Senior Materials Level Artist

This is a 6 Month contract role.

PlayStation Studios Visual Arts | Remote

This position is fully remote from anywhere in Canada. PlayStation Studios Visual Arts (PSSVA) provides world-class content, development and services to PlayStation Studios such as Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio, Bend Studio Guerilla Games, and more! Our team is always at the cutting edge of technology and partners with the industry’s best minds and companies.

You're a creative and passionate artist who lives for world building and crafting textures and materials that tell a story within game environments. You're inspired to achieve only the highest quality in your work and have a passion for contributing to the artistic vision and development of the industry's most anticipated AAA games.

We are seeking a highly talented and motivated Senior Materials Level Artist to contribute to an upcoming AAA project. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of delivering high quality content during the later stages of development, working efficiently while maintaining an established visual quality bar. This role involves creating both in game and cinematic quality materials along with in level modeling and world building for assigned environments, ensuring exceptional visual fidelity and consistency throughout the project.

Core Skill Areas

Materials & Texturing

• Create and refine realistic, physically based (PBR) materials for both in game and cinematic levels.
• Maintain visual consistency and quality standards across the project.
• Ability to contribute to workflows in Substance Designer is a plus.

Environment & Level Art

• Work directly within game levels, including:
  • Terrain and level specific modeling for visually appealing compositions.
  • Organic and hard surface environment world construction.
  • Asset placement that drives an immersive player experience.
• Create integrated environmental looks through:
  • Material blending.
  • Ground to asset transitions (skirting).
  • Environmental storytelling (age, wear, erosion, and historical narrative)

Modeling 

• Handle traditional environment art tasks from:
  • Blockout / prototyping for initial level layouts.
  • Custom asset creation.
  • Final shippable quality art.

Collaboration 

• Partner with Art Directors, Leads, Technical Artists.
• Implement feedback quickly and effectively.
• Help define and improve the game's visual direction with each deliverable.

Technical & Production Requirements

• Balance visual quality with performance constraints.
• Solve production challenges creatively.
• Estimate scope and manage workload effectively.
• Deliver work on schedule / on time in a production environment

Requirements:

• 6+ years' experience as a material / world building artist in the video game industry, with 2 shipped AAA titles
• Proficient with Autodesk Maya and traditional modeling pipelines
• Portfolio that demonstrates materials created using both procedural and traditional techniques
• Strong understanding of PBR material workflows, standards and surface/light Interactions
• History shows a strong understanding of game development with a focus on materials usage within a world building pipeline
• Proficient at applying surface details and controlling shader features that represent a wide variety of material types
• Expert knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and traditional texture baking techniques
• Ability to unwrap UVs for texturing meshes and lightmaps in Autodesk Maya
• Experience optimizing games for performance and memory
• An advanced understanding of game and cinematic art asset creation
• Ability to learn new game engines and tools rapidly
• Work core hours aligned with PST and team located in California

Pluses:

• Knowledge of Substance Designer workflows
• Shader authoring
• Houdini experience
• Experience working with external outsource vendors
• 2D graphics experience
• Conceptual level layout experience

As a part of the PlayStation application process, candidates will be expected to provide a portfolio or demo reel of their work and may be asked to complete an art test, in addition to a phone screen.