This may seem like a rather pessimistic thread title, but it is a thought that has crossed my mind from time to time lately. With the latest engines and software available, a lot of what we do as technical artists has been automated (rather ironic since we automate so much of other people’s work). Granted, at the moment a technical artist is still in demand to create the pipelines between various software packages, but looking at the grand scheme of things it seems as though we are being slowly shoved aside. Both Maya and Max have a number of new features that make it easy for an artist to take care of tasks that we used to need to cover. Unity is a great example of a game engine that will pretty much accept any kind of asset thrown at it. The recent developments with Alembic have made huge strides in easing the film industry workflow. I’m not saying we are doomed right now, but looking at the direction many software developers are taking to create simpler pipelines and easier workflows has me a little concerned as to where technical artists are going to be in the days to come. Sure we still cover some specialized rigging or vsfx, but the meat and potatoes of what we do is being slowly replaced by more user-friendly software. Eventually it seems as though a common language will be reached, so to speak. Again, it will definitely not happen for awhile, but it is slowly getting there. Where does the technical artist stand then?
Like I said at the beginning, I’m not trying to be pessimistic. We all know there will be pipeline issues and a need for more knowledge than just pushing some verts or dropping some keyframes - but, will the technical artist be a necessity at that point or will it be such a trivial annoyance that companies will simply have no need for us?
This is just a random thought thread. I know we tech artists will be around for quite awhile more. It is just interesting to hear people’s thoughts on the direction of our positions and where we may possibly be in the not-so-distant future.
I completely understand what you are saying and yes there have been many additions to the tools that we work with that automate what we do on a daily basis.
Heaps!!! of the solutions that we use to develop have become redundant, trust me I have had many of the solutions that I have created retired, but for me it means that everyone that uses these products (Max/Maya) benefits from the what were originally proprietary solutions. That’s a big Win in my mind. Yes, if all the tools make it easier for development then we will have less to do, but only with the systems we have now.
New technologies and techniques will always come around and there will be plenty of work for the Technical Artist. We will find new ways to create Art and improve pipelines, and who knows what applications are just around the corner.
I think this is a really good question though, and I’m sure that it will spark off a thread that will strengthen what we do and what we provide to production and staff.
This also maybe a great place for people to talk about what they want in a pipeline and what we currently don’t have and need to work towards.
Everytime the software “works” that means more time I get to spend on the art side of tech-art instead of working on the “workaround” part of tech-art.
Workarounds are fun to figure out but I have never known a tech-artist to wish they had more bugs to fix, since we have more than enough to do just with regular production work.
The other great thing that Dr Bob brought up is that if the software is working, then you don’t have to re-create the same fixes over and over at each studio you work at, because the software works! Crazy I know:)
what Brad said. I’d love to see less of the “Tech Art is the IT department for Maya/Max” tasks where we just go around and fix stuff, keep stuff running and write a short script here and there. It feels like being Scotty running around on the Enterprise with a hammer.
Sure, tinkering is fun, but why tinker with tool installations and helper scripts when you could instead have time to tackle all this new technology that’s present in, for example, Unreal and make sure your game gets the most out of it? Or when basic rigging is taken care of and you have time to dig into advanced features like muscles or cloth and make it work?
I think that software vendors taking care of the functionality which we implemented in the past is a good thing, because it allows us to move forward with our tools and our skills.
The thing that turned you into a (good) technical artist in the first place is always going to be high in demand. You are very unlikely to work with the exact same thing 10 years from now, but then again - I rarely do the same thing I did six months ago (if you are, then you’re doing it wrong). A tech artist (or animator for my part) will always be there to try to push stuff one step further from whatever we can currently do. To make us 10% more effective from whatever effectiveness level we have.
Start thinking of yourself as a tools programmer. There will always be a need for new tools as we will always be create new things.
As a really really roundabout example, watch and reality TV show about building things, like Orange County Choppers or Sons of Guns or any of the Gold blah blah blah shows. They have a ton of pre-built tools that they use, but sometimes they can’t afford something, so they build it themselves. Or maybe the job they are doing is a big out of spec for that one tool, so they create something new to get that job done.
I think there will always be a place for tools creators. The type of tools we create will just change.
Hey Noob hear :), I would say at the moment at least, Tech Art is one of the most high demand areas I recruit for.
Working across EA in europe 2 of the 3 studios Im working with have open TA roles (DICE and EA Gothenburg) and the other studio wants me to make them aware if anyone really strongs is looking (Crierion).
Can’t speak for the US and Canadian markets but in the EA we are still really short of great TA’s
Tech art dying? Hell no. Tech artists are more valuable than ever. More please. The bigger a production and the more stuff we normal artists have to do, the more we need tech artists providing tools to speed things along. We only have one in our studio and could really do with a few more. He’s good, but he can’t do everything.
Built in pipelines that ship with DCC apps are welcome just to get things moving, but those kind of blanket solutions hardly work for every team. In general I think the bigger your studio, the more you should be concerned with how smooth the pipeline is, and the less likely the blanket DCC solution works for you out of the box.
I see the pipeline side of the TAs job moving more toward building stand alone tools to help all the different apps talk to each other and wrangle content in a more streamlined way.
Aside from pipeline there are new problems to be solved. In the AAA game space, think about how we are going to get our teams to make 4 times more content for the next gen consoles, in the same amount of time. Similarly, many studios are moving to physically based shading/lighting now, which requires new texturing work flows that are very hard for artists to nail down without additional tools.
I think it’s important to remember that despite all the progress, computers are fundamentally stupid.You’ll never be able to fully automate tasks: someone will always need to check the computer’s output to check quality and fix errors.
More importantly, having more and better tools doesn’t mean that we’ll be replaced, it just means that we’ll end up working on different tasks.
Wow! Thanks for all the replies. I think everyone has a great point and I actually feel much the same way about it. I am looking forward to all the new tech coming out and, as a few of you have mentioned, figuring out what new tools can be developed to make the “easy to use” software even easier. It is definitely a great direction the industry is heading in, and all of the new development will give us the ability to focus on creating much more powerful toolsets and pipelines!
As a TA student I dont really mind this change, I can work with the maya API but I would be thankful if things worked and there were less grunt work to be done.
It would be lovely to spend less time there and more on specialised tools/stuff for the application if there is a need.
With some luck we will have less of the grunt work and more of the creative art programming like shaders or help with ordinary art/programming when there is nothing else to do.
[QUOTE=speuzer;15772]I see the pipeline side of the TAs job moving more toward building stand alone tools to help all the different apps talk to each other and wrangle content in a more streamlined way.
[/QUOTE]
I like this statement. In fact, that is exactly what we’re doing now. When I started as a TA our pipeline was pretty terrible to say the least and now that it’s semi-smooth and ready to tide us over until a pretty big overhaul with engine technology we’re now focused on standalone tools that doesn’t just affect art.
So as a TA i’ve seen my role go from a lot of grunt work to the point where I’m spear heading our pipeline and standalone tools work. I like to think because of such flexibility in a TA role, we cannot automate ourselves out of a job. I see the role growing, especially in an age of indie devs where it’s an expectation to be able to wear many hats. The title may change, but the work/responsibility won’t fade.
Only through automating the “known” problems so that we may work on the “unknowns” will there ever be industry-level innovation. The solution is to not limit yourself in terms of what you are or are not. Understand that every time you publish a solution, it will be “stolen” the instant it hits the market. Learn to not fear that inevitability, and trust in the fact that you will always come up with new ideas. Anyone incapable of constantly growing has missed the point of what a tech artist is in the first place. The more cheerful side of that coin is that we are creative engineers, and our ability to think of solutions from new angles should be an enjoyable playground.
For how much the artist workflow has improved, there is a staggering amount that can be done to make our lives easier. Yes, many technical challenges have been addressed in the past few years, but those types of hurdles are far from the only tasks that eat up our time.
I cannot stress enough how much accessibility can be improved. Walk a day in an artists shoes at your studio and take tabs on how much time is spent just looking for stuff, getting everything situated to start working, and the roundabout means used to preview/update changes. It’s all taken for granted as just being part of the work. I recently devoted some time scripting tools to address this stuff and the time it’s saving me as a game artist is really paying off.
speuzer and RyanT - I’m 100% with you on making applications streamline with eachother. I have to disagree though about tech art moving in a more stand alone app direction. Those will always be important, but it’s not as if our usefulness in say Maya is tapped. If anything the opposite is true, there is more potential and reason to create tools and establish pipelines within our 3D applications. Not to mention that’s what artists like me prefer if possible :).
[QUOTE=robinb;15771]Tech art dying? Hell no. Tech artists are more valuable than ever. More please. The bigger a production and the oven more stuff we normal artists have to do, the more we need tech artists providing tools to speed things along. We only have one in our studio and could really do with a few more. He’s good, but he can’t do everything.[/QUOTE]
I don’t think tech artists are in danger of disappearing either… I think they’re more important than ever to bridge the gap between programmers who are becomming ever more specialized and less technically oriented artists.
That the pace of change in 3d software has gotten glacially slow too. Between monopolistic sluggishness, user conservatism, the tyranny of the installed base, and 15 years of cruft both packages have become unwieldy behemoths full of quirks and gotchas. Look at the difference between Quake I and, say, Crysis 2 then look at the delta between Max 1 and Max 2012.
In other words, some time around 2099. And to the last we’ll still be bitching about maxscripts crashing on Unicode characters and Maya failing to save it’s own goddam preferences correctly.
I would disagree in that more can be done in studios that have yet to embrace, or are just starting to embrace, Tech Art as a separate and vital part of the studio’s pipeline. The role of Tech Artists may be changing, and is that not something for which Tech Artists are well-suited?
