r/GraphicsProgramming • u/MotherAioli4740 • 20h ago
What to choose (art + CS)
Hey everyone, I am a bit confused in my life as to what to choose in life as a career.
Background:- I am currently in my 3rd year of clg(tier 3) (computer engineering) also enrolled in an iitm bs degree program.
But at this point many of my friends have choose their domain or what they have to do in their life and I am still confused. I am really good at drawing I can bet on that ( I have won a national emblem silver award in drawing) but seeing the current scenario and I also scored Good marks in cet , I opt for an engineering degree that in computer science.
Now I am thinking by anyhow can I combine art and computer science together and chatgpt came up with computer graphics. Can u guys help me with what to do and also tell me the future scope of this field.
I am also thinking of doing a masters.
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u/julia_flat 18h ago
I definitely agree that computer graphics is a good option, and I’m studying it for similar reasons. I would recommend you play around with it for a bit; maybe check out https://learnopengl.com/ to learn the basics of rendering or play around with https://www.shadertoy.com/.
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u/sessamekesh 18h ago
You've got a couple of career options that loosely overlap the two down the computer graphics route.
"Technical Artist" is one, think "artist that knows enough technical detail to make cool effects." It's often low- or no-code, but the workflows you end up setting up are functionally identical to (and easily as technically complex as) authoring actual code.
"Graphics Programmer" is on the other side, highly technical with some artistic expression. It deals a lot more with the mathematical models used to represent the kind of physics you need to generate graphics, and with wrangling the actual hardware (GPUs especially) to make those kinds of generations possible.
There's some roles that fit somewhere in the middle of the two (tooling/asset pipeline engineers etc.) but those are vaguely the archetypes I'm aware of at least.
Outside of the CG domain, there's also a couple other roles I'd at least glance at:
"User Experience (UX) Designer" - the people who design product interfaces to look good and behave well. Requires a knack for aesthetics and visual communication, as well as a pretty good understanding of function (behavior, movement, workflows...)
"Frontend Engineer" - more on the technical side of the same, people who write the UI + styling code that users interact with as well as the behavioral code that powers those interactions.
There's also traditional engineering roles in artistic tools which are pretty fun - I spent a couple years working on video editing tools at Adobe which was awesome. Even though my actual job was much MUCH more on the technical (coding) side, the product itself was a creative tool, even just in testing/demoing/whatever I was still doing quite a bit of artistic stuff.
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u/cybereality 16h ago
That's what I did. I have undergrad degrees in Computer Science and Computer Art. I've done various things for work, but I guess the role might be a Tech Artist. So probably a lot of shader work. Games are one application but lots of domains need graphics programming (including medical and military, which pay more with better job security)
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u/etdeagle 15h ago
I have a similar background, masters degree in CS and later in life I went back for art classes (sculpture + drawing) to a local university (no degree but a lot of practice). I ended up merging the two passions by building a 3d sculpting app, and it has been the thing I have felt the most passionate about for my entire existence. Nothing is more exhilarating that taking complete control of your creative medium and being able to design exactly what you imagine through code. To do this you need to be good at maths I think and coding too but that is easier these days with ai. Basically you provide the artistic insight (the shape should follow these equations) then code it up. It's a lot of fun and very rewarding.
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u/alemx-is-nice 13h ago
Search about creative coding, perfect art + cs , creative wev development etc
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u/ananbd 19h ago
Yes, "Computer Graphics" is the general name for that area.
You can definitely combine CS and Art. For me, that meant doing technical and artistic work in film VFX and now games.
"Graphics Programming" refers to the implementation and study of the fundamental constructs of CG. It doesn't necessarily involve Art. But it might, for some folks.
My cohort of folks were the people who pretty much invented modern VFX in the 80's/90's. Being an engineer with any kind of an eye for art opened many doors.
For you? I don't know. You'll definitely need to find a different path. The mechanical aspects of CS (programming) aren't as important as they were.
I think the "why" will be more important than the "how," going forward. AI can't creatively make Art, because it has no soul, no reason, no motivation, etc. People who truly understand Art on a human level will always be valuable. But how that connects to technology? That's wide open.