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Senior Environment Artist- Materials

Come join the award-winning God of War development team! Sony Santa Monica Studio is looking for a Senior Environment Artist - Materials to help us create stunning worlds that set the visual fidelity bar for entertainment. This individual will contribute to the artistic vision of amazing, top-of-class games with a specialized focus on creating realistic and fantasy-based textures and materials for a physically-based rendering pipeline. As a team member, you must possess the ability to effectively collaborate with the Art Director and environment artists to create complex, realistic textures and materials that can be applied to character and world building assets. Help us create visuals that will set the PS4 apart from the rest!

Responsibilities:

• Material content creation, including environment 2D texture painting for physically-based rendering pipeline and complex multi-layered shader creation.
• Encourage artistic evolution within the studio by being a high level contributor to the development of the material authoring pipeline. Research and share techniques and processes utilized to achieve realistic and hyper-realistic textures and materials. Develop a comprehensive knowledge of the PBR pipeline and all engine, tools, and systems associated with the creation of textures and materials.
• Create high resolution textures with industry standard techniques, such as painting and photography, and maintain a high resolution texture library.
• Communicate with the rendering team to develop material shaders as needed by the art teams.
• Maintain the artistic goals and vision through all phases of the game development cycle, from pre-production through final product release. Ensure that textures and materials are of the highest artistic quality and uphold the integrity of the game’s design and the artistic vision of the game as a whole.
• Resolve an assortment of moderately complex artistic development issues for artists as well as other team members.
• Clearly communicate updates and properly escalate concerns to the appropriate team member(s) and manager(s).
• Generate documentation and material guidelines for texturing outsourcing assets. This should cover the integration of assets as well as texture and material optimizations.
• Actively improve skill set and abilities by keeping aware of industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, and learning new software packages and traditional art methods.
• Demonstrate strong time management and prioritization skills. Collaborate with Production to develop task lists to ensure assignments are progressing as expected according to schedules, milestones, and overall project goals.

Requirements

• Advanced knowledge of texture painting and material creation for physically-based rendering pipelines, HDRI authoring.
• Skilled in texturing workflows, including material creation, 3-D painting, and surfacing for PBR rendering methodologies. 
• Proficient in the use of Substance Designer, Photoshop, Maya (or 3D modeling package), Z-Brush, Mari, and other 3D paint tools.
• Strong traditional fine art skills, training, and production experience. (illustration, painting, organic forms, color theory, perspective, 2D & 3D design)
• Familiarity with video game product development including, but not limited to: workflow, tools, lighting, high and low poly modeling, texture painting, baking and topology, UV layout, in-game animation, level layout, and FX.
• Previous or next-gen video game platform experience is desirable.
• Good communication, organizational, time management, and interpersonal skills.
• Works under minimal direction to determine and develop approach to solutions.
• B.A. in Fine Arts or relevant curriculum, or equivalent skillset.
• Minimum 5 years’ industry or related experience.
• Experience on 2 or more published titles is considered a strength.

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