If your portfolio is good enough, you'd be considered for the position. Since you have more lighting experience, that could possibly outweigh your environment area. And (as far as I know) more people do environment models, so you're picked for lighting in the end. You just have to get your environment stuff better than everyone else's
I would say yes.
My advice would be to continue to work the lighting gig, and do some sweet enviro work in your spare time to build up a folio.
With your lighting skills, you should be able to make your stuff stand out from the crowd if you put your back into it.
As a lighter, you know that good lighting can make a simple scene look awesome, while a scene full of detail with bad lighting will always look average on first glance.
While the company you currently work at might need you as a lighter more than an enviro builder, having a strong environment folio to show them or others can never hurt if you hear of an opening or a project suddenly finds it self short on environment artists.
A good folio will always get someones attention if you actually show it off.
Show it to the environment lead artist for instance, ask him for feedback on your work. This way you have shown your self to have appreciation for his skills enough want him to critique your stuff, and also you have shown him that he could call on you if the need arises.
Never expect them to come to you first. Either full on pimp our your work, or do it like I described above, which is a slightly more "political" way to do it at the company you currently work at.
One of the reasons I actually decided to make the switch, is because instead of being confined to endless props and details I get to own a level and do everything from rough composition to final lighting. I find it rewarding like that, although you have to be comfortable with knowing that you have more limited resources and a way smaller audience for your games then AAA stuff.
The big companies understandably tend to have their folks more specialized and chances are I even lost a potential job by saying that I'd very much like to model, texture and light my own environments. Because as to quote the lead artist I spoke with "It's the lighting/texturing artist domain and they might take offense if you would be doing their job for them."
I know that it's different from place to place but to be able to actually have creative control over the whole environment is extremely rare these days.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it very much. I'm actually in between jobs right now, so I'm trying to get up my skills so I have more options. I actually got to take an art test for an environment position recently . They thought my test was "good" but they want me for lighting instead....However I'm currently stuck in that position where they say "looks like youre the best fit for this position, we will contact you on monday to talk more about it"
....this was last friday, and i haven't heard anything
blankslatejoe: Thanks!
Yeah I have noticed that since I've been doing lighting- I am not naturally a technical person but I guess I've sort of become more tech savvy because of the nature of the work. I've always been into that fancy stuff you can do with mental ray though..
Replies
My advice would be to continue to work the lighting gig, and do some sweet enviro work in your spare time to build up a folio.
With your lighting skills, you should be able to make your stuff stand out from the crowd if you put your back into it.
As a lighter, you know that good lighting can make a simple scene look awesome, while a scene full of detail with bad lighting will always look average on first glance.
While the company you currently work at might need you as a lighter more than an enviro builder, having a strong environment folio to show them or others can never hurt if you hear of an opening or a project suddenly finds it self short on environment artists.
A good folio will always get someones attention if you actually show it off.
Show it to the environment lead artist for instance, ask him for feedback on your work. This way you have shown your self to have appreciation for his skills enough want him to critique your stuff, and also you have shown him that he could call on you if the need arises.
Never expect them to come to you first. Either full on pimp our your work, or do it like I described above, which is a slightly more "political" way to do it at the company you currently work at.
But thats just my two cents
Mo Bile
One of the reasons I actually decided to make the switch, is because instead of being confined to endless props and details I get to own a level and do everything from rough composition to final lighting. I find it rewarding like that, although you have to be comfortable with knowing that you have more limited resources and a way smaller audience for your games then AAA stuff.
The big companies understandably tend to have their folks more specialized and chances are I even lost a potential job by saying that I'd very much like to model, texture and light my own environments. Because as to quote the lead artist I spoke with "It's the lighting/texturing artist domain and they might take offense if you would be doing their job for them."
I know that it's different from place to place but to be able to actually have creative control over the whole environment is extremely rare these days.
....this was last friday, and i haven't heard anything
Yeah I have noticed that since I've been doing lighting- I am not naturally a technical person but I guess I've sort of become more tech savvy because of the nature of the work. I've always been into that fancy stuff you can do with mental ray though..