Lighting Artist

Why PlayStation?

PlayStation isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Today, we’re recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®VR, PlayStation®Plus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.

PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

Join the award-winning team that created God of War

Santa Monica Studio is seeking a Lighting Artist for the development of a new unannounced title!

This individual will help us create stunning worlds that set the visual fidelity bar for entertainment. They’ll also contribute to the artistic vision of amazing, top of class games with a specialized focus on creating realistic and fantastical lighting of Characters, Cinematics, and Environments.

As a Lighting Artist, you must possess the ability to effectively collaborate with the Art Director and Game Director to light game levels that are visually stunning while also working with a wide range of development team members to ensure technical feasibility.

Responsibilities

• Light levels, cinematics, and characters in real-time according to defined quality standards, artistic styles, conceptual designs, development pipelines, technical parameters and production goals.
• Serve as a high-level contributor to the development of the lighting techniques and processes utilized to define and achieve a product’s visual style. Encourage artistic evolution within the studio. Develop a comprehensive knowledge of the level art and lighting pipeline and all engine, tools and systems associated with the lighting of art assets.
• Work with the Art Director and tech teams to implement post process effects such as bloom, ambient occlusion, depth of field, and color correction.
• Facilitate requests or information needs regarding any aspect of the environment/character lighting process as requested.
• Understand and problem-solve your work in the lighting pipeline and ensure that lighting for levels and cinematics run in memory and within budget.
• Actively improve skill set and abilities by keeping aware of industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, learning new software packages and traditional art methods.
• Generate documentation for the lighting pipeline as it changes.
• Demonstrate strong time management and prioritization skills by collaborating with Production to develop task lists to ensure assignments are progressing as expected according to schedules, milestones, and overall project goals.

Requirements

• 5+ years of industry or related experience
• A. in fine arts or relevant curriculum, or equivalent skillset
• Experience with photorealistic lighting for real-time engines
• Mastery of lighting fundamentals – how lighting effects mood, gameplay, and frame rate in real-time environments
• Strong understanding of PBR and how materials work with lighting.
• Proficiency in level art generation in regard to real-time lighting techniques such as vertex baking, light maps, light probes, etc.
• Proficiency in asset creation software for authoring and organizing game content, including but not exclusive to: Maya, Photoshop, and Perforce
• Strong technical skills for debugging complex lighting problems
• Previous or next-gen video game platform experience is desirable
• Good communication, organizational, time management, and interpersonal skills

Preferred Experience

• 2 or more published titles considered a strength

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