Introductions

Hi everybody. I am mostly interested in 3D animations and visual effects. I joined this forum because I hope to find here some new informations about softwares and solutions in computer graphic. I hope you guys can help me and with a time and experience I will be also useful for some of u here :slight_smile:

Hi TA :slight_smile:

I’m a lurker but i’ve decided to show myself since i’ve started to get more into the technical side of art ;). I’m an aspiring technical artist who has worked in the industry for nearly two years now. I am an environment artist but I’ve been getting into shaders, and the idea of making tools has interested me a lot more lately.

So I decided to take the plunge by starting to learn maxscript (i’m a 3ds max user atm) and i’ve also been doing a bit of python (thats a bit slow) and i’m also starting to a bit of C# learning in Unity (for tools). I’ve also been doing shaders where I have needed to as well.

I know thats a few things at once but its been where necessary with the shaders at least. But I love learning this stuff!

So yeah it’s nice to finally post on here and hopefully my code won’t scare anyone away :wink:

Welcome aboard!

Hi folks! I’m a student at the moment, and I’m learning as much as I can. Looking forward to talking shop with you guys and seeing what you do.

Hey everyone! Good to be here!
I am a 3d artist with an technologics degree in 3d animation that started falling in love with shaders, scripting, game development etc , now i am just starting a computer science degree and will have lots of questions for you guys, please have pacience! :D:

Hi, I’m new here. I tripped across the forum a little while ago. Currently I’m an art team lead/generalist but I’m wanting to use my swath of experience to go into technical art. Its sort of what I do in a day anyways. Thinking of starting with an internship if I can grab one.

Hey guys, my name is Patrick. It was a pleasure meeting some of you guys at the GDC TA round tables and I am glad I finally found my way into this forum!
I am one of two TAs currently working on Dreadnought at Yager. Mainly, I am responsible for pipelines / workflows and game performance optimization and profiling. My original background is 3D environment art, but since we’ve got so many talented artists and so few people keeping tabs on what they are actually doing, I barely have a chance to practice this. Instead, every once in a while, I enjoy programming some gameplay feature in C++ or scripting some fancy Blueprint stuff in UE4.

Welcome everyone!

It’s been a busy couple of months with new members, quite a few just after GDC which is great! as well as the steady flow. If you haven’t checked out the Tech Artists.Org Game Developers Conference Forum that Jeff Hanna setup, its got presentations and round-tables from the past couple of years. So check it out the forums, the planet and the wiki and as always feel free to post any questions you have or cool things that you have learnt.

And again welcome aboard.

Cheers,
Rob.

Howdy all.

Heard of this forum from a UE4 Twitch stream recently (Bill Kladis was talking about VFX, what else :slight_smile: ) so I figured to check it out.

Don’t mind me looking around at first, until I can see where I can contribute the best… :wink:

Hello everyone.

My college adviser recommended that I check out this site since since he thinks I could be a good technical artist given my academic track record. I have some coding experience mostly with C++ but am willing to look into other languages. I’m going to be working on a big project next year and I’ve been tasked to do some lighting scripting. Not sure how to do that, but I hope by using resources here I can do a good job with it.

Hello All,

I’m a former CG digital special effects guy for movies, commercials, and theme park rides from way back. Currently I design, create, and art direct game-like content for graphics developers at Intel that enable games of all kinds. I found out about this place from Theodox who I met at last GDC. I’m here to learn more about what you do/need, ask questions, get opinions, and hopefully determine where and how Intel can help you. Meanwhile…I’ll try not to be a nuisance.

Thanks for having me.

^^^ pester him for good docs in those cool graphics samples, people :slight_smile:

Welcome aboard Amigo, ProfessorBamboo, xfx and everyone else that has joined over the past couple of months. Please ask as many questions as you like, they spur on great discussions and we all end up learning new things and points of view.

Cheers,
Rob.

Hi everyone,

My name is Anthony. I am a recent graduate from LA Film School for Animation. I really love to do 3D rigging but my school didn’t have any intermediate or advance level of rigging. I wanted to continue to explore and improve my skill set for it. I have used Maya for rigging so far. I have messed around with UE4 and Marvelous Designer. I know enough of Python and Mel to read it. I am trying to teach myself more about Python to add on to my own workflow. I am currently trying to learn how to setup blend shape sculpt for facial rig on my next personal project.

Looking forward to see what I can learn here.

Hi TAO community! I’m Brendan.

I see myself as on the path of a tech animator - I like animating and rigging in particular, as well as making scripts and plugins to automate and assist these tasks. I got to this point in a kind of post-grad convergence of the things I studied in school: creative writing (storytelling), design, and computer science. I use Maya primarily, with some ZBrush for original characters.

Looking forward to learning from people around here. Can anyone recommend other good communities to trawl, for a Maya user in particular?

Hello world,

I’m new here, i’m a tech artist working for Ubisoft.
Currently working to improve my python scripting, so you will find me hanging out in those threads :slight_smile:

ciao

Hi all

My name is Camille and I’m a 3D Software Developer from Australia. I work in a small company making interactive 3D software (“serious” games and applications). I’ve always called myself a generalist, having both artistic and technical skills (mainly 3D and C#). It makes me happy to know that there’s actually a role out there that is for people like me!

Looking forward to being a part of the community! :slight_smile:

I’ve been floating around the forums for some time, a post here or there but never actually posted in the introduction thread, so I thought I would. My name is Aaron and I’m an aspiring technical artist. I enjoy character rigging and python development. I’m excited to get more into the physics and math behind 3D and to start jumping into more C++ stuff.

:slight_smile:

Hi Anthony, Brendan, Thomas, Camille and Aaron, Welcome to the forums.

@Anthony
Great to hear you have messed about with UE4 and Marvellous, they are both great programs; if you get a chance you should also look into Unity. As for improving your rigging skills, there are a number of online courses that you can take and many are run by our members, you should be able to find them in the forums. Excellent that you have messed about with these languages including Mel, it’s always good to have an understanding of what Maya was originally based on. If you are looking for more examples, tips and tricks you can check out the TAO Planet (an aggregation of blog post from our members) and some of the books that our members have written. Don’t be afraid to hack at scripts and mix and match, there are times that a patchwork solution is needed but remember as soon as you are done, fix them up :wink:

@Brendan
Excellent to hear that you have studied in those areas, especially storytelling. It’s so important to have history and meaning behind a character. I also think that it’s something that all creative areas should be involved in to bring history/believability and coherence to the world if you’re not already doing so. If you are looking for another forum for Maya check out MayaPro, it’s mostly TV/Film but there is a good chuck of Games as well. You can also check out The Area and CGSociety. Depending on what you want one of these places will have you covered.

@ Thomas
Welcome aboard Thomas, hope you find what you are looking for and if you don’t then ask away. Working on anything top secret that you can tell us? :wink:

@ Camille
Another fellow Aussie, Welcome! I am also a generalist, but of late I have been working mostly on pipelines. Generalists are in high demand in smaller studios as you tend to end up doing all the art and tooling that you need to get the job done. In larger studios generalists are also in demand but you tend to take on longer term projects in a certain area and fill in the gaps in other disciplines when needed. Just so you know it has taken some years for quite a few of us even to have the title of TA recognised, so we understand how you feel especially when you find out that you are not alone.

@Aaron
Physics and Math will get you far with Rigging and taking that step into C++ will help you get every cycle you can, but sometimes a python solution is more than adequate to either prototype a solution and/or implement against not to mention sometimes a lot! faster to implement.

If you or anyone else wished to get onto the TAO Planet feed, shoot me a line with your blog rss and I will add you.

Welcome aboard again and please feel free to ask as many questions as you like.

Looking forward to hearing/seeing what projects you all have planned.

Cheers,
Rob.

Hi all,

My name is Philip Atha, I’m a 3D generalist turned into a tech artist. I’m here to network and hopefully find work! I previously worked for a rail simulation company for the last 4 years. I’m a Unity3D/C# fan but I’d particularly like to learn C++ since it’s still very prevalent.

~Phil