I was wondering, if in anyone else’s experience, has it been expected of you as a technical artist to write shaders?
I was recently asked to write a shader as one of the steps for getting a job. I have no experience in this department, because most of my experience is with rigging and animation.
Is it commonplace for a tech artist to do this kind of work in the biz?
It is very common and a skill almost any TA should have. Though not required for disciplines like Technical Animation, shader writing is a basic skill, just like rigging (another skill not required for specific disciplines). Even if you aren’t writing shaders in your day-to-day (I’m not), I consider it an essential (and easy to learn) skill to have. It will give you insight into how some areas of rendering work, allow you to communicate more effectively, and also give you new ideas for rigging and animation (especially in the areas of deformation).
Thanks Rob.
I noticed that there is a wiki here at tech-artists that I could hit up for info. If you know of any other resources that could help me in this department, I would be super grateful.
From my experience shader writing is a specialization within TA, not really a common skill. Also most TA with this skill work more as shader mockup writers for R&D purpose, and the render programmers will re-write the shaders for actual production.
That said, knowing the basics about how rendering works, what the costs are and so on without having to know how to write actual shaders (the exact math and shader language), is a basic skill for any TA in the art pipeline (and like Rob said not as important for TA in the animation pipeline). Learning how to write shaders is one way to get that basic skill, working with art optimization and profiling tools is another which I find more common.
But wider knowledge is always good. Companies expect us to be a versatile bunch of people after all. 
Every technical artist I’ve worked with at least knows a little about shaders, and in general how the rendering pipeline works.
Shader writing can be as simple as “Hey, look, it’s diffuse lighting” to more complex things from speciifc approximations of lighting phenomenon to performance optimizations.
What an artist thinks is important and what a graphics programmer thinks is important is often two different things, so it is imperative that a graphics programmer has a technical artist to bounce ideas off of and that a technical artist has a graphics programmer for ensuring the best, most efficient methods are used.
In our studio here, I have one or two graphics programmers I talk with almost on a daily basis, I help them with the art and content side, and they help me ensure I’m not going off the deep-end. :):
[QUOTE=projectbrian;10315]I was recently asked to write a shader as one of the steps for getting a job. I have no experience in this department[/QUOTE]
In my experience, this is the part that is more commonplace than the shader writing itself. Even amongst programmers as well as TAs, there’s always that point where someone will ask for something that you know nothing about, but have to deliver anyway.
I have created several resources to help people learn to write shaders. First, I authored a series of DVDs to teach artists shader writing. You can purchase them from Cg Academy here:
https://www.cg-academy.net/es_catalog/index.php?cPath=29
I have also written several simple shaders that run in 3ds Max. These shaders are well commented so looking through the code can help you get an idea for how they work:
Finally, Kees Rijnen and I created ShaderFX, a plugin for 3ds Max that allows the user to create shaders in a node-based interface (a bit like the shader editor in the Unreal engine.) You can wire a series of nodes together, see the results on your model, and then look at the output shader code. This is a good way to get what you want and then see how it works under the hood. You can download a free version of ShaderFX here:
http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html
In addition to these resources, there are also lots of books on the topic. Let me know if you’d like a book recommendation.
Thought I recognised your name Ben! I’ve used your 3ds Max shaders before for rendering real time in max before!! I’m also looking to develop my skills as a tech artist and will definately consider buying them DVD’s! I must take a look at that shaderfx plugin though! it looks awesome! especially when all my shader experience has only been in Unreal…