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Character Technical Artist

Welcome to Striking Distance Studios!

Striking Distance Studios continues to grow. We are looking for talented developers with experience working on large-scale, live service games to join us in our San Ramon studio.

What we need:

Striking Distance Studios is seeking a talented, motivated, and experienced Character Technical Artist who has a passion to collaborate with Animators, Designers, and Engineers to bring characters to life. This position will facilitate the development of shared rigging and animation technology utilized in cinematic and game creation pipelines across multiple teams. An ideal candidate should have a thorough knowledge of animation, rigging, deformation and simulation tools used in the CG/VFX industry, as well as related cross pipeline and workflows. Experience in game rigging, animation pipelines, and technologies are required. In addition, he/she will also implement tools and workflow automation. The team consists of season professionals from film and game background, aspire to leverage cutting edge technology to produce the best game experience. This is the perfect opportunity to work closely the best in class from all over the world and under one roof!

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for character setups, including the rigging of various heroes, enemies, weapons, vehicles and props, working closely with animators to achieve engaging in-game performance
• Create simulation setups for things such as hair and cloth for real-time in-engine or for animation within Maya
• Assist the animation team in troubleshooting assets and animation problems as they arise
• Provide and maintain technical documentation
• Act as an intermediary between the animation and technical teams to elucidate the workflows, needs, and terminologies of each team
• Create Maya tools and improve the art pipeline between the game engine and Maya

Qualifications:

• Strong knowledge of Maya, with a minimum of 4 years of production experience in game or film/vfx fields
• Experience working in Unreal
• Possess a comprehensive understanding of animation techniques for the purpose of proactive problem solving and troubleshooting
• Knowledge of anatomy and an understanding of bio-mechanics, for humanoids and animals
• Proficient Python development skills and debugging techniques
• Experience in adopting production pipelines and following guidelines and system requirements
• Strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to find pragmatic solutions
• Good understanding of UI design using Qt, PyQt, PySide
• Proven ability to be self-sufficient and be proactive in preventing/solving production issues

Bonus Skills:

• Maya API (Python and/or C++)
• Familiarity in runtime performance efficiency and optimization