{"id":14,"date":"2011-03-09T00:13:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T00:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/?p=14"},"modified":"2011-03-09T02:06:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T02:06:03","slug":"why-all-games-artists-should-learn-how-to-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/2011\/03\/09\/why-all-games-artists-should-learn-how-to-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Why all games artists should learn how to code"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s nice making funky 3D models, isn’t it? Sitting there painting them with your lovely graphics tablet, crafting the high-resolution source model from which all that glorious real-time lighting will derive? Yeah, it’s fun that bit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not so much the bit where you have to UV the whole damned thing up, or fiddle around with all those annoying vertices around the shoulder so that when the guy raises his arm just a little bit<\/em> everything doesn’t screw up and look shit. Or the bit where something goes wrong on export and the whole thing appears in game as a big bag of spikes.<\/p>\n

Actually, scratch that last one – that’s pretty amusing actually, just as long as the deadline is waaaay <\/em>over there, somewhere.<\/p>\n

So forget 3D art – back to basics, 2D… click… click… click… click… click… OH GOD I’M STILL ON FRAME ONE.<\/p>\n

No, it’s no good. On balance, fun = (good bits \/ bad bits)<\/em> works out pretty much\u00a0indistinguishable\u00a0from zero. It all sucks. Worst of all, if you’re one of those jack-of-all-trades artist types, you’ll find yourself\u00a0immeasurably\u00a0useful during all the sucky bits and horribly out-classed when the good bits finally arrive.<\/p>\n

Witness all those fellow artists enjoying themselves being better than you and, oh have a problem do we? Hand it over to muggins here and I’ll sort out the tedious bit for you so you can get back to having fun.<\/p>\n

So. Why all games artists should learn how to code.<\/p>\n

I don’t mean start writing 3D engines or anything complicated. Just a nice little bit of code. A little biscuit to compliment the tea of art production, if you will.<\/p>\n

Firstly and obviously, it doesn’t hurt to understand just a squidge of the sorts of things going on under the bonnet. It might help stop you naming assets “Copy of Bob(1).Max” or trying to check files into AlienBrain which are stored on your desktop.<\/p>\n

But more importantly, writing little programs isn’t half a blessed relief from the click… click… click… of pixel art or the tedium of moving UV co-ordinates around while your eyes go funny from staring at the checkerboard you’ve temporarily assigned to the mesh.<\/p>\n

And not only that, but with C# a free download away, MaxScript or MelScript sitting there dormant while you’re modelling, you can write something useful<\/em>. Something that can save you<\/em> time and remove just a smidge of that tedium and tip the balance\u00a0a little back towards the good bits.<\/p>\n

And now more than ever, it couldn’t be easier to write applications even if you don’t know much about writing applications. And there’s this thing called The Internet where there’s like, loads of tutorials and stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s nice making funky 3D models, isn’t it? Sitting there painting them with your lovely graphics tablet, crafting the high-resolution source model from which all that glorious real-time lighting will derive? Yeah, it’s fun that bit. Not so much the bit where you have to UV the whole damned thing up, or fiddle around with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p326tq-e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theindiestone.com\/binky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}