Tech Art and shaders in the future

Shaders
#1

Hello people, I’m Yasin and new to the forums and very happy that I found this community =}

I’m a student striving to become a technical artist so I got a question regarding Shaders and Technical Artists in the future.

We know that there are several new additions to the shader family in DX such as Geometry Shader, Compute shaders running on separate threads (cool for raytracing, making AO / GI through a voxel represenation of the 3D scene etc).

Now do you guys believe a Technical Artist should be good in those areas? Do you guys think that we will need to work with them in the upcomming future when everything is more physic based or will we be stuck with Vertex and Pixel shaders?

It feels like our shader role will die within a few years because I think pixel shaders will not be as usefull as it was before, because compute shaders are basically an upgraded pixel shader in a way that can be used on any kind of operation and not only pixels.

what do you guys think?

Best regards and take care people!

#2

If you’re looking to move towards specializing in Shaders, then certainly you’ll need to adapt and grow with the technology as you would in any specialization. Certainly part of being a TA is adaptation and quick learning so plan on needing to constantly do just that. :slight_smile:

#3

Well he brings up a good point. Those types of shaders require more than just simple shader setups in order to work. They require certain pipes and inputs and setups that I don’t think any editors provide out-of-the-box. It is sort of like scene shaders require more support than many apps can give. TA’s, and artists, will certainly need to adapt, but the technical skills required will be much greater and the environments we write shaders in will need to change, in some cases drastically (I’m looking at you, DCC apps).

#4

I believe that the future is very bright for technical artists and our bonds with the programmers will become even stronger because the technology just jumped to a new level in a matter of years. The adaption needed will be heavy.

Though I suspect that companies will hunger for TAs? Someone correct me I have no experience ofc, just thinking out loud ^^

I totally agree that the enviroments we write shaders in will need some big revamping, stuff will not be as simple as vs/ps anymore, everything will be more structured and carefully handeled. I’m curious if Nvidia has something up for FX Composer.

Otherwise I guess us TAs will need to make our own shading tools and fit it within the pipeline or something.

Off-topic: Gongratz on the release of Dragon Age expansion Rob! =]