This is actually a though question to answer, as this is a very broad discipline that is quite young. Even companies that hire Technical Artists are not fully aware of what this discipline encompasses.
My high level answers are: ”A Technical Artist provides technical solutions to artistic problems.” and “A Technical Artist is bridging the gap between every other discipline.” A Technical Artist needs to have an artistic eye, technical understanding and knowledge of theory and practise in art, engineering and even design. Further below, I will source videos discussing this in more depth.
Where did this discipline come from?
From my understanding, the discipline comes from the need of multi disciplinary knowledge and skill. When I started my gamedev journey I often heard that “Generalists” or “Jack-of-all-Traits” are Master of None and useless for production. Which, at the end, was narrow minded as knowledge is not a flat measurement and resulted in Technical Art being one of the highest sought after position to fill in companies.
As stated above, Technical Art is a vast discipline that touches many fields in itself. Across the industries of games, TV/movie, automobile and beyond the significance of these fields change as well. There is no real agreed upon guide what these fields are, but through my experience and talks with other companies and Tech Artists, this is what I have come up with:
(Description of these and fields may expand in the future.)
| Field name | Rough Description |
|---|---|
| Rapid prototyping | setting up interaction tests and gameplay environments. |
| (DCC) Pipeline | asset creation and sustaining a pipeline from concept to finished model in game or beyond |
| Procedural Content | procedural generation and procedural tools. |
| Tools | creating tools inside and/or outside the engine |
| AI Tools | using and setting up AI tools |
| Simulation/Physics | everything physics and simulation related (like destruction) |
| Material and Rendering | everything rendering and shader related |
| UI | implementation and creation of UI elements (eg: special shaders, world space UI features,...) |
| Optimization | performance optimization from graphical elements to code. |
| Research and Development | analysing tools or taking new concepts and structurally breaking it down and recreating it for our purposes. |
| VFX | VFX pipeline and integration in every aspect (from texture and simulation up to custom Niagara scratchpad) |
| Animation | know-how about rigging and animation pipeline outside and inside of the engine |
So what actual skills do you need? That is a bit tricky to answer, because you need skills in programming, 2d art, maths, character art, animation, hard surface, organic modelling, writing, production (and probably some more).
“But that is a whole studio worth of skills!”
Yes it is. But you have to see that not every of that skill is fully needed as it depends on which of the fields a Technical Artist pursues as their main fields.
So the needed skills also depend on the fields (and subfields) you tackle. Before you ask, yes, you might have seen people on the Internet that seem to be awesome at everyone of these skills, but that is not the norm and you should not stress out about it!