Turn 10 Studios, the creators of the top selling and critically acclaimed Forza racing games franchise, has an exciting opportunity for a Technical Animator to join the Character team. A Technical Animator at Turn 10 will work as part of the creative team responsible for bringing the Drivers, Crew, and Crowd to life on Forza Motorsport. Working closely with the rest of the Character team as well as the Cinematics and Tech Art teams, the Technical Animator supports Animators and Cinematics artists with tools, rigging, and implementing content into the engine.
Turn 10 Studios is located in Redmond (Washington), just outside of Seattle. The Seattle area is a major hub for the tech and gaming industries. With beautiful mountain ranges, diverse wildlife, great hiking/biking trails, and a thriving arts culture, Seattle offers a variety of options to enjoy your life outside of work.
Responsibilities
- Work with content creators to achieve and maintain a high, consistent quality bar for characters and animations in game.
- Add to and maintain our Python-based animation tools, rigging, and mocap pipelines.
- Work closely with other Technical Animators to achieve team rigging and tools goals.
- Work with character artists to prepare, skin and export character assets for our engine.
- Identify opportunities to improve workflows and increase efficiency.
- Monitor the impact of in-game characters and animations on performance and work with the team to solve issues.
- Present ideas, feedback, and create documentation relating to animation and rigging workflows.
- Keeps abreast of industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, and continually learning new software packages and tools.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelors or Masters Degree required
- A portfolio/demo reel demonstrating a strong understanding of rigging and achieving high-quality character deformations.
- A portfolio/demo reel demonstrating problem solving or quality of life improvement for artists through the creation of tools, workflows and/or pipelines.
- Solid industry knowledge of character, animation, and motion capture pipelines.
- Strong knowledge of one or more major 3D packages, Maya preferred.
- Proficient with scripting in Python for Maya.
- Excellent organization, time management, communication, and problem-solving skills.
- Enthusiasm for empowering artists and animators to do their best work.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience working on AAA quality real-time character rigging on current generation hardware.
- 1+ yearsβ experience and as a technical animator or similar.
- Proficiency with scripting in Python and MaxScript for 3DS Max.
- Experience with an industry standard motion capture system, Motive preferred.
- Experience with Granny 3D animation system.
- Avid gamer who understands industry leading visuals and consumer expectations.
- Passion for art, innovation, and technology.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.
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