AI can "Enhance your creativity rather than hinder it," says technical artist Vishal Ranga

"Disowned was made three years ago in Unreal Engine 4. Back then, we did not have Nanite or Lumen, but it had ray-traced shadows and reflections as its brand new feature. I wanted to try it out. It was possible to build UE4 from source with Nvidia RTX features enabled, which gave me access to Dynamic Global Illumination. I used these along with Unreal’s then new in-engine modeling tools to bring Disowned to life."

"I chose to use ray traced dynamic global illumination with RTX cards to achieve natural light bounces. Without GI, I would have not got any light bounces. Dark areas would have been much darker, making it very unnatural. Ray-traced shadows play a crucial role in elevating the scene, especially with self-shadows on the leaves, enhancing its overall realism. DLSS helped with maintaining performance of my scene when I cranked up the resolution."

"In the Disowned’ project, I wanted to try Unreal's then new ray traced GI lighting capabilities. Along with it, I also wanted to show how we can leverage the modelling tools within the engine to create such content without using any external modelling software. 

"Art wise, I wanted to make a swamp scene, but not a dull, uneasy, eerie one. Instead, I wanted it to be bright and abandoned. I thought it would be a new way to show swamps, different from what we usually see. By making it abandoned, I wanted to express that it is not all bright and happy either."

"There are a lot of great tools out there that artists use, but today it looks like Unreal is where everyone brings their game creation to, in the end, and there is a perfectly good reason for it. Unreal Engine 5's rendering features are highly advanced and they just work out of the box or with just a click of a button. 

"This empowers artists to bring their visions to life with exceptional quality and realism - without having to deal with heavy technical complexities. The best part is, Unreal keeps evolving and every improvement makes game-dev better, easier, quicker. What people create using these features combined with their skills are truly wonderful to see. It is inspiring!"

"I used Ray Traced Shadows, GI, and Reflection. Also used DLSS throughout the project. It really helped while rendering when I set screen size to 200% to get crispier details. 

As said earlier, this was three years ago, so even back then RTX allowed Unreal Engine 4 users to get dynamic GI which was not available in Unreal 4 then. Although today Unreal5 has Lumen’s Dynamic GI, I still use hardware ray-tracing which requires RTX GPUs, to produce high-quality, natural-looking results with soft shadows and accurately computed AO."

"Most of my projects' intention will be to try out some new tech and showcase my attempt. The idea will usually be to explore 'better ways to do things' first, and then the beautification part. The 'can we make good looking art with this process?' comes after. 

"This is something I genuinely enjoy – it keeps my passion for innovation alive. Getting excited and keeping up with new tech not only keeps me on the edge but also inspires me to think of more creative ways to make art content."

"When it comes to art content creation, AI will never give you exactly what you want because it cannot think like how you think with your artistic sense. But it can assist your processes by streamlining workflows and automating repetitive tasks. 

"As a Technical Artist, I personally use the free version of ChatGPT to help me write some quick automation scripts like asset renamers and folder creators to help with speeding up my workflows. Although 99% of the time the results will be ridiculously wrong, and the scripts won't work, I will be able to learn how to approach the script and quickly modify it or write one myself. 

"I also use it as a search engine to learn things quickly these days. In addition, we all often use tools / softwares that uses AI. For example, Substance Alchemist leverages AI algorithms to generate procedural textures or extract textures from images."

"It does not matter what type of game art you are into, I would stress and tell you that you should be very strong and confident with the basics. While learning something, make sure you apply it practically and take the time to really experience the highs and lows of the creation process. 

"The games industry is very competitive, but the community is actually very good. Get into the forums, the Discord channels, Facebook communities and interact with people – this will help you in many ways. 

"Due to recent mass lay-offs, it is very difficult for beginners to get game jobs because you'll be competing with all the experienced people. Although demoralising, you can still think out of the box and make 'that one project' that is mind blowing – something you are very proud of, something that gives you an edge. A lot of companies would consider your skillset, artistic sense and portfolio quality, more than your number of years in experience."

"Despite how the industry is, If I am starting now, my focus would be to learn and experience as much as possible by being a part of a serious dev-team. Getting into an indie team would be perfect because this is where you will learn the 'process' and fundamentals. You will be working on different parts of game dev learning from everything, everyday. 

"Later if you switch to a AAA setting, you will be a 'small, yet vital part of a big machine', working with much larger fully funded teams filled with seasoned devs. With freelance, although it pays well, I would personally not prefer it because as an external contractor I don’t really get the 'sense of ownership' on the projects I am working on."

"No matter what app, tool or package you use, the most important thing is the actual basic fundamentals of any and every topic. Only after that, you use tools to implement and showcase your art skills. 

"In my opinion, for a game artist, your portfolio should be all about showing how well you know your craft, not how well you can use a tool - that is for technical artists.

"Learning tools will make you proficient with getting your work done, but being artistic, for example having a sense of 3D space – for environment artists – or knowing the anatomy – for character artists – are the parts that make you a good artist. 

"With that said, you should choose whatever tool that you are comfortable with, and learn it as you go. Do not be afraid to switch tools to try out different ones. If you ask me for recommendations, I would suggest using Unreal Engine 5 as your engine to build, render and showcase your artwork because if you start learning it, you will be exposed to learn a lot of concepts and features that will be very useful for your career as an artist."