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Senior Technical Artist

Sr. Technical Artist

Job Summary

Maxis is looking for a Technical Artist - Generalist. We are gearing up for our next productions and we need some passionate teammates to work with us in bringing our new characters & worlds to life. If you are passionate about bringing the latest trends in technology to bear against your craft, and working with others to develop outstanding experiences for new IPs … come join our team.

You will report to a Technical Art Director at Maxis.

Responsibilities

• Work with Technical & Art Directors, Engineers, Character & World Leads to develop industry-leading content pipelines .
• Develop tools and workflows to empower world, character, and animation artists to create excellent content.
• Create and maintain rigs and part systems for characters and animated objects.
• Work with TDs and TADs to develop content performance plans, and monitor performance to provide performance guidance, based on established metrics and reporting methods
• Develop tools, pipelines, & processes for performance management aligned towards meeting production goals.
• Firefight production issues, investigating hot issues and resolving roadblocks.
• Work with Technical Art partners across EA to develop and share pipelines and best practices.
• Keep up with the latest trends and technical tools for developing content and inspire others thru knowledge sharing.

Qualifications and Skills

• 6+ years of tech art, tech animation, rigging, or world development experience in Maya for video games.
• Served as a Senior Tech Artist on a published or soon to be published video game project.
• Significant experience working in Unreal Editor.
• Expert proficiency with Maya and modern DCC applications.
• Proficiency in Python & Mel (C# and other languages a plus.)
• Experience writing tools to aid animators, character, and object artist workflows.
• In depth experience creating and maintaining high-end character rigs.
• Experience working with keyframe animation and motion capture data, troubleshooting motion data issues, and ensuring animation best practices.
• Understanding of real-time animation systems and developing within technical limitations of a range of platforms (pc, mobile, console, etc).
• Experience developing and maintaining animation blend trees.
• Collaborate across multiple disciplines to achieve team technical goals.
• Ability to communicate through solid documentation of developed pipelines and workflows.
• Experience in Perforce or other version control software.
• Well versed in Shotgun, Jira or other bug tracking and project management software.

Bonus Qualifications

• Development experience on next-gen console hardware (XB1/PS4).
• Experience with iOS/Android.
• Experience with Blueprint and/or asset scripting.
• The ability to read and write shader source code using HLSL or GLSL.
• Background in photography, painting, concept art, or animation.
• Experience with shader networks and procedural texturing.
• Experience with PBR rendering and material / light interactions.
• Skills in Substance Designer & Painter.
• Houdini procedural workflow experience.