Position at ILMxLAB

Position Summary

We are looking for a talented and driven technologist who reflects the innovative spirit, creative talent, production excellence, collaborative mindset, and passion for great storytelling that define ILM and ILMxLAB. The Senior Lighting Artist is responsible for bringing the best out of our environments and to combine artistic talent and technical ability. You would be working closely with our Department Supervisor, Lighting and production teams on the design and implementation of lighting setups and lighting pipelines.

What You\'ll Do

• Work with Art Directors, Lighting Leads, Designers, and Concept Artwork to design lighting setups for environments, characters and interactive game assets.
• Deep knowledge of lightmap baking, dynamic lighting tools, image based specular lighting, indirect light probes, post-process volumes and real-time rendering and raytracing
• Partner with environment, character and VFX artists in the lighting design to achieve the desired targets for aesthetics and performance through material shader and geometry work
• Work with level designers to animate via level blueprint or sequencer dynamic lighting or transitions
• Actively participate in improving workflows, optimizations and best practices
• Identify, triage, and fix bugs as required working with engineering and relevant departments
• Take final project to a high degree of polish and optimization
• Work with Technical Artists to optimize lighting to fit performance requirements with target platforms and devices
• Create documentation and setup guides for projects
• Supervision of junior and mid-level artists, as required

What We\'re Looking For

• 5+ years experience as a lighting TD/artist - in 3D game development or animation/vfx film studio
• Strong aesthetic sense for lighting and color theory
• Strong technical understanding of current real time lighting tool sets including atmospheric effects, post processing, color grading and HDR IBL workflows
• Team player who can take direction and know what looks good and why
• Experience with Unreal/Unity or equivalent real time platform: dynamic and baked lighting workflows: physically-based rendering and basic level blueprint scripting
• Shaders: in-depth knowledge of real-time shader implementations, PBR pipelines, subsurface shaders, and limitations of shaders in VR
• Materials: experienced in the development, authoring & organization of efficient materials via the UE4 material editor
• Fluency in working in Windows, JIRA, Perforce or equivalent OS, workload and data management tools
• Excellent communication, organization and problem-solving skills and self-motivated
• Bonus points for:Strong traditional art, photography or film studies background
  Passion for playing and making games, experience or interest in VR and AR VFX production / pipeline experience
  Proficient with profiling tools in the examination & diagnosis of performance issues related to lighting
  Experience with one or more of the following: Maya, Substance Designer / Painter, Zbrush or Mudbox, Houdini, Mari, 3D StudioMax, Photoshop, Nuke
  Interest and capacity to work with proprietary toolsets
  Previous experience as a lead on a project

A portfolio / reel submission - including a detailed breakdown of your work in each section - is required with all applications