Thanks DJTomServo, your breakdown helps a lot. A lot of those items I can hit, while others like working away from Maya would be kinda hard because I do my MELs in sections in ConText, and pull them all together in the end doing a lot of testing along the way. Most of the things I end up doing, I surprise myself, so I am always learning. But I think I like being an artist that just knows how to write scripts.
Both actually, and truth be told, itâs really hard to say one is better than the other. The kind of people i end up hiring or recommending are sorta balanced in those respects, ie you have the artists/animator who is a bit of a code/script enthusiast or you have the programmer whoâs a closet artist. And by enthusiast, I mean said artist not only can write MEL but is also somewhat versed in modern software design and engineering paradigms (OOP, etc) and is able to deploy code with those in mind. Same with the closet artist, maybe they wonât compete in Dominance War, but theyâve definitely moved beyond that âprogrammer artâ stage:laugh:.
Nowadays, you also tend to find folks that are Technical Art from day one, ie theyâve heard about Technical Art, they have an idea of what the skillset encompasses, and theyâre actively pursuing that skillset. There are even schools that are offering Technical Art degrees and of course you have places like td-college, so it seems to me that we may be seeing more of these dyed in the wool Tech Artists, which I hope turns out to be a good thing.
So I think overall, as the industry expands and the needs for technical artists continues to grow, youâre going to see people of all types and all backgrounds breaking into tech art, and l think as long as people are willing to devote a good chunk of time to both art and programming and are willing to maybe spend a little more time than theyâd like on their weaker aspect (if they have one), background is going to become less and less of a factor (I hope, it makes hiring easier!).
âŚof course, Iâve only been in a hiring position for about 3 or 4 years, so take any of this with however many grains of salt that requires.
I looked up one of the schools Seth mentioned, TD-College. Does anyone have any experience taking their courses?
djTomServo. Iâll show my ignorance and ask what you mean by MEL algorithms outside of maya. An example maybe. thanks
hey djTomServo,
How many TAâs have you managed to hire with that interview process? Weâre finding it pretty hard to find someone that matches all those qualifications. Itâs really hard to find someone that can rig and write HLSL shaders, weâre out there, but weâre hard to find.
I know that in different companies they have different classes of TAs (shader guy, rigger, tools guy, pipelines) and that seems easier to hire for.
Are the TAâs in bungie all generalist? or expected to be? Just curious
Hehe, my bad, actually all i mean by that is we ask you to write up some MEL code for us, but we donât give you a copy of Maya to do it in, we just have you do it on a whiteboard or a piece of paper.
ahh sweet. Thanks. I felt at a loss there for a second. "Crap I donât know how to do that! " lol
[QUOTE=lkruel;3144]hey djTomServo,
How many TAâs have you managed to hire with that interview process? Weâre finding it pretty hard to find someone that matches all those qualifications. Itâs really hard to find someone that can rig and write HLSL shaders, weâre out there, but weâre hard to find.
[/QUOTE]
We went down this road at Crystal Dynamics and it was tough. Eventually we went down the route of hiring specialists just because yeah, there arenât too many people out there with that skillset that are working a job they donât like ( and i was getting lonely in my ivory tower:D: ) Bungie was a bit of a different story because we hired most of our dept through employee referrals. Weâll actually be looking for another high level generalist in the near future and i imagine itâll be painful. Although i will keep some numbers, because iâd be interested to know that sort of thing myselfâŚ
I know that in different companies they have different classes of TAs (shader guy, rigger, tools guy, pipelines) and that seems easier to hire for.
Are the TAâs in bungie all generalist? or expected to be? Just curious
We like to start off with a generalist, then hire specialists as needed. Right now we haveâŚ4 generalists (2 Max, 1 Maya, 1 kinda everything) and 3 riggers. I think the expectation is that we just expect you to be expert level at what we hire you for, so if we hire you to be a rigger, youâre also pipeline and tools guy for rigging. At the same time, if we hire you as a Maya tech but not a rigger for example, we still expect you to be enough of a rigger to take over rigging tasks and write rigging tools in our framework if need be.
yeah itâs usually pretty straightforward, or we might give you a listing and ask you how to optimize it (thatâs where we throw the tricks usually, hehe).
Itâs very interesting to hear all the various things studios look for in the ideal candidate.
TBH, itâs kind of intimidating even for me!
Iâve been a TA for something like 7 years and 11 years in the industry and I donât think I could pass most of the requirements set forth in many of these posts. 
I guess the days of the TA being the one guy who had a good grasp on almost every aspect of the pipeline, content creation, and the technology (as I was with Ensemble) are fading and the advent of segmented specialists is upon us.
While we never had the need to hire another TA for our 120 person studio, I know I would look for people who are primarily excellent communicators.
Secondarily Iâd look for people with an excellent grasp of both the technical limitations and possibilities of whatever engine they are using as well as the process that artists prefer to work in most and allows them to be most creative. Does that mean they have to be an artist or a programmer? Not really but having dabbled in both is the key. I look for programmers that know DCC and/or artists who know C#/Python/C++/etc.
Lastly, and arguably most importantly is that Iâd look for someone who is a very fast learner. I donât necessarily need someone to understand technology or DCC tools with the utmost granularity and expertise, just enough to speak about them intelligently and understand how they all tie together.
I wonder if the transition to specialized roles is due to the growing size of studios more than an actual specific need for such specialists???
1 Like
Such a great thread. Keep it coming
the definition of what a TA is will usually drive the need of how many. If the artist are ok debugging pipelines, and setting up metadata, rigging their own characters like some companies do, then one TA will probably manage.
Another thing too is once you get one TA the rest of the team will realize that now we can do much cooler things, more complex rigs, more specific shaders, smoother pipelines, asset tracking software, that the one TA will become swamped and need help.
Usually the TA will be the one seeking out those improvements, sometimes the team will beg them for it, but I guess itâs like a goldfish that will grow to the container itâs put in. If you get an army of good TAs your game will have every tool you need, every shader optimized with debugging functionality, etc etc, if you only have 1 or 2 itâll still be better than not having any but the more the merrier.
This sounds familiar. :laugh:
Itâs usually the TAâs seeking out the improvements because weâre the ones fixing things when they break.
But isnât that why we do what we do? I love solving problems. I love when Iâm given a problem I havenât faced before and have to figure out how to fix it and avoid the problem in the future.
If we didnât have that. What would we do? lol :wow:
[QUOTE=JayG;3153]This sounds familiar. :laugh:
Itâs usually the TAâs seeking out the improvements because weâre the ones fixing things when they break. ;)[/QUOTE]
Ohh manâŚdo i have epic stories about thatâŚ
I think thatâs definitely part of it, but i think a larger part of it is that content creation has gotten more complex. I mean if youâre the type of technical artist who came from a production art background, think about the road you took into technical art and what need you were filling while you were making that transition. Now look at the differences in pipelines and asset creation between when you started being a technical artist and now. To give a more concrete example, the first MEL script Dave wrote was an auto-rigging script that did the usual build a skeleton, apply ik and controls etc. Now heâs writing retargeting systems, scene management tools, dynamic rigging systems, and even frameworks for writing those tools, but not because the animation team itself is bigger (it is, but he was writing these tools back when there were only 6 animators here), itâs just the kind of work that they want to do, coupled with the kind of game that we want to make i think demands that sort of specialization. I mean i canât imagine having to maintain our rigging framework and toolset in addition to all the other stuff i do:wow:
[QUOTE=Bharris;3154]But isnât that why we do what we do? I love solving problems. I love when Iâm given a problem I havenât faced before and have to figure out how to fix it and avoid the problem in the future.[/QUOTE]Itâs how I do most of my projects. Like the Mel I made to sync Unreal mesh locations with Maya, it started out as another artist showing my lead how he manually copies and pastes locations from Maya to Unreal. Then my lead saying âI wish I could take the locations of things in Maya and have them show up in Unreal.â Then the Art Director rolled by and was like âThat would be cool⌠you know the copy and paste in Unreal is just textâŚâ and it went from there.
Yeah, I think all of the Mels I made started out with someone saying âI wishâŚâ :laugh::D:
Yeah, I think all of the Mels I made started out with someone saying âI wishâŚâ
ditto that⌠our animation directorâs favorite saying is âwouldnât it be cool ifâŚâ
whenever i hear that, i grab my pad and pen and prepare myself for a challenge.
// Roger Klado was here,
// November 30, 2000
// cause no one else will do it fer me
( But with much guidance from Bryan Ewert and the highend listserve)
I had this thought the other day, that I think would be infinitely helpful to aspiring tech artists everywhere, and potentially others.
Since technical art, at its core, is creative problem solving, could those of you doing this on a daily basis list off some of the specific problems that you have solved (without breaching NDAâs of course), so that others might put themselves through the same thought process and see what solution they come up with. Those of us not in the industry donât often face the same challenges, especially not on a day to day basis, or the issues we run into arenât issues for a team of 1. As there are those like myself who see this job description as a good fit, (or would wind up there eventually anyway if hired as an artist) having a set of skill and portfolio building exercises would be helpful.
A set of specific problems to tackle would also result in more applicable tests of skill and thought for those you would potentially interview later. Rather than just having a generic set of shaders, or a generic human rig, etc, there would be a baseline from which to judge someoneâs implementation.