Senior Character LookDev Artist - F/M/NB

Novaquark, Inc.; Paris; Hybride; EUR 70 000 - 100 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

Tara Gaming is seeking a Senior Character LookDev Artist to develop and maintain shaders and material solutions for characters and creatures in-game. You will collaborate with Character Artists and Technical Artists to translate high-quality assets into performant, production-ready game materials.

The role emphasizes real-time rendering, shader optimization, and ensuring consistency across platforms while building reusable workflows and documentation for the character art team.

Qualifications

• Mandatory strong understanding of real-time rendering and PBR.

Responsabilités

• Develop and maintain character shaders and material systems for skin, eyes, hair, cloth, leather, metal, wet materials, translucent materials, and other character-specific surfaces.

Connaissances

Real-time rendering

PBR rendering

Character shaders

Unreal Engine shaders

Shader optimization

Texture maps

Subsurface scattering

Hair/fur shaders

Substance 3D Designer

Substance Painter

HLSL/GLSL

Unreal Engine custom nodes

GPU profiling

Python scripting

Ray tracing

Nanite/Lumen

Outils

Unreal Engine

Substance 3D Designer

Substance Painter

Description du poste

Role Summary

• Responsibilities: Create and maintain high-quality character shaders and material systems, ensuring characters achieve the required visual quality, realism, and performance in-game.

• Team composition: Character Shader Artists working closely with Character Artists, Lead/Principal Character Artists, Character Art Director, and Technical Artists.

• Team work: Primarily with the Character Art team, while collaborating closely with Technical Art, Rendering/Graphics Engineering, VFX, Lighting, and Art Direction.

We are looking for a Senior Character LookDev Artist to develop and maintain the shaders and material solutions that bring our characters and creatures to life in-game. You will work closely with Character Artists and Technical Artists to translate high-quality character assets into performant, visually consistent, and production-ready game assets.

Core Mandate (3 main missions)

• Develop and maintain character shaders and material systems for skin, eyes, hair, cloth, leather, metal, wet materials, translucent materials, and other character-specific surfaces.

• Push character visual quality and realism by developing advanced material solutions, supporting look development, and translating offline/reference-quality looks into real-time game rendering.

• Ensure performance, scalability, and consistency of character shaders across target platforms while establishing reusable workflows, documentation, and best practices for the character art team.

Success Criteria (What are we expecting from this person in the next months)

• Deliver production-ready character shaders and material solutions that meet the project’s visual quality and technical requirements.

• Establish or improve a consistent character material/shader pipeline, reducing iteration time between Character Artists, Lookdev, Lighting, and Technical Art.

• Successfully optimize shaders and materials to meet performance budgets without compromising the required visual quality.

• Provide strong technical support to Character Artists and become a go-to expert for character materials, shaders, and real-time rendering.

• Identify technical limitations and propose new shader/material solutions that improve the overall character pipeline.

Key information

• Freelance Contract (one year)

• Availability: ASAP

• Location: Full remote possible (Europe only)

• Compensation and Benefits:

  We partner with Deel to facilitate hiring globally, ensuring compliance with local labor laws and providing tailored benefits for each country. This collaboration allows us to offer competitive packages and seamless onboarding for our international team members, enhancing their employment experience no matter where they are located.

  • Our website: https://taragaming.com/

  • We released the first trailer: https://tinyurl.com/yd9k7fa8

  • Life as a Programmer at Tara Gaming

  • Life as an Artist at Tara Gaming

  • A short article about us: https://gamesbeat.com/the-age-of-bhaarat-aims-to-be-the-black-myth-wukong-moment-for-triple-a-fans-in-india-exclusive-interviews/

  • Good summary of our game: https://tinyurl.com/bdzxd9cc

Hard skills

Mandatory Strong understanding of real-time rendering and physically based rendering (PBR). Proven professional experience creating character shaders/materials for AAA or high-quality games. Strong knowledge of shader development and material graphs in a modern game engine such as Unreal Engine. Strong understanding of PBR, lighting, color spaces, texture maps, normals, roughness, metallic, subsurface scattering, and material response. Experience developing character-specific materials such as skin, eyes, hair, cloth, and complex layered materials. Strong understanding of shader optimization and real-time performance, including shader complexity, instruction count, texture sampling, memory usage, and platform constraints. Ability to work closely with Character Artists and Technical Artists and translate artistic requirements into technical shader solutions. Strong troubleshooting and debugging skills for visual and technical rendering issues. Knowledge of hair/fur rendering and grooming-related shaders. Experience with Substance 3D Designer / Painter and procedural material workflows. Experience with subsurface scattering, transmission, anisotropy, iridescence, clear coat, and layered materials. Nice to have Experience with HLSL / GLSL or writing custom shader code. Experience with Unreal Engine custom nodes, material functions, and shader development. Experience with GPU profiling and rendering/debugging tools. Experience working with custom rendering pipelines or proprietary AAA engines. Python or other scripting experience for pipeline/tools development. Understanding of next-generation rendering technologies such as Nanite, Lumen, virtual texturing, ray tracing, or similar technologies.