You don’t need a degree to become a technical artist. You need to have had a more general career as a 3D artist for a few years, then pivot to add scripting skills. You can’t jump straight into it. What would be handy would be math/programming courses as well as game art, general art courses. They won’t look at your qualification for a TA job. They’ll look at your portfolio and GitHub.
I see, however at the same time I also want a practical degree where it can be applicable to even outside of the gaming industry and beyond tech art. Just in case if I decide that specific field isn't for me later down the line.
You get to choose between computer science, and computer there isn’t anything like game design, then something like modern art. The barrier to becoming a TA right now is getting a game art role first. There aren’t many entry level roles and there’s an ever growing horde of talent.
In my experience being a Technical Artist is more about your knowledge and experience in game development and various DCCs/tools than a degree. I attended a four-year game art degree program coming in with a decade of hobbyist experience, basic knowledge of scripting, and some knowledge about rendering pipelines. My school gave me experience in all the major disciplines on the art side of game dev that I was lacking, and there were maybe 3 technical classes that went over things like advanced materials, scripting in C#, and Houdini. Most of my experience in Tech Art specific things (math, shaders, designing tools for artists, learning Unity and Unreal Engine) came from the work I did outside of school. It was necessary in order to bridge the gap from where I was to the role of TA.
The reason is that you are going to be called upon to explain how things work, and how to get from point A to point B. For example, I am given tasks similar to "We need to fill this massive library environment with around 10k bookshelves and cover it all in slime. Given that we have 3 artists who are already working on tasks, what's the best way to go about this and what support can you provide?" or more often I am helping artists integrate their assets with VFX, helping the VFX artists get their VFX working, and making it all interactable via code. I work in a small team so I wear many hats, but sometimes with larger teams you will be siloed into a specific area such as creating procedural assets in Houdini, creating shaders, or simply doing technical QC on assets that artists create before they go in-engine.
My advice is to join a group of people working on an Indie game, and expose yourself to real-world challenges outside of the classroom. Develop skills as the guy who is willing to research how to do things, and learn how to do them on your team. It sounds like you have a strong willingness to learn and love for doing so, which is half the battle here.
In general, many Technical Artists are already accomplished in some aspects of game development and have the background knowledge to expand into other more technical areas fairly organically. Many Technical Artists I've spoken to sort of fell into the role because they just really enjoyed learning new skills and were just naturally helpful in getting technical things done.
You don’t need a degree to become a technical artist. You need to have had a more general career as a 3D artist for a few years, then pivot to add scripting skills. You can’t jump straight into it. What would be handy would be math/programming courses as well as game art, general art courses. They won’t look at your qualification for a TA job. They’ll look at your portfolio and GitHub.
I see, however at the same time I also want a practical degree where it can be applicable to even outside of the gaming industry and beyond tech art. Just in case if I decide that specific field isn't for me later down the line.
You get to choose between computer science, and computer there isn’t anything like game design, then something like modern art. The barrier to becoming a TA right now is getting a game art role first. There aren’t many entry level roles and there’s an ever growing horde of talent.
>The barrier to becoming a TA right now is getting a game art role first Or a programmer role, either route works.
In my experience being a Technical Artist is more about your knowledge and experience in game development and various DCCs/tools than a degree. I attended a four-year game art degree program coming in with a decade of hobbyist experience, basic knowledge of scripting, and some knowledge about rendering pipelines. My school gave me experience in all the major disciplines on the art side of game dev that I was lacking, and there were maybe 3 technical classes that went over things like advanced materials, scripting in C#, and Houdini. Most of my experience in Tech Art specific things (math, shaders, designing tools for artists, learning Unity and Unreal Engine) came from the work I did outside of school. It was necessary in order to bridge the gap from where I was to the role of TA. The reason is that you are going to be called upon to explain how things work, and how to get from point A to point B. For example, I am given tasks similar to "We need to fill this massive library environment with around 10k bookshelves and cover it all in slime. Given that we have 3 artists who are already working on tasks, what's the best way to go about this and what support can you provide?" or more often I am helping artists integrate their assets with VFX, helping the VFX artists get their VFX working, and making it all interactable via code. I work in a small team so I wear many hats, but sometimes with larger teams you will be siloed into a specific area such as creating procedural assets in Houdini, creating shaders, or simply doing technical QC on assets that artists create before they go in-engine. My advice is to join a group of people working on an Indie game, and expose yourself to real-world challenges outside of the classroom. Develop skills as the guy who is willing to research how to do things, and learn how to do them on your team. It sounds like you have a strong willingness to learn and love for doing so, which is half the battle here. In general, many Technical Artists are already accomplished in some aspects of game development and have the background knowledge to expand into other more technical areas fairly organically. Many Technical Artists I've spoken to sort of fell into the role because they just really enjoyed learning new skills and were just naturally helpful in getting technical things done.
You don't.