Identifying Your Training Needs

One critical stage of creating an internal training program is to identify which areas of production require training effort to be applied. The most obvious place to start will be the skills required by your studio's projects, as highlighted by the ubiquitous schedules and manpower plans.

Some training requirements are very obvious, whereas other deficiencies can be difficult to assess and in some cases training does have other unforeseen "second order" effects.

By way of example there are a few "out of the box" modules that most studios could and should run. Any training that can reduce many of the repetitive operations associated with asset creation will have a large impact over the course of production.

Speed modeling, focusing on hotkeys, shortcuts, and marking menus, is a great example of such a course. On the more intrinsic side, color theory, starting on the basics, mixing colors using paint and light and moving onto video illegal colors, all exemplified by cinematography, will have an immediate positive visual impact.

On the design side of things, anything relating to fundamental level design theory is a good place to start, especially with regard to camera placement, land marking and player control. 3D modeling for designers (depending on your pipeline) can greatly increase productivity and reduce inaccuracy too. On the intrinsic side the fundamentals of learning curve management and the tricky subject of emergence will reap rewards in the long term.

Coding can benefit as well. Re-enforcing coding standards will have the biggest impact cross the studio by making code easier to read, debug and share. Other specialist areas such as unit testing, AI, shaders, and the art and science of special effects will greatly enhance the flexibility of any coding team.

In terms of global modules for everyone, those centered on soft skills such as communication, management, and law are incredibly useful. On a more practical front, continuous training on your chosen middleware solution, be it in-house or licensed, will grease the wheels of any studio.

Developing Your Training Processes

By mapping the requirements of any given projects by the manpower resource available, the potential training needs of individuals are often quite apparent. Interestingly, the adoption of an effective training policy can make the staffing of projects far more effective, as a lack of skills can be largely accommodated, rather than acting as a deal breaker.

Other internal processes, such as personal reviews, provide a very rich hunting ground for training requirement identification. Personal reviews also have the added bonus of affording more junior or quieter members of the production team the opportunity to recommend or suggest new training.

Significantly, the inevitable five to seven year learning curve of a new hardware generation change will always prove valuable in identifying training needs.

Once the subject matter for training has been chosen, the time has come to source the instructors. The first stage is to look to your gurus. These are the people with the types of specialist skills that when shared have a very positive impact on most areas of production.

That said, not everyone is a natural teacher; it's a communication and confidence thing, so be prepared to train your experts in the art of training too.