Senior Face Technical Designer

CONTRACT ROLE

Insomniac is looking for a Senior Face Technical Designer. In this role you will be responsible for authoring effective FACS shapes from scratch for human and non-human characters; collaborates in developing rigs to support high-fidelity animated facial performances; participates in facial research & development efforts. Expected to have an expert understanding of FACS and facial anatomy and cutting-edge approaches to facial technology.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:

• Expert level understanding of FACS and facial anatomy for cutting edge application to facial animation technology
• Expert proficiency in sculpting FACS shapes using deformers and/or sculpting tools for human and non-human characters
• Expert understanding of facial skeletal and muscle anatomy;
• Collaborates with animation, character art, and engineering teams to produce high quality face rigs
• Authors rigging systems to augment or support blendshape-based facial rigs
• Authors high quality photorealistic facial rigs based on FACS using blendshapes
• Collaborates with Character Art, Animation, and Engineering teams to deliver the highest quality assets with animator/mocap friendly interfaces that run smoothly in engine 
• Contributes to automated tools and workflows for runtime optimization
• Contributes to tools for ingesting 3rd party facial rigs
• Processes and cleans 3D or 4D scan data from FACS sessions
• Keeps up with state-of-the-art approaches to facial rigging for photorealistic characters in film and games
• Has strong understanding of facial shape transfer techniques and ability to implement shape transfer pipelines
• Contributes to tools for authoring and editing facial rigs (python/pyqt/pyside)
• May be asked to direct actors through FACS during facial acquisitions
• May ingest and integrate facial assets from 3rd parties
• May be expected to maintain relationships and provide feedback to external vendors
• Other duties may be assigned