Andy Davis

First thoughts- cool hair!

Right so this was another lecture and it was interesting Andy talked about his past work and how he worked at Travelers Tales (they have the game licences for LEGO) which was awesome because I love the Lego games they’re so funny and good, anyway he worked as a technical artist there which basically half way between an artist and a scripter and what he does for a job is he makes tools for artists, which to be honest I was like, is that a job? But when he explained it in full, it’s cool. His job is to help make tools and plugins to help artists to do stuff quickly and it’s a good job because he’s always being tested and learning new stuff which keeps things interesting and makes what he does so good as he can just make anything to help people and helping people is nice.

Right so if you want to be an technical artist Andy put some stuff up on the presentation that would be good for you to learn so I have a list of stuff which will help and will tell you a bit more about what he does and how you can do it.

A technical artist is:

- Generalising

- A bridge between a developer and an artist.

-  A tool creator

- A specialist artist

-  A trainer

- A problem solver

Coding languages you need to learn:

-          Mel

-          Maxscript

-          Python

-          C#

-          C++

-          Objective c/ android

-          Html 5

Tools that you may need to create: 

Functionality tools:

-          Exporters

-          In house attribute manager

-          Portal manager

-          Workflow tools

-          Selection utility tools

-          User interface customization

-          Attribute setter modelling macro

-          Automatic rigging tool

-          Renamer tool

-          Batch exporter

Now this is the meaty part where he told us everything he does and helps with:

-          
Optimisation:

-          Polygons

-          Streaming

-          Textures

-          Dynamic objects

-          

Documentation and training:

-          Maintaining a wiki

-          Tool documentation

-          Game functionality

-          Bug hunting

-          General art bugs

-          Technical setups

-          Tools bugs

-          Rigging

-          Skeletal hierarchy building

-          Movement constraints

-          Control interfaces

-          Shader writing

-          HLSL

-          GLSL

-          CG

-          Animation/effects:

-          Custom animation’s

-          Partical systems

-          Physical simulation

Well now you know what you need to do to become a tech artist then you can go and study at home and become the next Andy Davis.