Senior Technical Artist, Calvin Bryson, moved from Austin, Texas to come and work at the TurboSquid office in New Orleans. With him, Calvin brought years of experience in developing pipelines for modeling, lighting, and rendering of 3D scenes, establishing guidelines on everything from edge loop placement to layer organization.
What does your day typically consist of?
I usually come into work before 9:00 A.M. to grab a bowl of cereal from our cereal bar and sort through all the emails waiting for me. That’s about where my typical day stops. The rest of the day varies pretty widely. Some days I’m helping artists through technical issues they’ve encountered while trying to reach a specific result. Other days I create training materials such as tutorial videos and documentation. I also do research and development on modeling techniques, shader creation, and rendering efficiency. It is more fun than it sounds.
What do you do with your time outside of work?
I try to stay active outside of work to offset being at a desk all day. I play Ultimate Frisbee once or twice a week at Lafreniere Park. I was competing in an Indoor Coed Soccer league before that. I have a strong passion for customizing cars and motorcycles which can be an all consuming addiction any motorhead can understand. It’s pretty common to see me bugging around town on my custom bobber. Honestly, I have more hobbies than you can shake a stick at. I just try to rotate them out every now and then to keep things interesting.
You’ve been involved in development, documentation, and training for the CheckMate Pro v2 specification. How does specification development compare with the pipeline development you’ve done previously?
Whenever a specification or pipeline is first laid in place it is created to be the ideal scenario. As things progress deficiencies may present themselves. All the feedback has to be considered as well. Then with all things considered we can determine whether the bar is genuinely set too high or if with some training it is reachable. Things are always in flux as we have to adapt to balance the skill levels of artists with the demands for content.
What do you like best about working at TurboSquid?
Turbosquid is very relaxed, compared to all the companies I’ve worked at before. The environment isn’t a high strung production environment forcing me to crunch the hours away. I get to see the sunlight. Everyone tries to keep things fun and friendly. Also, I’m a big fan of the spontaneous Nerf or Lasertag shootouts that may happen at the end of the workday.
What is your favorite model on the site?
I am a big car and cartoon enthusiast. My favorite style of 3D is cartoony proportions with more realistic shading. This stubby Porsche just puts a smile on my face.
Just one more thing about you…
If only I had Tony Stark’s resources… all the awesome things I could build.