim texturing in game engine. You can model in game and #houdini does the trim texture placement and uv for you in seconds.

This is part of the Houdini engine started kit.@sidefxlabs #procedural #gameart #gamedev #techart pic.twitter.com/UOXJhMLePh

— Simon (@Simon_Houdini) March 4, 2021

---

Color Grading UE -> PS -> UE

• Unreal Engine
• Workflow
• UX

Source: Technically Art: Issue 89 (05.03.2021) by Harry Alisavakis

You can take a screenshot from @UnrealEngine, bring it into Photoshop/GIMP then bring those visual changes *back* into your project with only a few clicks using LUTs! For more info and the default LUT texture check out the docs here: https://t.co/CY5zMHpLis #UETips pic.twitter.com/WJ0XFxY3eY

— Chris Murphy (@HighlySpammable) March 4, 2021

---

Workflow of creating a level for “Haven”

• Unity Engine
• Workflow
• UX

Source: Technically Art: Issue 89 (05.03.2021) by Harry Alisavakis

Here is a little behind the scene for the creation of a fragment in Haven, all in engine!

Watch it on YouTube: https://t.co/bqyfLk1Whr#madewithunity pic.twitter.com/AnVEorozR9

— The Game Bakers (@TheGameBakers) January 27, 2021

---

The Toolsmiths updates:

• The Toolsmiths are slowly migrating the conversations from Slack to Discord

  via GIPHY

• Toolsmiths @ GDC 2021
  • GDC Tools Summit
    • We are waiting for your submissions for the GDC 2021 Tools Summit! Send your talk proposals to Geoff Evans and David Lightbown
  • GDC Tools Roundtables:
    • Join us this summer at the virtual Tools Roundtables!
• We are continuing our 3rd season of the Vault Club in our Discord Server.
  • We are discussing programming languages and how they apply to Game Tools development.
    • Just finished discussing:
      • Rust
      • Dion
      • Odin
    • We still plan to discuss:
      • Jai
      • D
      • Kotlin
      • Zig

---

Did You Know??

• Promethean AI has a discord server

• You can visualize the struct layouts in VisualStudio

I've always missed a quick way to see my C++ struct layouts when coding in order to have good cache behavior and small footprints. So, I built my own layout viewer for @VisualStudio!

Twitter folks, what do you think about it?https://t.co/Drw8zwm6g7@visualc #cpp #coding pic.twitter.com/kbXY48i7PN

— Ramon Viladomat (@Viladoman) October 26, 2020

---

Checkout other awesome digests:

• Graphics Programming weekly by Jendrik Illner
• Technically Art by Harry Alisavakis

---

Did we miss anything?

Send us a tip!

Write a direct message to Alexander Pirogov or Victor Stepanov.

---