Brian C McRae

Attn Game Devs! Have you tried "going indie" or have thought about doing so? Maybe launched a game on the side? No agenda, just looking to converse/network. Back in 2012, my wife and I spent a year making Roboto and it ended up hitting #7 on the App Store. #Indie #GameDev #IndieGames #Unity

Big unlock for @OdysseyStreamAI! We’ve just been accepted into the @ElevenLabs Startup Program! This unlocks high-quality, real-time voice for our avatars at scale. It's one of those indicators solo founders like myself hope for after months of working in the dark. #AI #Startups #Founders #Tech #Innovation #Creators #FutureOfWork #GenerativeAI

After 70+ launched projects, I've learned this - listen to your project. When you start, you put in all your hopes and dreams, giving it life. Once you have a loop, listen to it, form a relationship with it. It will tell you where it wants to go. Let it lead you. #creativity #GameDev #ArtProcess

Last night I told my wife I'm not getting along with my AI. So today, me and the AI had a little talk. I literally wrote this to my AI: "There are few moments in life as special as this. Let's enjoy it." It reluctantly agreed. Then apologized. Then it broke down all the reasons I'm right into various paragraphs and bullet points, with plenty of emojis sprinkled in. #AI #ChatGPT #FutureOfWork

Generation X lived two lives: one analog, one digital. As someone building what I believe could be a new AI-native medium, I’ve never been more proud to be part of this generation. #GenX #AI #80s #Tech #Platfoms open.substack.com/pub/brianmcrae…

For my first post of 2026, I thought I'd share something a little deep.

Having devoted most of my adult life to the craft of 3D Art, I have every right to completely despise AI art.

But I don't. I see possibility and opportunity.

This transition in mindset has been...a struggle. I worked endlessly to learn every technique and workflow to get the best possible result. I'd pour hours, days and weeks into a single model, and be proud of it.

My hard drives are full of 3D meshes, Unity and Unreal projects, textures, animations, mo cap files, reference and concept art, you name it.

But now things are different. Now anyone can prompt amazing images in seconds. There's very little "skill" required to prompt an image.

But this has happened before.

When photography was invented, it undid hundreds of years of artistic pursuit of realism. As soon as technology could capture reality in an instant, every portrait painter in the world went obsolete.

The result? An artistic explosion of Expressionism, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism. Monet, Dali, Picasso, Kandinsky. The time between the 1860's and the 1930's gave us some of the best art ever.

I’m working on a new AI rendering tool that gives full camera control using your 3D assets as a guide. It’s designed to help creative professionals get the exact cinematic angle and mood they want, directly from their 3D scenes, rendered in AI for visualization and pre-production. #AI #3D #Filmmaking #GameDev #AIArt

Been working on a project to help with...my project! It's a story bible software that drives all the sequences in the experience, allowing for true, dynamic and meaningful interactions with other characters. #StoryWorld #Screenwriting #GameDevTools

Asked by a AAA Technical Art Director about how I'm doing the wind system in #WhipsersInTheCorn My response shows that games are a little more complex than you might think. :) "Vertex shader run through a simple perlin noise texture for movement. To keep them grounded I used vertex colors as a gradient painted in Max to influence sway, bend and jiggle, so R,G, and B were all used on the meshes. Interaction is achieved using a volume field to influence the shader based on the position and radius of any object with a volume helper script. Pretty performant up to about 10 influence objects - which is plentyt for my case. All instanced geo that renders 30m - 90m verts in drawview at 60fps. Distance trees use a more simple vert shader and wind system. I can change the amount of wind on a slider (for story/gameplay reasons). Took about a week or two to get it right."

Made a build of #WhispersInTheCorn and textures came in at 2.2GB. Too big. After going through one by one, got it down to 1.1GB with no loss to visual quality. But it's tricky to find. Go to Editor.log>Build Report after a build to view your texture list.

Results from my Youtube channel poll last week. I actually love hearing there's plenty of interest in design theory and my process, two topics I enjoy sharing the most!

People have been asking for more #WhispersInTheCorn devlogs, but I've been holding back - don't want to give away the surprises! Here's what I can say: The story is very close to the original inception, but the design has evolved. More soon! #indiedev #UnityHDRP #gameDesign #HorrorGames