Specializing or not ?
polycounter lvl 5
Question is ...
Professionally speaking is it better to specialize in a narrow field such as texture art or character modeling only or keep it more broad like for an assets designer?
And about texturing, is substance designer with its procedural texts really good ( like the guys at allegorithmic say )?
Do you think this is the future of texturing?
Thanks in advance.
Professionally speaking is it better to specialize in a narrow field such as texture art or character modeling only or keep it more broad like for an assets designer?
And about texturing, is substance designer with its procedural texts really good ( like the guys at allegorithmic say )?
Do you think this is the future of texturing?
Thanks in advance.
Replies
Being more generalist like Modeling Texturing Shading is better for advertisement industry ( The Mils, Blur etc )
I think game guys are kinda generalist too
and yup Substance iz gud
hf !
Be good enough at general tasks to not be so specialized that you can only do one thing, but do one thing well enough that you're known for it and stand out. It's really hard to get a job as a jack of all trades if you don't stand out, usually you'll be up against someone who is more specialized and probably better at whatever the job calls for in that case. It's also hard to get a job if you only know how to do one thing, unless you're absolutely without question amazing at that one thing (even then, the people I know who are really really good at something specific are pretty good at a variety of other things too).
For instance, if you want to be a character artist, you should be really good at sculpting and organic work, but you should also be proficient at lowpoly, uvs, baking, materials, and know a bit of hard surface as well (armor, weapons, etc are common hard surface things a character artist would be expected to do). If you know how to do that, you could do some prop work or even environmental work in a pinch.
On the other hand, it seems like a lot of kids out of college know how to do a bunch of things poorly. For instance, you might know the basics of rigging, animation, character modeling, hard surface, level design, but not have enough experience at any of those to be good enough to be hired. This is the point where you need to specialize and pick a discipline to focus on.
Jobs that are very specialized, like only doing highpoly character sculpts, or only doing materials, tend to be reserved for senior artists that have been in the industry for a while. Don't expect to get an entry level position and do only textures, unless it's at a huge factory-type studio.
To give a real-world example of what I mean, I'll break down what I do at my job as a character artist at Insomniac Games:
Research:
I do tons of research to understand what I'm making, both on a technical as well as an artistic level. This usually means lots of Googling and looking through books and magazines. Research is actually a skill set in itself because it relies on you being able to find things with very little previous knowledge of a topic by digging through keyword searches and related fields until you can find what you need.
High-poly modeling:
I do lots of sculpting in Zbrush, hard surface modeling in Modo, and clothing creation in Marvelous Designer. These are all skills that I've had to develop over various projects, but they all feed into creating different aspects of characters and I use them almost every day.
Low-poly modeling and retopology:
I do most of my retopo in Modo, and this requires knowledge of both how models deform as well as an understanding of how UVs will be laid out. A lot of that knowledge comes from experience, but just as much usually comes from determining the constraints of whatever I'm working on as I'm working on it.
UV mapping:
Efficient UV layouts provide you with greater texel density, but they also let you work more easily with various types of shaders that rely on UV layouts being very carefully laid out. If you ever work on a character that has something like stripes on their clothing, you'll understand the importance of a good UV map.
Texturing:
I use a bunch of different programs for baking and painting textures, and they change on a case-by-case basis depending upon the needs of the character. If I'm doing a character with extremely clean textures, I might just slap something together in Photoshop. If I'm doing something that requires advanced wear and tear, I'm a lot more likely to use Substance Painter to get good results. I also dabble in Substance Designer when I need things like tiling cloth patterns.
- - -
As you can see from the above, the job of a character artist is somewhat multi-disciplinary despite being exclusively focused on what is usually a small part of games. That's a common theme through most of the art jobs you'll see in the game industry, and for good reason; if you are good at a single part of the process but don't know anything about the rest, you're eventually going to create something that isn't a viable end product. This applies to most game art disciplines, especially things as complex as vehicles, weapons, or environments.
By narrowing your focus enough that you are making specific types of things, but keeping broad enough that you can create a complete asset from start to finish, you're putting yourself in a much more desirable position as a potential hire. In addition, you're ensuring that you understand all parts of the process and the best way to approach multiple types of problems.
Specialization meaning you're not just good at it, but you also have deeper knowledge and experience when compared to your other skills.
In regards to Substance: I imagine most artists will not be very specialized in Designer - even though some knowledge is required. But they will work primarily in painter. Deep Designer knowledge will be required mostly by TAs, and artists will modify and use read-made materials from a studio's Substance library, to enable re-use and consistent looks.
Regarding the OP:
The different things you are mentioning are very specialized sound a lot like VFX/CG jobs and less gaming related, though the big studios seem to embrace this approach more and more. But it stays the same for you too - find the job you want to do and see what they require. Film needs specialists, because they have completely different quality standards for each asset than games, especially mobile games. If you want to get a job in games narrowing it down to just texturing might be dangerous because it requires a very big team to have such limited roles. Just see what is expected from people doing your job - look at the description and find artists' portfolios that are working in that field and you will have a clear picture what you need and what expectations come with the position. With Artstation, LinkedIn and all the other stuff it is quite easy.
Generally speaking:
I was working in a small team with 4 artists and they had a lot of trouble before embracing the fact that generalists don't have all the answers. Since I joined I was pushing to look for specific skills when looking for new employees. Yes, we were a small team and we need to be able to do a lot of different stuff (from 2d merchandise to 3d games), but they were just lucky that when they hired me they got somebody who can rig because no one in this team (each 10+ years of experience) could do a IK-FK switch and they were not even aware of that. I on the other hand couldn't do a proper looking animation if my life depended on it and so on. So the smaller the team gets the more you have to be able to do, but someone in that team should have the answers for the problem at hands or at least recognize the problem, which often requires specializations.
The other argument against generalists would be in bigger teams you won't be doing it all. I know too many people who think they have fun doing everything, but actually as a beginner you barely have the time to master the things necessary for a single job. Looking at the job as Swizzle wrote, you will have a hard time convincing me that you as a graduate are able to do all that on a great level as well as also animate, rig or being a great environment artist. You won't even have the time at work to do all that stuff anyhow, at least if it has to reach a certain quality level.
That's why I say find the job description that you want to do for a living and practice those skills. In your spare time look up the other jobs and try to at least understand the basics of those so that when your teammates come to you and speak about what they are doing and what they need from you, you can understand them.
Awesome community!
Having said that - focus on understanding principles and workflows rather than where to find which button - workflows are transferable, the rest you can learn from a help file. Substance Designer = node based, non destructive workflow. You find this in Unreal's material system, in the Hypergraph, in ShaderFX and other packages. Painter is your beefed up 3D painting app, which shares concepts found in Mari, Bodypaint, etc.
It's important to focus on the texturing side while knowing and continuing to learn the basics of the other programs. Things like UV'ing, SubD and file formats such as exr, tiff, FBX are very important for a texture artist to know
Hope that helps.
For software, the guys above have compiled a good list of what is currently industry standard. My advice would be to look at the studios you admire the most and see what technology they're using or what skills can be easily transferred over from one program to the next.
To be honest I always though it was weird for character artists to take rigging knowledge that far instead or having the animators handle it.
I guess most expect rather animators to do the rigging around here. I just started doing the rigs because of workload disposition and actually I like it now, though I would never call myself a rigger.
Regarding what is expected of generalists:
I would say it differs and depends on a lot of things. If I hire a veteran that claims to be a generalist I expect him to have above average skills in all areas, but any sane lead will expect you to have strenghts and weaknesses. Still these are things I would try to clearify during the hiring process - both sides should know what to expect.
but I never hold myself on doing other area of discipline that has nothing to do with my specialty , and actually showing to public what I have done with that
(unreal character AI and crowd NPC would be my next goal
it is not a sin to be jack of all the trade, but you need to be aware that it takes extra years to be expert on each.
as long as you enjoy that process then feel free do do it.
write down to yourself , why you want to do more than 1 thing? is it for money? to make elaborated art ? or to be independent game developer?
despite doing many things you still can slim down what specific technique you want to learn, based on your goal
I guess most expect rather animators to do the rigging around here. I just started doing the rigs because of workload disposition and actually I like it now, though I would never call myself a rigger.
Regarding what is expected of generalists:
I would say it differs and depends on a lot of things. If I hire a veteran that claims to be a generalist I expect him to have above average skills in all areas, but any sane lead will expect you to have strenghts and weaknesses. Still these are things I would try to clearify during the hiring process - both sides should know what to expect.
The Visual Works guys that work on the Square Enix trailers are largely what we could call Character Generalists.
They do modelling, rigging, animation, hair,+ cloth. Very likely even many of their own FX.
I believe the concepting is still largely split up, and the shading/rendering is handled by another dept. I believe Blizzard Cinematics used to work this way as well, up until WarCraft 3.
But still schools for CG weren't wide spread back then. We are lucky to have such opportunities to learn all the skills. It is far easier to get the information than back then, so I didn't blame my collegues for not knowing things, but for claiming they do or not caring about keeping up to date.