Ready At Dawn Studios is looking for a Material / Shading Artist


Ready At Dawn is seeking a Material / Shading Artist to work on our new original IP, 3rd person action adventure game for a home console game system. Working closely with artists and programmers, the Material / Shading Artist is responsible capturing a diverse range of material looks to a high degree of visual quality. From various metals, stone, and wood to skin, fur, and water the Material / Shading Artist must strike a strong balance between technology and art to create a stunningly surfaced world that runs efficiently in the game engine.

Successful candidates should have a strong aesthetic eye for breaking down the key rendering components of various materials, as well as solid technical and problem solving skills to work with programmers to implement complex looks in a clever and efficient manner for use in our proprietary engine. In addition to R&D, throughout production the Material / Shading Artist is responsible for creating and maintaining a global collection of material templates and working with lighting and 3d artists to make sure a consistent degree of quality materials is maintained across the game.

The Material / Shading Artist is primarily a strong visual artist with good technical skills; while shader programming experience is always a plus, this is primarily handled by our graphics programmers and is not a requirement of the position.

Responsibilities:

  • Prototype and pitch creative and engine-efficient art solutions to complex materials (skin, fur, water, etc)
  • Author and tune a core libary of material templates for use by other 3d artists
  • Work with 3d and lighting artists to make sure materials interact well with lighting in an HDR/GI environment
  • Work closely with graphics programmers to direct the creation of new material types and optimize performance
  • Responsible for material look development tests in pre-production
  • Responsible for final finishing on in game and cinematic materials in full production

Position Requirements:

  • Strong balance of aesthetic, technical, problem solving, and communication skills
  • Excellent understanding of authoring materials in an HDR lighting pipeline
  • Diverse mel/python scripting skills
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills
  • Ability to filter diverse feedback from artists, designers, and programmers and propose effective solutions
  • Passion for and broad knowledge of games and game development, with an ability to critically analyze them

Additional Skills (Pluses)

  • Advanced knowledge of materials and rendering within the Maya 3d package
  • High resolution film or marketing rendering experience
  • Experience with various fur and hair solutions
  • Any scripting and programming skills

Please send samples of your work with your application.

Submission can be sent by email to jobs@readyatdawn.com