Senior Technical Artist

Description

SENIOR TECHNICAL ARTIST

Firaxis Games is searching for an experienced Technical Artist. You should have a combination of strong creative/visual aesthetics and technical knowledge as the job is roughly a 50/50 split in these areas.  You should also be experienced in every aspect of the content creation pipeline, as well as be able to think outside the box to come up with techniques that work better and faster. Your goal will be to attack the more complex issues, and to help the other artists with technical hurdles they might be having, often acting as a liaison between Art and Engineering disciplines.

The person in this role will be responsible for the following:

• Rendering Tech – Focus on rendering, lighting, and post processing in tandem with graphics programmers to enhance visual quality, support artistic vision, and allow for better performance
• Material creation - Making materials for characters, environment and terrain assets, effects etc, anything requiring a novel approach to solving a complex problem
• Optimization - Use diagnostic tools to examine current content, game performance, and identify areas for improvement
• Light tools development - Work with programmers on developing new features and mock up features in external programs
• Cinematic Support – Assist with cinematics by lighting and rendering final-quality scenes using UE4

The ideal candidate will have a mix of the qualifications below:

• 5+ years of game development experience.
• Extensive experience working with Unreal Engine
• Knowledgeable and experienced in Physically Based Rendering and Lighting
• Advanced 3DSMax or Maya experience
• Experience with various software packages including Photoshop, Substance Designer and Painter
• Max/Mel Scripting and HLSL or shader programming experience is a plus
• Content creation skills a plus (modeling, texturing, Zbrush)