Tech art is often used as a buzzword in the games industry, and it can mean so many different things depending on the company and the context. The only generalization is that it is a cool job title, and tech artists are often sought after and highly valued by companies.
This post is directed at entry level and junior profiles, who might be equally motivated and confused about getting a tech artist job. I want to give my personal opinion and advice, while taking into account how other companies use “technical art”.
What is Technical Art
Taking into account all the different information at my disposal, I will approximate a kind of universal average of what a technical artist is supposed to do. Be warned, this probably would accommodate only a small percentage of all the cases, but it’ll still be useful to get an overview. The responsibilities of this universal average would consist of:
- Building tools and establishing consistent workflows for each of the art teams in the studio. Find new ways for artists to deliver higher quality work with less effort.
- Improving the art pipeline (how the assets get into the engine). Usually custom exporters, asset processing, version control, etc.
- Give constant support to all the users of said pipelines & workflows.
- Make or help making shaders. Shaders are a shared responsibility between tech artists and graphics engineers. If there are none in the studio, the tech artist will need to make all the shaders, while if there are, the tech artist will probably just focus on making the outlier shaders (for special use cases, like VFX).
- Optimization: LODs, profiling, etc.
- Facilitate communication between Art and Programming teams.
I’ve also found the tech art position varies a lot depending on whether the studio uses Unreal Engine or not. More often than not, in an Unreal Engine powered studio, tech artists focus more on the artistic part, and sometimes contribute to making final art for the games. In my case, we use a custom engine, and my responsibilities are more centered in the technical part.
What skills can get you a tech art job
The single skill that did it for me a few years ago was Maxscript. It is a scripting language used to make 3DsMax tools. I didn’t have professional experience with it, but just having studied it in university was enough for passing the technical test in the selection process.
However, if you’re starting now and have no knowledge of Maxscript, I don’t recommend you to waste time on it. Python would be a way better option. It’s supported in 3DsMax, and in other tools like Blender and Houdini, which are gaining a lot of traction, even surpassing 3DsMax in the recent years.
But arguably, an even more importan thing to have is a broad set of skills, that cover from coding to almost all of the 3D pipeline. For my current position, they wanted someone to give support with tools and pipeline improvements to all the 3D art teams. My lack of animation knowledge wasn’t a problem, as they already had a couple of technical animators, which will be the case in most bigger studios.
Right after these, shader knowledge would be the next more important skill. You will be asked to write or modify shaders in the technical interview, and you need to be prepared to adapt to different languages: GLSL, HLSL, ShaderLab. This depends on the tech the company uses. At least, you should be able to implement with code different blending algorithms1, basic lighting2 and vertex displacement.
Procedural modeling can also be a huge advantage for you in this field. Most teams will be interested in procedural or semi-procedural solutions to alleviate some work from the 3D artists. In my case, I started learning this by playing around with Blender’s Geometry Nodes, and this skill was pretty useful when later on we decided to start making procedural tools in Houdini, which would have been way more intimidating to learn without the Geometry Nodes knowledge. If you want to jump into Houdini directly because it caught your attention, online tutorials are not going to help I’m afraid. I recommend you do yourself a favor and sign to a paid course.
Ok, but what can you actually do to learn and showcase these?
Here are some examples of projects you can add to your portfolio. These will cover the main skills mentioned above, and will make you learn along the way. Make sure to pick projects that motivate you, it will make the trip easier, and it will show in the results.
Exporter helper tool
This can be actually very helpful for you in the future, and will show that you can tackle making tools. Bonus points if you make a simple UI for it. I recommend doing it in Python for Blender. Focus on what would be actually helpful for you and your preferred engine/other tools you use.
Consider sharing your script and getting people to use it and give you feedback.
Procedural modeling projects
Go to Blender, open the Geometry Nodes tab and start playing. If you don’t know what this is about, look for any simple introductory tutorial, follow along and adapt the result to your liking. And if you don’t have any ideas, you can make buildings, roads, anything that normally has patterns and would be a pain to 3D model in the traditional way.
Make sure to document the process and showcase it in your portfolio.
Dioramas
These can act as a vertical slice to show off your knowledge of the 3D art pipeline, and serve as an expositor for your shaders and VFX. Also, if you can take advantage of your other tools and Geometry Nodes, it would be ideal. You can keep dioramas in Blender, or better yet, put them in your preferred game engine and finish the visuals there.
If you’re looking for inspiration, you can take a look in https://sketchfab.com/ to get ideas and/or styles to replicate.
Extra: you need to care about soft skills
Soft skills are specially important in technical art. You will need to communicate with lots of different people from different teams, understand what they need, and make sure that what you do suits their needs.
You will also need to sell your job, and be able to convince higher ups to change tech and invest in licenses.
As an introvert, this GDC talk helped me a lot: The Calm in the Storm: An Introvert’s Guide to Success
Afterword
I made this post after reading Nina Klos’, which inspired me to add my own point of view. There are many other experiences out there, so don’t stop looking for more insights about this.
Footnotes
- See examples in:
– Unity: https://elringus.com/blend-modes-in-unity/
– Godot: https://godotshaders.com/snippet/blending-modes/
– GLSL: https://github.com/jamieowen/glsl-blend ↩︎ - For example the Phong lighting: https://learnopengl.com/Lighting/Basic-Lighting ↩︎
Subscribe to get my blog directly in your inbox