While knowing the basics of engines helps quite a bit, I haven't worked with any big name engines yet and the problems we face are the same things that the engines dealt with years ago. So if you know an engine really well it can help but you probably won't encounter the problems that they've already tackled, problems that…
Balls Deep. At both of my jobs the engine was all in house and everything was learned on the job. But knowing how to import meshes, create basic shaders, setup levels and do lighting pass in an engine helps you a great deal when it comes to being able to pick up the same concepts in house. Everything is transferable.
I'd say getting it into the engine is good enough knowledge - later you can dive deeper if you want. The way things have turned out, I've spent most of my career working on Gamebryo games and in house engines - so almost all the tools are built in house, I was shown how to use them on the job.
I think the important stuff to understand is usually pretty common across all engines; How the meshes and textures are stored and moved around in memory (i.e. what makes them efficient for the game engine - tri-stripping, vertex splits, etc). How they're rendered (again, what the efficient methods are and when to use which…
As professional 3D modelers, do you spend time studying the workings of game engines or does the basic input/output and lighting setup for tests suffice to do your work? I'm asking this since i'm new to the area of gaming art. I have a generic modeling and texturing background and to be honest its a bit scary to think i…
Thanks again. Just to expose better why i was asking, i'm going to do a reel, and besides normal animation/movie assets i'm considering branching to game models and environments, showing some optimized low poly meshes/ high poly and its normal maps etc, but i thought including a walkthrough in real time inside an engine…
I would say while going balls deep into an engine is great and will give you a headstart on many problems you might envounter, unless you are developing your own game you only have to know how to present work in the engine. By this I do not just mean how to import and slap on textures - but how to properly set up…
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm The materials and shaders sections of Neil's site are helpful in understanding how to break the materials down into their basic elements. Little changes between the engines other than names and possibly some procedures for various game related technical issues. So…
To be clear I view it like this: Systems Programmer - - Graphics programmer - - Technical artist - - Game artist - - Traditional Artist Not to imply heirarchy but to imply a ratio of the 'level of required knowledge in engine' Vs 'ability to make pretty looking stuff' There's a place for everyone on that spectrum in a game…
^He means that an artist will be essentially an artist, that will make stuff visually, so knowing about shaders (or how to get a certain look on a model) is important, even if you don't make them yourself, knowing how to use them to the full potential is important and what each slot does. For example, want to fake a…