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Rare is a one-of-a-kind game studio where we create the kind of games the world doesn't have, games that are uniquely Rare! Working here offers opportunities unlike anywhere else. You'll be providing players with unforgettable shared experiences in games loved by millions worldwide. Our pirate adventure Sea of Thieves, launched in 2018, continues to thrive – and alongside that we're busy creating our next magical world, Everwild, announced in 2019 to a global audience.
As a Technical Artist at Rare, you'll be responsible for delivering beautiful and captivating visual experiences to our players. You'll contribute to a 30-year history of delivering visually stunning games, using cutting-edge techniques to solve problems, and showing your own inventiveness to tackle challenges that have not yet been solved in the industry.
What to expect
We expect you to go all in and bring your passion for gaming with you, regardless of the team you join. It all begins with your onboarding into a real job role, where you'll belong to an established team working alongside industry experts. Throughout the placement, your learning and development won't stop, and you will receive on-the-job coaching, mentoring and personal development from colleagues. As a valued part of the team, we'll expect you to give your insights and opinions and make a real contribution to our business!
Responsibilities
Technical Artists can expect to interact with almost every aspect of game production. This role is about marrying art and technology in unique, creative ways. Tech Art interns can find themselves working on tools and pipeline improvements for other artists, drawing on their own experience of making art to come up with and implement inventive improvements to the process. They may find themselves working with engineers on gameplay features, or even with the rendering team, prototyping and implementing entirely new graphics techniques. Alternatively Rigging focused Interns will find themselves creating rigs and skinning characters using Rare’s in house tools while supporting animation with advice and tooling.
The desire to learn, fit into a team environment and positively increase the quality of the game as a whole, is a must – everybody on the team gets their hands dirty in all areas of game production! It’s all about the individual’s strengths and passions. Whether that’s tooling, procedural content, writing shaders, building control rigs or something else that we’ve never seen before, we want artists who will bring their own unique views and ideas to the project and the drive to innovate in their areas of interest.
We’re big believers in high quality artwork here at Rare and, since we’re developing our products as services, we aim for fast iteration using common methods. This means that we embrace modern development practices such as Continuous Delivery, automated testing, team art reviews and agile methods.
Key Accountabilities
In conjunction with artists, designers, engineers, and testers; identify, implement and iterate on game features and pipeline requirements.
- Identify and surface risks in the areas that are being worked on.
- Solve problems through the application of sound common sense.
- Continuously work to minimize technical debt and art quality debt and rework.
- Devote time to personal improvement to further their own game development, art and technical knowledge.
- Write concise documentation of tools and assets that other teams can rely on.
Qualifications
- Experience of producing CG art and a passion for the technology of state-of-the-art visuals and authoring techniques.
- Technical experience – familiarity with writing code, e.g., in the context of tooling and scripting for a content creation package, graphics or real-time interactive applications.
- Experience of iterating on character control systems, develop techniques to optimise character deformations
- A portfolio or technical blog demonstrating your ability in CG art and/or coding.
Please note:
- IT IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO HAVE EXPERIENCE IN COMPUTER GAMES DEVELOPMENT OR TO BE ON A GAMES-SPECIFIC COURSE
Desirable Experience
None of these are essential but the more the better:
- Experience with 3D graphics content generation tools (e.g., Maya, ZBrush).
- Experience with 2D graphics content generation tools (e.g., Photoshop).
- Experience with procedural content generation tools (e.g., Substance Designer, Houdini).
- Experience in off the shelf Engine/Editors (e.g., Unreal 4, Unity).
- Experience creating animation control rigs and skinning characters
- Strong traditional art skills.
- A love for stylized visuals – exploring and understanding the art pipeline and rendering techniques involved.
- Artwork interests outside of those prescribed by a university course (e.g., personal portfolio, online competitions, independent game projects, involvement in a modding community).
- Creative activities (e.g., interest in art principles, photography, creative writing, game art).
- General programming skills in languages used within game development (e.g., Python, C#, C++).
- Experience writing shaders for real-time rendering (e.g., HLSL, GLSL, CGFX).
- Understanding of real-time rendering pipelines in modern game engines.
- Experience of any of the areas of game development mentioned in the Activities section of this document.
