My studio is in a round of hiring for art postions, and I’m seeing lots of the typical portolio mistakes.
Especially the long loading, slideshow heavy flash stuff (ugh)
It prompted me to think of updating my portfolio, which was thrown together in my pre-tech artist past.
Screenshots of tools and rigs and code certainly don’t seem to be adequate.
What makes the best portfolio for a tech artist?
I personally would like to see your process. How did you start ( what problem do you want to solve and how did you discover it ), what problems did you experience along the process, how did you try to work efficient and effective, …
The big challenge is to do this in a light, visual way for people to quickly scan through. I have not really seen much people do this ( and my heavily outdated portfolio would be the worst example )
I feel that a lot of portfolios try to throw way too much content at you, so it is not comfortable to really see the best stuff in it. Someone who just has a couple of things to show, but they are all very strong and clear is a game changer.
And I love people who are not scared to show they looked at a problem from a different perspective and share what they learned from it.
What I am looking for is attitude, curiosity, experimentation, efficiency, open minded, …
Not 100% sure if it is possible to see this in a portfolio, but I am ready to be wrong
I usually rely on a resume, phone screen and an in-person interview when evaluating tech-artists. Most of the work they do is highly proprietary and cannot be shown since it belongs to the company they work for.
As someone who hires people, the best folio is one that fits the job description I’m looking for 
Meaning you want to have some main focus in your folio. Are you a generalist? guy suitable for support? guy suitable for larger dev tasks? are you a technical/animator or rigger? are you somebody who lives and breathes engine skills (UE4, UE3, Unity)?
Make whatever you want to be or become your focus of your folio, and then pick support skills to show off. E.g. Scripting is always good. But art skills are important too (tech-ARTIST!). Why? I want to see how your observation skills are if you’re going to work with shaders, lights, etc. I want to see if you can make some decent UIs and think about usability if you’re into tools. If you’re into developing software, I care about readability, re-usability, modularity and documentations, because other people may have to work/maintain/adapt your software.
Things I don’t really want to see: MEL only scripting folios. Sure, you gotta know some MEL. That’s not the problem. Not showing me Python is the problem. Same thing for MXS only folios - you gotta throw some other skills into the mix (C#, or animation, rigging, etc).
Personally I hate demo-reels unless you’re showing something off that requires the format: such as a rig, animations, FX. Don’t show me code or you fussing around with your mouse pointer over a gazillion of buttons of your tool. Write a short paragraph introducing your tool, as you would on e.g. scriptspot, make some meaningful screenshots or even short animated gifs that load in every browser.
If you’re a senior TA you can go up to 1 page per tool, but keep an intro paragraph! When I look for people with specialist skills I appreciate it when I can dig deeper - if I want to.
I’m usually not really checking out tools or code myself, unless you make it super easy to set up. But I do browse docs and API documentation, if available. For pipeline tools, consider using diagrams explaining the pipeline and how your tool fits in.
If you have documentation, teaching, mentoring experience and have anything to show, do it! e.g. tutorials. (Eric Chadwick has a good section on this on his folio!)
Finally, I agree that curiosity, attitude, experimentation and open mindedness are most important, but I usually prefer to assess this in an interview.