Summary:

For over 30 years, Naughty Dog has been crafting best-selling, critically acclaimed games that constantly push the boundaries of narrative, gameplay, and technology. Our most recent game, The Last of Us Part II, has received over 300 Game of the Year awards and three of our games are among the top 10 highest scored games on the PlayStation 4. As a part of the Naughty Dog legacy, you’ll become a part of continuing the development of extraordinary and enduring experiences for a broad, global range of audiences.

The environmental foreground team is responsible for the creation, rigging, and support of all environment related animating objects in the game. This includes dynamic simulations and interactions with level (background) geometry.

Most foreground artists are versatile Maya generalists, but also have specializations in different areas that fall under the team’s realm of responsibilities. Some foreground artists are technical or rigging specialists, others are modelers and texture artists, and some specialize in dynamic set-ups. Through this diversity of specializations, the team supports each other in different ways, actively distributing and sharing the overall workload.

Responsibilities:

Thorough understanding of 3D pipelines, particularly in Maya
Create intuitive, animator-friendly animation rigs for environment related props.
Working with real-time physics objects in Havok, or similar packages, to aid and support artist friendly authoring.
Supporting with artist friendly interfaces for pre-simulated effects in Maya or Houdini, including breaking up geometry, rigging and simulation.
Working with cloth or rope dynamic setups.

Requirements & Skills:

Solid foundation and experience with Maya modeling and texturing tools and pipeline
Experience with Python in a 3D pipeline environment, particularly frontend tool and script development for geometry manipulation
Experience with artist friendly interface design
Good communication skills and a great attitude for interfacing and collaborating effectively with all other disciplines
Ability to stay organized and prioritize tasks according to their urgency
Industry experience, having shipped at least two AAA titles. Must be able to provide a demo reel or examples of professional work (online preferred), a breakdown of your contributions to the shots, and an accompanying resume

Bonus Skills:

Houdini experience, particularly digital asset development or experience with Houdini Engine
Shader development experience