REAL-TIME ASSET ARTIST (PROJECT HIRE)

$118,560 - $158,080/Yr

Sony Pictures Entertainment - Culver City, CA

Full-time - Mid Level

Culver City, CA

Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries

About the position

The Real-time Asset Artist at Sony Pictures Entertainment is responsible for creating high-quality content for the Unreal Engine. This role requires extensive knowledge of the Unreal Engine and proficiency in various artistic and technical skills, including concepting, set design, modeling, and surfacing. The position emphasizes collaboration with multiple teams to ensure the development of optimized assets for real-time environments. This is a project hire role anticipated to last up to 6 months.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Asset Supervisor, Asset, Pipeline, VAD and Lighting team on creating characters, environments, vehicles, and props for the Unreal Engine.
• Create high-quality assets from concept to final model and surfacing that are optimized for real-time performance.
• Ingest assets created internally or sourced from third parties into projects.
• Engage in creative research and development, clearly communicating goals and objectives.
• Assist with long-term strategic planning and inspire technical solutions for asset development.
• Leverage advancements in Unreal Engine to expedite the asset development process.
• Develop and implement standardized practices across projects to meet quality and aesthetic standards.
• Create project-based materials and blueprints in Unreal Engine.
• Critically think and solve technical challenges within DCC programs and Unreal Engine.
• Create Control Rigs in DCC and Unreal Engine as needed.
• Generate documentation on processes used for content creation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience with real-time content creation.
• Excellent eye for detail and an artistic portfolio showcasing modeling and texturing expertise across various models.
• Ability to create meshes, materials, UV maps, and textures for optimal performance.
• Proficient in DCC programs like Maya, 3ds Max, Zbrush, Houdini, and Blender.
• Extensive experience with Substance Suite and Photoshop for texture and material creation adhering to Physically-Based Rendering principles.
• Experience with optimization processes for assets while maintaining high fidelity details.
• Proficient in real-time productions using Unreal Engine and knowledge of tools for character creation, set dressing, landscapes, and blueprints.
• Ability to work in various art styles with or without conceptual reference.
• Strong artistic understanding of anatomy, proportions, scale, silhouette, lighting, composition, layout, color theory, and atmosphere.
• Ability to communicate and apply art direction notes effectively and efficiently.
• Self-motivated with excellent organization, time management, communication, and collaboration skills.
• Maintain consistency and quality on all meshes, textures, and shaders for all asset types.
• Ability to rig and skin assets and build a Control Rig in Unreal Engine.
• Understanding of metahumans and ability to convert custom characters for Unreal Engine.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience working in a Volume, LED Stage, Mocap stage, and with Virtual Cameras.
• Visual Effects experience including compositing, set extension, previs, postvis, techvis, After Effects, Nuke, Renderman, VRAY, etc.
• Knowledge of ShotGrid, Syncsketch, Bluescape, and Marvelous Designer.
• Experience with photogrammetry and scanning.
• Experience with lighting, sequencer, camera, layout, fx, and animation in Unreal Engine.
• Experience with advanced rigging, metahuman skinning, and control rigs within DCC and Unreal Engine.
• Experience with Unreal tools, landscapes, procedural content generators, blueprint creation, sequencer, Nanite, Lumen, data layers, Niagara, groom, chaos, simulations, retargeting, cloth, and plugins.
• Creating custom parent materials, procedural materials, and functions.
• Basic scripting knowledge in C++, Javascript, or Python.

Benefits

• Incentives and/or comprehensive benefits may be available.