About the position
As a Principal Environment Artist on the Riot MMO team, you'll focus on building high-quality 3D assets, expressing their unique style through shape, lighting, and materials, as well as help establish the technical workflows that enable our world to come to life in Unreal Engine 5. You’ll be responsible for taking concept art and turning it into stunning environment assets that elevate gameplay and storytelling. This is a creative role with a strong sense of composition and environmental storytelling that also requires deep Unreal 5 knowledge—ideal for someone who pairs deep modeling and texturing craft expertise with the ability to partner across Tech Art and Engineering to build scalable pipelines. You’ll push quality targets, collaborate on tools and workflows, and help the team deliver immersive spaces that perform well at scale. You will find the right balance between creating a beautiful world and empowering its gameplay/product needs. You think about implementation, not just visual targets and have experience maximizing scalability of the workflows you build. You’re comfortable pushing a concept further in Unreal 5 and know how to work within real constraints to create environments players can’t wait to explore time and again. This is a high-impact role for an artist who thrives at the intersection of creative excellence and technical execution.
Responsibilities
- Create high-quality 3D environment assets—including hard surface structures and organic foliage—using modern tools and workflows.
- Own the implementation and optimization of assets in Unreal Engine 5, balancing visual fidelity, gameplay clarity, and performance.
- Interpret and push concept designs to the next level while navigating technical constraints like draw calls, poly count, texture memory, and streaming budgets.
- Partner with Tech Art and Engineering to build efficient pipelines, tools, and workflows that support scalable, real-time content creation.
- Help define and maintain material and shader libraries in collaboration with Tech Art, with a deep understanding of PBR workflows and real-time lighting.
- Establish and raise the craft bar for environment asset quality across multiple biomes and cultures, ensuring artistic cohesion and performance standards.
- Influence development techniques (including procedural content generation) that enable rapid content creation at scale.
- Navigate creatively ambiguous problem spaces through rapid iteration and artistic exploration.
- Collaborate with the Art Director and Creative Leads to uphold visual direction and ensure environments support narrative, gameplay, and world cohesion.
- Support the team by mentoring other artists, creating documentation, and contributing to best practices that strengthen the discipline.
- Actively participate in the environment craft community, leading initiatives and discussions that elevate craft thinking across the project.
- Partner with Product and Delivery leads to ensure visibility into team velocity, deliverables, and production phases.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience creating environment art for AAA games.
- Experience with procedural world-building workflows (Houdini, Geometry Nodes, or similar in-engine PCG systems)
- Expert modeling, sculpting, and texturing skills using tools like Maya, ZBrush, Substance, and Photoshop
- Deep Unreal Engine 5 experience, especially Nanite, materials, and environment optimization
- Strong understanding of PBR workflows, real-time material creation, and lighting fundamentals.
- Experience building environments for large, open-world or multiplayer games.
- A collaborative mindset—able to partner closely with Tech Art, Design, and World Building to achieve shared goals.
Nice-to-haves
- A love for and/or experience working on MMORPGs
- Substance Designer experience preferred
- Experience with performance benchmarking, streaming budgets, and optimization in large-scale maps
- Familiarity with the League of Legends IP or Runeterra’s world and aesthetics.
Benefits
- Open paid time off policy
- Flexible work schedules
- Medical, dental, and life insurance
- Parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children
- 401k with company match
