Principal VFX Artist

Tbwa Chiat/Day Inc; United States; Remote; USD 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

Join an innovative studio as a Principal VFX Artist, where your extensive experience in the VFX industry will shine. This role demands a unique blend of artistic and technical skills, enabling you to tackle diverse challenges in real-time VFX. You will mentor fellow artists, collaborate with directors on creative vision, and push the boundaries of current technologies. Your insights will shape the future of VFX at the studio, ensuring high-quality output across exciting projects. If you thrive in a dynamic environment and are passionate about creating stunning visual effects, this opportunity is tailor-made for you.

Qualifications

• Advanced skills in Houdini and Maya for visual effects.
• Strong knowledge of game engines like Unreal and Unity.
• Proficient in technical scripting and programming for graphics.

Responsibilities

• Mentor the art team and assist in training and techniques.
• Collaborate with Art Directors on artistic direction.
• Identify and improve VFX pipeline bottlenecks.

Skills

Artistic versatility

Technical problem-solving

Mentoring and training

Adaptability to styles

Collaboration with Art Directors

Quality assurance

Understanding of VFX pipeline

Dependability and consistency

Education

Experience in Games, CG or VFX industry

Tools

Houdini

Maya

Unreal Engine

Unity

Photoshop

Substance Designer

PopcornFX

After Effects

Job description

Insomniac is looking for our new Principal VFX Artist. In this role, the Principal VFX Artist will be responsible for blending significant industry experience, technical and artistic versatility to a variety of Real-Time VFX tasks. Paramount to the role, the Principal VFX Artist must possess the agility required to move quickly between technical and artistic challenges. In addition, the artist must leverage their experience to provide feedback, mentoring, and recommendations throughout the course of product development.

If this is the opportunity you have been looking for, please read on:

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:

1. Leverages significant experience in the Games, CG or VFX industry to advise development teams across a variety of disciplines.
2. Serves as a mentor for the art team, assisting in training while sharing techniques and workflows.
3. Collaborates with the Art Directors to determine the artistic direction for new and existing properties.
4. Understands the VFX needs at the project level and works with the VFX Manager and Art Directors to create a plan that fits within all budgetary constraints.
5. Utilizes industry experience to provide clear recommendations on team structure, company policy, and artistic direction.
6. Sets “quality targets” for new or existing properties.
7. Creates pivotal content for new or existing properties.
8. Provides detailed and relevant feedback across a variety of creative materials.
9. Possesses a strong understanding of the capabilities and limitations of current real-time hardware and software and has experience to push the limits within those constraints.
10. Be aware of the future trends to evolve the studio’s VFX tech in innovative ways.
11. Identifies VFX pipeline bottlenecks and inefficiencies and works with stakeholders to improve them.
12. Demonstrates expertise across a variety of artistic foundations including visual and graphic design, composition, color theory, rhythm, balance, timing, etc.
13. Displays an ability to lead by example amidst artistic and technical challenges.
14. Helps debug, troubleshoot and solve major technical hurdles, especially those pertaining to graphics and performance.
15. Ability to quickly adapt to a diverse selection of styles and sensibilities.
16. Possesses a proven track record of dependability, consistency, and high-quality work on big budget AAA projects.
17. Other duties may be assigned.

Supervisory Responsibilities: This job has no supervisory responsibilities.

Qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Computer Skills:

1. Advanced level in Houdini and Maya: expert understanding of these DCC visual effects packages, competent working with joints and locators, animation/keyframing, rigid-body and fluid simulations, materials, shaders, lighting and rendering.
2. 3D modeling and procedural modeling/UV’ing skills are a must.
3. Strong knowledge and experience with modern game engines/editors such as Unreal, Unity, proprietary, etc.
4. Proficient with real-time particle-editors and VFX systems such as Unreal’s Niagara, PopcornFX, etc.
5. Advance understanding of complex node-based shader networks such as those used in Unreal, Unity, etc.
6. Familiarity with game scripting and/or node-based systems (e.g. Unreal Blueprint, etc).
7. Have strong grasp of technical scripting, programming and expressions pertaining to DCC and graphics: e.g. MEL, Python, Houdini VEX, HLSL Shaders, etc.
8. Proficient in Photoshop for painting and editing textures.
9. Strong knowledge of procedural texture generation software (e.g. Substance Designer, Filter-Forge, After-Effects, etc).
10. Knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite.
11. Knowledge of other visual effects or CG software a plus (e.g. Blender, Nuke, etc).

We look forward to hearing from you. Please use the link below and apply. Thank you!