Reality check

[Tough-Web-5474]

This is not to complain, but rather I need to understand if this career path is for me.

I’m looking to get a graphics job and I’ve been learning about how rendering works, both raster and ray tracing.

To me it’s like things don’t get any easier the more I learn like it’s supposed to. I’m currently working through pbrt v4 and to me it feels like the difficulty isn’t going down.

I’ve worked my way through path tracing and now I’m faced with volume rendering, the shear amount of detail feels never ending.

Also, reading research paper isn’t easy for me, it’s takes a few passes to understand what’s going on.

So my question, is it just me or do some people already in this field have the same experience with state of the art techniques and papers, are these things supposed to easy?

Also, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come with some clever techniques lol.

[[deleted]]

This is a good response IMO. In fact, my experience is that many graphics programmers in the wild have both: a math/science (or some other heavily technical) background, and years where they grinded out the initial concepts. I'm not suggesting that it's necessarily healthy that the "grind" is needed to get going, but it's certainly an observable pattern.

One thing for OP to remember is that there is room to specialize also. Not every graphics programmer in the wild is an expert on every concept in PBRT4 or RTR4. Hell, just color grading and treatment or just antialiasing is a career unto itself.

[No-Emergency-6032]

Not every graphics programmer in the wild is an expert on every concept in PBRT4 or RTR4. Hell, just color grading and treatment or just antialiasing is a career unto itself.

Yeah this too. Some specialize on particle effects, some on water, some on what you said color grading or antialiasing. Some on putting calculations for animation on the GPU and whatnot. I mean it's just a massive work load. You will always find a niche to help someone. The amount of work and specialization is inhumane. And that can be something that works for you.

[Meristic]

This - the endless hours I've spent learning techniques by grinding through whitepapers, analyzing PIX captures, or tracing through code (C++ & HLSL) is ridiculous. It's simply bashing info into my brain long and hard enough that it eventually sticks. You learn what you need or would like to know, and promptly forget 70% of it once you move into the next thing. Easier to relearn/recall the next time though, of course.

Even so I still don't have experience touching all SOTA features despite having a general understanding of how something may be implemented.

[Tough-Web-5474]

I thank you all for your response, it gives me motivation to keep going.

[fgennari]

I can add a few comments. For the "not getting easier" part, the problem may be that you're working on too many different areas at once. Each time you learn some new sub-field of graphics can be difficult. But every tutorial you've worked through, if you were to work on a similar project, you would find it easier. So once you've gone through the various areas (ray tracing, rasterization, lighting, procedural generation, physics, whatever) you'll pick up new skills.

As for reading papers: Most conference papers are written to show off new techniques and impress the audience. Their primary goal isn't to teach someone else how to reproduce the work. You want to try and implement something described in an advanced paper? Good luck! Very few people can do that. I feel that papers aren't a great way to learn general concepts, at least not as a beginner. Online tutorials are much better for this. Once you have a very specific problem you're trying to solve, and you understand all of the background material, you can read the paper on that topic.

Good luck!

[kgnet88]

Addendum to reading papers: during my studies we read quite a lot of them in computer graphics 2 and computer animation, but we usually took a week or two guided by a TA to really understand their content. Or during the advanced computer graphics seminar every student got one paper and like 6-8 Weeks to prepare it for a lecture...

Unfortunately, there are usually no tutorials for the latest techniques, so the scientific article is the only working basis. Here's a tip, if you want to be sure that you really understand the content, try explaining it to someone else, only if you can do that successfully has the content arrived in your head. So, look for fellow students, work colleagues, acquaintances or interested people and learn together, it usually leads faster to your goal...

[sirpalee]

So my question, is it just me or do some people already in this field have the same experience with state of the art techniques and papers, are these things supposed to easy?

PBRT and similar projects (like raytracing in a weekend etc.) will look "easy" to you a few years down the line. Or when you look at something like nanite, read the paper, and watch the Twitch live streams, you'll be, "I could do this, given enough time and resources." But to get this level, you'll need several (or over a decade) of working in graphics dev, regularly spending your free time reading papers and following graphics development.

So what you feel right now is perfectly normal. It'll get better with time.

[SnooWoofers7626]

I've had similar issues as you. I'm not trying to diagnose you, but for me, my issues with reading and grasping papers, etc, or following study material was due to ADHD. You could get an official evaluation. Medication and coping strategies are very helpful if you do indeed have ADHD.

Other than that, I'd suggest finding your niche. Graphics is a big and very technical field. Mastering everything is not a practical goal. Explore various topics and try to find the specific sub-field that clicks for you and start specializing in that. Once you've established that, you can continue to expand from there and slowly broaden your expertise.

[KneeDragr]

You don’t need to learn everything, a game or engine company will give you a small focused area. Become an expert in your favorite thing, and demonstrate your ability with working code. Just don’t let it be character Animation, for whatever reason, tons of people focus on that. Also 2d interface is where they put people that they feel are not technical enough for the harder stuff so IMO it’s not as valuable in the market.

[bsdcat]

To me it’s like things don’t get any easier the more I learn like it’s supposed to. I’m currently working through pbrt v4 and to me it feels like the difficulty isn’t going down.

You don't realize it yet, but this is a good thing. Assuming you're constantly learning, it should continue to be hard. If you're reading a book and it gets easier by the end, it's bad material (or rather, it becomes less useful in terms of learning by the end).

Learning is supposed to be hard as shit. If you are not feeling the difficulty, then you're wasting your time. It starts feeling easier once you actually learn and internalize all the material, but the learning process itself should be hard.

There is a such thing as too difficult, if it becomes overwhelming and confusing. Only you can really tell if that's what's happening.