For a summer break, I worked at Tintash as an intern.

I apprenticed under Mukarram Shafique, then a 3D solutions architect, who helped me learn 3DS Max. Coming into the internship, I had experience with blender and 3D art, but only as a side hobby. I was still too programming-oriented to apply myself towards art. While I waited for assignments Mukarram Shafique gave me exercises to learn 3D art from a different perspective.

I was introduced to the asset pipeline used for a certain 3D web app and identified several areas that bottlenecked it. One in particular was the VRay to PBR conversion. I created a MaxScript plugin to streamline this process. Then we ran into limitations where my programming background came into play.

The bump to normal incident

As part of the conversion, artists had to take a bump map from the VRay renderer and make an equivalent normal map. They would usually do it inside 3DS Max by baking the normal map from the original model.

They had tried before to use MaxScript to automate this project, but no dice. At first I created an OpenGL utility to take care of it, but I was told it was not extensible at all by the designers. If at some point, someone wanted to extend it, they'd have to find someone with C++/OpenGL experience. So we compromised and settled on Godot, see Bump to Normal.

In the end, I gained a taste of the niche I liked: "3D applications to take on weirdly complex tasks in industrial applications". I'd later go on to seek a job at Bricksol with this exact requirement.