We sat down (virtually) with Maxime Beaulieu, founder of Catalyst Studio, a Quebec City-based studio that does one thing and does it deeply: technical art. From pipelines and shaders to tooling and optimization, Catalyst has built its business around a skill most schools don't even teach. 

Here's what Maxime shared with us.

Where does the name Catalyst come from?
I founded Catalyst alongside two other developers who left during the studio's early days. The name was inspired by the idea of three electrons forming an atom, which was mirrored in our original logo. A catalyst is something that sparks important change, and that's exactly what we wanted to bring to the game industry.

What gap did you see in the industry that led you to start a tech art studio?
Before starting Catalyst, I worked on the service side of the game industry and saw a clear shortage of technical artists. There were hardly any school programs for technical art, so expertise could only be gained through hands-on experience, figuring out how to apply emerging technologies to art direction. Once I identified the problem, I knew I could bring a solution.

I built the team around senior talent and brought on engineers and artists who wanted to transition into technical art, giving them the environment they needed to grow. Plenty of studios offer tech art support, but very few specialize exclusively in it. That focus is what propelled us forward in our early years.

For anyone outside game dev, how would you explain technical art, and why do studios bring in outside support?
Technical art has many spheres: pipeline development, shaders, optimization and many more. Simply put, any task that brings new technology to art benefits from technical art support. Because it covers so many avenues, finding a senior TA who is proficient in all of them is almost impossible.

Many studios can't cover everything they'd want from their TAs. Sometimes they simply don't have other TAs to learn from, so their TAs have to figure everything out on their own. That's where outsourced tech art shines. Our tech art team is bigger than most studios could wish for, which lets our TAs learn from each other and cover everything a studio might ask of them.

What's the most interesting project your team has worked on?
We've tackled many interesting AND challenging projects over the years, but the one that stands out most for me is OUTBRK, a tornado-chasing simulation game. We were brought in to develop rendering solutions for realistic tornadoes. We built pipelines to import data from real tornadoes into Unity, parsed that data so it could be used with Unity shaders and C#, and built rendering features around those systems. The final game includes custom clouds, tornadoes, rain, fog and more.

Our tech artists who specialize in graphics engineering are built different. (Props to you, Tony and Léa!)

You work on a time-and-materials basis rather than fixed milestones. Why?
Much of our work is research and development, because the solutions we build often don't exist yet for the studios we partner with. We can still outline timelines and plan productions, but traditional feedback rounds don't fit most of our scope. Elements like shaders and VFX can work with fixed milestones and standard review cycles, but applying that structure to the rest of our work makes little sense.

What's it like building a tech art studio in Quebec?
Quebec's game dev scene is a small but robust community, with proud developers like Sabotage, Berserk and Polymorph, among many others. I started building the team in Quebec City, expanded to Montreal to find a broader range of profiles, and later began hiring in Vancouver. Our roots are firmly in Quebec, but we knew we had to look beyond our local community to find the specialized talent that truly fits our team.

The same thinking applies to how we staff projects. Some of our crew thrive in larger studio settings, while others prefer the dynamics of smaller teams, so we match each assignment to the environment where our technical artists do their best work.

How do you see the way studios work with external partners changing?
Over the last couple of years, we've seen productions trying to solve problems with lower budgets, smaller teams and tighter timelines. Catalyst plays a key role in those productions. Because our tech art expertise is so wide, we can find solutions faster.

What brought Catalyst to Game Caviar?
Any platform that puts in the effort to push external development forward is worth your time. We discovered Game Caviar through MIGS, and we're looking forward to working with the team to help build an environment where studios can be discovered across the game industry.