Uncategorized – Linden Reid

Questions to ask game studios you’re interviewing with

When you get to the end of an on-site interview with a team and they ask you:

“Do you have any questions for us?”

The worst thing you could do is say “no”.

If that’s the case, then what DO you ask?

Remember that, if interviews are functioning correctly, you’re also assessing the company and team as much as they’re assessing you. You should ask questions that demonstrate that you’re carefully considering whether or not your career goals align with this team’s goals and the position’s responsibilities. This demonstrates that you’re somebody who takes their career seriously and can bring that focus to the team.

Having said that, I also know that sometimes you’re in a position where you’re almost certainly going to take the job if you get an offer regardless of what their answers to these questions are. Sometimes you’re new to the industry and you don’t know what your goals are yet. Or maybe it’s just because the job market and interview process just isn’t actually balanced or fair in many (..most?) situations. I’ve been in that position before. I still think you should ask these questions, even if you have to feign some confidence about your ability to be picky.

Both a disclaimer and a possible boon- I’m writing this from the perspective of somebody who is an individual contributor, not a hiring manager. Although I’ve never made a final call on hiring somebody before, I do participate in the interview process and have interviewed for jobs many times myself. I encourage you to think critically about what advice here applies to you, and don’t believe everything you read on the internet. 🙂

With all that in mind, here’s a list of questions that I think are good conversation starters, helpful insights into company culture, and will help you figure out if this company and role are actually a good fit for you. You don’t need to ask all of them; pick a few that you think will help you make the best decision in your job hunt and make the most sense for your role and experience level.

Good luck!

Basic Math for Shaders

I never thought I was going to be able to do graphics programming because I believed I was bad at math. The only class I failed in college was a math course. And yet here I am, actually doing decently well at handling math subjects!!

Visualizing math has made all the difference. Abstract math means nothing to me, and I don’t expect it to mean anything to you either. But that doesn’t mean you’re not good at math- it might just mean you have untapped potential at geometry and visual-based math!

The best way to use this tutorial is probably to either a) reference it when you’re confused about or forget the meaning of a term used in another tutorial (for example, a tutorial says “get the surface normal” or “transform into X space” without explaining what that means) or b) reading it as a primer for more complex discussions of the subjects presented.

To really harness the math involved in this tutorial, you’ll need to do a combination of experimentation and research: start writing code to experiment with the terms you learn, and read books that go more in-depth explaining the math involved.

Or, you could do what I did, and use it as a brush-up on your graphics-related linear algebra skills before having a technical interview.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This tutorial is going to cover how the following math topics apply to representing 3D geometry:

What vectors and matrices represent
Vector addition & subtraction
Vector cross products & surface normals
Vector normalization
Vector dot products
Matrix * vector multiplication

Continue reading Basic Math for Shaders

Ice Shader in Unity

Hey y’all! Today, I want to show you how I created this ice / crystal shader. There are three parts to this effect:

The transparency with opaque, white edges
The iridescent bumpy texture
The distortion effect behind the ice

All of these effects are reusable for other kinds of shaders.

For example, if you’re successful, you’ll be able to apply the distortion effect to anything, like the water shader!

For your reference during the tutorial, here’s the final code for the shader.

–> Link to final code for Unity Ice Shader

Continue reading Ice Shader in Unity

Cel Shader with Outline in Unity

Today, I want to cover two super popular topics for shaders in Unity:

How to create cel-shaded lighting
How to create an outline effect

In addition to this code, you may want to check out the Unity graphics settings for this tutorial, which are important for lighting a cel-shaded game well.

If you like this post, be sure to follow me on Twitter 🙂

If you’ve never written shader code before, or used Unity, you still may get plenty out of this post, because the algorithms used to write the cel shader and the outline are applicable to any shader. If you do write shader code in Unity, you’ll find the rest of the techniques extra helpful 🙂

This is the end result, applied to an adorable Boston Terrier model made by amazing artist Kytana Le:

And here’s the full code for you to reference while following the tutorial:

–> Link to final code for the cel and outline shader

Continue reading Cel Shader with Outline in Unity