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Senior Lighting Artist - Unpublished R&D Product

As part of the Technical Art team, you will help tell stories through visually compelling environments. Working within both design and technical constraints you will light environments that enhance the purpose and mood of the game. Your craft expertise and eye for structure, form, shape language, and design will help illuminate fantastic new worlds for our players to explore. As a senior member of the team, you will help mentor your fellow team members to raise the quality bar and game developer knowledge.

As a Senior Lighting Artist on the Research & Development team, you'll create visually stunning gameplay spaces that support the story, art style, and gameplay. You'll use light, atmosphere, and grading to define the emotional intent of the world, characters, and user experiences. You will use your creative and technical proficiency in Unreal Engine to create lighting that works for both high-end machines and low spec machines while retaining the overall look. You will report to the Director, Art Direction.

Responsibilities

• Create mood and atmosphere through real-time lighting that is consistent with art direction and gameplay needs
• Develop lighting systems, color grading and other post process setups
• Translate lighting references, concepts, and game visual art style into gameplay lighting
• Collaborate directly with technical artists and engineers to develop the lighting pipeline, define tools and workflows, and develop technical standards/best practices for lighting
• Troubleshoot lighting to solve technical challenges and optimize the visual look and performance
• Work as a lighting guide for the team; identify risks, production issues, dependencies, and scoping concerns to ensure that all the lighting goals are fully completed.
• Create and gather visual reference to construct mood boards in the absence of concept art to establish and reinforce the look and feel through lighting
• Create and presenting pre-production materials including style guides, concepts, mood boards, workflow documentation
• Define efficient lighting workflows/pipelines and identifying innovative tools and technology for production

Requirements

• 5 years experience creating in-game lighting from pre-production through final with Physically Based Rendering pipelines
• Strong understanding of art fundamentals including color theory, value, and composition
• Strong understanding of lighting foundations including direct/indirect light, exposure/luminance, visual composition, and photographic principles
• Strong understanding of shading/materials and their relationship with lighting
• Understands lighting’s performance requirements for console and PC
• Experience in color grading using industry standard software such as Resolve

Desired Qualifications

• Professional experience creating systems and taking ownership
• Background in photography and/or cinematography
• Experience on a large AAA game with heavy demands on lighting

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!

When submitting your application, please provide a portfolio of your high-quality lighting art. And as a part of the application process, you may also be asked to complete an art test.

Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code . Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming .