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Senior Environment Artist (Maxis)

Senior Environment Artist

At Maxis, we excel at outrageous thinking. It's the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We're trailblazers and great storytellers. But it's not just about amazing your peers – it's about amazing yourself and our fans. Take risks. Work with dazzling minds and dare to dream big. Together, we can change the way millions play every day. We are looking for someone with deep insights on how to create the best experience for our players.

We are looking for Senior Environment Artist to join our creative team and help establish the look and pipeline for our environments and objects. You would be motivated to work within a cross-disciplinary group, possess excellent communication skills, and demonstrate a sense for visual storytelling. You will work in a fast-paced, iterative environment and should be familiar with development processes and best practices of a major game studio. The ideal candidate should be flexible; someone who has extensive world building and object modeling experience and can support development across both disciplines as needed. This artist enjoys finding emerging technologies that improve development pipelines, and can produce high quality art with consistency and efficiency in a highly collaborative environment.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the Art Director, Environment, and Object Team Leads to create 3D levels and assets based on visual, technical and gameplay requirements
• Work closely with the art and Tech Art Leads to establish, test, and maintain scalable and flexible pipelines and assets that meet technical and performance requirements
• Ensures all asset types have established budgets and are optimized for the engine
• Work with Material and Tech Artists to establish and test material pipelines
• Work closely with the Animation Team to assure assets support feature sets
• Collaborate with vision holders to establish styles and standards
• Actively share progression and knowledge within area of expertise and influence related disciplines
• Responsible for content creation in of support project prototyping and visual targets
• Active participant in team discussions, critiques and reviews
• Clearly communicates and anticipates production risks/issues with constructive mitigation strategies and measures
• Mentors junior artists in the domain

Qualifications:

• Minimum 7+ years of experience combined as an Environment Artist and Object Modeler in game development
• Experience working on mobile titles
• Experience working on current-generation console or PC games
• Strong knowledge in level creation, including terrain and lighting creation within Unreal Engine 4
• Strong understanding of scene composition, layout, materials, color, and lighting
• Strong technical skills with experience implementing assets in Unreal Engine 4
• Great experience in scene/level management, include VFX and SFX
• Experience with Substance Designer/Substance Painter and material workflows
• Relevant 2D and 3D experience – Photoshop, Maya, ZBrush, Unreal, etc.
• Skilled at balancing art quality and performance optimizations
• Ability to digitally sculpt/model and texture with a stylized look is a plus
• Clear, concise and transparent communicator - both written and verbal
• A self-motivated team-player with a positive attitude and strong work ethic
• Proven time management skills with the ability to be self-sufficient and execute quickly
• A passion for video games

Bonus Qualifications:

• Knowledge in procedural world building or asset creation process
• Experience in working with remote teams (outsourcing).