Once again, NVIDIA developers will be presenting at this year's GDC in San Francisco. This is your chance to see new material and success stories from developers that built games like Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, and many others, as well as hands-on opportunities to try out our new tools, including NVIDIA Parallel Nsight 2.0 and our new Tegra performance tools. NVIDIA's booth will be located in the main expo area, booth 1424 (click here for a detailed map).

As in GDCs past, we'll also be entering the attendees of each sponsored talk into a per-session drawing for amazing prizes. So come by, learn something, and maybe walk away with a little something extra!

Whether you're a hardcore game developer looking into leveraging the latest quad core features of Tegra, or a visual artist looking for better ways to master NVIDIA's content tools, we've got something for you at this year's GDC. Bookmark this page to get the "last minute" updates on what NVIDIA has planned for GDC 2012. Below are the planned NVIDIA-sponsored sessions and theater presentations for GDC 2012, plus other recommended sessions and tutorials...

HIGHLIGHTS

Monday March 5, 2012

These presentations are part of the Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D Tutorials . They are being held in Room 3007. Attendance at this event requires an All Access Pass or a Summits & Tutorials Pass.

Don't Throw it All Away – Managing Buffers Efficiently 2:50pm -3:20pm John McDonald, NVIDIA Room 3007	In this session, John will explore how improper buffer management can lead to serious performance degradation without any of the usual smoking guns. Attendees will learn how to recognize these problems, and how to fix them. Additionally, a new class of Buffers will be introduced. Basic knowledge of Direct3D is suggested
More Realistic Real-Time: Film-like Post-Processing and Rendering Techniques 3:30pm - 4:15pm Timothy Lottes, NVIDIA Room 3007	In this session, Timothy will present optimized real-time rendering methods, including post processing and anti-aliasing, which game developers can use to provide a more film-like experience to the player. This talk is geared towards both the programmer with a basic knowledge of Direct3D, and the technical artist who would like to gain a better understanding what is possible on current graphics hardware.
My Tessellation has Cracks! (and solutions to other common tessellation problems) 5:50pm - 6:20pm Bryan Dudash, NVIDIA Room 3007	In this session, attendees will learn about common issues that arise when using D3D11 dynamic tessellation with displacement maps. They will also learn techniques to solve these issues. Attendees should have basic knowledge of the hardware graphics pipeline and D3D11 Tessellation high level design.

Tuesday March 6, 2012

Solving Rigid Body Contacts 11:00am-12:00pm Richard Tonge, NVIDIA Room 3022

This tutorial continues the tradition of the "Physics for Programmers" tutorial by bringing together some of the best presenters in gaming physics. Over the course of a day they will deepen programmers' knowledge by focusing in on the topic of physical simulation and providing a toolbox of techniques for programmers interested in creating and using physics engines, with references and links for those looking for more information. The focus of the course is to study various pieces of the simulation pipeline and show how problems along the way can be solved and optimized using standard 3D mathematical concepts and engineering know-how. Topics include integration of a physics engine into a game, rigid body solvers, collision detection and contact resolution, physics on mixed CPU-GPU systems, rigid body destruction, and networking for physics programmers. Sample code libraries and examples are provided.

THEATER SCHEDULE

Game Technology Theater @ GDC 2012
Wednesday, March 7th and Friday, March 9th during exhibition hours | NVIDIA Booth #1424

The theater will feature talks and demos on a wide range of topics covering the latest in GPU game technology. Open to all attendees, the theater is located in the NVIDIA booth and will feature developers and industry leaders from game studios and beyond. Check back here in the coming weeks for more details on featured speakers and topics.

Wednesday March 7, 2012

Time	Topic	Presenters
10:00am - 11:00am	Leveraging Quad Core Tegra 3 Features using Substance by Allegorithmic Allegorithmic will show real game projects using Substance on Tegra 3 (Shadowgun and Bladeslinger), going through the process of creating dynamic textures for high end mobile devices using Allegorithmic's tools. Substance is a technology allowing to produce dynamic texture effects (weathering, aging, damage...) using the additional CPUs of Tegra and without hitting the framerate.	Alexis Khouri, Allegorithmic Alexis Khouri has joined Allegorithmic in 2007 and has been deeply involved in the product design of Substance, the smart texturing solution. He is also managing business development in Asia and the US. He was formerly General Manager at Playsoft (Mobile Game development) and Senior Consultant at Simon-Kucher & Partners. He also wrote on a regular basis for Les Echos (French Business newspaper) on video games industry-related article. Alexis has graduated from ESSEC Business School in 2003 and has also a strong technical background in programming and production pipelines.
11:00am - 12:00pm	3ds Max with MassFX Autodesk's implementation of MassFX within 3dsMax will show you just how easy the workflow is for rigid body dynamics and how versatile to the tool can be. Additionally, Autodesk will be giving a technology preview of some aspects of MassFX currently being experimented with in 3ds Max.	Chris Murray, Autodesk Chris Murray is a Technical Marketing Specialist at Autodesk Media and Entertainment playing with his favorite toys, the 3dsMax suite of tools (including Mudbox, Matchmover and Composite) He is a creative interface between marketing and development. He's responsible for deciphering new features and producing usable work flows for emerging 3D. His is also a specialist in HDR panoramic photography. You can follow him on twitter @chrismmurray.
12:00pm - 1:00pm	DirectX 11 in CryENGINE 3 Join Crytek in a presentation on how DirectX 11 features were integrated into CryEngine 3. Their lessons and observations will be presented.	Sean Patrick Tracy, Crytek Sean Tracy is Crytek's Field Application Engineer and a Senior Sales Support Engineer for the award-wining CryENGINE. He is responsible for adapting the engine and its features to individual licensees, as well as developing full technical and mini-game demos for prospective and existing clients. Describing himself as a 'generalizing specialist', he also gives support directly to CryENGINE licensees, while designing and maintaining their workflows, pipelines and development techniques. Sean joined Crytek in 2008 after working as an electronics technician for the Canadian Military. He is an avid gamer with extensive modding experience on titles including Never Winter Nights, Half Life, Doom and Battlefield 1942.
1:00pm - 1:30pm	Marmalade: Bring Your Console Development Skills and Assets to Tegra 3 Devices and Beyond Made with Marmalade will show how to use Marmalade to deploy a PC based game to an Android device, as well as other devices. They will also demonstrate how NVIDIA's PerfHUD ES complements Marmalade to create mobile games with outstanding performance.	Sam Clegg, Made with Marmalade Nick Smith, Made with Marmalade Marmalade is a trading name of Ideaworks3D Limited, which was originally founded in 1998. The unique technology behind the Marmalade SDK was developed between 2005 and 2008 and battle tested through the development and deployment of high profile games such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Need for Speed and Resident Evil to mobile devices. The SDK was launched as ‘Airplay SDK’ in late 2009, before becoming Marmalade in June 2011.
1:30pm - 2:00pm	Tegra Profiler Revealed Optimizing code is similar to confronting a maze of indistinguishable twisty passages; you never know where they lead. NVIDIA's Tegra Profiler gives you the tools you need to properly navigate this maze, focusing your optimization efforts and allowing you to maximize the performance of Tegra's quad core CPU. Join NVIDIA for the unveiling of this powerful tool.	Stephen Jones, NVIDIA Stephen's passion for crafting digital content creation tools for artists and developers began at Anark Corporation over 10 years ago. Stephen brought this passion to NVIDIA where he oversees the Product Management of Mobile Software Developer Tools. Focused on customer experiences, Stephen's background in technology and intuitive grasp on artist and developers' needs brings a unique spin to product management. Stephen holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee. Twitter: @nvidiajones
2:00pm - 3:00pm	IKinema and PhysX - Combining Physics with Kinematics for Realistic Off-Line and Run-Time Animation IKinema is a production-proven technology for full-body IK animation. Products include run-time middleware for mobile platforms and high-end consoles as well as a plugin solution for Maya. Come to see how IKinema is combined with PhysX in Maya to blend between physical simulation and user-defined constraints to speed up animation and provide tools to the artist for customizing quickly and realistically the dynamic response. This on combination with APEX Clothing brings a dynamic physical effect, in run-time during game-play or off-line during design and animation for film or game.	Alexandre Pechev, IKinema The IKinema team has vast experience in animation, control and in software development for the gaming and other industries. IKinema™ uses patented technology for fast full-body solving and animation. Their products span Maya plugins, game middleware, and web based solution.
3:00pm - 4:00pm	Tegra3 + UE3: Sustainable Game Development in a Mobile World Phosphor Games will talk about their high level design and production philosophy that allowed them to produce a high quality mobile game in 3-4 months. This process focuses on "sustainable content" concepts that rely on repeatable techniques to yield console-quality game content. Phosphor Games will also discuss the technical we faced from a scheduling and scope perspective and how they reined it in to ship games. Finally, they will discuss how Tegra 3 has allowed them to stretch their mobile visual effects to unheard-of levels in the mobile world.	Dan Nikolaides, Phosphor Games Jarod Pranno, Phosphor Games Dan Nikolaides is a Lead Programmer at Phosphor Games. He loves his job making videogames almost as much as he loves Jenna. He grew up in Lombard, IL and attended Glenbard East High School and University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. Jarod Pranno has been working in the video game industry for 19 years. He is currently the studio art director for Phosphor Games; their most recent release was "The Dark Meadow," a horror-themed monster-hunting game, originally released for iOS, now with significantly updated visuals and physics for Tegra 3 devices.
4:00pm - 5:00pm	DirectX 11 Debugging with Parallel Nsight Many engine and game developers are now adding DirectX 11 to their titles and realize that the complexity and programmability has greatly increased since the DirectX 9 days. To ease the pain associated with this effort, Parallel Nsight harnesses advanced software and hardware features to assist with debugging all aspects of the DirectX 11 pipeline, ranging from pipeline setup to shader authoring. Russ will be showing how the latest graphics debugging features of Parallel Nsight can be used for the development of advanced DirectX 11 rendering effects.	Russ Kerschner, NVIDIA Russ Kerschner has worked for nearly a decade as a Direct3D programmer at NVIDIA. Formerly when developing the graphics driver, he was an enthusiastic user of PerfHUD. Thus, he was excited to join the Parallel Nsight team, where he works on the latest generation of power tools for profiling and debugging graphics applications.
5:00pm – 6:00pm	The Game Console of the Web: GPU-Accelerated 2D and 3D Games with Adobe Gaming Solutions Join the Adobe gaming team as they show you how to fully leverage the GPU in your Flash mobile and desktop games using the Stage3D APIs. Equal time will be given to both 2D and 3D games and plenty of case studies will be shown.	Lee Brimelow, Adobe Tom Krcha, Adobe Lee Brimelow and Tom Krcha are Gaming Evangelist at Adobe and speak regularly at conferences worldwide.

Friday March 9, 2012

Time	Topic	Presenters
10:00am - 11:00am	Unity on Android Unity will speak about pushing the envelope of 3d on Tegra 3/Android, and demonstrate the techniques they are using to create the kind of visuals seen in titles like Shadowgun.	Joe Robins, Unity Joe jumped across the sea from England to join Unity in Denmark, his education focused on 3d art and Game Design at the University of Teesside. Joe later landed a job developing with Unity where he became an active member of the community and worked on various projects, from jet ski games with purple water to a building familiarization tool for Greater Manchester Police HQ. After joining Unity 3 years ago, Joe is currently working as a Community Evangelist.
11:00am - 12:00pm	CUDA and the Future of Dynamic Lighting Geomerics showcases two new technologies that utilize the full capabilities of the CUDA architecture. The first is the inclusion of dynamic objects within the full radiosity update within Enlighten. This enables a full radiosity update for a complex scene with moving geometry in under 5ms on the GPU. This is a wholly practical dynamic solution. The second technology is dynamically-computed soft shadows from area lights. Computing soft shadows from area lights has been practical at interactive rates for some years. We demonstrate how the computations can now be carried out in a few ms on CUDA, making them practical for real-time updates in high-end games.	Dr. Chris Doran, Geomerics Dr. Graham Hazel, Geomerics Dr. Chris Doran. Geomerics Founder and COO, is a leading research scientist with over 15 years' experience. He is a regular speaker at major international conferences and is a Director of Studies for Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 2008 Chris was named one of the 25 people reshaping game development by Develop Magazine. Dr. Graham Hazel, Lead Developer at Geomerics, is a Cambridge native, Graham is a dab hand with a long pole and a flat-bottomed boat - but gets confused by hills. With many qualifications in hard sums and years of middleware experience, he's occasionally a good source of technical information... but is much more reliable when it comes to local restaurants, pubs and beer festivals.
12:00pm - 12:30pm	Marmalade: Bring Your Console Development Skills and Assets to Tegra 3 Devices and Beyond Made with Marmalade will show how to use Marmalade to deploy a PC based game to an Android device, as well as other devices. They will also demonstrate how NVIDIA's PerfHUD ES complements Marmalade to create mobile games with outstanding performance.	Sam Clegg, Made with Marmalade Nick Smith, Made with Marmalade Marmalade is a trading name of Ideaworks3D Limited, which was originally founded in 1998. The unique technology behind the Marmalade SDK was developed between 2005 and 2008 and battle tested through the development and deployment of high profile games such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Need for Speed and Resident Evil to mobile devices. The SDK was launched as ‘Airplay SDK’ in late 2009, before becoming Marmalade in June 2011.
12:30pm - 1:00pm	Tegra Profiler Revealed Optimizing code is similar to confronting a maze of indistinguishable twisty passages; you never know where they lead. NVIDIA's Tegra Profiler gives you the tools you need to properly navigate this maze, focusing your optimization efforts and allowing you to maximize the performance of Tegra's quad core CPU. Join NVIDIA for the unveiling of this powerful tool.	Stephen Jones, NVIDIA Stephen's passion for crafting digital content creation tools for artists and developers began at Anark Corporation over 10 years ago. Stephen brought this passion to NVIDIA where he oversees the Product Management of Mobile Software Developer Tools. Focused on customer experiences, Stephen's background in technology and intuitive grasp on artist and developers' needs brings a unique spin to product management. Stephen holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Tennessee. Twitter: @nvidiajones
1:00pm - 2:00pm	DirectX 11 Profiling with Parallel Nsight Adding DirectX 11 to an existing game engine or game title can introduce performance bottlenecks in some of the new pipeline stages. In addition, DirectX 11's multi-core support improves application performance by offloading your API state setup to other threads, but increases the complexity of your rendering code and its interactions with the runtime, driver, and GPU. Parallel Nsight's powerful Frame Profiler and Analysis features give you the tools you need to tackle this new level of complexity. Russ will demonstrate how game developers can master these new DirectX 11 functionalities and run at full speed through the use of the latest Parallel Nsight performance analysis features.	Russ Kerschner, NVIDIA Russ Kerschner has worked for nearly a decade as a Direct3D programmer at NVIDIA. Formerly when developing the graphics driver, he was an enthusiastic user of PerfHUD. Thus, he was excited to join the Parallel Nsight team, where he works on the latest generation of power tools for profiling and debugging graphics applications.
2:00pm - 3:00pm	Enhancing Games with APEX (Clothing, Destruction, Turbulence) APEX has been used in various games to enhance game interactivity. In this session we will show you how APEX Modules (Destruction, Clothing) can be used to add more realistic clothing and destruction into your game. We will provide several APEX examples in current games and guide you through the entire pipeline of authoring, importing and setup of APEX Clothing and Destruction in a UE3 level. This session will provide an overview of the full NVIDIA APEX suite of tools used in the creation of clothing and destruction as well as an overview of the upcoming APEX Turbulence module.	Aron Zoellner, NVIDIA Kevin Newkirk, NVIDIA Aron Zoellner has worked as an animator/technical artist in gaming and digital media for nine years. His love of animation has taken him from an aspiring animation student at Savannah College of Art Design to working as a technical artist/animator for Simutronics Hero Engine and as a freelance artist. Aron joined NVIDIA three years ago to push the envelope with dynamic character physics in games and to integrate these new technologies into the everyday creative process. He now utilizes his interest in innovation to explore the uses of real time clothing simulation in games such as Mafia 2 and Batman: Arkham City. Kevin Newkirk has had a passion for games from a young age, but always wondered why there wasn't more realism in games. He took his love for traditional art, and moved into 3d digital art over 10 years ago. After working at several small studios, Kevin came to NVIDIA three years ago. Kevin now takes his love for interactivity, most recently by pushing the limits of destruction in games like Alice 2: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.

SPONSORED SESSIONS

Thursday March 8, 2012

NVIDIA Parallel Nsight™: DirectX 11 at Warp Speed 10:00am -11:00am Jeff Kiel, Manager, Graphics Tools, NVIDIA Jesse Attard, Lead Programmer, Digital Extremes	DirectX 11 opens up exciting new frontiers in the realm of real-time rendering effects. These frontiers are fraught with challenges and dangers, from programming the effects correctly to achieving the warp-speed performance required for an enjoyable gaming experience. Jeff will share the log of his journey, while working with high-profile DirectX 11 game engines, showing how key features of Parallel Nsight are instrumental in overcoming these challenges and makes it possible to create fast, and yet dazzling high-end graphics effects.
Mastering DirectX 11 with Unity 11:30am - 12:30pm Renaldas Zioma, Tech Lead, Unity Jason Nicholas, Head of CG, Passion Pictures Simon Green, Developer Technology Engineer, NVIDIA	The new Unity engine was designed to produce amazing visuals and game effects using the latest technologies and tools. In this talk, we'll take you behind the scenes and show you how Unity can quickly create astounding visual scenes, how those technologies leverage the power of DirectX 11 compute and tessellation, and how we went about deploying them to maximum effect.
Flexible Rendering for Multiple Platforms 2:30pm - 3:30pm Tobias Persson, Co-Founder and Rendering Architect, BitSquid Niklas Frykholm, Co-Founder and System Architect, BitSquid	Achieving the best possible visuals on a variety of different platforms demands great flexibility in your renderer. In this session we'll go through how BitSquid Tech achieves this by having a completely data-driven rendering pipe together with a minimalistic abstraction layer on top of the rendering APIs (D3D, GLES, GCM). We'll look at what that means for the game developer as well as how it is designed and implemented from a low-level perspective. A scalable runtime is not all though, you also need tools that allow quick reviewing of changes directly on the target platforms. We'll cover how we've implemented target mirroring in our tools and how you work with platform-specific assets in BitSquid Tech.
Enhancing Games with Clothing and Destruction 4:00pm - 5:00pm Aron Zoellner, Technical Artist, NVIDIA Kevin Newkirk, Technical Artist, NVIDIA	In this two-part presentation, we will first show you step by step how physically simulated clothing was added to Bruce Wayne in Batman: Arkham City – we will go through the DCC authoring pipeline, importing to UE3, running the asset in a game level and discuss how to avoid common problems when moving from static to dynamic clothing. Next we will demonstrate clothing using the lead character from Epic's Samaritan demo as a playable character in UE3. In the second part of the session we will be focusing on the APEX Destruction pipeline using PhysXLab and go through the authoring of recent destruction game examples as well as authoring the massive destruction in the UE3 Art Gallery Demo.
Android Gaming on Tegra: The Future of Gaming is Now, and it's on the Move! 5:30pm - 6:30pm Lars Bishop, Senior DevTech Engineer, NVIDIA Marek Rabas, CEO, Madfinger Games	NVIDIA Tegra-powered devices continue to break new ground and redefine the world of mobile gaming. This year we focus on how Android and mobile development has advanced, and what that means for game developers looking to ship exciting, innovative and rock-solid titles. The breadth of topics to be covered give some insight into the wide range of opportunities and challenges facing Android game developers today: Developing for new use cases like HDMI and wireless controller gaming; Quad-core utilization for performance and power; resolution-aware effect tuning; effective use of gyros, accelerometers and cameras as input devices; and Android lifecycle in pure native games. Join us as we analyze a live, big screen, gamepad enabled, multiplayer session of Shadowgun. Movement is a certainty in the mobile gaming world, be sure to attend and catch which way it's heading.

SKETCH MATCH

Thursday March 8, 2012 – ONE DAY ONLY!

Sign up in the NVIDIA Booth # 1424 starting at 10:00 am

Get creative. Get great prizes. Get to the NVIDIA SKETCH MATCH.

Come to Booth #11424 starting at 10 am on Thursday, March 8th to sign up for the NVIDIA SKETCH MATCH Contest. Don't miss this fun mix of students, professionals, and drawing exhibitionists—all competing in a high-energy frenzy of creativity. Everyone who participates is eligible to win awesome prizes. We'll provide the old-school materials, like charcoals, pastels, and chalk. You provide the creative passion. NVIDIA's own Creative team will be hosting the event, so come join us for the challenge!

NVIDIA PARTNERS

Company Name	Booth number
Adobe Systems Incorporated	2328
Allegorithmic	1542
Autodesk	1432 & BS-916
Bigpoint	702
Capcom Game Studio Vancouver	CP1715
Crytek GmbH	1002
Epic Games, Inc.	BS800
Google	1901
NCsoft	#2305
Nintendo of America Inc.	802
Obsidian Entertainment	1526
RAD Game Tools, Inc.	1114
Thumbstar Games	2212
UBISOFT Entertainment	#CP1202
Unity Technologies	1416
Wargaming.Net	1602
WEBZEN Inc	424
Avalanche Studios	CP1016
BigWorld Pty Ltd	624
CloakWorks	1842
Foundation 9 Entertainment	1725
Gamebryo by Gamebase	832
GameSpy Technology	1624
Geomerics Ltd	BS215.
GREE International	1825
HeroEngine	2116
Insomniac Games	1314
Adhesive Games - Hawken	SUITE