Senior Environment Artist

As a Senior Environment Artist, you will be responsible for delivering high-quality assets and materials yourself, along with helping to raise the quality bar of other team members. You will set an example through exceptional asset creation, understanding current environment art technologies, tools and dependencies. To be successful in this role, you will need to be an expert in environment art creation, have a solid understanding of current AAA-quality art and pipelines, strong communication skills, and passion for game development.

Responsibilities:

• Provide strong leadership and thoughtful direction to the art team, mentoring artists by providing creative and technical training, guidance and constructive feedback.
• Assist in the creation of exceptional environments and props, following the artistic and technical guidelines, graphic style, theme and other visual requirements.
• Maintain, research and share knowledge of best 3D environment art techniques and practices.
• Ability to understand and follow complex documentation, the art pipeline, the hardware limitations and common techniques, and search for more detailed and specific graphic references for the levels.
• Work closely with the Art Manager, Principal Ar Manager and Head of Art to ensure the visual target is always exceeded and stylistically consistent.
• Able to autonomously follow guidelines and execute complex tasks within a given timeframe.
• Create and provide the team with the documentation, infrastructure, benchmarks, and other art resources they may need for the optimal performance of their work.
• Act as a resource person for the artistic team for the rest of the tasks by answering questions from team members.
• Adaptable knowledge of modelling and texturing techniques. General understanding of organic, realistic and hard surface modelling.
• Being able to take on the most demanding tasks of a project.
• Actively participate in technical and aesthetic problem solving discussions for the entire project.
• Support the Management team with performance evaluations.
• Advise management in a timely manner of any issues which may impact project schedules.
• Be willing to perform any other duties, functions, and responsibilities required by the project or the studio, assigned to you by the Art Manager, Principal Art Manager, Head of Art and Production team, faithfully, diligently, efficiently and to the best of your abilities.
• Provide art materials made within the studio for the company's, website, portfolio and demo reel for marketing needs.
• Collaborate and participate in any necessary meetings, team or activities related to the studio and the project assigned.
• Regularly review, verify and update the status of assigned tasks and workload.
• Exhibit initiative, be proactive, ask questions, and clearly report improvements and possible issues to the Art Manager.

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience in the AAA gaming industry.
• Credited in at least 2+ published AAA game titles for creating architectural or natural assets.
• Strong expertise in creating optimized 3D AAA game environments and lighting for them.
• Proficient in video game optimization techniques, nanite workflow modularity and level assembling, trim & atlas texturing, vertex color blending, layering materials, UDIMs, decals, foliage creation, etc.
• Strong technical understanding of Unreal Engine 5, up-to-date industry workflows, and awareness of performance and optimization.
• Strong knowledge of architectural and natural sceneries, including modelling, mapping, texturing, and gameplay-related setups. Thorough knowledge of the process of baking and authoring textures for physical-based rendering (PBR), and working with different material pipelines (material layering, advanced shaders, etc.).
• Understanding of form, colour, shape and composition theory.
• Excellent knowledge of leading software within the video game industry, like 3Ds Max, Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Marmoset, Photoshop, Substance Painter, etc.
• Strong experience working with scans, reconstruction, clean up, optimization, etc.
• Able to autonomously follow guidelines and execute complex tasks within a given timeframe.
• Able to accurately and efficiently perform task breakdowns and estimations for scheduling when required.
• Ability to render final art creatively.
• Strong eye for composition.
• Structured workflow habits, and ability to consistently meet deadlines.
• Persistence, drive, and self-motivation. Positive, creative, and fearless attitude, with a willingness to push boundaries, experiment with new ideas, and openly express opinions.
• Excellent communication and organizational skills.