Senior Character Rigger

We are offering a fulltime opportunity in the role of Senior Character Rigger. The Senior Character Rigger will be responsible for engineering and building the character and object rigging systems and customized tool sets. The Senior Character Rigger will report to the Animation Director while functioning as a liason between the Animation Team and other studio department team members regarding the technical aspecsts of animation and character engineering. The Senior Character Rigger will be bringing movement and life to the game’s characters to truly engage players into the experience.

• Skeletal set up – Design skeletal systems of joints and bones for desired movement as dictated by the proposed move sets and animation/motion requirements for each character.

• Muscular deformation and binding – Perform geometry binding and weighting to achieve realistic muscular movement and seamless mesh deformation.

• Facial set up – Design facial animation systems, blend shapes, bone set-ups and UI tools to meet the requirements for facial emoting based on the personality profile of the character and direction from animation.

• Morph Targets, Blend Shapes & Procedural Animation – Develop design, setup, and tool support for animating morph systems, blend shapes and procedural animations.

• Cloth Simulation – Responsible for cloth system setup, animation, and support based on project requirements.

• Maintenance & Technical Support – Support all created rigs and toolsets including ongoing modifications, upgrades, and daily troubleshooting, while incorporating animator requests throughout production.

• Tools and Automation - Create and standardizes tools, manipulation controls, and customized UIs for the Animation Team while maintaining compliance with the studio pipeline and all established technical procedures.

Candidate must have a portfolio that demonstrates the following:

• An advanced working knowledge of Maya and its functionality in regards to character engineering for animation. This includes bone and joint setups, muscular deformation, geometry binding and weighting, morph target systems, blend shapes, and procedural animation.

• Extensive professional experience as a character engineer/rigger using Maya, preferably in both the game and film/television industries.

• A strong skill set in automation and tool design for animation using MEL scripts and other languages.

• Experience in working with cloth applications - HAVOK Cloth in particular.

• Education in human and animal anatomy.

• A working knowledge of animation and character modeling.

• Strong communication skills, verbal and written.