Introductions

Figured I give my introduction, since everyone else is :slight_smile:

I work at a marketing company, Rosetta, nope not the language software. My role there is to lead the technical side of the solutions we generate for our clients, this includes but not limited to: programming, project management, lead teams and integrate with the creative side of our organization.

So you may be asking yourself, why is a non-game developer registered here? Well it is simple, development of games, software, websites, etc… all share a lot of similarities, and it is these similarities that brings me here. I have done creative on the side of usability, site design, interactivity, and creation of the graphics for the solutions that I have been involved with and have also implemented these creative concepts to code and even hardware level.

So from that I have been both sides of what a technical artist can do, minus to the creation of tools to help streamline/reduce the work for either side. Which brings me to why I am here, I am here so that I am learn more from your experiences and how you improve the workflow as well as to share any information that I have.

I already have my first personal project that I am will be developing to help increase productivity for the creative process and generation of content for engineering. The task is to integrate Photoshop, with TFS for version control and building of content. If you have any information on how to add functionality to Photoshop: adding dialogs, menu items, tool bars, etc…, please feel free to send them my way.

Thank you,
Don

Trying to figure out if I should go back to school to become a tech artist :slight_smile: Hoping this forum will help me learn a little bit about life in the industry!

Hello everyone, I’m cedric bazillou, characterTD at studio Hanuman, where i mostly do character modeling, rigging , and mocap data massaging.
My first contact with scripting was in javascript in after effects. To ease my work i now use maxscript and mel, to automate some tasks and build tools.
I also have a keen interest in character deformation, so two years ago i start using the maya python api to write my own maya nodes and deformers.
I’m glad to be able to talk to such experienced guys.

Hello everyone, joined up a month or so ago after working at Bioware w/ Rob and finding out about this. Wish I had discovered this earlier! Anyway I’m originally from Chicago, where I finished a MS in Computer Graphics and Motion, also half way through another MS there in software engineering (Doing that remotely at the moment). Looking for work as a Tech-Artist at the moment. Learning more each day, so far this site has been a huge help :slight_smile:
Demo Site:
www.treyanesi.com
Any advice good or bad on the demo site always appreciated! I’m admittedly somewhat blind on what I should and shouldn’t add.

I’m John Sollows,

I’m a tech artist/rigger at a small developer in Atlantic Canada. I’ve been harassing the experts here with my problems for a while, and did not even think to make a formal introduction… how rude!

I’m at an introductory technical level, as most of my experience is in rigging/animating. Scripting/tool management was not taught in school, so I’m trying to pick the skill up in my spare time. That seems to be the common experience!

Hopefully I’ll get to the point where I can start making valid contributions to the community!

Greetings!

I am Ryan Metcalf and I’m a Jr. Technical Animator at Gearbox Software. You may already know Chad Mauldin, who is my lead here, and if you don’t - forshame! :D:

Like many others here I am from Texas, born and raised. An interesting path brought me to work as a technical animator: I started off as a drummer in 6th grade and didn’t stop until mid-college, I changed majors to film which I had also been doing since grade school (with a love for video editing). I found that percussion, film editing and animation have a lot of similarities.

I took a chance to apply to the Guildhall in the Art Creation track. I learned a ton in a short amount of time - 17 months sounds shorter than it felt like. But the more I began to do animation, the more I fell in love with rigging, scripting, mocap, match moving, shaders, pipeline solutions and problem-solving. I’ve evolved. :laugh:

Greetings,
I’m Vegard Myklebust, a freelance TD currently working at Grid VFX in Belgium as a technical supervisor / senior artist on Plankton Invasion.
I’ve also programmed several of the features in messiah:studio
My own website is http://www.usefulslug.com/
Hope to learn a bunch here and also help teach some of the things I’ve found out while exploring.

Hey all,

Long time reader, first time poster.

I’m Steven Strobel and I’m what Gearbox Software has decided to call a technical artist. I specialize in effects, shader work, and content optimizations with specific emphasis on the consoles.

Like Ryan, I’m Texas born and bred. I started out as a level designer before beginning my path towards the technical. I enjoy poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick.

Hi everyone.
My name is Dimitri Frazao and I’m a MFA student at the Academy of Art University.
I come from a 2D background and I’ve worked as a animator and storyboard artist. After switching to 3D I got obsessed with character rigging and writing tools in MEL/Python. I’m starting to “experiment” with cg shaders in Maya(so much fun).
My goal is to become a professional tech artist and contribute to the industry.
Is a great community to be part of and thank you all for sharing your knowledge.

I am Seanpual i am currently a Graphics designer working in sharp image. I design cartoons and other stuff like abstacts. I have been working here since 4 months.

Hello everyone…I work as a Game Artist at Nihilistic Software in Novato (20 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge). I’m currently trying to learn as much as possible to shift into more of a Tech Artist role. Hopefully I’ll have interesting questions to post when I need help! :slight_smile:

Welcome all!

Totally forgot to do this when i starting checking out the forums here.

My name’s Jon and I’m a alch…i mean character TD at Lucas Arts. working mostly on rigging and animation tools from motion builder to Maya. I’ve been trolling this forum for a while now getting great links and lots of useful info, hopefully I’ll start providing more to the community.

Never made my introduction here but here goes

My name is Alistair and Im currently a student wanting to be a technical artist. Was directed here while back, members gave me excellent feedback on what I needed to do and how to get better at shader writing. Definitely need to say thanks to Rob for putting this site together :slight_smile:

I’m Joe. I’m a student (about to be a senior) in Computer Graphics Technology & Computer Science (minor) at Purdue University in Indiana. I’m from the Detroit area.

I am working to become a Game Technical Artist. I currently work in web design & development, but I hope to land a job in the game industry within a couple years of graduating.

hi, wendy is here
i am a sale
do business
some like shirt
design by myself

Hey Folks,

I’m a student at Drexel University, working towards a BS/MS in Digital Media. I was looking online for Tech Art resources and this seemed like a really great community, I’m looking forward to becoming a part of it!

I’m a tools/systems developer, my work to date primarily being on build and test automation systems. I’ve been in the Core Tech group at Adobe Systems for 11 years, and worked for 8 years before that at tools developer Borland. I do most of my development work in Python, which is an ideal way to develop cross platform systems and tools which, with a little careful design consideration, do just run anywhere. I’m also quite comfortable in a C or C++ development context, though do more reading and debugging of that than code writing these days, and work primary in Visual Studio and Xcode. We use Perforce for SCM (I currently use Subversion at home).

I prefer a Unix environment, and would use Linux full time if all of the apps I use had native versions for it. I started out on Windows (ok, DOS…), but love OSX now due to its Unix core. I use Emacs as my primary authoring/editing environment on all platforms, then augment with ActiveState Komodo for heavy Python debugging.

I got hooked on gaming back in the mid to late '90’s, and have been on a part-time foray into the world of 3D since then, starting with LightWave and then Maya (since v5). In the last year, I also made a significant investment in learning ZBrush. Along the way, I have carefully studied the first Gould book on Maya programming, and took a slow, careful study of Jason Scheifer’s Animator Friendly Rigging course.

I own a license of Terathon Software’s C4 Game Engine (because it includes source), and have lately been playing a bit with the amazing UDK, and have been working out the flow of data from content creation tool(s) into the engines (what data is supported, what form does it need to be in, how to manage updates, etc.).

My current objective is to find work in a CG content production environment as a Tech Artist, either in action or adventure-related gaming, or feature area (TV/film) in the SF Bay area.

Hey everyone, my name is Jean-Eric. I’m a Technical Artist at Obsidian Entertainment. I’ve been lurking here for a while and finally decided to introduce myself.

I mostly focus on Environments and recently finished up work on Dungeon Siege 3

Feel free to add me on linkedin! http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeaneric

Hello!
It’s time to indroduce myself: I’m Alessandro Ardolino, currently TD at Ubisoft Milan, Italy.
My job on the last studio’s project was on developing maxscript+dotnet tools for 3dsMax and on particles and special fxs.
I used to be a 2d/3d artist and I become a TD joining my artistic skills with the BS in Computer Science…and I really love it!