What does a lead real time artist actually do?
In this feature, we take a look inside the working lives of people whose job titles often warrant the question: ‘but what do you actually do?’ This week, we speak to Pepin Portingale, lead real-time artist at Spinifex.
When the words “real-time artist” are mentioned, many different images may immediately jump to mind. Does it involve a kind of wizard who alters time and space and then throws it onto a canvas to make art? Or perhaps nothing comes to mind and instead there is the assumption that this title is merely a few industry buzzwords that mean very little.
So what is real-time? Maybe the wizard analogy isn’t that far off. Real-time involves a suite of technologies that have been used in the gaming world for decades. High powered gaming engines allow the creation of experiences and virtual worlds that can be experienced as either interactive or in a passive way. Other programmes like Maya and after-effects may still be part of the pipeline, but they are integrated into a real-time scene. This allows everything from real-time rendering, thus providing quicker and easier ways for a client to review and request changes, to walking around a scene and interacting with elements within the virtual world.
