"I Don't Know How to do that!"
polycounter lvl 5
Hello Polycount,
I'll begin this thread by stating, that, I am an industry noob; an MArt Student at Sheffield Hallam University, whom, after this year of intensive study and skill-set refining, will attempt to put my foot in the reinforced steel door that is the Games industry!
Many students at my level, despite not showing it, feel quite the level of helplessness when approaching the industry, and the concern that echoes mostly throughout the student community, as well as being the personal daunt of my own, is the thought of not being able to complete the task I am assigned to.
I.E. - What if my supervisor asks me to complete a task, and I have no idea how to approach it?!
Myself, and I am certain that many other students, would value greatly, the reassurance of the professional developers; we want to know what you feel we should do when we are stuck.
My personal approach, as always, is to give it a go. Spend some time trying to figure out a solution myself; but take care in not making your efforts futile, as this is still time wasted.
It can be a very daunting feeling having to hold your hands up to the boss and telling him/her that we are stuck. Professionals of Polycount, have you any advice, or guidance that you would be happy to share with us students, about what to do, in-industry, when we have no idea how to approach the task we are assigned? Should we be scared of admitting we are stuck?
Thank you for reading/contributing.
Essentially, the scope of this is to help reassure the newer artists, and to give them the confidence to seek help.
I'll begin this thread by stating, that, I am an industry noob; an MArt Student at Sheffield Hallam University, whom, after this year of intensive study and skill-set refining, will attempt to put my foot in the reinforced steel door that is the Games industry!
Many students at my level, despite not showing it, feel quite the level of helplessness when approaching the industry, and the concern that echoes mostly throughout the student community, as well as being the personal daunt of my own, is the thought of not being able to complete the task I am assigned to.
I.E. - What if my supervisor asks me to complete a task, and I have no idea how to approach it?!
Myself, and I am certain that many other students, would value greatly, the reassurance of the professional developers; we want to know what you feel we should do when we are stuck.
My personal approach, as always, is to give it a go. Spend some time trying to figure out a solution myself; but take care in not making your efforts futile, as this is still time wasted.
It can be a very daunting feeling having to hold your hands up to the boss and telling him/her that we are stuck. Professionals of Polycount, have you any advice, or guidance that you would be happy to share with us students, about what to do, in-industry, when we have no idea how to approach the task we are assigned? Should we be scared of admitting we are stuck?
Thank you for reading/contributing.
Essentially, the scope of this is to help reassure the newer artists, and to give them the confidence to seek help.
Replies
Any decent lead or peer should be happy to help you out. Now, if you're asking the same questions over and over, that's a different thing. But as long as you're learning ... don't sweat it.
Ask.
I have been working at Naughty Dog for 5 years now and I still ask how to do things. Or ask people how they think I should approach something. If there is a situation where I am unsure of how to do something, before I even waste time taking a shot in the dark I ask others for help.
There is NOTHING wrong with asking for help ever in any situation in life. Games or not.
....for days when your lead might be in a bad mood :poly124:
Anyone just sitting there, basically doing nothing/the wrong thing - aware of it, but too proud to ask, should be banned from the coffee machine for a year
It's always something that seems to come up for the newer artists; confidence, hence the creation of the thread, and having industry experts tell them straight up, and bluntly, to just ask, is definitely the most reassuring thing anyone could need.
If that's the case, something you can always try and do is take a deep breath, take a step back, and break the problem up into smaller parts. Work from bigger forms to smaller ones. Try to make a conscious effort not to get bogged down by smaller details early on.
There's also the internet. There's so much information out there now. Learning how to find answers fast on the internet is something that self-taught artists have been forced to master.
Obviously if it's really technical or pipeline specific I would just ask.
This. So much this.
tap the guy next to you. "Hey, how would you go about doing this? Im doing it this way, is there a better/faster way?"
To add to this point,
what if this is my supervisor?
and you have no one you work with to ask?
That doesn't help when the question is related to the companys internal workflow. There are many ways to bake a normal map but likely only one that the AD at that company will accept.
It's an interesting point!
Whilst of course, Google won't have the answers to everything (specifically as others have mentioned, if it's pipeline specific or a unique asset) - it is useful for many things.
Would it ever be seen as somewhat unprofessional if you were seen to be using Google to learn how to make an asset you were asked to in-house? Or is Googling for techniques, on the job/at work, a standard practice?
Another thing to keep into mind, speaking of team effort, usually tasks are taken up by multiple people. Rarely is there one person for a large task. Sure, if you are making some rocks or adding a trigger for an event in script, or debugging an issue in a build... you will do it yourself with little to no team effort... but you always have your friends and teammates at the studio. It seems like every 5min I am in a conversation with someone on the dev team about something or another. Honestly, with how fast this industry evolves, you will be learning on the job/task as you go more times than not IMO.
I google stuff all the time, constantly on Polycount, etc. Programmers are half on the internet, other half in a reference book or existing code, why cant we as artists or tech artists?
Dude you're seriously overthinking this.
I had "How to model knurling" up on my second screen the other day. I literally had 0 idea how to do it. Before I asked I just did a quick search around and found my answer.
1. In general, you just have to make art that looks good and fits the project requirements. Organization and communications with other departments is also important if you're working on a character or weapon.
2. Tutorials/googling/whatever is fine. Once again, if you're hitting deadlines and getting your work done, you're fine.
3. If you ask a question about perforce or a specific workflow related to the project, people are understanding. If you start asking thousands of silly basic questions that you could easily google, then people will start getting annoyed.
The idea of the thread is to raise common points of concern/worry that go through people's minds when they're new to the industry, and to create a sense of reassurance that they've nothing to fear.
The question I raised is not one that I personally would be concerned about, as I'd be happy to go and have a quick Google to see if anyone's found a good method - but it is something that some newer to the industry would worry about. :P
Definitely!
If it's a question about the internal workflow I usually try to find out through an alternate means. At an organised company they will have internal documentation that tells you exactly how things work and sets out standards. Otherwise it's helpful to ask either the tools programmer, or a tech artist, about how things should be done. Ideally your lead will tell you who works on that particular system when you get the task. So you can just go work with them to solve problems.
If no one knows, Google more and try stuff out. Over time you'll build up a sort of bank of intuition and half remembered facts, workarounds, posts on forums... and it'll all feed in.
A big part of being in the industry - and something many courses fall to instill, with an over-reliance on tutorials - is figuring out how to approach new things. You might not know the whole path, but when faced with a problem, being able to break it down and pull together disparate bits of knowledge to get you through is an invaluable skill. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the job, I find.
Having never worked in a studio, I've always wondered about that, thanks! I know many places set up "art bibles" for visual reference for a project.
Mirroring what the others have said, 3dstuffs is a technical skill with a ton of things to know; you're not expected to know everything. Often, someone will have a novel way to do even the simplest thing and are usually happy to share what they know.
Everyone has the ability to break a problem down and find a solution, it's just a matter of exercising that and figuring out what works best for them.
Ask if you think that you don't understand the task or concept, getting it explained to you and at the same time have questions on hand, to ask while someone is explaining, helps a lot. There's no shame in saying, I've never been involved in a process like this, have no experience and don't understand what you're asking me to do. As long as you put the effort in to learn and show that you can up-skill, people won't hold lack of experience against you - or shouldn't - everyone starts somewhere.
In every interview I've been to and offers / jobs I've had, I honestly say I don't know how to do this, but I'll always improve and I can. Making people aware of where you've come from and knowledge that you don't have, or areas you are willing to explore and become proficient in, makes it easier and takes pressure off.
Also with large codebases its good to ask at times anyways since someone else may have already solved the problem and you just dont know which namespace to look in.