Hi! I'm Caroline. I’ve always had lot of things wanna to say, but social media platforms aren’t really suitable for me to share. On my personal website, I can share these things without knowing who might be viewing them.
Well, let’s talk about my art journey first. I’ve been studying art for almost 7 years. And in my high school, I received excellent traditional fine art education at the top art school in China. My original plan was to pursue a career in game concept art. My high school life went pretty smoothly. Simply speaking, for the first two years (my high school was a four-year program), I mostly spend time on social activities — I didn’t like studying or art that years. But in the last two years, I shifted my focus to academics. My professional art skills consistently ranked near the top in every 'Teaching Inspection'(My school's activities, each student will hang out their artworks follow the grades from first to last). Oh, and one of my artwork was even collected by my school. As for basic academics(Math, English etc course), I found them easy to study. In my final year of high school, we were preparing for the university entrance exams. Although I initially wanted to attend the Beijing Film Academy, about three months before the exam, I suddenly changed my mind and decided to study abroad. I tend to make quick decisions like that. So, I shifted my focus to preparing a portfolio for studying abroad, occasionally studying content for domestic entrance exams, but in the end, I receive an offer from the Animation Department of Beijing Film Academy!!! I never expected that I can receice. Anyway, that's how my high school years passed very smoothly. For me, 2022 was a year of both happiness and good fortune.
Then came to 2023, the year I decided to become a Technical Artist. This year was a bit chaotic, and many bad things happened. Of course, these things were only a small part of what influenced my personal mindset shift. Honestly, I’ve already forgotten why I first mentioned the Technical Artist track, but I clearly realized that heading in this track has made my life much more fulfilling. This has to do with my personality—I’m someone who easily gets bored with things. When I feel bored, my mood tends to deteriorate. For example, with drawing, I remember that at a certain point, it no longer felt like a passion, but something I should do because I was an artist. If I didn’t draw, I wouldn’t be an artist anymore, or I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the industry. So in 2023, I created a lot of things I wasn’t personally interested in, which made me feel bored.
But the Technical Art track is different because there’s so much things should learn to me. Coming from a fine art background, I find this track extremely challenging. I’ve been learning a lot about computer graphics and coding. I still remember back in January 2024, the first month I started learning Technical Art, I was crazily self-studying the Games101 course. Starting with computer graphics was a bit hardcore for the beginning of my learning journey, so I still haven’t finished the course. But it’s precisely because of this foundation in computer graphics and logical abstract thinking that I became deeply curious about this track. As I write this blog, it’s been about six months since I started self-studying. Since the Technical Art track has so many subfields, I’ve dabbled in a lot during these six months. I started with Unity’s BRP pipeline, searching for resources and writing all kinds of basic shaders. Then I moved on to the Unity URP pipeline, writing PBR and stylized PBR shaders. Next, I focused on 3D basics, learning to model in Maya, creating materials in Substance Painter, and now diving into procedural materials by learning Substance Designer. How do I put it... it’s been tough. I often feel like I’m learning all by myself, without a teacher to guide me (due to the nature of this track). Most of my friends are either artists, so I don’t have many people to talk to about this. But as I’ve learned more and more, I’ve found a point of interest in procedural generation (specifically procedural materials, as I haven’t started with Houdini yet). Procedural materials, or rather the Substance Designer workflow, seem incredibly suited for people transitioning from art to Technical Art. This direction has been the most interesting process I’ve encountered so far. Take the works I’m currently making, for example — what you see is not the result of modeling or drawing but rather achieved through various nodes and logical-mathematical thinking, using a node-based system to compute and arrive at the final 3D and material effects. One thing about this workflow that feels magical to me is the "0-1"map, or in 2D art, the "grayscale" map. A small range, or a very simple black-and-white image, can reflect all the information of the real world. When I used to draw, I would express a real object through techniques like color, light and shadow, and brush strokes, etc. But in the PCG process, I can replace those artistic techniques with scientific thinking to achieve the same representation. I think that’s so wonderful!
Hmm... I think that about sums up my recent updates. You might ask, “What comes after your realization that the PCG workflow is so wonderful?” Well, for that, you’ll have to check out my portfolio report! My next blog post will be a small tutorial on how to create a wool knit texture, which will also celebrate the launch of my website. Feel free to keep following my blog — I always have lots of things wanna share, and I’ve finally found a place to share them. Thanks for reading my first blog post! So let me end this post with a phrase often used when saying goodbye:
“See you, have a nice day!”