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3D Rigger & Animator

House of How Games

We believe that a universe without fun would be a pretty dull place to exist… and that games are the best medium in the world to provide that fun. We love games which is why we make games. We make games to be a part of providing that outlet for escape, competition, exploration, social connection and so much more to a global audience of 3B+ players and growing.

We believe in authentic leadership, real conversations, making decisions, learning from mistakes but always continuing to move forward. We don’t want big company politics. We just want to do our best work with good people and have fun doing what we love.

We believe that our team performs best when everyone shows up as their authentic full self and we strive to empower everyone in the studio to be a game-maker. We encourage everyone to have an entrepreneurial mindset and we foster continuous learning and innovation.

In a time of so much industry consolidation, House of How is proud to be fully independent. We are based out of Bothell, Washington with remote game-makers all over the USA. We have a satellite studio in Boden, Sweden and are also now expanding our remote workforce in British Columbia, Canada.

Starting out as colleagues at Microsoft Games, our leads worked with each other for years before setting out on a new adventure together. From humble beginnings, we grew slowly and carefully to ensure we could control our own destiny. We are now at ~50 people and growing rapidly as our industry reputation is bringing more and more projects to the studio. Come join our team and be part of the amazing growth story of House of How Games and help us to entertain the planet!

Job Description

House of How is looking for a 3D Rigger & Animator who is able to rig and animate multiple 3D characters and environments. We are looking for someone who has a passion for games and animation, particularly with the drive to take charge on seeing through their entire animation pipeline, both artistically and technically, from rigging, animating, exporting, uploading, implementing into the engine, identifying and resolving issues independently, and improving this entire process for the team with your ideas and feedback. If you have a jack-of-all-trades attitude and skillset to rig holistically, you will be immensely valued!

Responsibilities

• Rig 3D assets (characters, creatures, props, sets, etc.) to achieve the intended animation performance for both gameplay and cinematics.
• Be proactive and vocal about any issues encountered in our rigging pipeline and communicate with the production team in a timely manner.
• Enforce rigging standards for assets.
• Work to ensure quality of milestone deliverables that are both visually impactful and data efficient.
• Assist the Art Director to execute on priorities, and work effectively to meet milestone deadlines.
• Work closely with artists, designers, and engineers to create and implement 3D art and animations.
• Work quickly and effectively in a fast-paced environment.

Requirements

• 3+ years experience in 3D rigging and animation for games.
• Technical animation skillset; strong familiarity with 3D art workflows and rigging of characters and creatures.
• Proficient in Maya and other rigging and animation tools.
• Experience with animation for real-time applications.
• Ability to debug character rig and weighting issues.
• Portfolio that demonstrates your impressive skills and understanding of skeletal animation.
• Familiarity with emerging tools, techniques, and technologies that influence animation content creation.
• Excellent communication and personal time management within a remote work environment.
• Able to give and receive meaningful critique and feedback.
• Experience in source control systems such as Git or SVN.
• Experience working in Agile environments and on multi-disciplinary teams.
• Written and spoken English fluency.

Bonus Qualifications

• 1-3 years experience with a game engine such as Unity or Unreal, particularly in implementing 3D animation into engine.
• Experience or interest in 2D Rigging. While not required for this role’s project, if you can do both 3D and 2D rigging, you will be tremendously valued at House of How!
• Experience with rigging or animation for Babylon with glTF exports.
• Audio, sprite art, design, programming, any other game development-related skills! If you’re a jack-of-all-trades with many interests, please tell us!
• B.A. or MFA in 3D Animation.
• Experience with creating behavior trees, animation systems, or cloth and hair simulations.
• Experience in ADO, Trello, Jira, or other task tracking systems.
• A passionate interest in games to drive our products to the next level.
• Shipped 1+ AAA game title(s).
• Experience working in Blender, ZBrush, Houdini, or Adobe Animate.