Or, in the bigger studios, are these separate professions entirely?
I just ask out of curiosity. I was learning about animation, which is so much fun I laugh like an idiot at every little thing I create, but I felt stymied by my lack of rigging knowledge so I’m trying to get better at rigging, and I hate it. It’s frustrating, confusing, and is probably taking years off of my life.
But my theory is that a character artist, especially one interested in indie game development, should be able to make a character asset from the first cube to a final, animated asset. I realize that’s a lot and you could spend years becoming an expert in just one part of the process, but I want to have some level of understanding for each part, and also just because I’m new to this I like to try out things and see what I like.
TL: DR – Is it worthwhile for someone with a goal of getting a job as an artist to learn rigging and animation? Or is that a waste of time, as all time should be spent becoming an expert in a singular field? And vice versa for indie studios.
From my knowledge - technical artists may even be segmented further in larger studios, ie tools tech artists and riggers. The tools could range from any type of support between teams or anything ‘art’ related for engine or DCC tool, ie lighting, textures, sprites pipeline, in-engine layout, rigging support tools, maybe even level editor development.
In a legit indie studio - lets say 20+ developers, a tech artist(s) would be the ‘guys/gals’ that did everything related to tools, plus rigging unless the studio had the animators rigging models.
On a small team - the animator IS the rigger. Tools are provided by the engine, assets, maybe a programmer if the animator can justify the cost/time savings to the lead.
Disclaimer: I have never been employed by a studio, large or small.
That’s not what I like to hear. Nothing saps my motivation like specialization. I hate being a cog in a machine!
But then, the chances of getting a job in a big studio are slim, especially given such a late start at this, and also I’m never going to be moving to any hub cities – so that’s kind of off the table anyway.
It’s kind of hard to decide what to do though. Focus entirely on my personal game projects, treating them like they absolutely must be finished at any cost and are the best shot at making money out of all this – even if I have to do it all on my own – or put those to the side and focus solely on becoming an expert in a single field, and thus only doing modeling and texturing, and not messing with other things.
You can either be a specialist and be a cog in the machine - or you can be a generalist - and be OK at a lot of stuff, or put another way - be less good at everything than everyone else who is a specialist. That is cynical - but reality. However - zombiegorilla mentioned on several of his projects they had majority of generalists - though I’m sure most of them were veterans, not 1-3 years experience generalists.
Specifically - what is your NUMBER ONE passion? You want to try real hard to get paid to do that - if you are able.
Game development maybe - but that is very broad. Be as specific as you can. That is what you should pursue - and you can still make games on the side if that number one passion is not game development.
My number one passion is animation. I went to college and graduated as a animator. I’ve worked for companies (not in games) for the past 19 years as a animator (and doing other things). And for the past roughly 15 years I made game animations on the side.
Rigging is a secondary task for learning 3D stuff. It is not focused on enough imo. I taught myself the ‘advanced techniques’ and tricks of rigging. It is something that a person has to do if they want to animate and if they want to animate something unique. They need to be able to rig.
I’ve now transitioned into making games as a solo developer - with an emphasis on gameplay and animation.
Its tricky to give a solid answer. Tech Artists (nowadays) are varied and hybrids. Traditionally, the term usually meant rigger, but not so much now, though it can include that. We don’t usually use the term generalist when applied to tech art, because often we are specialists in many areas, and specialists in areas that others aren’t (tools / pipeline / integration / prototyping / solutions / optimizations). And even within the tech art field, there are folks who are more specialist in certain areas over other (rendering pipeline vs. content pipeline, etc). Most of my friends / peers in the field, came to tech art after specializing in one or more fields previously. Often engineering, but also animation, art and VFX. I have previously been Sr Engineer, Lead/Sr UI/UX and production art and several years as purely animation. Very good and successful in all those areas, just never satisfied being locked in to one thing for very long. Or more often, would just integrate my own art/fx because I knew better than the engineers on how to implement efficiently/optimally, or as an engineer, would improve/rework art because I could understood better ways of doing it having insights in to both sides.
Ultimately:
I have never learned anything specifically for a job, or learned a skill to be more marketable. I learned and got good at the things that excited me, and then found someone to pay me for my skills. The more you know, the better you can be at other areas. A texture artist who can write shaders, will be a better texture artist. A modeler who can rig will be a better modeler. And so on. As hippo said, multiple disciplines are are pretty much a requirement these days. Not only because small teams require it, but because even in specialist areas, you are competing for jobs with others who are multi-disciplined, which makes them better at their speciality.
This right here is so true IMO. You can do everything yourself and only achieve a level of “being OK, not great”. I create rigging and animation and am willing to accept my results will never be of the same standard/quality as an expert.
But, part of the challenge is just realizing that one’s work is OK, not great. It is very easy to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon, where someone is unable to acknowledge this fact at times.
We are all guilty at times of thinking our work is better than it actually is.
Well, after about twenty hours of working on getting better at rigging, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the humanIK rig created by Maya is way better than the crap I poured so much time into.
It sucks, but I think I just have to accept the fact that I’m not going to be a good rigger and will have to work from humanIk most of the time if it’s just me. Yeah, I could work really hard and get better, but I hate it. I hate rigging. stomps foot and runs away
Hopefully I did learn something useful from all that, and thank god largely automated solutions like humanIK exist otherwise a soloist like me would be seriously stumped.
One thing I am curious about is what effect MOCAP is going to have on the animation profession. I know MOCAP has been around for some time, but it seems to me that animation would eventually become purely a technical field, in which specialist simply clean up motion captured stuff, and rarely create something from scratch.
Then again, I guess you can’t motion capture dragons and exploding airplanes, so maybe that’s a silly line of thought.
On the higher end, for a lot of things, the difference between being an expert and not, can be speed and proficiency. For example rigging, one can rig a professional level/quality but not be as fast a someone who rigs full time. Modeling and texturing can be the same type of thing. Someone who is full time modeler may be way faster than someone who does it 10% of the time, but not necessarily “better”. And when you have the advantage of a large team, having dedicated roles leads to higher/ faster through out of content. You see this often where you have small team games with fantastic quality, but took longer to build. Multiple skills / specialties isn’t always a reduction in quality, but can be a reduction in
speed in some cases.
Some areas, like visual art, or coding in general, are based on a core skill set, which if you are good at it, you can still apply it in a high/professional level in different sub disciplines, just not as as quickly as some who operates in that sub discipline 90% of the time.
And in some cases, cross knowledge actually improves overall time to implementation (and often quality) than narrow knowledge individuals. A “pure/only” artist and a “pure/only” coder working together on a feature, may take much more time (and potentially lower quality), than one or two people of hybrid skill sets as they understand the blended points, and work together faster with less back and forth.
“If you get good enough at anything someone will pay you to do it.”
That’s a quote I recently heard and I can’t really think of an exception. It’s just a question of how good you need to get to be paid for it. And all the AAA artist categories in studios probably have a rather high bar to reach.
If you want to focus on earning money without moving to another area I’d evaluate what kind of freelance 3D work you can get within your skillset (possibly entirely outside of the games industry). I doubt you can earn more with indie gamedev with the multiplayer shooter project you’ve talked about in your other thread. Generally I don’t think art is a great job-opportunity money-wise, unless you’re willing and capable to be one of the absolute best specialists in at least one field of art.
Indeed. And it is also worth noting that context is really important. A great coder or great artist, may not work well in games or in a games production environment. On top being good in those fields, being good in a team and in games is critical.
If you dopn’t like rigging right now. Why don’t you better start watching some tutorials on programing and then use Maya or blender with the Python API. I know that you can make cool things in Maya with Python. (Not an animator). But you can “master” one area, and then you will face the harsh part.
20 hours is kind of just starting out. I didn’t feel confident in my rigging skills/knowledge no less than one full year (roughly 300 hours) after I decided to focus on it.
Too - Rigging is not a ‘beginner’ task - imo. It’s not as simple as UV layout, or mesh editing. It is generally speaking, at minimum a intermediate level task, so don’t be frustrated about not getting it in 20 hours.
No shame man - humanIK is a quality setup (from my limited knowledge working with it) I believe @Mecanim-Dev was one of the main guys behind humanIK? So - it’s like you are working with your extended team here - This is one of the great benefits of using a engine and softwares that are widely supported.
I still use CAT and biped (3D Max) often when considering animations that need retargetability or conformity with other rigs. This is not anything to be down about. Custom rigs are tools just like rig systems (humanIK, biped, CAT) are tools to be used by us to get the jobs done.
Imo - mocap has only increased the need for competent animators who in turn have an increased skill set in mocap related to capture, conversion, cleanup, and enhancement. Tools can only automate/clan so much raw data. Artists are still needed to make mocap pretty.
Consider reviewing facial mocap capture, conversion and cleanup for future potential business opportunities.
And fast! which directly correlates to zombiegorillas spot-on post.
Well, I had spent probably 30 hours about on this before, I just decided that I needed to come back to get some retraining because I thought I could do some things better than the humanIK setup.
But this is good to know that, for at least one other person, it took a good amount of time to get proficient at rigging. The truth is, I spent a lot more time learning and practicing modeling before I got to where I could think of something, then make it on my own – and I guess because I feel confident in some parts of asset creation I expected to pick up rigging pretty quickly and got upset when I dived into the deep end only to realize there was no water in the pool.
But one thing I have learned is that I can indeed set-up the set driven keys I need on the human IK setup, and that was the main thing I wanted. Besides that, I really like the ease of us with the humanIK rig, it’s just super intuitive and I can usually get any pose I want without any trouble or tedium at all.
Yeah, that is something I have been looking into. The game project is just a means to learn from, although I am pretty passionate about the idea and want to finish it – and do it properly as well. I’m not sure at what point I should start applying to jobs, but I suppose the first thing I need is an impressive portfolio – which would take some time to get ready of course.
I find my self quite the opposite, I think my work looks like crap, and others tell me it’s actually nice lol.
I hate ‘good’, I’ll sit tweaking a polygon for hours just until it looks right (figuratively speaking) haha.
I consider my self a generalist in everything for the most part (Coding, Modeling, Rigging, Material Creation, Music, Sfx, Level Design, Ui/UX, Editor Tools, etc). But this has come from 2 decades of learning, not a couple years of playing around.
I started learning game design when I was like 8 years old by modding C&C Games. Haven’t stopped sense.
I haven’t heard the T description before. But I think you should be a T. Focus on what you like the best but don’t be afraid to learn and try new things. Especially if they help with what you like doing.
I know modeling, rigging, texturing because I wanted to program games. So if I couldn’t produce my own content it would of been much harder.
I’m not saying I am an artist but I am good enough to protype things and then give design or specs to the artists to take it from there.
And don’t get down about using a tool in a package. Why would you want to make a rig from scratch when good ones already exists. This to me is a waste of time other than just learning and experimenting.
But learning how to modify biped / maya or add extra things to it is what would be useful.
I have worked on custom engines and even created some of my own.
But I won’t be using something like that in production, that is what unity is for.
And like 30 hours is nothing. That’s not even a full work week.
I can only say from my own experience and friends in the industry. I’ve worked at a couple of AAA and a few smaller studios for a number of years now, and right now I am at what you would call a mid-size studio. Usually technical animators will not so much animate but deal with all the tech aspects of animation pipeline, that is, rigging, pipeline integration from the artist’s side, any animation tools that may be needed, any simulation work, etc… Most smaller/mid size places will not have a tech anim guy but a more general tools guy, and the animator or lead animator will deal with rigging. Or sometimes the modelers will do it, it really depends on the place and the talent pool at the studio. Larger places will usually have more specialization, I’ve never had to rig at larger studios for one.
As far as you having to know these things to get in the door, well it’s always good to know it even if you don’t anticipate/expect to be doing it, if only to be able to work out what is wrong with a rig or what is broken with it, what you don’t like about it, etc. It really helps to be able to know what you are talking about to articulate to your Tech anim or rigger what it is that you want fixed or changed. That being said, everyone knows intuitively what they are better at and more interested in so you end up gravitating towards that. Once you know what it is that you want to do, you just have to look at reels of people working in the industry to see the level that’s expected and work towards that baseline. If you want to be a freelancer, you will have to have a more rounded skillset however, so keep that in mind.
One last thing about rigging, you’ll find that when it comes to games, rigging tends to be not so complex. There are exceptions of course, and every project is different, but generally game rigs are a lot simpler that say, tv or film projects. I’ve worked on film and tv and I can honestly say I could never come up with anything close to the rigs I’ve had to use on those projects when it comes to complexity. But in a number of the game jobs that i’ve had I have done the rigging so yeah, there is a huge difference. Anyways, just my two cents, sorry for the long post!
Lots of good stuff has been said, but the one thing that is invariable, is deadline, the skills is not just about how good you are to the job, but how consistent you are to hit deadline or “impossible” challenge. For example I often claim I can do many stuff, but the catch is that I’m hobbyist with infinite time, I have no deadline, I don’t apply for a professional job because I won’t qualify. Many pro I have met have many shortcut to kickstart their workflow like using many basemesh etc … which make the difference when urgency fall into your lap.
