Special Guest: Steven Strobel, Visual Fx

I am going to start off this blog with the special guest we had today in class. We were privileged to have Mr. Steven Strobel, one of the very talented Technical Artist from Gearbox Software, come and talk to the class and present a demostration. The demo that Strobel, as he wants to be called, went over with the students was how to create particles inside the Unreal Engine (UDK). His talk was very interesting and provided the students with some additional knowledge of Cascade, the particle tool set inside UDK. His final product was spheres bouncing/colliding with multiple surfaces, exploding and then producing other spheres. This was to show that you could take a mesh and have it be the look of the particles, them collide with what is in your level, and then have 2 additional sequences happen. Like an explosions and then dust. He then discussed the importance of networking, what its like working in the industry, spending as much time learning your craft. Last but not least, being a nice person to other people, even when you are in school, because you never know who might be in on your interview.

"This industry is really small" he said, in reference to how quickly your reputation can spread to a whole industry with a close knit community.

Thank you Mr. Steven Strobel, aka Strobel, for coming and talking to my students. I know that they got a lot out of it. I also imagine some of them spent a few hours after class creating particles.