What is a Technical Artist?

The Technical Artist role is about wearing hats and solving problems.

The Technical Artist wears a number of hats depending on the following:

• the current stage of the project
• the size of the team/studio
• seniority/management role

Tech art interviews

Watch the Tech Art interviews made at GDC by Bill Crosbie

Tech art interviews

• provide technical support to artists for issues in the art production pipeline
• provide technical support for outsourcing
• help debug issues in complex assets (skeleton rigs)

Solving Problem, Support & Troubleshooting

Production Stage: Pre-production

• outline problem areas of the art production pipeline

Production Stage: Production

• make sure the ramping up of artists on to the project is as smooth as possible
• help outside vendors set up the required pipelines for outsourcing workflows

Production Stage: Finalling

• providing feedback and help artists get their content within the performance budget

Develop Tools

• develop/support tools/plug-ins inside DCC tools with the use of built-in scripting languages (Python, MAXScript, MEL)
• develop/support standalone tools for the content production pipeline to improve/automate the workflow of artists (Python, C#, Rust, C++)
• integrate new Digital Content Creation packages into the existing pipeline by writing data exporters/importers
• collaborate with Tools Engineers by providing feedback and test data sets

Communication and Advocacy

• bridging the gap between engineering and content creations departments
• bringing the artist perspective to technical discussions and vice versa
• work closely with lead artists and department heads
• set up feedback and QA process for outsourced art work
• training and mentoring artists (new workflows, new DCC packages, new tools)

Pipeline Architect, Pipeline Design

Production Stage: Pre-production

• conduct postmortems of previous production pipeline technology
• develop new ways to make the production pipeline more efficient
• help with the pre-production stage for select art departments (the art discipline you specialize in)
• define and set up new authoring pipelines

Research and Development

Production Stage: Pre-production/Production

• research and development of new pipeline technology
• help engine programmers define new engine features
• help programmers test new technologies and provide feedback
• decide on using new DCC packages
• evaluate updates to DCC packages that are in use
• research/prototype rendering techniques

Develop & Support the Game

• create and prototype shaders for the game
• debug and fix complicated content related game bugs
• work on game VFX
• work with engine programers on new game features

Content Budgets and Optimization

• manage content budgets
• help optimize art assets while keeping the visual quality
• help cleanup scenes
• help produce content production guidelines to keep assets within budgets

Documentation

• develop and maintain documentation for workflows and pipeline tools
• document best practices and guidelines for content creation

Revision Control

comfortable with at least one of the following

• Perforce
• git
• SVN

Scripting/Programming Languages

comfortable with at least one of the following

• Python 3
• C#
• C/C++
• Rust
• JavaScript

Game Engines

be familiar with at least one game engine pipeline

• Unity
• Unreal
• CRYENGINE
• Godot
• Lumberyard

GUI frameworks

• Qt (C++)
  • PySide2 or Qt for Python
  • PyQt

Digital Content Creation tools

have a deep knowledge of at least one

• Blender
• Houdini
• Substance Suite
• Photoshop
• Zbrush
• Quixel Suite
• Modo
• Mudbox
• Maya
• 3ds Max
• MotionBuilder

Databases

be familiar with at least one db technology

Note: some TA positions won't require this knowledge. But as you become senior this knowledge will become valuable.

• NoSQL
• SQL

Quick Learner

• quickly learn new art packages
• keep track of new industry standards and trends
• hone skills in a selected art discipline