Xin Chao! Thankfully, I woke up in time to fully enjoy breakfast today. It was my group’s company for today’s visit: Glass Egg. Glass Egg is a 3D art studio that designs 3D vehicles, props, and environments for video games. As someone who enjoys playing video games, ever since I had first heard about Glass Egg I was interested since their work has been in a number of popular games like Apex Legends, Forza Horizon, Fortnite, Spiderman 2, etc., and they did not disappoint. Our visit started off with a presentation of their work. Their longest running title Forza has been using cars made by Glass Egg for 26 years. Glass Egg seems to have mastered the realistic look and feel of the cars. So much so that they’re able to take their realistic models and add more of an artistic flavor to them like in NFS Unbound. The vibrant cartoonish style of this game look as if it had been pulled out of a comic book. It became apparent to me that this was Glass Egg’s biggest strength. Their solid foundation in designing cars that they built from working on Forza for years, allows them to adapt that foundation to fit the needs of their customer. This is largely what has driven Glass Egg’s success over the years. Their success with 3D vehicle models is shown by them being a part of 9 of the 10 top racing games. This has cemented Glass Egg as the “Car Guy” of the 3D art industry and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

A challenge that I anticipate most companies in this field to encounter is AI. With AI becoming more prevalent and faster-growing than ever, companies will need less artists. I imagine that many companies will end up skrinking the amount of artists they employ because AI will be able to replace them and save the company money.

My first week in Vietnam has been a lot of fun. Some highlights of the trip so far have been the food (pho and korean bbq), the waterbus tour where we got to play ping pong with the locals, and connecting with the UEF students. I have just been blown away by pure hospitality and kindness that the UEF students have shown us every day. From the first day we met them they were already treating us like brothers and sisters. When I reflect on American culture and they way that we treat foreigners it makes me feel disgusted. Even though it’s barely been a week so far, this has already been a life-changing and inspirational experience for me and I can’t wait to see what the next week holds!