Technical Artist Project Goals or Direction?

starogre

Hi Everyone,

I was recently hired a few months ago as a Technical Artist at a games company but am not working on 3D content at the moment. I was wondering what sort of scripts and projects TA's are expected to do in regards to rigging and controllers, python scripting for tools (what sort of tools??), shaders (is this programming them from scratch or just getting materials to look good or what), getting things working properly in game engines beyond the basics? These are sort of abstract qualifications and project goals for me and was looking for a direction to go in terms of solidifying a project goal or idea and working towards it. Maybe even throw in some FX in Unity or Unreal?

Looking over several TA job descriptions and most are pretty general and abstract and depend on what project the company is working on at the time. I don't really have a specific company in mind at the moment as I have only been working as a Technical artist for a couple months now. Got a long way ahead of me!

The resources for TA seem bleak compared to what I've seen for character artists and modelers.

Thanks, any advice is appreciated!

Kovac

You're completely right, the role itself is very abstract. It sounds like this company you're at has a very loose interpretation of what functions a TA should provide, but it sounds like you have the general idea. My suggestion is to start paying close attention to your artists' development pipeline, and start finding ways to make their lives easier.

Once you put together a few automation scripts for them (bound-based collision generators, object renaming tools, material path fixing tools), they'll begin to recognize some of your functions and start asking you for more specific tools. The goal is to ultimately educate your artists to ask the right questions, or notice redundancy in their own workflows that can otherwise be automated or configured differently.

I recommended lurking and frequenting on tech-artists.org -- it's where you're likely get the answers you're looking for by observing some of the tools others are tinkering with.

It also seems like you're in a good position to define your own strengths and work towards those as well. I personally cater towards FX, shaders and pipeline optimizations over things like technical rigging and animations tools; to each their own.

Good luck,

starogre

Thanks for the reply! I am actually at a relatively small company. I'm doing front end UI stuff at the moment with one other technical artist. We have a couple 2D general artists and then we have 3 3D artists doing mostly character modeling in zbrush and maya and some animation. So the work I'm doing right now as a first time technical artist just hired is pretty basic and that's why I'm already kind of bored and want to branch out to other areas on my own outside of work. I guess I don't really have the opportunity here to get things into game engines or program advanced particle systems or even have to make advanced weird rigs for different types of bipeds or quadrupeds. Thus, I am looking for a direction to start in to move beyond the 'tutorial' phase for these things.

I will definitely check out that website!