Senior Technical Animator (Unannounced Project)

We are ArenaNet, a studio making online worlds infused with innovation, hand-crafted excellence, and creative passion. Our passion is broadly shared; gamers made Guild Wars 2 the fastest selling MMO game in the West with more than 3 million copies sold in its first 9 months, and players and press have consistently called it one of the best MMOs of all time.

Our studio is built on foundations of excellence with a focus on community. We constantly innovate, unlocking the true potential of online role-playing with game-changing titles like Guild Wars 2 and beyond. The status quo isn't good enough for our dedicated worldwide community of players which is why we question the de facto industry conventions and demand more from ourselves as developers.

We are looking for a highly experienced technical animator with significant experience collaborating with artists and engineers to define clear goals for tool sets, pipelines, and art development process.

In this role you will work closely with the Animation, Character, Design, and engineering teams to establish and maintain advanced and effective animation pipelines, rigs, and tools for next-gen runtime animation.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Work closely with the Art Director, Animation, Designers and Engineers to establish and maintain AAA quality bar for realtime animation
• Share responsibility with the gameplay programming team for prototyping and developing quality UE4+ Animation Blueprints that bring the game to life
• Work closely with the rest of the Technical Art team to create custom tools and pipelines to increase productivity and efficiency of the animation team

WHAT YOULL NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• Experience creating and maintaining efficient AAA animation pipelines across all phases of development
• Deep knowledge of Unreal Engine animation blueprints, blend trees, and state machines or similar technologies
• In depth experience with creating and maintaining high-end, cutting-edge creature/character rigs for run-time environments
• Strong eye for creating high quality character deformations, utilizing methods beyond basic skinning (driven transformations, pose space deformation, corrective shapes, etc)
• Solid Understanding of Human and Creature Anatomy
• Experience with Simulated Dynamics related to characters and character motion (cloth, hair, ragdoll, etc)
• Experience developing or working with modular rigging systems
• Experience working with and processing motion capture data
• Very willing collaborator with strong cross-discipline communication ability, both verbal and written
• Strong documentation skills
• Highly proactive problem solver
• Growth mindset with an eye on the future of tech in the games industry

NICE TO HAVE

• Maya Python or C++ API programming skills