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What to learn to be a graphics programmer

blog.demofox.org

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Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#111

Post by tayo42 »

sph wrote: post #28
KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

I really dislike people that got into a thing and then try to discourage others. “Don’t be like me! I wasted my entire life” which is bullshit from a jaded person that lost passion. Telling people to stay away from graphics programming is not how to entice tomorrow’s John Carmack. So here’s another perspective. If all you have done is web apps and Kubernetes, for example, do get into graphics programming. The feedbac…

That sounds nice, but we need to make money and there aren't alot of opportunities. I'd love to get away from web and infra nonsense but,in The right domain id even do it for a pay cut. Hobby work won't get you a job

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#112

Post by qingcharles »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

Right. Most of the clever stuff that Carmack is famous for moved from software into hardware.

By argument about not getting into graphics programming is different -- are 3D engines, with their vertices and textures, going to even exist a few years from now? Or will everything be rendered directly by an AI world model? How much code will a game contain, or will it simply exist in a series of cleverly-worded prompts?

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#113

Post by dylan604 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #15

Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming: I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced: The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive. Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a…

> "Where is todays Jon Carmack?" - he was famous for squeezing everything out of the hardware,

Spinning that another way, there's Bill Gates (not sure of the authenticity though) saying something along the lines of why would he pay to spend that kind of time when CPUs/RAM/HDDs are getting faster/cheaper; users can just upgrade. If we determine which method is more successful based on their worth...

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#115

Post by qingcharles »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #101

I had some difficulties making sense of _color_ in context of graphics programming, especially transfer functions (sometimes misleadingly called tone mapping). Good article on color management in general, which has a great intersection with foundations needed for graphics programming: https://chrisbrejon.com/cg-cinematography/chapter-1-color-ma...

Color is so difficult. That's a good article. A graphics programmer should absolutely have an understanding of color. It's getting really hard now that games also implement HDR features, which few can understand. Great video on the problems here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hAVA6_Sczs

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#116

Post by jplusequalt »

playorizaya wrote: post #77
SirHackalot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why outsource my learning to Al? The whole point is the joy of the process. I could easily take a photo of a scene (since the inception of photography) instead of learning to paint it, but I would gain no skills through that. People still paint. I'm just tired, boss... I yearn for a past when we didn't have to end every conversation with a disclaimer about Al taking over.

Yeah depends what/why you wanna do. As a kid I wanted to make games when I got older, I always saw learning to program as a means to that end. It wasn’t until I was deep into my career that I started developing all these preferences and ego and suddenly caring about the craft of the craft - specializing in work I never imagined spending so much time and energy on, career aspects I never meant to work into my personal…

>We’ll get great films, games, stories, and research because of this stuff.

If you were the kind of person who could create great art, then you would have found a way to make that art happen before LLMs were made.

Sorry if that comes off as harsh, but it's true. Too many people are convinced that an AI is suddenly going to skyrocket them from the ground floor to the ceiling of a craft. It won't.

Accept that there are no shortcuts to mastery. Accept that ideas are cheap, and execution is what matters. Accept that a large portion of people find it repugnant to engage with generative art.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#117

Post by Toqoz_ »

bsder wrote: post #57
sph wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really dislike people that got into a thing and then try to discourage others. “Don’t be like me! I wasted my entire life” which is bullshit from a jaded person that lost passion. Telling people to stay away from graphics programming is not how to entice tomorrow’s John Carmack. So here’s another perspective. If all you have done is web apps and Kubernetes, for example, do get into graphics programming. The feedbac…

> I really dislike people that got into a thing and then try to discourage others. “Don’t be like me! I wasted my entire life” which is bullshit from a jaded person that lost passion. Telling people to stay away from graphics programming is not how to entice tomorrow’s John Carmack. Given that almost everyone who wants to be a "graphics programmer" is also somehow gaming industry adjacent, it is extremely fair to war…

> Second, "learning graphics programming" is like "learning phone programming", you spend more time fighting godawful software infrastructure more than you do actual programming. AI actually kind of helps this, but it doesn't completely remove the fact that 80% of your knowledge has a half-life of 18-24 months.

What kind of knowledge are you talking about here? learnopengl.com is still relevant today for its technical knowledge of fundamental graphics techniques, in spite of OpenGL itself slowly dying. The knowledge itself is overwhelmingly transferable to whatever modern graphics API you’re using.

With mobile development, I can see that you’re mostly learning surface level tools and APIs, which get changed frequently as a new iOS version comes out. But with graphics it’s actually the opposite — most large features come with new hardware, and because most of your customers are generally using older hardware, you can’t even use those new features until the majority of users have upgraded and support it (usually with a new console generation).

Regardless of what you think of the games industry, graphics programmers are highly in demand and paid relatively very well. It’s hard and there’s a lot of surface area to cover to really be excellent, but the knowledge is relevant, longstanding, and rewarding IMO.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#118

Post by andai »

Animats wrote: post #107

Do you want to make games, or do 3D engine programming? If you want to make games, use an existing engine. Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, and Bevy are good choices. You'll learn the higher level issues of graphics, not how to push pixels around. The real problem is making it fun. If you want to do 3D engine programming, be aware that there are too many bad game engines. In Rust land, where I am, there are three failed…

Two years? Why does it take two years?

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#119

Post by TheSamFischer »

andai wrote: post #118
Animats wrote: post #107

Do you want to make games, or do 3D engine programming? If you want to make games, use an existing engine. Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, and Bevy are good choices. You'll learn the higher level issues of graphics, not how to push pixels around. The real problem is making it fun. If you want to do 3D engine programming, be aware that there are too many bad game engines. In Rust land, where I am, there are three failed…

Two years? Why does it take two years?

Unless you’ve written one before, it’s the natural learning curve.

You can always generate one using LLM if you don’t care about how it actually works.

Re: What to learn to be a graphics programmer

#120

Post by charlie90 »

qingcharles wrote: post #110
Animats wrote: post #107

Do you want to make games, or do 3D engine programming? If you want to make games, use an existing engine. Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, and Bevy are good choices. You'll learn the higher level issues of graphics, not how to push pixels around. The real problem is making it fun. If you want to do 3D engine programming, be aware that there are too many bad game engines. In Rust land, where I am, there are three failed…

Agree with almost all of that. Unless you are targeting some obscure or old platform, I don't even know how you'd justify trying to write a 3D engine from scratch in 2026, except as a fun learning experience. Also, think about tooling. Last time I wrote an engine from scratch, the tooling to support it probably took way more time than the engine did.

AI changes this a lot.

You can realistically get a featured 3d engine+editor up and running in a couple week with AI, working solo. Probably better than what Godot or even Unity gives you. Also AI is very good at editor/tooling stuff, I've even found it getting better at graphics programming stuff, just telling it to 1-shot implementing gpu occlusion culling, ddgi probes, taa, etc. type of features. Also for stuff like animation, I just told my AI "clone Unreal's animation blueprints" and I have a pretty featured animation system now. "clone Unity's particle system" and it 1-shots it in an hour with the runtime and nice editor tools. With the advantage being you can just implement exactly what you need.

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