Technical Artist: Human Head Studios, Inc.

Human Head Studios is seeking a Technical Artist for our Madison, WI video game development studio. This position will assist Art Direction as the driving force for troubleshooting and providing technical support for the art department and the individual needs of each project. Work with a team of talented artists, and engineers to achieve cutting edge visual goals, within technological limitations, at the highest level of performance. Collaborate with fellow artists, designers and engineers on developing brand-defining visuals for projects, and the means to achieve them. This position requires strong creative/visual aesthetics and technical knowledge of content creation, an acute ability to think outside the box, and a passion to research subject matter when problem-solving complex, well-defined visual goals.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Rendering Support: Collaborate with art direction and engineering to enhance rendering, lighting, and post-processing, support artistic and creative vision, and improve performance.

Material Creation: Create material based solutions for all requisite content: characters (skin & hair), environmental/prop assets, VFX, and anything requiring a novel and extensible approach to attaining a complex visual target.

Lighting Development and Support: Assist lighting artists to light game-play environments and in-game cinematics to final-quality, using both lighting and post-process tools within UE4 technology.  

Quality Assurance and Optimization: Use diagnostic tools to audit visual content, maintain consistency of art assets, identify ways to improve game performance and preserve fidelity.

R&D: Research and proactively investigate tools/software to enhance rendering and visual content quality. Work with art director and programming to improve efficiency of content creation/implementation pipelines.

Instruction: Provide demonstration and guidance for new tools, work flows and best practices to fellow developers. Document and maintain content guidelines, standards and work flows. Qualifications:

5+ years of game development experience

Extensive experience with latest Unreal and Unity technology, specifically UE4

Knowledgeable and experienced in Physically Based Rendering and Lighting (PBR)

Experience with various software packages: Photoshop, Substance Designer and Painter

Extensive experience in 3d Packages; 3dsMax and/or Maya

Max/Mel Scripting and HLSL (Shader) programming experience is a plus

Experience with creating particle-based FX in Unity 5 or UE4 a plus

Content creation experience a plus (Hi-poly/Low-poly modeling, textures Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, etc.)

Experience with cloth/hair and destruction physics a plus (PhysX, Havoc, etc.)

Additional Skills and Interests:

Work and play well with other developers and development disciplines

Impassioned gamer, with experience in various genres and artistic styles

Appreciation for visual arts, across various mediums

Traditional art skills and art fundamentals a plus

Strong attention to detail

Excellent time management skills

Passionate about what is next in Computer Graphics/Rendering and the development of CG content, specifically to gaming, but also across all visual entertainment