Job Details
Lead Lighting Artist
Summary
Reporting to the Art Director, the Lead Lighting Artist is responsible for setting the tone of the lighting across the game, both gameplay and cinematics, and determining the best lighting pipelines for external vendors.
Category
Gaming
Grip / Lighting / Electric
Location
Austin, Texas Area
Time Period
Full Time
Posted Date
Jan 18, 2022
Start Date
N/A
End Date
N/A
Job Description
The Lead Lighting Artist will drive realistic, cinematic lighting in a real time environment. This role will also work within the limitations of real time rendering in Unreal and solve technical problems to improve performance, as well as interacting with Engineers to help develop new tools and workflows.
The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, comfortable working in a cooperative, cross-disciplinary team environment, and possess solid artistic skills, including a thorough understanding of color theory, composition, light, and form. The ideal candidate will also have experience with Unreal, and other 3D CG packages, demonstrating a solid understanding of rendering, lighting, and shading networks, and able to achieve a quality look even when a concept is not available.
Essential Functions:
The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, comfortable working in a cooperative, cross-disciplinary team environment, and possess solid artistic skills, including a thorough understanding of color theory, composition, light, and form. The ideal candidate will also have experience with Unreal, and other 3D CG packages, demonstrating a solid understanding of rendering, lighting, and shading networks, and able to achieve a quality look even when a concept is not available.
Essential Functions:
- Lead the lighting team to create both the exterior and interior lighting within environments and cut scenes
- Optimize lighting data for memory and frame
- Work with the Art Director, Environment Lead, Art Production Manager, and Cinematic Designers to achieve the best look possible to meet the needs of the level or cinematic
- Work within constraints set by the technology and target platforms
- Work with engineers to develop new tools to improve lighting and the cinematic feel
- Work with Art Production Manager and Technical Art Lead to solidify pipelines and establish best practices
- Maintain good team dynamics
- Engage in look-development around key surfaces and shaders to ensure lighting delivers against visual reference
- Set standards for post processing, color grading, exposure, SSAO, bloom, tone mapping curves, etc.
- Prototype the use of lighting technology to reach the visual targets defined by the art direction
- Profile existing and future levels to maximize the quality of lighting on characters and environments while staying within performance budgets
- Develop character and environment lighting schemes to create visually compelling and awesome looking cinematics
- Work with level artists to ensure integration with gameplay
Preferred Qualifications:
- Strong understanding of cinematic pipelines
- Sound knowledge and use of lighting techniques for video games
- Strong interpersonal skills and communication skills
- Experience leading a team
- Experience in creating and shipping AAA quality titles as a real-time lighting artist
- Deep understanding of CG lighting technology, both real-time and software rendering
- Strong sense of lighting theory, color space, exposure, light fixtures, natural light, reflections, etc.
- Good understanding of cinematography and dramaturgy, the use of camera technology, scene blocking and lighting to set the mood
- Good understanding and experience with physical based lighting system
- Proactive in the use of lighting as a powerful tool in gameplay clarity
- Ability to thoroughly digest the art direction and be a champion for executing it in the game
- Skilled at balancing visual quality against performance requirements
- Experience with generating light-maps, pre-lighting or baked lighting
- HDR Tone mapping experience desired
Plus:
- Strong knowledge of Unreal
- Extra plus for knowledge of Lumen
Job Type
Full Time
Weekly Limit
40
Shift
Day
Attached Files
N/A