A little background; I am someone with more programming knowledge than art skills although I like both. In my pursuit to learn game dev I found graphics api’s and learnt OpenGL which I am now decent at. Through this i found about the role of technical artists and real time vfx.
Here’s the issue: I wish to use programming skills to create real time vfx but in my research I found most of the vfx work is done by artists using existing tools (like UE Niagara, Unity ShaderGraph, Houdini etc.). I would very much like some advice on where i can take my skills or if i have to now choose b/w the programming side or the art side.
I also started as a programmer and transitioned into VFX.
Coding skills will always be useful for you, even if you will transition to more art side of things as shaders are math and use a lot of coding fundamentals (even graphs). A lot of more advanced stuff can require coding too (Scratchpads, HLSL). And when you work and have coding experience then programmers that help you will implementation will love you.
Though the problem I had was that I had too little knowledge from art theory and understanding, so I had to put considerable time into this part of VFX.