Technical Artist

Description

What's It All About:
As a technical artist, you live in the world between code and color. You love to figure out how to make a graphics engine sit up and beg, rendering visual effects that inspire and motivate players. You are equally comfortable whipping up a MaxScript or MEL script, as you are jumping into HLSL to tweak a shader.

A Typical Day:
The game is coming along nicely, but somehow the graphical elements could use a little tweaking to blend together in a seamless experience. You create a plan to develop a few full-screen shaders to do the trick. You start with saturation controls and then move on to more ambitious techniques like tweaking the unified shader or finding an efficient way to add film grain effects to the game.

Who You Work With the Most:
You work closely with the graphics programmers, discussing render pipelines and their effect on artist workflow or final graphics fidelity. You talk to your fellow artists frequently, seeking ways to make their job easier with a few scripts, or support the FX artist with a few custom shader or particle modules.