OPEN POSITIONS
LEAD LIGHTER - Pirates
In both a hands-on role and leadership role, the Lead Lighter sets the quality benchmark, supervises, and facilitates the overall artistic lighting content on a game project. In addition to their lighting work, they work closely with the Technical Art Director, Art Director, and Engineers to develop the techniques, technology, pipeline and workflows for all aspects of lighting - including environments, characters, cinematics, visual effects, and shaders, including any offline or distributed rendering.
As well as lighting in-game, they render high-end CG images and video content for promotional use as needed. The lead lighter is actively involved in planning and goal setting, and is expected to provide leadership, training, guidance and support to other artists both on the internal team and at our outsource partners, to produce the highest possible quality lighting content on the project.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Develop key lighting prototypes, both in-game and pre-rendered, setting the highest possible visual benchmark
- Define and plan the techniques used, to ensure the delivery of AAA quality lighting, shading and rendering. Design workflow efficiency tools and solve technical production issues as needed
- Set requirements for the lighting pipeline and tools, and design workflows to ensure efficient in-game lighting and iteration
- Light all elements of the game to the highest possible standard - leading by example
- Provide leadership, training, guidance and support to other artists to produce high quality lighting content for the game project
- Design and maintain the lighting pipeline & workflow for all aspects of lighting
- Regularly review, feed back, and approve lighting content on the project, both internally and externally, in concert with the project Art Director
- In concert with the Technical Art Director, ensure that the team is optimizing lighting and shading content for runtime in game engine
- Work with the Lighting Producer to define lighting strategies, set priorities, and assign tasks
- Coordinate and communicate with other departments regularly, keeping team and management informed through regular, proactive updates and presentations
- Shade and Render high-end CG images and animations for internal presentations and promotional use (Magazine covers, Websites, Web Vignettes, Sizzle Videos, etc...)
- Work closely with the Technical Art Director, Art Director, Art Leads and Rendering Engineers to ensure the team is achieving their creative goals and lighting quality benchmarks
- Report into the Art Director
Qualifications
- A post secondary education in traditional art or classical animation
- Prior experience on a game team, lighting for a AAA console product, in a senior or lead capacity
- A proven ability to create and evoke mood through the use of light, shadow, and colour, along with an eye for detail and style as demonstrated by a top-rate portfolio or demo reel
- Proven knowledge of in-game lighting techniques, including dynamic lighting (forward and deferred) and baked global illumination (vertex or light map-based)
- Knowledge of rendering systems that use Final Gathering and Global Illumination effects such as Mental Ray, Turtle, V-Ray or Renderman
- Proven understanding of commonly used next-gen game shaders, and how to best utilize them for effective lighting
- Ability to problem-solve and lead a team in a dynamic, deadline-oriented environment
- Excellent organizational, verbal and written communication skills.
- A strong blend of artistic and technical skills
Assets
- Knowledge of Maya
- Knowledge of Modeling, Animation, VFX & Surfacing
- Ability to write scripts, e.g. MEL / Python
- Experience using Beast or Turtle
- Prior experience on projects using outsourcing or 3rd party development
- Additional background in Film, TV, or VFX is an advantage
APPLY NOW
Send us your resume to jobs@propagandagames.com along with a cover letter describing why you'd be right for the job.
