Job Description
Senior Technical Artist - Rigging & Deformation
Vancouver, Canada or Remote
EA SPORTS is one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world, with top-selling videogame franchises, award-winning interactive technology, fan programs, and cross-platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sport through industry-leading sports video games, including Madden NFL football, FIFA soccer, NHL® hockey, and EA SPORTS UFC.
Team Overview:
Our Character Animation Research Team (known as the A-Team) is a small team based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
We are a cross-functional, applied R&D team, strategically positioned in EA to drive and disrupt the future of character animation technology. We are a self-motivated, collaborative team, empowered to constantly explore and leverage the latest innovations across the fields of animation, rigging, physics, and machine learning. Our technology has been used to create next-generation gameplay realism across EA titles such as FIFA, Madden, NHL, UFC, Battlefield, and many others.
Join us in helping shape the future of how games are made!
The Sr. TA will work with the A-Team TADs, game team TAD's and central content teams to create tools, workflows and systems to achieve the highest quality character deformation. This includes investment in R&D for the future of rigging at EA.
Key Responsibilities:
• Develop global rigging deformation workflows and systems with the goal of convergence and efficiency
• Participate in and enhance the EA character community
• Coordinate with content creators to achieve highest possible content to our game team partners
• Partner with Technical Art Directors on rigging content game integration
• Collaborate on solutions with other disciplines (Animation, Engineering and Art)
• Evolve rigging domain along with changing industry technology and trends
• Participate in development of training programs for A-Team
• Collaborate on and follow A-Team best practices (code conventions, versioning, node naming, directory structure)
• Participate in code and art reviews
• Communicate risks and concerns with A-Team leadership
• Work with A-Team on rigging deformation solutions
• Aim to improve cross studio communication and team culture
• Write documentation, where applicable
Required Technical Skills and Qualifications:
• At least 10+ years of rigging experience in games and film
• Expertise in creating common animation rigs, tools and workflows for rigging and animation
• Expert knowledge in Maya
• Expert knowledge in Python
• Working knowledge in Motion Builder
• Understanding of physical motion, weight, balance and form
• Knowledge of human and creature anatomy
• Experience with motion capture and motion retargeting
• Experience with editor-based game development environments (Unreal, Unity)
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gp5jx9-3-236-55-137-42 in your application.