Electronic Arts

Cliffhanger Games is a newly formed Seattle Studio focusing on blockbuster action-adventure games and pioneering next-generation emergent storytelling beginning with Marvel’s Black Panther. Join us to pursue your passion to build unique groundbreaking, and inclusive games that empower players to create incredible stories of heroic adventure. Become a foundational part of an ambitious, respectful, and diverse team as we are looking for a Senior Material Artist to join our team.

Reporting to the senior lighting director, you will establish and maintain the products shader and material quality with a focus on material surfacing for both the characters and environments we create. The senior material artist will work with art Directors, lighting artists, character artists, environment artists, tech artist, and graphics engineers in the development of our physically based materials pipeline including the creation of materials within an Unreal development environment and through the substance toolset. You have a love for the beauty and nuance of all things textural and how they add richness to our game environments, characters, and creatures. You have knowledge of materials from the natural world, are a student in the original construction of human made materials and objects and find yourself immersed in the possibility space of pattern languages on architecture and characters. You have an enthusiasm for ensuring cohesion of material construction within a PBR environment to maximize the final graphical quality within defined specifications. Additionally, you are on the cutting edge of material creation, photogrammetry, and enjoy working within the UE5 nanite environment as part of your process.  

Responsibilities

• Work with the art directors, senior lighting director, graphics engineers, environment artists, character artists, and technical artists in the definition and maintenance of the physically based material development workflow and a base material library to ensure cohesion of material output at high quality and within specs.
• Through sculpt, scan or from scratch, create and integrate materials that represent the art and creative brand direction aspirations through textural expression that brings cultural depth and brilliance to our characters and worlds.  
• Coordinate, create, and implement photogrammetry source assets with substance created materials for architecture and characters.
• Collaborate with art, technical art, and engineering team members to ensure material construction and rendering is efficient and performant.
• Document and promote the material development pipeline and asset library to ensure team clarity on best practices.
• Focus on research and development of new approaches in the material generation space.
• Partner with senior lighting director, development directors, and art leadership on maintaining scope and priorities through the phases of development.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years' experience as a material artist in the video game industry.
• Portfolio demonstrating several tiled and one-to-one materials created using both procedural and 3d sculpted techniques.
• Understanding of PBR standards and surface/light interactions.
• Expert knowledge in Substance Designer / Painter / or equivalent software.
• Experience sculpting and creating 3D environment assets and scenes.
• Experience developing and implementing photogrammetry materials.
• Experience with material generation and implementation into Unreal.

We encourage you to apply, even if you don't match every qualification listed above. Let us know why this role appeals to you, why you will be great, what unique perspectives you will bring, and which requirements will challenge you to grow.