Senior Unreal Environment Generalist
At Brown Bag Films, our motto is simple: “We Love Animation™.” And we mean it — we put our artists at the heart of everything we do. As one of the most creatively driven animation studios, we are passionate about creating high-quality, engaging content for kids and families everywhere.
We're seeking a Senior Unreal Environment Generalist to design and build immersive real-time environments in Unreal Engine that bring the creative vision of our productions to life. The ideal candidate combines strong artistic sensibilities with technical expertise to create scalable, high-quality worlds optimized for real-time workflows.
Purpose
To design, assemble, and develop real-time digital environments in Unreal Engine that support the creative vision of the show’s Director and Art Director. This role combines strong artistic judgment with technical execution, focusing on scalable, performant environments that communicate story, scale, depth, and mood.
The Senior Unreal Environment Generalist is responsible for building environments primarily through modular, reusable building blocks—including terrain, foliage systems, rock and mountain assemblies, skydomes, and atmospheric effects—constructed and refined directly in Unreal Engine.
This role replaces traditional painted matte backgrounds with fully constructed 3D and real-time environments, leveraging Unreal’s lighting, fog, haze, and atmospheric systems to shape distant environments and ensure visual continuity across shots and sequences.
Delivery
- High-quality Unreal Engine–based environment assemblies and set extensions aligned with the project’s visual language
- Distant and mid-ground environments (terrain, foliage clusters, skydomes, atmospheric layers) built as real-time 3D solutions rather than static matte paintings
- Modular environment layouts using pre-built 2D and 3D assets optimized for Unreal Engine
- Contribution to, and maintenance of, a reusable Unreal environment asset library
- Optimized environment scenes that meet real-time performance, lighting, and rendering requirements
- Clear technical breakdowns of environment setups for lighting, layout, and downstream departments
- Pipeline, tools, and IT tickets related to Unreal Engine workflows and environment systems
- Documentation of Unreal-specific environment workflows and best practices
Key Responsibilities
- Assemble and refine high-quality environments and set extensions using existing 2D and 3D library assets
- Build environment components such as terrain, rock formations, layout passes, and skydome setups
- Build and manage foliage setups in Unreal Engine using foliage painting, scattering systems, instancing, and clustering tools.
- Understand and incorporate real-time lighting, haze, fog, and atmospheric effects to enhance distant environments
- Collaborate with Production, CG, and Lighting departments to ensure visual and technical continuity
- Curate, organize, and help expand environment and asset libraries for reusability and stylistic consistency
- Log time and submit relevant pipeline or IT tickets for support or improvements
- Proactively solve artistic and technical challenges related to environment creation
- Research, develop, and document improved Unreal Engine environment workflows, tools, and best practices.
- Mentor junior artists and help develop team skills in 3D environment creation and Unreal Engine
Key Requirements
- Use tools such as Unreal Engine, Photoshop, Maya, and Nuke to produce, integrate, and optimize environment elements
- Prototype quick environment layouts and set extensions in Unreal Engine for previs or rapid iteration