Taking your work home with you

scourgewarper

This is for those in the industry, what's the policy on getting your work done at home? Is there some weird legal thing of not making assets at home or something weird like that or is it perfectly acceptable and common practice for artists to complete work at home, especially during crunch time? Or does the policy depend entirely on the company you work for?

Also, what if you can use standard company issue software like max but much prefer using something like Silo, could you just install your preferred software at work and use that as long as its compatible with the engine/technical requirements for your project?

EarthQuake

Depends, for both questions, it just depends on the employer and what their policies are.

Mark Dygert

We recently remodeled our office and we also had a bunch of snow, and a long holiday break. While we where closed everyone was encouraged to either take that time off or work from home. We all have external HD's along with remote access to email and the servers.

The legal and technical wrangling was a bit of a nightmare. They had us transfer licenses for 3ds Photoshop and a few plug-ins. Which wasn't hard just a hassle.

I strongly recommended checking it out with your employer as most will probably be pretty weary of your home system and software its running.

scourgewarper

Hey Earth, I guess i'm just trying to gauge what the general policy is in the industry can you say what it is where you work or have worked in the past? Anyone else too.

I could understand companies not liking you installing your own prefered software. Pretty soon you'll have everyone using different programs and things could just get downright messy and inefficient. But then again if people work much faster in another package...theres pro's and cons to both arguments really. What do you think is best?

Reverenddevil

I know for us if needed, people work from home and get the licenses to use software at home. I wouldnt want everyone working out of the office all of the time, then you might as well be contracting. I like the collaborative team environment. I think it just depends on your boss and why someone will be out of the office etc. I think for a few people working from home etc now and again is fine but imagine everyone wanting to at the same time things would be to chaotic and the bosses would say hell no, no one is working form home....

East

We have no problem taking work with us home. Some people without access to the hardware and software at home, take their workstations with them over the weekend if they need to put in a few extra hours during crunch.

scourgewarper wrote: »

Also, what if you can use standard company issue software like max but much prefer using something like Silo, could you just install your preferred software at work and use that as long as its compatible with the engine/technical requirements for your project?

Where I work this isn't a problem, as long as you have a license for it and you get the work done. We are mainly a Maya studio, but I also have a license of Silo for when I need to do quick polygon/sub-d modeling. Everything at work handles OBJ files.

greenj2

Another thing to consider is the security of content being transported between home and work and stored on your home PC. This really depends on the company you work for and the projects they're working on. I've worked on titles where it's been made very clear that the studio doesn't want any project related content leaving the building, for security purposes.

Kizza

Also depends on the project. The last two I've worked are based on franchises where they are providing high res assets so we weren't allowed to take work home at all. If it's an original IP there's less red tape involved when you need to take something home.

Rick Stirling

I've brought stuff home several times, mainly when it's just texturing stuff. I'll use Silo as an asset viewer and paint in away in Photoshop. Since I run a mac at home this is easy to do.

If I was going to be rigging then I'd have to boot up into Windows which I generally can't be arsed doing.

Why would I work at home? If there was a crunch due, or as often happens we get a few dozen change requests at the same time and I didn't want to be in work I can just pop those onto a thumb drive and bring them home.

Data confidentiality? I can be trusted not to be sharing that stuff. Losing the thumb drive? How many people would realise what a .obj or .psd file was anyway? If they did, how many people would recognise that they were from an unreleased game?


Installing software at work? Ask. I've got Silo installed. Everyone had Crazybump installed until it went commercial, now we have licenced copies for anyone who requests it. 5 or 6 of us asked for and got 3D Coat.

Flynny

Hope that 1 day all the major 3d softwares, bla what am i saying i mean i hope autodesk make all there stuff universally compatible animation/rig wise

As far as work going home with me, it happens but if only to get my head around why my rig isnt working the way it should mostly.

rolfness

Taking work home is only good if you're a pornstar the rest of the time its for chumps..

Eric Chadwick

There's a lot to be said for working face to face, as far as art is concerned. I've found it rare for an artist to work well off-site, and stay integrated with the team. Some artists can do it well, some cannot. Some just don't have the discipline to get their work done when there are so many distractions available.

The necessity of on-site work is especially true during crunch, when sometimes you need to talk to someone ASAP. They have a file checked out, or their work is blocking you, or it's crashing the game. If on-site you can usually track them down anywhere in the building and get the issue resolved. Not always so if they're at home, they could be away from the computer or phone, unreachable. That's happened to me many times.

Kizza

I've taken stuff home with me that doesn't use assets from our license. Especially things like writing tools for the Maya animators, sometimes I'll be in a such a groove I pull open Wordpad++ on my laptop and keep writing mel scripts on the train home. I've done a couple of days where I'll be home sick and I end up getting more done than if I went to work because there's no distractions, and no transit. There's definitely something to taking work home with you if you're swamped and you need to just get it done.

I've had a project in the past where I was told on a Friday we needed to deliver a character on the Monday so I'd do it at home over the weekend. But I try and avoid it because it's nice to separate work from home. If I need to do stuff I'll try and do it at work. (We get free dinner if we stay late so it's not so bad)