Here’s a list of GDC / Siggraph presentations we put together after the roundtable. It’s just getting started, so please add more!
Notes from the Uncharted 3 VFX Talk
Special Effects with Depth in Unity is a really interesting presentation that covers:
Soft particles • Animated shields • Intersection highlights • GPU simulated particles • Refractive force field effect • Object outlines • Vertical, fluffy fog • Point light shafts
Although it takes place in unity, the tricks would work in any engine.
Creation of Killzone 3 (Killzone particles starting at page 141! Really fascinating to see their tools. All their particle shaders are authored in the maya hypershade. Videos are here:
http://www.guerrilla-games.com/presentations/Siggraph11_CreationOfKillzone3.mp4
Making of Killzone 3 GDC 2012 talk, a lot about how they use Maya in their pipeline, some other tools and some shading network examples.
Making and using Non-Standard Textures in Portal 2 is a great talk Bronwen Grimes gave about crazy ways of using textures on Portal. Flow maps, shader based sprite bubbles and more. Inspiring ideas!
Rock Show VFX was my GDC talk from 2010 - deals with random stuff like particle lighting, simulation, rendering and some framebuffer trickery
Rapid Prototyping Techniques for Kinect Game Development is mostly about kinect and unfortunately all the videos are missing so I’m not sure how much sense it will make. Deals with rapid prototyping VFX and gameplay using “Processing” so I wanted to include it since that came up in the roundtable.
[B]Visual Effects Roundtable 2012[/B] notes from GDC 2012
[B]Visual Effects Roundtable 2013[/B] notes from GDC 2013
[B]Visual Effects Roundtable 2014[/B] notes from GDC 2014
[B]Visual Effects Roundtable 2015[/B] notes from GDC 2015