The role of the technical artist is to bridge the gap between the issues of the creative, programming and engineer teams in game development. They must possess an equal amount of knowledge about both disciplines to ensure all needs are being met. Because of this they tend to be all-rounders with experience working in the artistic and programming realms.

Innovation in gaming treads a fine line between creative excellence and technical brilliance, making the role of the technical artist key to the success of a title.

Role & responsibilities of a technical artist in the video games industry:

Liaising between heads of programming and design teams
Researching and developing technical tools for a project
Setting up workflows of art production
Supporting artists and engineers in the 3D art pipeline
Assisting in asset performance and validation
Solving complex technical issues during development
Deciding on what software and tools are required for game production
Developing and maintaining resources and pipelines along with programmers
Porting finished art to the game engine
Ensuring final art runs to full visual resolution
Working within the limits of the game engine, curating file sizes, polygon counts and loading speeds
Enforcing standards as outlined by heads of departments
Developing tools and software to execute the needs of the game
Preparing and designing character systems such as skeletons, cloths, effect emitters and ragdoll collision
Optimizing environments and establishing physics barriers
Writing custom software specific to the needs of the game which will work with industry standard scripting languages
Researching and overseeing the implementation of rendering techniques
Developing performance of frame rate and memory
Resolving material errors and collision issues
Monitoring the performance of the game
Maintaining technical documentation
Skills required to become a technical artist
technical artists need to be expert in both the creative and technical fields, two areas which are usually at odds. It takes a particular mindset to be equally talented in both fields.

Video game studios may look for the following skills in a technical artist:

High attention to detail
Excellent communication skills
Career training in VFX
A strong portfolio or demo reel
Solid understanding of art and animation pipelines
Familiarity with game systems and the game development process
Scripting skills
Ability to identify the best tools and software to maximize game delivery
Rendering and post-effects experience
Understanding of rigging and animation
Experience in physics simulations
Shader development experience
High level artistic skills - proportion, color, composition
Creative mindset and ability to overcome technical challenges
Experience in digital art content creation - high and low-poly modeling, unwrapping, baking, texturing, level art, etc
Excellent interpersonal skills in dealing with differences between creative and technical teams
Knowledge of high-end coding languages
What software and tools do technical artists use?
Technical artists must understand the fundamentals of CGI, modeling, animation, special effects software as well as a solid knowledge of platforms such as C++ and Javascript to be able to integrate assets into the game at the highest quality.

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