Lighting Artist - Agency Contract

Playground Games is looking for a Lighting Artist to work alongside our talented Forza Horizon team in Leamington Spa on an agency contract. 

About us 

As a premier first-party Xbox Game Studio, we are passionate about creating genre-defining games that are accessible, beautiful, and, most of all, fun. As we continue to evolve our BAFTA award-winning Forza Horizon franchise, we are looking for exceptional talent to contribute to our already diverse team of developers.  

About the role 

As Lighting Artist, you will be working with the Lighting Lead and Art Directors to realise our vision for the lighting of Forza Horizon. You will create and maintain all elements of world lighting and proactively drive collaboration with other departments. 

Passionate about your craft, skilled in lighting, colour and composition, and with a track record to prove it, you will also benefit from a level of autonomy that allows you to be trusted with planning and delivering your own tasks to our expected standards. 

This position is offered on an agency contract, with the successful candidate employed by our trusted agency partner and assigned to work with Playground Games. The role is based at our state-of-the-art studio in Royal Leamington Spa, operating under our hybrid working model with a minimum of three days per week in the studio.  

Please note, as this position is offered through a managed service provider, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this role. 

What you'll do:

• Create lighting setups for our open world environments 
• Create and bake lightmaps for environment assets 
• Setup time of day lighting and atmosphere 
• Control Weather types and chances 
• Light Cinematics 
• Work with the Lighting Lead and Art Directors to establish visual targets 

What you'll bring: 

• Excellent understanding of lighting theory and pipelines 
• Excellent knowledge of cutting-edge real-time lighting techniques 
• An interest in off-line 3D rendering 
• Experience baking lightmaps is desirable 
• A genuine passion for games 

Why join us? 

This is a fantastic opportunity to contribute to a world-class game while working alongside an established, talented, and collaborative team at one of the industry's most exciting first-party game studios. 

If you require any reasonable accommodation to apply for this position, please contact us on recruitment@playground-games.com