Lead VFX Artist | Unity and Unreal | Real Time

Title: Lead VFX Artist (Remote - Unity & Unreal)

Location: Spain, Chile, Argentina & Mexico

1518 Studios is extensively growing our Global Art Team

The role of Lead VFX Artist is to lead and motivate a team of talented VFX Artists in delivering astounding work and AAA quality assets. This position entails a great deal of responsibility and opportunity to drive further the development of strong team and for which your artistic, technical and managerial expertise are with great importance. As a Lead VFX Artist your job is to plan, organize, follow-up and evaluate your team´s work in order to ensure that they meet the production objectives in terms of time and quality. In this role you are required to anticipate and find solutions on team and production level in order to deliver stunning visual experience of the project.

The ideal candidate in this role is an experienced VFX Artist in games, with a balance of technical problem solving, artistic skills and a passion for all manner of VFX; from gameplay and combat driven systems, to environmental atmospherics and destruction.

In this role you will supervise the design and implementation processes for high-quality AAA VFX, making sure these support gameplay and art direction. Create and optimize VFX to run within performance limitations. Work closely with art, animation, design, and programming team to anticipate and solve challenges within given constraints and visual requirements. Translate references, concept art, game design briefs, and verbal directions into prototypes.

We are looking for a Senior to Lead professional VFX experience in the game industry and you must have a strong reel/portfolio showing executed real-time FX work with a minimum of one shipped AAA game.

What you’ll be doing

• Create high-quality particle effects and textures.
• Collaborate with the Art, Gameplay, Design, and Animation teams to develop in-game VFX elements, from early look development and prototyping to final polished implementation.
• Use our engine authoring toolset, Maya, Houdini, Substance, and various other supplemental VFX authoring packages to create stunning VFX particles, systems, textures, and simulations.
• Directly implement VFX content, including in-world placement and scripting of systemic/gameplay driven behaviours.
• Working with the Art, Design and Engineering teams to find solutions to artistic challenges.
• Develop a deep understanding of the art direction and create effects to support the vision.
• Create effects to realistic performance budgets and take ownership of the memory and performance costs of your effects.
• Set and Design technical and quality visual effects benchmarks with minimal to no supervision.
• Storyboarding VFX Concepts.
• Establish and maintain best practices documentation.

Requirements

What we’re looking for

• Knowledge of Unity and Unreal Particle System.
• Experience with the CASCADE interface in Unreal.
• Examples of Flipbooks VFX in your portfolio and stylised effects.
• Experience of using industry-standard content creation software (e.g. Maya, 3ds Max, Photoshop, Substance) to create assets to use in-engine.
• Strong understanding of Real-time VFX techniques and pipeline.
• Experience with various supplemental 3D and VFX authoring packages (Maya, Houdini, Substance, etc.)
• Portfolio that demonstrates a breadth of both technical and artistic execution of real-time VFX.
• Deep understanding optimizing VFX for console and mobile game development.
• Experience with shader creation inside Unity and Unreal.
• Knowledge of game production pipeline and life cycle.
• A critical eye for the timing, animation, and motion of real-world objects and visual VFX.
• Excellent Leadership Skills, great verbal and written communication.
• Have experience teaching and mentoring new artists.
• Excellent English skills

Good to Have

• Experience in writing scripts/plugins in MEL, C/C++ for Maya would be a plus.
• Abilities in secondary areas such as modelling, skinning, animation, or lighting is a plus.
• Bilingual competences in Spanish.

Benefits

What we offer

• Attractive Remuneration
• You will be working for the pre-eminent global provider of specialist services to the games industry and provided with full training and the opportunity to work on some of the biggest games titles in the world.
• Competitive remuneration, holidays, regular team competitions with great prizes; and inclusion into an extensive social calendar. Collaborative team-work with people from all around the world, different nationalities and languages.
• A supportive community inclusive of LGBTQ+, and any age, ethnicity, religion, or disability. We care about the wellbeing of our employees and have a dedicated employee wellbeing programme.

Who we are

35+ Studios | 26+ Years of Experience |1,000+ Products | 60+ Awards for Clients | 8,500+ Employees

PTW is a video games services company that supports video game developers and publishers through outsourced production services. We started 25 years ago and since then, have grown exponentially year on year to where we are today. Our history is in gaming, and we are gamers at heart. In our time within the games industry, we have worked on over 1500 titles across all genres and all platforms, including 8 out of the past 10 Game-Of-The-Year-winning titles.

We have grown rapidly over the past few years and now have 35 sites spanning the globe. The PTW Family of Brands includes SIDE, 1518, and Orange Rock. SIDE works at the cutting edge of interactive media as a provider of audio services for the global entertainment market. Orange Rock is our in-house game and product development studio. 1518 is our award-winning global art studio providing art-related services at every stage of the game or app development process.

1518

Our in-house art team offers the highest-quality assets: from 2D concept design to 3D animation, in-game to package art, smartphone to VR, we make everything look amazing.

1518 Ranged across time zones and countries, we’re a diverse group of tech wizards, engineers, and strategists, with over 25 years combined on-the-job experience. Alongside our internationally-acclaimed art directors, artists, and animators, we’re building immersive game worlds through Art and Co-Dev. Our client list includes Electronic Arts, Google, Jam City, Disney, Warner Bros, and Uber. No detail is too small or insignificant, and no vision is too big or ambitious. Let’s make beautiful worlds together!

Our Values

Pole To Win's core values are imbued across our global organization: Reinforced by our actions and our attitudes. Echoed throughout our approach to our operations and our clients. Exemplified by our culture, and most of all, our people. We build people and their careers. We actively turn to team mates for counsel, inspiration, and diverse perspectives. Relationships are built on mutual respect. Personal and professional integrity is our guiding principle. We are honest, authentic, transparent, and ethically sound. Our primary goal is to advance our clients' businesses and their customers' satisfaction. We set the bar for generating imaginative and effective solutions for the most challenging problems. We move with speed and agility. We love what we do. We have unwavering loyalty to our DNA, our culture, our values, and ourselves.

Welcome to PTW, Family of Brands

1518 STUDIOS