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Shader & Materials Technical Artist
1 year ago
Crystal Dynamics is constantly seeking the best gaming talent worldwide to add to our 30-plus year legacy of AAAA game development creating new and iconic franchises. We are committed to making great games with great people and having an awesome time living the dream while doing it.
Benefits for our full-time positions include, but are not limited to, a competitive regional salary, 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance options, professional development reimbursement perk, flexible hybrid on-site/off-site work opportunities, 12 company paid holidays, additional 10 paid days in December when the studio is closed for holiday break, and the ability to accrue weeks of personal paid time-off.
Join us and shape the future of an amazing studio culture committed to creating award-winning franchises like Tomb Raider , Marvel's Avengers , the next Perfect Dark , and more!
Position Summary
Come be a Part of the Future of Tomb Raider!
Crystal Dynamics is looking for a Shader / Materials Technical Artist who has an eye for high-quality, “best in class” material creation for real-time PBR environments. This Materials TA will be working on a small but fiercely talented team to bring to life the key moments in our narrative stories, levels and experiences. The successful candidate will be able to create complex, highly-optimized node-based shader networks, and work closely with artists to ensure derived materials instances are intuitive to work with.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
- Create a collection of parent / base materials from which the environment, character, and VFX teams will derive their material instances
- Develop workflows and pipelines to support the efficient creation of textures and material instances by the content team
- Work closely with Engineering, Art, and Technical Art to drive new technical features and improvements to visual fidelity, helping to realize the Art Director’s artistic vision for the game
- Set standards for material instance creation, including PBR value compliance and optimization best practices
- Guide artists in proper creation of layered materials and help troubleshoot any issues. Document workflows and best practices for material creation
- Use debugging and profiling tools to solve technical material bugs, analyze materials for GPU performance, and manage memory usage
- Mentor more junior Technical Artists
- Communicate effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, including productive feedback and brainstorming, creation / contribution to technical design documents, code documentation, and user documentation
- Take on R&D tasks and produce usable new features within time constraints
Essential Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in the game development industry on AAA console titles (or relevant industry) with at least one shipped title (or relevant projects)
- Experience writing shaders, either using a node-based graph or writing HLSL directly, including knowledge of best practices for GPU performance
- Expert knowledge of PBR, advanced rendering techniques, shading models, and the relationship between materials and lighting
- Significant optimization and debugging experience with PIX, GPAD, Nsight, RenderDoc, and/or similar profiling software for both GPU and CPU
- Portfolio:
- A demo reel (approximately two minutes) showcasing best work from professional and personal projects
- A breakdown of work done for each project presented in the demo reel, including a description of the original problem, an overview of the solution as well as technical details, explanation of contributions you were directly responsible for, and thoughts on shortcomings and possible future improvements
- Source code, if you are able to share it! Ideally, provide a link to your github account
Bonus Skills & Experience
- Sound artistic judgment (composition, color, etc.) and an eye for quality
- Experience creating materials with Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Photoshop
- Understanding of photogrammetry and scanning processes
- Basic Python and/or C++ knowledge or willingness to learn
The pay range for this role includes the annual base salary, not including bonus and the generous benefits package that Crystal Dynamics provides all full-time employees. Individual compensation is determined by work location within our approved states, as well as additional factors, including job related skills, experience, and relevant education. Your recruiter will be able to share more information about total compensation.
Pay Range
$110,000 — $128,000 USD
Not sure if you are qualified? We hope that you will still choose to apply so we may review your application!
Crystal Dynamics is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to identifying and implementing positive and persistent measures to ensure equal opportunity in the recruitment, hiring, development, training, promotion and compensation of a diverse team employee group. This includes persons of different race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity or gender expression, pregnancy, breastfeeding or medical conditions related to breastfeeding, genetic characteristic, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, medical condition, political affiliation, age, veteran status, uniform service member status, marital status, physical or mental disability, or citizenship, as well as any other classifications protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.
By submitting an application, you acknowledge that you have read and understand Crystal Dynamics’s Privacy Notice available at https://www.crystald.com/legal/privacy/.
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