Unreal Engine Graphics Programmer (Advanced Shader Development)

**Upwork Job Posting — Unreal Engine Graphics Programmer (Advanced Shader Development)** We’re looking for a highly skilled Unreal Engine graphics programmer with strong experience in real-time rendering and shader development to implement two advanced material systems: ### Scope of Work You will develop **two production-ready master materials** in Unreal Engine: 1. **Silhouette Parallax Occlusion Mapping (SPOM) Material** * Similar to the technique used in *Crimson Desert* * Must support **true silhouette/profile displacement**, not just standard POM * Should replicate behavior described in CryEngine’s silhouette POM documentation * Clean, optimized, and scalable for real-time use 2. **SSDM (Screen Space Displacement Mapping) Material** * Based on the technique demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQoDpv04FPo * Should approximate screen-space displacement behavior with stable results * Must be performant and usable in real production scenarios ### Technical Requirements Both materials must: * Be built as **clean, well-structured, optimized master materials** (not messy prototypes) * Support **Material Instances** with the following inputs: * Albedo / Base Color * Normal Map * Height Map * Packed ORM map: * R = Ambient Occlusion * G = Roughness * B = Metallic * Be compatible with: * **Unreal Engine 5** * **Unreal Engine 4.27** Please note the shaders should support Unreal Engines various rendering modes: raster/ray-tracing,Lumen, & path tracing. * Be optimized for real-time rendering (reasonable instruction count and performance) ### Reference Material * CryEngine Silhouette POM: https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-3/categories/1114113/pages/1048726 * Additional breakdown (SPOM + SSDM context): https://3dnchu.com/archives/crimson-desert-spom-ssdm/ * SSDM research paper: https://www.divideconcept.net/papers/SSDM-RL08.pdf ### Deliverables * 2 finalized master materials (SPOM + SSDM) * Clean, readable material graphs (well-organized, commented) * Example material instances demonstrating usage * Brief documentation or notes explaining controls and setup ### Ideal Candidate * Strong experience with **Unreal Engine material editor and HLSL/custom nodes** * Background in **real-time rendering techniques** (parallax, ray marching, screen-space effects) * Familiarity with **CryEngine rendering techniques** is a major plus * Able to balance **visual fidelity vs performance** ### Bonus * Experience implementing similar techniques in shipped titles * Ability to suggest optimizations or alternative approaches if needed --- **To Apply** Please include: * Examples of advanced shaders or rendering work * Any relevant Unreal projects or GitHub links * Brief explanation of how you would approach silhouette POM or SSDM in UE --- This is a focused, technical task — we’re not looking for basic POM. The goal is to achieve high-end, next-gen material fidelity comparable to modern AAA techniques. If you can, please answer the questions: Question 1 (SPOM depth test) How are you planning to handle rays that exit the heightfield beyond the mesh boundary? Question 2 (Silhouette validation) Will this produce correct silhouettes against the skybox, or only approximate edge fading? Question 3 (SSDM reality check) How do you plan to handle temporal instability and missing data outside the screen? Question 4 (Unreal-specific constraint) “What parts will require Custom HLSL vs Material Graph only?”