Shader Artist

Basic Function:

Develop shaders and ensure support of the art direction.

Duties and Responsibilities:
- Create initial concept inline with art direction and work with artists to adjust as necessary
- Work with programmers to understand technical requirements
- Maintain quality and continuity while developing shaders that support art direction
- Address new feature requests & adapt to changing priorities
- Use knowledge of modeling, programming and the pipeline to troubleshoot work
- Tuning and polish of shaders; responsible for assisting less experienced artists
- Helps establish art style and quality levels
- Understands memory and frame-rate budgets and works within those constraints
- Uses in-house tools as appropriate; provides feedback to improve the tools
- Understands how the game engine interacts with the different consoles and makes decisions based on that understanding

Principal Working Relationships:

Works with concept artists, programmers and artists to create shaders that satisfy requirements and support game goals.

Qualifications

Educational Requirements:
- Formal art education such as BFA from accredited art or design school or equivalent level of experience required

Special Knowledge, Skills:
- Capable of developing shader dependent technical art assets required
- Good understanding of modeling, rigging, animation, UV mapping, texturing, shading and rendering required
- Photoshop and 3ds MAX software required
- Shader FX required or equivalent
- 2D Illustration, set design, 2D compositing, or film/tv background a plus
- Knowledge of computational geometry a plus
- Mental ray/ Vray software skills a plus
- C/C++ skills a plus
- Matrix algebra and trigonometry skills required

Prior Experience/Previous Positions related to current position:
- Has shipped more than one AAA title or possesses equivalent experience from a related industry

Other Qualifications and/or Requirements:
- Ability to build collaborative relationships and resolve conflicts in a constructive manner
- Provides others the information that they require to make decisions
- Communicates in a clear and succinct manner, considering the audience
- Ability to plan own work
- Properly estimates time to complete work, manages competing priorities and builds in buffers
- Takes risks, makes mistakes and takes steps to prevent repeat mistakes
- Understands the impact of decisions on other disciplines