Lighting Artist

We are looking for a Lighting Artist to join the Art & Animation team as a Contractor. They will play a key role in defining and enhancing the game’s visual atmosphere by implementing and refining lighting across various scenes and environments. The ideal candidate will possess a keen eye for colour, contrast, and visual composition, combined with a strong technical foundation in Unity’s lighting systems. This role will collaborate closely with the environment and all tech teams to ensure that lighting enhances both gameplay and aesthetics, delivering a cohesive visual experience across the project.

Key Responsibilities

Lighting Setup and Adjustments:

• Set up and maintain lighting across environments, character scenes, and cutscenes in Unity, ensuring they align with the game’s artistic vision and technical requirements.
• Make real-time adjustments to lighting setups based on team feedback, optimizing performance while preserving visual fidelity.

Atmospheric Lighting and Mood Creation:

• Work closely with the Head of Art & Animation and Environment Artists to develop atmospheric lighting that enhances the visuals within the game.
• Use lighting creatively to reinforce gameplay, and player immersion across different game settings.

Collaborate with Art and Technical Teams:

• Partner with environment artists and technical artists to ensure lighting works seamlessly with other visual components, enhancing cohesion and consistency in scenes.
• Coordinate with technical art to balance visual quality and performance, ensuring lighting is efficient for real-time performance on targeted platforms.

Scene Optimisation and Debugging:

• Identify and resolve technical and performance issues related to lighting, such as real-time shadows, global illumination, and post-processing, using profiling tools and techniques in Unity.
• Collaborate with engineers to debug any lighting-related issues, ensuring assets meet performance and quality standards across devices.

Lighting Tool Usage and Shader Knowledge:

• Leverage Unity's lighting tools within URP, such as light probes, reflection probes, and lighting volumes, to achieve realistic lighting effects that align with project goals.
• Basic shader knowledge, with the ability to adjust or customize shaders in Unity as necessary to enhance visual effects related to lighting is a benefit.

Process Adherence and Detail Orientation:

• Follow established workflows and best practices, avoiding ad-hoc solutions in favour of structured approaches that can be easily maintained and scaled.
• Ensure all lighting assets and methods adhere to the project’s technical and aesthetic standards, with detailed documentation for future updates.

Lighting Polish and Review:

• Continuously refine lighting elements through feedback cycles, ensuring consistency with the project’s vision and maintaining a high standard of visual quality.
• Proactively share progress with the art team, being open to feedback and ready to iterate to align with broader art and design goals.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• 2-3 years of experience in lighting for real-time environments, preferably within a game development setting, using Unity.
• Demonstrated experience in lighting environments for interactive media, with a strong portfolio showcasing work on completed games or similar projects.
• Proficiency in Unity’s lighting systems, including global illumination, lightmapping, post-processing, and environment lighting techniques.
• Familiarity with profiling and optimisation techniques, ensuring real-time lighting runs efficiently across various hardware using URP.
• Knowledge of basic shader adjustment in Unity for visual effects related to lighting.
• A solid understanding of colour theory, composition, and visual storytelling.
• Strong sense of mood and atmosphere creation through lighting, able to bring environments to life with attention to detail and thematic consistency.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to work collaboratively and respond to feedback constructively.
• Experience with other industry-standard software and tools, such as Photoshop or Substance for texture support related to lighting.
• Understanding of URP in Unity, with experience in leveraging this for high-quality lighting.
• Familiarity with procedural lighting tools or dynamic lighting systems.