Senior Unreal Artist

Who we are

The Weather Channel television network has an opening for a Sr. Unreal Artist to join our Emmy-award-winning team. We create the world's best scientific and entertaining weather and climate content that reach millions of people around the world. We strive to tell compelling and impactful stories and explainers that help inform, educate, and save lives. It's our mission - and if it's part of yours, we invite you to join us.

Who you are

You love working with the Unreal engine. You love design and science. You care about the planet and want to join a close-knit and diverse team that collaborates on ways to bring meaningful stories of science, weather, and climate to life. you thrive feeding off of new ideas and peer feedback to make the best experience possible. You can't wait to bring the latest advances in technology and new software features to life in your work. You live and breathe as a creator and are obsessed with life-like and realistic quality in your executions and your portfolio and reel prove it.

What you'll do

The Sr. Unreal Artist will utilize superior 3D modeling, texturing, and lighting skill sets in order to create hyper-realistic environments, assets, immersive experiences & set pieces using 3D software and the Unreal Engine. The ideal candidate will collaboratively capture and then translate both design and scientific visions in order to meticulously craft awe-inspiring, highly accurate environments.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Utilize highly developed modeling & lighting skillset to build visually stunning and accurate environments, levels, and assets in Unreal engine.
• Prototype rough layouts quickly and efficiently.
• Create natural landscapes and terrains.
• Utilize and interpret Unreal Engine blueprints and sequencer tools.
• Develop a beautiful cohesive layout with 3D assets resulting in an immersive Unreal scene.
• Optimize environments in a manner that meets or exceeds performance & memory standards.

Education, Experience, Certification Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computing Science or Graphics discipline, or equivalent professional experience preferred.
• Minimum 3+ years experience with Unreal Engine 4 & 5.
• 1 year or more of experience in virtual production or live broadcasting.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Accomplished visual artist.
• Expert Experience with Unreal 4 and Experience with Unreal 5.
• Must be highly experienced with the fundamentals of 3D art creation including high poly and low poly modeling, UV layout, texture, and material creation.
• Must be an effective collaborator and communicator that can work with leads, directors, and with other departments to deliver work on time.
• Be proficient in 3D Studio Max (or similar 3D modeling software), Adobe Substance, Photoshop, and Zbrush.
• Able to plan the creation of multiple art assets to meet the art needs of entire environments and see them through to completion.
• Experience with industry-standard asset management tools like Perforce.
• Exhibit good color theory and technical expertise in primarily organic layout, lighting, scene composition, and environmental FX polish (bloom, color adjust, fog, etc.).
• Creatively model from rudimentary or unfinished concepts, showing an understanding of the goals of the design, to final, production-ready models.
• Create solid, high-fidelity textures of any given surface.
• Create shaders for environment assets, volumetrics, decals, ambient effects, etc.
• Knowledge and experience with Zero Density and/or Pixotope software is a plus.
• Professional experience taking storyboards, wireframes, and concept art all the way to highly-polished, linear & interactive experiences.
• Advanced skills in hard-surface and organic modeling.
• Create light mobilities & shadow options in a manner that maximizes believability and desired mood.
• Ability to create both hard surface and organic models with a high level of realism.
• Familiarity with modular-level construction.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, interpersonal, and organizational skills.
• Good sense of spatial composition and proportions.
• Understanding of basic architecture.
• Good eye for timing and motion in relation to real-world physical behaviors.
• Understanding of VFX asset costs and impact on GPU performance; Ability to work within memory and performance constraints while maintaining high visual quality.
• Ability to work independently and creatively to solve VFX technical challenges.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, iterative development environment.