Crystal Dynamics, a part of the Square Enix family and the studio behind Marvel’s Avengers and the award-winning Tomb Raider franchise, is constantly on the hunt to add even more top-tier gaming talent to our family. We pride ourselves on attracting and developing the best talent available to concept, create, and contribute to the most exciting projects in gaming. Our 25-plus years of game development experience, as well as our combined AAA games industry pedigree, has established us as one of the premier studios to work for in the world today.

Benefits for this full-time position include a competitive salary, 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance options and plenty of days of paid time-off.

Position Summary

Come be a part of the future of Tomb Raider! Crystal Dynamics is seeking a Technical Artist who has an eye for high-quality, “best in class” environment creation for games. This Environment TA will work on a small but fiercely talented team to empower environment artists to work effectively and efficiently, while exploring new techniques to realize a vibrant, dynamic living world. The successful candidate will be able to work under minimal to moderate supervision.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Develop pipelines to procedurally generate environment elements (mesh placements, erosion, rivers, etc) at a “handcrafted” quality level in line with Art Director’s vision
Work with Artists and Designers to establish guidelines for module creation and build tools to support efficient world-building workflows and iteration
Assist Environment, Design, and Cinematic teams with setting up complex assets
Work with Engineering and Technical Art to help define requirements for new tech, test prototypes, and provide feedback
Work with Lighting and Shading Technical Artists to troubleshoot rendering and quality issues
Use in-game and external profiling tools to optimize environment for GPU and memory
Identify opportunities for improved environment asset reuse, organization, and consolidation
Educate environment artists on new material features, workflows, and techniques
Write documentation on environment art workflows and best practices
Contribute to set of content validation checks to ensure standards are adhered to
Monitor outsourced content for standard compliance and provide feedback when necessary
Advocate for environment artists’ needs within Tech Art and Engineering

Essential Requirements

Experience in the game development industry on AAA games with at least one shipped console title (or relevant projects)
Sound artistic judgment (composition, color, form, etc.) and an eye for quality
Experience developing tools to support procedural environment generation
Knowledgeable about Houdini, its uses within environment pipelines, and HDA creation
Experience creating materials with Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Photoshop
Understanding of PBR theory and standards for materials and lighting
Basic understanding of real-time rendering concepts – render passes, filtering, sorting, etc
Understanding of photogrammetry and scanning processes
Basic Python/Vex scripting knowledge or willingness to learn
Experience optimizing environments for GPU and memory using in-game/editor displays, Razor, PIX, or other profiling tools
Experience debugging visual artifacts using in-game/editor displays, Razor, PIX, or other tools
Comfortable with source control (Perforce), including merging and integration
Excellent communication skills and able to write clear documentation
Detail-oriented, methodical, and able to produce clean, organized work in line with team expectations
Exceptional problem-solving ability with minimal guidance
Fast and willing learner
Highly motivated to push boundaries and expectations without external pressure
Strong self-management of time and tasks
Ability to effectively communicate and escalate issues for resolution

Desirable Skills

Expert knowledge of Houdini and HDA creation
Experience writing shaders, either using a node-based graph or writing HLSL directly, including knowledge of best practices for GPU performance
Expert knowledge of PBR and advanced rendering techniques
Experience with Substance Designer, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Houdini, Photoshop, Knald, XNormal, and other commonly used packages
Artistic education and experience, particularly in a production environment
Sound artistic judgment (composition, color, etc.) and an eye for quality
Basic rigging, skinning, and animation knowledge
Optimization and debugging experience with PIX, GPAD, Nsight, RenderDoc, and/or similar profiling software for both GPU and CPU
Ability to take on R&D tasks and produce usable new features within time constraints

Portfolio requirements

A portfolio submission is required for this position. Considered portfolios should include the following:

A demo reel (approximately two minutes) showcasing best work from professional and personal projects.
A breakdown of work done for each project presented in the demo reel, including a description of the original problem, an overview of the solution as well as technical details, explanation of contributions you were directly responsible for, and thoughts on shortcomings and possible future improvements.
Source code, if you are able to share it! Ideally, provide a link to your github account.
Examples of artistic work – painting, drawing, photography, textures, models, effects, etc.

Crystal Dynamics is an EOE and M/F/D/V employer