Dneg - Double negative

TEXTURE ARTIST

• Job Title: Texture Artist
• Department: 3D
• Location: London
• Closing Date: N/A
• Reports To: Head of 3D
• Direct Reports: N/A

Key Purpose of the Job

To create photo realistic textures and other related maps or images for mapping on to 3D objects.

Needs To Do

• In most visual effects work, the textures need to be created to a high level of realism and fit the requirements of the model pipeline and shading set up. It will be essential to work closely with the other members of the project team in these areas. It will be necessary to learn some of our in house systems and become fluent in their use, as well as learn other off the shelf packages as required. Images may need to be created from scratch, but it is more likely that the artist will need to make use of extensive reference photography as source material. They may also need to source their work from a variety of other visual resources (paintings, reference books, architecture)

Needs To Know

• A full working knowledge of Photoshop, or similar paint package, is vital. Knowledge of Body Paint, Deep Paint or other 3D paint packages would be a big advantage
• Strong visual skills - a good eye for detail, scale, composition, colour and form. Supporting artwork such as a portfolio will be considered, but is not essential
• A good knowledge of how the texture painting work fits into the bigger picture, particularly in relation to the Modelling and Shading &Look Development areas
• Work closely with a Modeller to determine a optimal UV layout.
• Comfortable with Windows and/or Mac operating systems. A good knowledge of Linux would be an advantage. Knowledge of Maya and/or rendering software a plus
• At least 1 years experience in feature films would be beneficial. Experience in other areas of visual effects (TV, Games) will also be taken into account

Needs To Be

• Team oriented
• Able to learn new work flows and methods
• Able to adapt to changing requirements or briefs
• Resourceful

Measures of Performance

• On time delivery
• Show continuous improvement
• Ability to deliver the required look at an appropriate level of detail or realism

All I can say is.... :D Something I actually meet. Almost. Still missing 1 year of industry experience though.

Tutorial!

To the tutorial!

Squareeeee enixxxxx

Art Director, Reporting to: General Manager, Square Enix London Studios (SELS)

Job Purpose:

Collaborating with external studios to optimize the visual standards for games in development. <- Being an art director. What it says on the tin! :P

Primary Duties:

Working as part of a team, you will become the artistic stakeholder for all our projects, and as such you will get to turn your hand to every part of the development process:

Working with studios to find the appropriate artistic direction for each project.

Ensuring art quality on all titles.

Performing art-related due diligence on potential studio partners.

Setting art-related milestones.

Reviewing art-related milestone components.

Identifying art trends and understanding future quality standards to ensure titles in development will be competitive upon release.

Working closely with partner development studios to ensure their art staff, pipelines, solutions and process are adequate to support each game vision.

Contributing art elements to executive presentations.

You will also help in keeping the relationship with developers as positive and productive as possible.

This means working to build an honest and respectful relationship with them, providing meaningful feedback to their performance, and ensuring that they understand our development priorities. <- These I believe are something I'm currently able to do. I've been comfortable in both working under, and with, or being the 'leader' or groups, which would then communicate with others. To build an honest and respectful relationship with all colleagues, and that they understand our development priorities. Okay, this is something I HAVE been doing, and something I feel quite confident in. Although, the situation in the industry will of course be a lot different than it is at uni. People won't be slacking, or they'd get fired.

Secondary Duties:

Working as part of a team, you will become the artistic stakeholder for all our projects, and as such you will get to turn your hand to every part of the development process:

Developing and fostering relationships with service providers, middleware & hardware partners.

Contributing to internal concepts and presentations.

Directing concept artists and other outsourcing partners.

Keeping current on all middleware options and work with our development teams on the best solutions for our games.

Creating and overseeing marketing and promotional assets as required. <- Something I would most likely need to develop on. Although, my current job and previous job dwelled within this area at certain points. For example, overseeing new products / promotional items within the branch. Of course, this example would probably differ in terms of the media presented / handled; the same thing nonetheless.

Key Stakeholders:

General Manager

Technical Director

Producers and designers

Brand/PR/Marketing

Acquisitions

External development studios

Art Directors at partner Square Enix studios

Position based in: London, UK

Person Specification

Profile Essential Desirable

Experience & Qualifications

Must have extensive hands-on Art Director experience within the video game industry on at least two published titles (preferably at least one AAA title) on PS3 and 360 platforms. <- This I don't have, and isn't even in near reach of where I am at this stage in my life. I'm in the second year of uni, going into third. I need to leave here, get into a well known company, be involved in the development of a well known title, then apply for this job. Great.

Working with style guides. <- Have absolutely NO idea what a style guide is. All I can gather from internet searches is pretty much a generic guideline for the approach the team is taking into a particular theme.

Demonstration of a concept's evolution from rough ideas to final product.

Ideally will have worked on several high profile titles. <- Something I'm comfortable doing at this stage in time, provided communication is clear and a team is present ready and willing to give input.

Creating style guides.

Professional qualifications in an art-related subject.

Relevant art experience outside the video games industry. <- I have this? :D razarei.deviantart.com

Technical Skills

Understanding of best practice development and the different phases associated with game production (concept, pre-production, production etc.) <- Given

Excellent understanding of different pipelines for art, animation and visual effects. <- Basic understanding, this is something that could be obviously improved / developed further.

Excellent modelling and texturing techniques. <- Again, I'm quite good at texturing now, although I haven't dived too much into modelling. Again, both of which can be improved in the near future.

Ability to communicate quality requirements. <- Absolutely NOT a problem

Excellent knowledge of human anatomy, physiological reactions, body language and proportions in character design. <- Absolutely NOT a problem

Excellent knowledge of the principles of animation and motion-capture.

Experience in leading 2D and 3D art packages such as 3dsMax, Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro. <- Absolutely NOT a problem. MASTER of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro. Although, Maya knowledge needs to be improved. Also, my knowledge of motion capture is very vague at this stage.

Hands on experience with Unreal Engine 3 and other leading middleware engine solutions. <- Experience with only ONE engine (Unity). Played around with Unreal Engine, although not done much with it.

Ability to creafe concept art. <- No problem.

Able to use Flash and Dreamweaver. <- I have a great knowledge of Dreamweaver. Flash.. I can get by, but I cannot do advanced techniques.

Interpersonal Skills

Motivated, Passionate, Social Engineer!

Team player and ability to build relationships.

Ability to understand and consider different points of view. <- SOMEONE WHO FINALLY UNDERSTANDS!!!

Other Skills/Requirements

Excellent written and spoken communication.

Ability to convey instructions and artistic direction with clarity.

Valid and unrestricted passport with the willingness to travel (domestic and overseas) when required. <- Might not be a problem then, but definitely a problem now. :P

Ability to work with direction from project stakeholders.

An eye for detail.

Organised and able to work to deadlines. <- Second problem. I haven't had much luck with teams and I guess my self organization could be a lot better still.

Problem solving.

Motivations & Interests

Must be passionate about games, and play games in his/her spare time.

Must understand what makes good games so special, and have the ability to analyse what works and what doesn't. <- REALLY?!!?! Job from heaven.

So, just by looking at this job role, I'm actually not that far off... In terms of key skills / requirements, I'm guessing all this no-life days on the computer messing around with software has paid off, and the intense gaming over the years. In fact, I'm actually quite surprised that I almost fulfil that criteria....

HOKAI. CHANGE OF PLAN.

Right. After much debate, I'm changing this tutorial. I'm changing it from lighting to texturing. Why? I'm changing this because in my other project, I'm working on the texturing role, by default, because others wanted to do lighting, or they'd be unhappy, so I took the texturing role instead. I guess, this means that I can develop this a bit more.

So, what exactly am I going to base my tutorial on now? Texturing in general? UV mapping?

I'm going to do my tutorial on the workflow form Maya to mudbox. So starting something in maya, taking it in to mudbox, then back into maya. At this stage, I've already done quite a bit of learning regarding mudbox for my other project, so it only makes sense to make a tutorial based on what I've learnt thus far.

http://deonlitchmore4.blogspot.com/2011/03/concept-for-dark-world-concept-for.html

I think I'm getting there slowly. I crave knowledge, something that I search for on a regular basis. Unfortunately, good, informative and lengthy tutorials are hard to find, all of which I'm going to make sure my tutorial contains, so that pretty much anyone could follow.

These tutorials were introduced to me via Gerome, as by this point as part of additional learning grasped the basics of Mudbox. However, upon me experimenting, and finding TONNES of bugs / workflow errors, software letdowns (mudbox) I had to google my arse off in hope for resolution. All in all, I'm glad though, as I'll be able to replicate these errors for my tutorial, and make sure that these indeed to get resolved.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/xnormal/3d_cg_vfx_ambient_occlusion_map_texturing_lighting_xnormal_rendering_baking/

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-885831.html

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=221&t=885366

http://eat3d.com/maya-displacement-maps

All of which helped me throughout my journey to infinite discovery. :P

Skills

So. Skills. What do I possess? Where would I like to be?

Since I started branching out into the creative side, I've known where I've wanted to work from a very young age. As a heavy consumer of gaming and film, and an in-depth knowledge about them, I knew there and then my ideal job would have been (now known as) Square-Enix. A games developing company situated in Japan. Why here? I've played almost every single one of their titles to date, as well as plenty of other games. Not only am I hugely interested in the approach they take to their games, but the films as well, my main influence to the animation career, as their animated sequences and films are splendid to look at and enjoy.

Unfortunately, since the merge of the two companies (Square soft and Enix) their games haven't really been that great lately. As a result, this isn't my dream work placement anymore, but still one of the top few. Aside from that, I'd have to be EXTREMELY good in what I'm doing, be completely fluent in Japanese, and be, Japanese; they are slightly xenophobic.

As a direct result of this, looking around allowed me to find other companies, situated in London, where I could achieve pretty much what I wanted to anyway with Square Enix; that place is Framestore.

Next up, Double Negative, also situated in London, Soho. These guys are probably a tied top position in my choice list with Framestore. Why? I was purely fascinated by the approach the founders took to develop the company, as they came to the university for industry day.

Without trying to sound big-headed, I'm an all rounder. And not an all rounder that's okay in them, but not strong in any. I can honestly say that I'm strong in so many aspects. All of them aren't directly related to animation, but certainly would help in whatever I choose to do in life. I have a huge amount knowledge of ICT (computing, telephony, networking) anatomy, drawing skills (razarei.deviantart.com) music (composition, playing instruments) physics (math, engineering) the list is endless. All of which makes life so much more difficult for me because all of which I'm equally great at and each I wish to pursue. Rambling aside, my top five skills are:

Grasps knowledge really quickly

Very keen learner

Great with people, agony uncle :P

Anything needed, I will find a solution.

Loyal.

All of which I wish to push further. Throughout my life since probably GCSE's, I've been succeeding with minimal to little effort, or burst-rushes of work during the last couple of days prior to a submission. At the time, for something like that to happen seemed okay to me. It's not until I actually started (or during the) the first year that I actually wanted to succeed, beyond my expectations, with full effort. But low and behold, even though I'm trying, it still ends up the same. The same people dragging me down, using my kindness as an advantage to hold me back, friends, family, and of course this leads me to acting / feeling certain ways. I guess, it's times like this I wish I was just alone and had no one to bother me / make me worry, so I could just focus on my work, and succeed.

What I HAVE learnt though, is how important time management, planning, having a reliable group of people to work with, and communication is.

Rambling aside, gotta continue! Gotta push forward!

So, lighting.

^Lighting daytime simulations that I did in the last project.

Right, so it's been decided that I'm most likely going to do lighting. It was a tough choice between texturing or lighting. I decided that I would probably benefit the most from lighting, due to the fact that its range offers a much greater learning curve that would benefit me and the group the most in the near future hopefully. I already know a bit about lighting, but looking more in depth about it should allow me to replicate more realistic lighting scenarios.

I began to research into what attributes apply to lighting such as:

-Refraction

-Translucence

-Ambient Occlusion

etc. Just to see what effect lighting had on them, and what they could be used for.

All in all, at this point in time I've probably covered almost all the attributes for all types of lights. Next I'm going to look at the mental ray lighting system, excluding the physical sun and sky, and the physical sun and sky attributes, as I have already gained an indepth knowledge of those attributes and how they work.

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/maya/understanding_lights/part3.html

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/basic_maya_lighting/basic_maya01.php

Unit Introduction

This unit builds directly on the Industry Exercises 1 unit, allowing students to broaden their range of professional animation skills or to develop existing areas to an advanced level. Students also develop more advanced planning and organisational skills essential in the delivery of a completed project within a fixed schedule.

Students will complete two projects in this unit, one can be self‑initiated (negotiated with tutor) or students may choose to revisit an exercise which was not developed fully in the Industry Exercises 1 unit. The second project is an explicit production schedule for the term that demonstrates competent use of scheduling software to model potential outcomes. Student projects must have a clear focus on the development of industry relevant skills, their overall artistic or creative style, and contribute significantly to the demonstration of their employability in their final show reel.

These practical exercises are supplemented by a reflective commentary.

This unit’s aims are:

• To enable students to supplement possible career specialisms within the animation industry through the development of ancillary skills.
• To enable students to further develop portfolios of work demonstrating advanced proficiency in the specialism of their choice.
• To provide experience of establishing and developing personal project schedules and tracking progress towards project completion.
• To further develop critical awareness within the students of their personal skills, and the ability to generate research strategies for continuing enhancement.

This project is designed to work in a supportive context with your Post Production & Visual Effects unit (ANI09204). There are three elements you are required to produce:

1. A technical tutorial, subject to be negotiated with your tutor.

2. An online production schedule, using Shotgun.

3. A blogged individual reflective journal.

1 Tutorial

The main body of your effort (60%) will be directed towards your tutorial. You will negotiate a subject with your tutor, with the clearly defined caveat that this tutorial must be technical in nature, and specific to an animation workflow. You will develop an illustrated step by step tutorial that will enable other animators coming behind you to follow your process and achieve similar results. Your illustrations may be drawn, screen grabs, or audio or video. They must be step by step, and capable of being followed by people less experienced or proficient than yourselves. These tutorials will be hosted in a blogged format and will be coordinated on a portal site to provide you with an archive of relevant technical tutorials to support you in your studies this year and next.

2 Project Schedule

You will be learning how to use project management software, Shotgun in this instance, to develop a production schedule that will be hosted on line and will cover ALL of your time commitments this term, whether it is this project, other units, or your part time jobs or babysitting responsibilities. This is to allow you to develop a sense of how to prioritize your time, manage contingencies when things go wrong, and to know how much your time should cost.

3 Individual Reflective Journal

Your reflective journal is a smaller component this time around, but it will follow previous submission requirements in terms of format, i.e. it is another online journal. This time around it is purely about your particular repertoire of skills, and the things that your self-analysis will reveal you need to be able to do better whether it’s time management, or character rigging. You will be required to find some vacant entry level or junior job positions within the animation industry and use the requirements for successful applicants to those positions as a source for comparison and contrast with your own skills.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

A1: Have a critical understanding of the range of techniques and skills underpinning animation workflows.

Values and Attitudes

B1: The ability to initiate or extend creatively an animation project, and realise it independently, to a professional standard.

Skills (Cognitive and Intellectual)

C1: Critically locate their work in terms of its creative and artistic merits in relation to contemporary practice.

Skills (Subject Specific/Professional)

D1: Confidently apply animation skills and techniques appropriate to the standard expected for an entrant to professional animation or visualization

Skills (Transferable)

E1: Negotiate and conduct an independent study and manage their time and workflow

Students are assessed on:

Individual Reflective Journal

• Evidence of critical reflection on the creative and artistic merits of their work in relation to contemporary practice. (A1, C1)

Exercises 3 and 4

• Evidence of a critical understanding of the breadth and depth of techniques and skills underpinning the animation pipeline. (A1, D1, E1)
• Evidence in the realisation of the projects of systematic application of animation skills and practices to the standard expected for an entrant to professional animation or visualisation. (D1, E1)
• Negotiate and conduct an independent study and independently manage their time and workflow. (B1, E1)
• Initiate or extend creatively an independently realised animation project. (B1, D1, E1)

Assessable Elements	Percentage of Final Grade
Exercise 3 (Tutorial)	60%
Exercise 4 (Production Schedule)	20%
Individual Reflective Journal	20%

Submission Requirements

Exercise 3 (Tutorial)

Based upon your negotiated project to explore a specific animation technique or method, you will communicate the technical processes involved by means of an illustrated, step by step “How To…”tutorial in a blog format. All work that is not your own must be appropriately credited, and all tutorials will be routinely checked for plagiarism, so do not copy and paste from other online tutorials. Your blog should be hosted on Blogspot for sake of expedience and reliability, and will be submitted by URL emailed to jared.taylor@rave.ac.uk. Please do not forget that there is a second, smaller blog that you will submit for your reflective journal.

Exercise 4 (Production Schedule)

Your online production schedule (via Shotgun) should be submitted as a URL emailed to jared.taylor@rave.ac.uk. This schedule will be checked for continual development, as such, you should be saving previous versions of your schedule to prove its continual evolution. It is not enough to cobble one schedule together for the last week of term.

Individual Reflective Journal

This is a small journal, again maintained via a blog, but is distinct from, and smaller than, the tutorial that you will be writing. It focuses on your personal evaluation of your skills in developing the above mentioned tutorial and project schedule. Again, this journal should be hosted on blogspot and the URL sent to jared.taylor@rave.ac.uk

To sum up, you will be emailing the URLs of three distinct components:

1. Tutorial

2. Production Schedule

3. Individual Reflective Journal