Epic Games at ECGC 2017, April 19-20

The East Coast Game Conference is entering its ninth year of bringing together the largest collection of game industry professionals, educators and students on the East Coast of the US, and Epic Games is pleased to bring a range of talks and experiences to this year’s conference. Join us for ECGC 2017 on April 18-20 at the Raleigh Convention Center in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.

Last year, ECGC introduced a whole new talk track for VR along with a VR Village section for the expo floor. Epic Games will be present in the VR Village once again, and this year we’ll be hosting three Robo Recall stations where attendees can go hands-on with the game.

Developed with Unreal Engine 4, Robo Recall is packed with gratifying gameplay and enhanced by an in-depth scoring system that rewards you as you face off against a variety of rogue robots, get creative with a deep arsenal of weapons and access all-new challenges. Robo Recall is available for free to all Oculus Touch owners, and you can get started with making content for it with the Robo Recall Mod Kit.

Exhibitors near Epic in the VR Village include Microsoft, IGDA NC Triangle, RTP-VR, and other fantastic organizations.

In addition, we will have two Unreal Engine 4 demo stations with support team members and developers available to answer your questions. They’ll be near the Robo Recall booths, so you can’t miss them. After you’ve checked out Robo Recall and Unreal Engine, make sure to drop by the Child’s Play booth and pick up a raffle ticket to win prizes from Epic Games and other sponsors.

Below are the Unreal Theater sessions led by our developers here at Epic. Take a look at the full schedule to find out what you can learn at ECGC and plan out what all you want to see. And don’t forget to check out this year’s keynote speaker, John Romero!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19TH

Stylized Character Creation in UE4 Mobile Games
**10:15am - 11:15am ****|****Jeremy Ernst, Lead Technical Animator
**
In this session, the character pipeline for Epic’s new mobile game Battle Breakers will be broken down and thoroughly discussed, from the modeling, texturing, rigging, and animation. Epic Games feels the pipeline is unique and offered a way for them to create hundreds of characters in a short amount of time. Every aspect of the pipeline, with detailed step-by-step instructions, will be outlined. The processes used require commonly available software packages and are simple enough for all audience levels and disciplines. Epic’s new mobile game was a passion project built by a small team inside of Epic, and they look forward to sharing their techniques with you!

Finding Your First Gig: Students, Recent Grads, & Getting into the Games Industry
**11:30am - 12:30pm ****|****Emily Gabrian, Sr. Recruiter
**
Whether you’re going from student to professional, transitioning careers, or proving yourself within your current job, there are simple (and some not-so-simple) steps you can take that will move you forward. In the first of her ECGC presentations, Epic’s Emily Gabrian will discuss getting from point A to point B in your career in games.

Building Better Pipelines for​​ Unreal Engine 4
**3:15pm - 4:15pm ****|****Sam Deiter, Sr. Technical Writer
**
Over the course of this hour-long talk, Epic Games’ Sam Deiter will show you how to optimally set up your ​Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) content pipelines to help ensure your UE4 projects have the highest quality visuals with the best performance possible. From tips on building better 3D meshes to getting the most out of Unreal’s built-in debugging tools, Sam will walk you through a variety of different tools to help identify and track down any performance issues you might have and how to fix those issues when found.

Building Robo Recall Mods with Blueprints
**4:30pm - 5:30pm | ****Zak Parrish, Sr. Dev Rel Technical Artist
**
There’s been a robot uprising and it’s your job to stop it! What weapon will you choose? Why not make your own?

This demo covers the process of creating your own custom weapon mods for Epic’s latest VR game, Robo Recall. Viewers will see how to easily create custom mods for the game, how to bring in their own content, and how to quickly define bespoke behavior using Unreal’s powerful visual scripting system, Blueprint. For this demonstration, we’ll borrow Twinblast’s iconic handgun from Epic’s MOBA Paragon, and set it up to blast some robots to pieces!

THURSDAY, APRIL 20TH

Getting Started with VR in UE4
**9:00am - 10:00am ****| ****Andrew Hurley, Support Technician
**
Want to learn how to create a VR game/experience in UE4, and unsure where to start?

This talk will cover the essentials of creating VR projects in Unreal Engine 4, and the new features and techniques we use to optimize and increase performance. It will also cover good design practice and troubleshooting tips in order to maintain quality and performance while debugging your VR projects!

We will walk through various tools and console commands to use in your arsenal when working in the engine. The troubleshooting techniques provided in this talk can be applied not only to your VR projects, but any project being made in Unreal Engine 4!

Animation Blending Concepts
**10:15am - 11:15am ****| ****Wes Bunn, Sr. Technical Writer
**
In this session, we’ll take a look at some of the Blend Nodes available within Unreal Engine’s animation toolset, set up a playable character who can blend between animations, and use the new Pose Snapshot feature to blend a character from a ragdoll state into a “get up” animation. If you are looking for more information on working with and animating characters inside Unreal Engine 4, this talk is for you.

Finding Your Dream Job: Pro Tips for Applying at Epic at any Level
**11:30am - 12:30pm ****| ****Emily Gabrian, Sr. Recruiter
**
In the second ECGC presentation by Epic’s Emily Gabrian, she explains specifically what it means to work at Epic Games and why our people are so passionate about the company. Emily will share behind-the-scenes information about applications and interviews, and answer questions about internships, senior level positions, and what to do with this new-found insight.

Making Physics-Based Mayhem
**2:00pm - 3:00pm ****| ****Alan Noon, Sr. Dev Rel Technical Artist
**
Would your PC or console game be more fun if you could fling about huge groups of ragdoll-simulated characters? (The answer is probably yes.)

Come explore how UE4’s new Immediate Mode Physics enables developers to add more physics-based mayhem to their worlds than ever before! Viewers will see how they can simulate dozens of ragdolls simultaneously, how to blend physics and animation together, and how this new physics feature can make it all possible while maintaining 60fps on both PC and consoles!

Building Better Pipelines for​​ Unreal Engine 4
**3:15pm - 4:15pm ****| ****Sam Deiter, Sr. Technical Writer
**
Over the course of this hour-long talk, Epic Games Sam Deiter will show you how to optimally set up your ​Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) content pipelines to help ensure your UE4 projects have the highest quality visuals with the best performance possible. From tips on building better 3D meshes to getting the most out of Unreal’s built-in debugging tools, Sam will show you through a variety of different tools to help identify and track down any performance issues you might have and how to fix those issues when found.

Building Robo Recall Mods with Blueprints
**4:30pm - 5:30pm ****| ****Zak Parrish, Sr. Dev Rel Technical Artist
**
There’s been a robot uprising and it’s your job to stop it! What weapon will you choose? Why not make your own?

This demo covers the process of creating your own custom weapon mods for Epic’s latest VR game, Robo Recall. Viewers will see how to easily create custom mods for the game, how to bring in their own content, and how to quickly define bespoke behavior using Unreal’s powerful visual scripting system, Blueprint. For this demonstration, we’ll borrow Twinblast’s iconic handgun from Epic’s MOBA Paragon, and set it up to blast some robots to pieces!

We look forward to seeing everyone soon! Hang onto your ECGC pass and show it at the door of the Lincoln Theatre in downtown Raleigh on Wednesday evening. Doors to the ECGC Unreal Engine Opening Night Party will open at 7pm, and entertainment will feature Eight Bit Disaster, Mr Monopoly, Devious, Gifted 6, ancient/lakes, and None Like Joshua.

After ECGC is over on Thursday, come by the Google Fiber Space from 7-10pm when we’ll be co-hosting the UE4 Meetup and RTPVR Meetup. There you will be able to explore many different VR experiences and have one last chance to catch a demo of Robo Recall.

Not going to be able to make it this time? Check out the #ECGC17 hashtag, follow @ecgconf](https://twitter.com/ecgconf) and like them on Facebook for all the latest updates.