Principal Technical Artist

We are seeking a Technical Artist with a principal level of accountability and experience related to Performance Pipeline. You can find below the description of this job family:
Technical Artist general fall into two categories, Technical Animator or Technical Artist, or a combination of both. Generally, when starting off in a technical art career path, the work will overlap both categories where the focus for the technical artist is to be flexible to the needs of production. As the artist becomes more senior, they will gravitate to one of the two categories mentioned. Please use the following descriptions to understand how this job family is put together.

**Tech Animation - Rigging Cinematic**:
The Technical Animator is responsible for developing and setting up rigs, skinning characters and assets and creating tools that improve the production’s workflow. He/she works in close collaboration with modelers and animators to ensure that there are no technical problems met, or hindering of the work of other team members.

**Responsibilities**:

- Recognize proper mesh topology as well as repair and/or give feedback to the 3D modelers on mesh creation, UV’s, blendshapes, and textures.
- Rigging and skinning of the characters to meet the needs of stakeholders within the team (i.e. animators, artist, technical art)
- Collaborate with technical artist and tool programmers to create tools that increase the effectiveness of the production’s workflow;
- Manage the Cinematic pipeline from Motion Builder to Maya to Unreal.
- Own the setup and maintenance of the Unreal Sequencer pipeline and any custom tools required.

**Experience**:

- Advance experience with Maya
- Intermediate knowledge of 3DMax
- Understanding of FAC System
- Experience with IK setup, set driven keys, Mel scripting, and Python.
- Experience with motion capture data cleanup.
- Experience with Motion Builder.
- Ability to problem solve technical rigging issues.
- Good sense of body mechanics and proportions.
- Experience in rigging a character.
- Experience with rigging quadpeds, creatures.
- Experience using Unreal’s sequencer and some intermediate knowledge of blueprints.
- Experience working with performance and optimization on Console a plus.
- Houdini experience is a plus.

**Tech Art - Materials, Shaders, Pipeline**:
The Technical Artist is responsible for supporting Environmental Art, Level Building, Shader material creation, performance and optimization of Unreal levels and assets, creating tools that improve the production’s workflow. He/she works in close collaboration with the artist to ensure that there are no technical problems met, or hindering of the work of other team members.

**Responsibilities**:

- Support the development of base materials in substance designer.
- Propose, architect, and implement pipeline improvement strategies for each project and for the studio to help streamline content creation.
- Drive performance and optimization efforts on all content.
- Develop tools and view modes in Unreal to help isolate common performance issues related to draw calls, shader complexity, RCA’s, etc.

**Experience**:

- Experience with PBR
- Experience building materials in Substance Designer/Painter
- Experience with scripting languages and python for Maya, Substance, etc.
- Experience with performance tools in Unreal and on multiple platforms.
- An understanding of balancing draw calls against cpu and gpu usage.
- Experience building pipeline tools for Unreal, Maya. Automation is key.
- Experience with lighting models for pre-rendered, and in-game Rendering (Unreal).
- Experience with troubleshooting VFX and particle systems.
- Strong knowledge of current 3D graphics techniques.
- Strong knowledge of particle systems, environmental effects, cloth simulations, lighting, and dynamics.
- High proficiency in technical problem solving.
- Experience working with performance and optimization on Console a plus.
- Houdini experience is a plus.

As a Generalist Game Developer who can turn a game idea into code on a fast moving environment, you will be involved in various aspects of game’s creation from concept to finished product including coding, programming, audio, production and visual effects.

**Responsibilities**:

- Translate requirements into a clean and efficient code
- Working on the base or the engine on which the game will run
- Produce prototypes of gameplay ideas and features
- Develop schedules and determine milestones
- Generate game scripts and storyboards
- Implement game UI and visual feedbacks
- Create unit tests and validation procedures to assure quality
- Create technical documents and specifications
- Maintain code, fix bugs and take care of occurring problems
- Provide Consistent Quality results.

**Requirements**:

- Performance Optimization
- Rendering Shading
- Visual FX
- Tools Pipeline
- Hands on experience primarily with C++ and/or C#
- Proficient understanding of code versioning tools, such as Git/S