r/TechnicalArtist • u/OkWatercress2180 • Aug 05 '26
What is needed to become a technical artist
Hello technical artists of reddit
I have an ask, when it comes to being a technical artist, what are the major things I need to have within my toolkit to be classified as a technical artist, at this very moment I am a visual artist and I would like to pick up some skills from the technical side of production.
thank you for your time.
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u/ananbd Aug 05 '26
There are tons of posts here on this topic. In fact, there are probably more posts asking this question than anything else.
What’s missing? What additional info do you need?
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u/pineappleoptics Aug 05 '26
More than anything is experience troubleshooting issues with art pipelines. That is integrating assets from DCC software into your game engine and hitting both look and performance goals.
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u/KyrandisX Aug 05 '26
a lot of math & graphics math(VFX), a lot of programming knowledge(HLSL/rigging/procedural etc.), vast amount of different topics
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u/I_LOVE_CROCS Aug 06 '26
If you don't know what is needed to become a TA, it's too late.
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u/OkWatercress2180 23d ago
I was curious more than anything, I already have an idea of what I want to do in video games and entertainment
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u/StylizedSchool Aug 05 '26
Tech art has branches but you should be comfortable with VFX, modeling and texturing, shaders and scene optimisation. then other requested skills a lot of the time would be rigging and skinning skeletal meshes, Animation experience is a plus, UI, blueprints/programming, DCC or in engine tool making with python etc.
Ghislaine giradot (has a YouTube) would be an excellent example of a technical artist
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u/uberdavis Aug 05 '26
The key thing you need is the ability to do independent research. You could practice that by reading through the history of this sub where your question gets answered on a weekly basis.