Special Effects Art Test...what to expect?

Junkie_XL

Hi all. A certain studio's art director wants to give me an art test to fill for a "special effects artist" position. They contacted me first and their publisher is fairly well known so I'm somewhat flattered I suppose.

I'm not sure what it was in my portfolio that they liked to trigger this interest in me...(maybe the lighting screens?)...but I'm not sure and I haven't updated it in a while because of some other work I've had going on at the moment.

Anywho, I haven't been given the test yet. I was just wondering what do all of you fine folks here think I can expect? Anything I should have that prepares me? An animating alpha collection of some sort? heh Fire back up my "Guild Wars" and study?

yeah, I'm screwed...but I'll give it a shot...lol

Josh_Singh

You Know I have thought about how a 3d artists skills can apply skillz, to movie special effects, moreso in the make up effects section. Like it would be neat to make a prosthetic over a scan of an actor and have the mold printed out in 3d for a latex piece.
As far as explosions and all that sort of special effects, I havent done anything like that since I was doing the Max4 tutorials lol.

Scott_W

I imagine a studio would be looking for the movement and overall accuracy of an effect. That's assuming the test calls for real-world effects like... shattering glass, explosions, weather, muzzle flashes, etc.

I sort of migrated from environment art to purely visual effects after working at my studio for a bit, so maybe someone who was hired directly for that position has some more information!

Junkie_XL

Scott_W wrote: »

I imagine a studio would be looking for the movement and overall accuracy of an effect. That's assuming the test calls for real-world effects like... shattering glass, explosions, weather, muzzle flashes, etc.

I sort of migrated from environment art to purely visual effects after working at my studio for a bit, so maybe someone who was hired directly for that position has some more information!

You're probably the perfect person to talk to about this. Are there tutorials on the web showing sort of what you do day to day?

The game is 3rd person-action fantasy that they are working on.

Eric Chadwick

Articles like these are helpful to study.
Making of Shadow of the Colossus
Onimusha 3 lighting system (pardon the google translation)
Lost Planet graphics system

You should also spend some time with particle systems. For example...
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Particle_System_Overview
http://www.binarysun.co.uk/free-games/exgen/

Mark Dygert

If you're a 3dsmax user, check out Allen McKay's stuff, he's worked on a lot high end stuff and is more then happy to share his wealth (of knowledge...). Watch his studio's game cinematic showreel, lots of stuff you'll recognize. It will also give you a good idea of what they might expect.

His DVD's are great and so is the free stuff on his site. Most of the free stuff covers using the particle system inside of 3dsmax. He also is a FumeFX wizard. Seriously check out FumeFX its a really amazing plugin used all over the place. As well as give particle flow a good once over, together they unite to make an ungodly pair. You'll be blowing stuff up, setting it on fire, turning solid objects into piles of ash, and making spells dance around as soon as you get those basics under your belt. Most particle systems work the same way, stuff is born, events change it, stuff dies. The particle system in 3dsmax is kind of what UE3 is shooting for as far as feature set, but of course being for real time it falls a little short, still totall amazing for realtime.

Checking out the UE3 technology would be a good idea. Mostly Cascade but might be wise to check out Manitee and Kismet also. Eat3D has some good video tutorials on FX in UE3.

glib

Woah, I worked with allan for a few months, I had no idea he was so well known.

Junkie_XL

Hey thanks for the links & suggestions guys, I really appreciate it. FumeFX looks like the ticket for fire and smoke alphas. What else can it do?

After some research the developer is licensing UE3 so it sounds like Cascade is also the ticket. Me thinks I'll be picking that Eat3D disc up. I guess now it sort of makes sense why I was contacted because my lighting shots were displayed in UE3 and I had some additional little "effects" things in there. Although I don't know if they were really all that hot, heh. I do know UE3 quite well.

Haven't received the test yet. I'm even more curious than ever now since reading about the game they are working on.