Jack Of All 2D & 3D Trades?

Fordy

Hi All

I remember a number of years ago, CliffyB from Epic Games mentioned that most of the people at Epic tended to be multi skilled ie level designer might also do textures, modelers might skin their own models and perhaps do a bit of animation etc.

Does this still hold true? These days, im under the impression that everyone is a bit more specialised or is it common still for people to help out in other departments if needed?

I suppose what im really asking is do games companies look down on multi-skilled designers as a Jack of all trades or would they prefer a master of one skill? Or do some skills such as modeling and skinning go hand in hand?

Thanks in advance.

Ruz

In my last company, the animator did modeling themselves. Here we tend to specialise( but not socialise ; meh).

I think with next gen its getting a lot more specialised though

JordanW

From what i've seen for the most part you're going to need to be able to texture what you model and vise versa. Things are kinda funky now with next gen but for the most part I think your hurting yourself if you cant texture your own models. It does seem like with next gen at least in the environment section there are people who are specifically making the enviro textures but even then these people have to model for the normal maps!

I wouldn't say you should try to do everything under the sun, its good to know as much as you can but you should concentrate your efforts in a specific direction. It's ok to know some about all areas but if you really like animation you should strive to be the best at that, the same goes for design, modeling and texturing.

To your last question I would say that modeling and texturing do go hand in hand.

Joshua Stubbles

I couldn't agree more. Make it your business to learn a little of every aspect, but focus more on your own loving area. With the new generation of systems and development, more and more studios are breaking down into assembly line fashion, with task specialization being common place.

Fordy

Thanks all, id better get cracking, im gonna be too old at this rate.