Do I know enough to be considered as a valuable asset to others?

edited in Questions and Answers
Hi there.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. As the title implies I'm trying to figure out if what I've learned over the last 2-odd years could be considered as enough to get my foot in the door. I realize that the best way for me to be evaluated would be to include a lengthy portfolio of work I have done using different applications but please bear with me as I try to explain my situation.

First of all I think it needs to be said that prior to UE4 going free I had little to no idea of what games development entitled. The only skill sets I possesed that could be considered as valid to some degree was being able to do a few things in Blender and Gimp/Photoshop.

Secondly I was dependend on drugs to not only learn about games development but to play games as well. I used to lie to myself by thinking I needed to be high to be productive. Not only that but were it not for the drugs I would not even know half the things I did when I was still using. I thought it helped me and used this excuse to alleviate the guilt I felt from lying to my family and friends. Unsurprisingly though I came to realize that it was not thanks to the drugs but despite the drugs that I was able to learn as much as I have. I've been clean now for half a year (give or take) and only now do I see my brain's potential.

So what have I been able to teach myself in these 2 years? Here's a short list that I can remember of the top of my head:

Blender-Sub Division Surface,clean topology of meshes,normals pointing the correct way(All of them),Vertex groups and it's many different uses(Probably one the most helpful things in Blender),UV-unwrapping. This list is quite long now that I think about it.

UE4- Import/export of fbx format (tangent space,scale of mesh,Lightmap UV's not overlapping), PBR workflow,(Creation of PBR-correct materials,Roughness vs Specularity,Normal Maps,Height Maps,Ambient Occlusion,Albedo/Base Color), Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Distance Field Ambient Occlusion, Speed Tree asset import settings, Landscape Material creation (Landscape Layer Blends, Procedural Grass layers) Mesh/landscape displacement using height maps, setting up the inputs for the player character, Using blueprint to make use of the new inputs, Communication between two different Blueprints, Vector transforms(breaking them open to manipulate the x,y & z values of a static mesh)

I've probably left somethings out but for now it will have to suffice.

All I know is I want this. More then anything I ever have. It's shocking to see how jaded the gaming community has become. I want to change that. I want to make people like Jim Sterling eat their own words.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now.

Edit:I forgot to mention Armatures,Global Illumination, Nvidia physX Destuctables,Apex clothing. I have to drive somewhere so I will probably remember other things while I'm not in front of my PC.



Comments

  • edited
    Assuming you're aiming for the visual side of things, your value to a studio is like 80% what your art looks like. Lists of software and workflow features you've learnt mean very little if they're not combined with eyes that have been trained to identify what makes things look good.

    And nobody can evaluate how well you're doing that without a portfolio.

    It's great that you're thinking about what bringing value to a team looks like though. It's probably the best way of getting employment (when you get the right answers and then work based on them)!
  • edited
    Assuming you're aiming for the visual side of things, your value to a studio is like 80% what your art looks like. Lists of software and workflow features you've learnt mean very little if they're not combined with eyes that have been trained to identify what makes things look good.

    And nobody can evaluate how well you're doing that without a portfolio.

    It's great that you're thinking about what bringing value to a team looks like though. It's probably the best way of getting employment (when you get the right answers and then work based on them)!
    Thank you for the feedback. I've been meaning to get around to making a portfolio but I'm a bit stumped in this department. When I think about a portfolio I'm always reminded of my graphic designing days. But I feel that simple screen shots aren't enough. I'm always left wondering what makes a good portfolio for game devs. I realize that I could google the subject but I'm tired of doing this on my own. I guess this is my way of reaching out to people. Unfortunately I live in a small town where gaming workshops are non existant. The closest I ever get to other people with the same level of obsession for development are the gamers themselves. And if these last two years have taught me anything it's that gamers and devs are not even close to being the same thing.

    As for the coding side of things, I am admittadly quite far behind the art department but I seem to remember someone saying that a Jack of all trades is more valuable then a specialist. This makes sense to me but how true it is in the real world is beyond me.

  • image

    The mesh of the house is mine. The materials and shrubs I used were from the starter content. The grass was a free download from Speedtree's own website. I also enabled Distance Field Ambient Occlusion and added the post processing volume for Global Illumanation.
    Baroqeus.jpg
    1366 x 768 - 934K
  • Screen shots are pretty much standard. You generally want them to be from a real-time renderer (e.g. Unity, Unreal, Marmoset Toolbag or some other game engine). For 3D work, you often want to show wireframes (for clean topo and some indication of vert/tri count) and what your texture sheets look like (to see UVs and clean bakes) in addition to your beauty shot (showing good lighting and composition). If you want to show a turntable, you could use a video, or something like Marmoset Viewer.

    It may be worth checking out some of the Portfolio threads on this forum, or some of the ones posted on Polycount's forum, to see what other artists are showing in their portfolios. (Try to look for the portfolios of people who're actually employed in the game industry though. There are often many, many student/novice portfolios, but you want to be emulating the people who "made it", rather than those who haven't found work.)

    Learning some scripting is certainly a great skill to pick up! (Especially because it means you can make your own games if you're inspired, rather than absolutely having to find someone to work with.) But I'd only suggest doing that if you enjoy it. (I believe you'd probably get more mileage being a good artist and a bad coder, or a good coder and a bad artist, than someone who's mediocre at both. I feel that "mediocre" games struggle enormously to stand out, whereas games with stellar art, or revolutionary tech, can sometimes be excused -- at the very least, they're more likely to attract talent/collaboration than mediocre projects.)

    If you want to do further reading on portfolio-building, check the Polycount wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Portfolio. Bear in mind that they very much talk about advertising toward the US/EU job market there (i.e. big budgets, big studios), so some of the stuff there may not be that good a fit for our local industry. You would, of course, want to tailor your portfolio to the studio you're applying to.
  • Wow, this is really helpful. Thank you for taking the time to type all that information. It wont go to waste. I promise.
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