Re: The entry competence level for graphics programmers

Graphics programming is about geometry and lighting. Graphics APIs are
simply for getting information about both to the graphics hardware for
rendering, so if you know how to use one of them, it's a small step (~1-2
weeks of experimenting on the side) to being productive with all of them (I
am counting DX9 and DX11 as separate APIs here). 

 

More important than what APIs you know, will be:

 

.         Are you, if not fluent, at least familiar with, linear algebra and
computational geometry?

.         Have you any experience with optimizing rendering performance? Can
you at least root-cause graphics performance bottlenecks?

.         How does shadowing work, and what experience have you had with
shadowing algorithms?

.         Can you explain (with reasonable detail) the graphics rendering
pipeline?

 

If you don't have acceptable answers to the above, don't expect to do well
in the interview, because you *will* be asked questions about them.

 

Regarding shader programming, you will want to have had practical experience
with programming non-trivial shaders from scratch (meaning, not copied from
a text or from the web), and you'll probably want to have examples of same,
and be able to explain what they are doing and why you chose (a) particular
coding construct(s). 

 

Greg

 

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tommy
Brett
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:33 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Sweng-Gamedev] The entry competence level for graphics programmers

 

Hello ladies and gents,

 

I graduated 5 years ago with the intention of becoming a game developer, my
career got sidetracked and although this sidetrack led to an ultimately
comfortable existence and a lot of life lessons learned, I'm now at the
point where my career as a Flash / Flex developer is stagnating. It may also
be coming to a forced end as more and more of my employer's clients move
away from Flash each month. I've been keeping up with the times, and doing a
lot of graphics programming on the side using nVidia's CG shader programming
language and OpenGL. 

 

I'm looking for a little insight into what skill level you expect entry
level, and reasonably competent graphics programmers (i.e. qualifying as
something above 'junior' in their job title, even if that's just the
omission of the word) to be at, and the difference between the two. By skill
level, I mean knowledge base, for example implementing certain shader
routines (e.g. normal mapping) and grasp of mathematics. Before I enter the
job search proper, I want to make absolutely sure that my skills are in fact
up to par as I understand that graphics programming positions in particular
are highly competitive. For example, I know that one area I lack skill in is
using shader functions built for DirectX 10 and above - by virtue of me
still using an XP machine (GPU is DX10 capable though, reeeally need to
upgrade), and I suspect that not being knowledgeable about, say,
tessellation using the GPU would swiftly kill any application I would make
for a graphics programmer role that paid more than free lunches. 

 

On the other hand, this may not be the case, which is why I'm sending this
out to you better informed guys for a little feedback.

 

- Tommy

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