This was worded weirdly, but the question came as I kept trying to learn c++ for tech art because I heard it was used and it was good to learn, but I only had blender and blender used python, but when I tried to translate any non-interactive animation related ideas into c++, even trivial ideas such as a program to make a stickman walk around, learning graphics was a daunting task and often I couldn’t read a single function in graphics libraries such as SDL and opengl, and the tutorials available were focused on making game engines. I tried to ignore that and prioritize becoming a ‘good programmer’ to become a good tech artist, but if I couldn’t read the library watching tutorials to make projects felt as if functions and code were being chosen from thin air as I wasn’t sure what prerequisites were being asked of me, and the focus already in those tutorials wasn’t to learn programming theory, it was to jump into game dev by making a game, which wasn’t as much of my goal as making tools for animation was.
While I still didn’t know the tech art projects technical artists worked on in each pipeline specifically,
I had to realize if c++ is a lower level languages generally credited for development, it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell a beginner tech artist to develop software for graphics alone before developing tools in a pre-existing graphics software. Reaching this point I felt confused because I didn’t know what to learn next, I figured tech artists before had to learn graphics programming in lower level languages to develop software and tools to use for animation and modelling, so where did things begin? Regardless, it’s probably not a path a beginner could take, much less without asking for help.
In this supposed “orgins path”, Immaturely I kept getting frustrated and wondering “who just wants to make a website? Who just wants to learn data types?”
But I kept neglecting my art studies in favor of trying to be a “Real Programmer”, so of course I didn’t have any ideas, much less apply them to the new projects I was learning. I kept getting confused on whether a tech artist should focus on becoming a good programmer “across the board” first, but I’m not sure what generalization looks like without a project/problem in mind you’re passionate about. In this wild goose chase I’m probably going to return back to learning python so I can directly make tools within the software I use, this experience left me with a question: What do tech artists use different languages for, and how does that knowledge grow holistically? Or should a tech artist just begin by finding ways to implement programming into the art they do, and grow their specific knowledge from there?
I think my problems came from an insecurity of what I would do if there weren’t open source 2d and 3d software, if there was a time where ‘technology’ and ‘art’ were on separate islands, how would you learn the tools to make the things we use today if ‘technology’ demanded learning completely unrelated things to what was considered in traditional animation, how did people end up tying it together into this industry?
