Luc Leture (Virtuos): "The role of technical artist".

A 2016 graduate of RUBIKA, Luc Leture is a Technical Artist at Virtuos. He talks about his experience and daily life in the video game industry.

How did your job search go when you finished your studies?

Since graduating from RUBIKA, thanks to my end-of-study internship and the network I built up at school, everything has followed naturally from a professional point of view! I've met so many people that I'm now working as a technical artist at Virtuos on a permanent contract.

Can you tell us a bit about the job of Technical Artist?

If I had to sum up, I'd say that the Technical Artist is the person who will solve all the artists' technical problems and all the programmers' artistic problems.

What's a typical day/week?

A typical day for me starts with what’s called a “stand-up meeting,” where my entire team gathers outside the open space to get an overview of each person’s current work. It’s a chance to check in and track the tasks everyone is working on. After that, I head back to the open space to work on my tasks, which can include fixing bugs, creating shaders, or improving GPU or CPU performance. Additionally, I archive everything I do daily, explaining my processes on a shared platform that is extremely useful for the studio’s collective memory. At the end of the week, I have an individual check-in with my producer to define my tasks for the following week.

What do you like best about your job?

What excites me about my job is that each day can be completely different from the one before. In my role at a co-development studio, I encounter a wide variety of games within the same year. Moreover, the technical artist plays a significant role in the visual beauty of the game. It's a key position that has a real impact on the player’s experience and presents increasingly exciting challenges for improvement and refinement.

Can you tell us about a particular project? A project you're particularly proud to have worked on?

There are several, but too few that I can talk about today! In the year and a half I spent at Virtuos, I participated in three major AAA projects and worked on the prototype of another big game. I can share about the Assassin’s Creed Liberation project, where we focused on recreating all the game’s materials to achieve a realistic physical rendering.

What qualities does it take to become a Technical Artist?

A good mathematical mindset, or at least a desire to develop one. Additionally, a lot of concentration and a willingness to continue learning and renewing oneself to keep up with the evolution of the technologies we work with. A keen sense of detail and aesthetics is also essential.

What advice would you give to a young person wanting to go down this road?

Remain proactive and up to date on the software and programming languages with which a tech art is confronted.

Is going abroad a plus, especially in Montreal?

An experience abroad is always enriching. Montreal is a hub of incredible opportunities. Today, all the biggest studios are located there. At Virtuos, we work with studios based all over the world, and this interest in what is happening across studios globally is of real importance.

Are there many job opportunities in this profession?

Without a doubt, yes! Since my LinkedIn profile shows that I'm a Virtuos technical artist, I've been receiving an average of 2 job offers a week all year round for positions in France and abroad.

What is the salary range for a beginner and after 5 years of XP?

In France, we have the AFJV platform, an excellent tool for providing information on salary scales in the video game industry.

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