Which one to choose ? Modeler, texture artist, or a digital artist ?

Filip5

Greetings, this is a question that keeps me occupied for a rather longer time. I really do love game industry and movie industry and all of this digital work.

I do model 3D things for a couple of years now. Mostly architecture, can't say I am very good with organic models. For over those (about 5 years) I used Blender, Maya, 3DS Max. I love seeing my ideas coming to life and modeling the shapes and all of that, but it is missing something. I can spend the whole day modeling a thing, but at the end of day, I trash it, because there is something odd about model.

If I continue to work on it, the comes the part to which I look for the most. Texturing. On the contrary, I hate uv unwrapping. Its really as bad as it can be - altough, this may be caused by fact that all my models are somewhat blurry even tough unwrapping, by all I know, is done properly, not speaking about lightmass. But back to the topic. Above all I love texturing the model - basic, variations, small effects, what this effects will do and this one... all of that, playing around and seeing the result. Currenty, I am using substance painter and that software rocks. To add to this, I am a digital art student, so its not only applying created textures, but I can say I am somewhat good ad creating my own.

The last position is digital artist - thats pretty much what I am studying. There is probably no need to write more to this - there are numerous jobs concluded in here, images and video editing, creating websites, brochures and posters... I like it because of its diversity. 

Altough these areas are similiar and even do overlap,I would love to become texture artist - if that is possible. Can one only create textures without moddeling and, but if not neccesary, unwrapping models ? What do I need to know, in terms of skills, if I want to be texture artist. And what is their part of job in a model making (wether it is for a game, video etc.) 

Melazee

If you want to be just a texture artist (and I could be totally wrong here), but I think that's more a film thing (I often see roles for texture artists come up for D-Neg for example). However you do get a few game studios that have positions for just texturing/shaders like Naughty Dog: https://www.artstation.com/artist/pipesfranco/

For that, you probably have to learn Substance Designer and learn all about shader making, and not just about painting textures. But I think that's mostly big filmic AAA studios that have roles like this. If you want to go to smaller studios, you will probably have to be able to model as well as make the textures (the guy I linked you was originally an environment artist in the studio I work for example). 

To find out exactly what you need to do to become a texture artist, I would find an open position for texture artist on a studio's site, and look at their job requirements  

gsokol

Its certainly possible, some studios specialize, some dont.  I'm a texture artist at work.  I spend most of my time just making tiling materials and decals.    Very Rarely do I work with meshes or UVs.  I also do shader work, but in production its not very often I need to make a shader unless I'm doing something radically different than normal.

That being said, I didn't get hired as a texture artist, I moved into this role once we started specializing, and project or studio needs may dictate that I help out with other things at some point.  I can't speak for other studios, but we probably wouldn't hire a person who can ONLY do that thing.  I would say that its better to be pretty well rounded with exceptional material work than it is to only be able to do material work and nothing else.

another caveman

One thing I noticed both during my education (asking class masters) and at work (asking coworkers), even very good artists are not always working on what they planned to initially
Like you wanna be a prop artist- but you end up texture artist (which is cool too!!)
What I'm trying to say is it also relates a lot on job offers at the time you'll be on the look for one, and what people notice you for, and your network - network's super important
(I guess if you're picky you'll just keep looking at jobs, but you might get hungry )

Tomiajayi

pick the one you're best at