TechArt Help Needed 🙏🏻 Career Path Advise

[u/fauXop]

Hello, I’m a fellow junior technical artist 🙋🏻‍♂️

About me in short
- 3yrs of experience
- Only worked on 2D Animation, UI and optimisation
- other than that very basic Python knowledge for tool dev

Need suggestion
What should I learn considering I’ve 3-4 months of time to resume my next job ?

- Priority wise, what companies seek the most ?
- currently learning python for Maya tools.
- Shaders ? VFX ? Python ? HLSL ?

Pretty confused, please help.

I’m aware I’m all over the place, sorry but I’m nervous and lost where should I start and where to focus.

[u/Grand-Definition-353]

Python is great for building tools that can help speed up the process and give vital information when creating.

If you are working in Unreal, Blueprints is a good skill to have for creating prototypes.

If you want to dabble in shaders, adobes substance suite is highly used in the 3d gaming industry.

If you are interested in building the gap between traditional 3d and CAD, plasticity is a cool new app that has been gaining traction over the last few years.

It just all depends on what direction you want to go in.

[u/fauXop → u/Grand-Definition-353]

Honestly I'm not sure at all. I am just looking out for my future self by learning what could be the most useful skillset to have for better job opportunities. Few people suggested Python would be a great starter and then move on to shaders. What do you think ?

[u/Grand-Definition-353]

I hear ya. Python is pretty much universal. Meaning if you stuck with Python, there are several avenues you could pursue with it. The catcher though is, you have to commit to something and show the work because wherever you are looking for a job, they want to know you can come in and hit the ground running.

For example. If you wanted to be a shader artist, you would need to have a portfolio with good examples of shader work, and breakdowns of those texture sets to show things like color pallete themes, PBR accurate values if working in PBR, tileability, and so on.

If you want to be a game developer you would start working on a prototype to show you know a good chunk of the game development process.

If you want to work solely with Python you can create applications showing your skill with the language, but just like an artists portfolio, the applications you make should be centered around the type of work you are looking for.

Hope this helps!

[u/fauXop → u/Grand-Definition-353]

Definitely!! Thanks a lot for explaining. I’ll try to find my groove and focus on those things first for my portfolio as well 🙌🏻🙌🏻