GDC 2012 Autodesk Masterclasses.

The Game Developers Conference 2012 is over now, but the people at Autodesk have been so kind to share some of their good stuff with us. Several presentations, demo's and a whole lot of interviews have been uploaded. Marijn Giesbertz and Paulus Bannink's presentation on the creation of Guerilla's Killzone 3 cinematic is available online here. Also, some new masterclasses by industry experts have been added for you to watch, but you will be prompted to register for a free account at Autodesk Area first.

'Facial Animation and Retargeting for Games at Behaviour'.

This masterclass by Sylvain Côté, artistic technical director at Behaviour Interactive is about alternative solutions for facial animation/expression and retargeting in Maya. Watch it here.

'Insider Tips and Tricks for creating Game environment assets'.

A masterclass by Sandra Tournemille about environment modeling and texturing for the gaming industry using 3ds Max. Her advanced demos will improve your workflow and help create quality assets quickly and efficiently. Tournemille has worked on numerous games for EA, Ubisoft and Silicon Knights. Watch it here.

'3D Math for Artists'.

Ryan Trowbridge has been working as a character TD at Naughty Dog since 2006. His main focus is on character rigging and character pipeline tools. In 2011 he was a co-author with Adam Mechtley on the book 'Maya Python for Games and Film'. Ryan has worked on all three games from the 'Uncharted' franchise.

The focus of this class is to teach artists what vectors are, how to manipulate them, and utilize 3d math within their python scripts. This class will teach you how simple it is to add, subtract and use multiplication to manipulate vectors. It also shows you how Python can access the Maya API math classes MVector and MMatrix and how these make doing matrix multiplication easier and how it closely relates to doing vector math. Watch it here.

Below right: 3D Math for artists. After taking this Master Class, artists will find it easier to dig into 3D Math. Below left: In case you were wondering, this is the awesome book Ryan wrote with Adam Mechtley last year. Mechtley is founder and director at Candlelight Interactive. Check out his blog here. By the way, Ryan's blog is over here.

Guerilla games at the GDC 2012.

Quick post just to remind you that the Game Developers Conference has begun and lasts until March 9, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Autodesk has announced that Marijn Giesbertz and Paulus Bannink, lead artists at Guerilla Games here in Amsterdam will be among their speakers. They will do a presentation Thursday on the making of the 'Killzone 3' cinematic, using Autodesk Maya. Later that day a booth presentation is scheduled. Good luck, guys!

Autodesk said their presentation for the GDC will also explore the latest solutions for mobile game development featuring scaleform. You will learn how a modern pipeline powered by their software can help increase performance, productivity and creativity. Check it out here.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world's largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event. The GDC attracts over 19,000 attendees, and is the primary forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry. The GDC is produced by the UBM TechWeb Game Network.
Go behind the scenes' making of this season's most talked about games and take the opportunity to network, learn and share information. For more on the GDC, go here.

Update: Watch the complete coverage of the GDC 2012 Game Developers Choice Awards below, presented by Cliff Bleszinski. 

Tecmo shows first glimpse of new Ninja Gaiden III

During the GDC 2011 (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco, Tecmo showed their first preview of Ninja Gaiden III. Ninja Gaiden is still conceived as the hardest next-gen game. It was released for the X-Box in 2004 and designed by Tomonobu Itagaki and his Team Ninja. The Sequel 'Ninja Gaiden II' was released in 2008 for the X-box 360.

Since then, Itagaki has left Tecmo with several of his team members to start a new company 'Valhalla Games' to complete his next project called 'Devil's Third' (to be released in 2012).

I'm a huge fan of Tomonobu, and I like my games as tough as possible, so the original title is still my favorite game. However, all the signs seem to predict the next installment in the Ninja Gaiden franchise will still kick ass, so I'm looking forward to chopping some fresh heads with Ryu! Producer Yosuke Hayashi says big changes are coming to the third game. NG III is slated for 2012. Check out the teaser from Tecmo, it's hot!