Introductions

Hello people, I’m Yasin. Joined today :slight_smile:

20 years old student at futuregames academy in Sweden, Stockholm. (Gameart school)

I’ve been doing 3D Art and Programming since 12 years old and my aim is to become a Technical artist (love the idea of being a bridge to close the gap between art department and coders).

Artwise I started with Max and switched over to Maya when I was 16. Though I still use Max from time to time. My programming “career” comes from the indie engine “3D Gamestudio”. From there I moved on to C++ and after that to C#.

I enjoy writing shaders in FX Composer or programming winforms apps in C#. Making toolboxes and scripts with MEL is also fun. Though not limited to only these languages as I know C++ and Flash Actionscript 3 to count a couple.

Recently I made a material editor with Winforms for XNA which let’s me import a HLSL shader, compile it at runtime. Once compiled, I generate a class for that shader in memory at runtime with all the properties and methods for setting shader parameters/engine known parameters etc.
Once the class is generated I compile it at runtime with reflection and set it to a property grid for editing the values and watch the result in RT. Then I serialize it to XML to save out the artist tweakable params. Works with any shader.fx file, and I use the semantics used by FX composer so it is guaranteed to work within my XNA engine.

Right now my main goal is to build a kick ass showreel, thinking about using Silverlight for my portfolio and hopefully amaze enough to get into the game dev bussiness once I’m done with this education (a year left for internships).

Best regards Yaz!

Hey everyone! I’m Micah Zahm, I met quite a few people here down at GDC the other week, and it was great seeing a community for tech artists both current and upcoming.

I’m a 25 year old college student up at DigiPen Institute of Technology in the Seattle, WA area. I’ve had a few years of school studying computer science, decided that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life and have since been going for my bachelors in Fine Arts for production animation. I’ve learned 3ds Max and Maya by using my comp science background studying MEL and MaxScript to understand exactly what’s happening behind the scenes in the 3d packages rather than just learning what’s happening on the screen. Ever since I realized I could mix my love for programming and art I’ve gone head first to learn all I can about Tech Art and will continue to for as long as i see to come.

Again, it’s awesome seeing everyone here that shares the drive to do tech art and help bridge the gap between artists and programmers.

Hi, I’m Amy. I met some of you at GDC 2010 at the tech artist round tables and it was great to get to know you guys (and gals)! It really is hard to meet other math/art hybrids and that room was full of us.

I’m 24 and also a student at DigiPen. Prior to DigiPen, I went to the University of Washington switching between a variety of science majors before deciding I wanted to do art. It turns out art, science, and math collide very…gracefully in 3d applications.

Hey I’m eb (my nick made from initials: Eric B.)
I’m 33 and from upstate NY, USA. I am an avid user of 3dsMax but I have recently received a contract from an animation studio here in NY that strictly uses the Maya suite…so I should have that installed within the hour the package arrives. *Why do I mention that?..
Well, I currently create tools using Max and I would like to learn to do the same for Maya. I am quite curious to learn.

  • I have worked with video game studios, architectural studios and municipalities to name a few areas of experience, but never in movies or TV…perhaps later in life for that. :wink:

I am willing to share what I know and I am ready to learn from anyone willing to drop some information on me. :wink:

Thanks for reading and nice to meet all of you!

  • eb

Greetings. My name is Shawn and I worked as an artist/technical artist for about 9 years. Currently unemployed and looking for work. In the meantime I figured I’d get to know some other techie artists in the industry.

The majority of my experience is with 3dsmax, with very light maxscript. I also dabbled in Flash Actionscript 2 and 3.

Glad to find the site, good resource.

Hey all, thought i’d stop lurking and try and start contributing.

My name’s Lloyd, i’m a Computer and Video Game Design student in Southampton, England. I decided to work towards becoming a technical artist a couple of months ago after learning and implementing Unity for a university project.

There seems to be so much to learn, I wish I could have found this place sooner lol.

Currently i’m working on expanding my knowledge of shaders and engines, with my summer plan being to learn HLSL, Cg, UDK and Unity a bit more.

Hey there,

I’m Damon, and I work at Sidhe Interactive in New Zealand as a Tech Artist.

I work primarily in Maya and Python, with forays into C++ when needed.

See you all around the forums!

Hello, my name’s Jon Thorsen, I’m a tech artist at Sidhe, used to be a film TD at Prpvfx. Maya and python (like Damon).

Hey Community,

My name is Christian Akesson (cakesson - son of cake, my dad is bakesson - son of bake (true story)(I like parenthesis):D:)

I work as a Senior Tech Artist at Sony Online Entertainment, San Diego. Been doing 3d since 1999 (Maya 1.0)(I will discount the Strata Studio Pro on Mac Clone years), and been in the Gaming Industry since 2001.

I am a Swede that has been in the states since 94 when I began my college studies.

See you in the forums!

/Christian

hello all,

I’ve been lurking this forum for over a month now, so its beginning to get time to introduce myself.:cool:
I’m Perry Leijten, 22 years old now, a student at the nhtv in Holland, Breda (3d year) at the international game architecture and design course.

All the experience I have is learned at that course. Main focus is MELscripting and rigging in maya (willing to learn python/pymel over the summer holidays).
Secondary focus is modeling in polygons nurbs and sculpting in zbrush.

hopefully beginning my internship this september at Guerilla Games…

I’m glad to be a part of this community… :):

Kind regards

Hello All,

After lurking for a while, I thought I might take the plunge and introduce myself.

I’m Matt Robinson and I am a Tech Artist currently contracting with Namco-Bandai on Splatterhouse.

I tend to focus on tools and pipelines, but can also do a bit of rigging and CGFX work. I also do alot of C# and MEL scripting.

I’m glad I found this site, it’s about time TechArt got a little love :slight_smile:

-m

Hey everyone, Forrest Crump here, though some folks know me as Nacire over at polycount and gameartisans. I’ve worked on a few titles over the past 5 years and continue to freelance at the moment.

Hello All!

I’m Eduardo Simioni, Lead Animator at Milestone, in Milan, Italy. I’ve been responsible for everything animation-wise around here, but for the last couple of years we hadn’t had much time to work on the pipeline. So now I’m able to do some scripting and I’m planning to get my hands deeper on the tech side of animation development again.

I’ve found this forum just recently and it’s an invaluable source of information! Thanks already for all the contribution!

eksimioni

Hey everyone, Richard Robinson here, I am currently doing animation and web designing. I will keep in touch with all members.
Translation Company

Hi

My name is Lee, I work largely on real time 3D projects games , simulations, visualizations and CAD tools.

I have several specializations.

  1. building and optimizing hybrid scene managers for game engines seamlessly mixing in and out door environment. (Yeah I am more toward programming, so I know the art tools and ways artists work, but I don’t come with a reel, I come with references, and products and titles that has been shipped.)
  2. Helping teams to talk nicely with there engine, engine tools and art pipe tools to get the correct performance in the end.
  3. Helping teams to create and learn an art pipe that will take them to there goals faster and produce cooler looking more optimized artwork.
  4. Mentoring and teaching colleagues and people around me.

I am currently looking for work.

I have worked in Australia, Germany, Sweden.

Hi everyone :slight_smile:

I’m Luke Maskell, recently promoted to technical artist at indy developer Gusto Games here in the UK.

Currently working on art pipeline tools, rigging, and shader stuffs for our next project.

You’ll find me lurking on the IRC channel as LMaskell :slight_smile:

Hi,
I’m apparently a technical artist from Melbourne, Australia. I’ve only really picked up this area by default because no one else at my last studio was interested in making art tools and so far I’ve done it on my own by a fun combination of guess work and I’m rather excited to finally have a place where people are going to be thinking along the same lines.

-James

Hi, all.

I’m Josh Jones. I’m only marginally a technical artist. I definitely don’t have nearly the skill set that many of you here do, but I’m trying to stay abreast of the field. I work as Lead Animator at Bethesda Game Studios (which happens to be hiring, see the job forum). So my responsibilities are a bit broader. But I dabble with scripting and animation pipelines when I can.

Hey guys. My name is James, I’m an artist and sole animator at a small game/web company. Our art team is only a few guys so I’ve had to do a lot of semi-tech work and I’m now considering it as a career path. I’ve posted more details here, if anyone can help me out it’d be much appreciated!

hEY!
i have a question…i’m new here and i’m really interest about ‘tech artists’ as a work and i’d like to know what programs are good to getting start…

i really appreciated your help
Thnx