Senior Character Technical Artist - Xbox Games Technology Group - Coalition

Position: Senior Character Technical Artist - Xbox Games Technology Group - The Coalition
Overview
Games continue to evolve and push the boundaries of entertainment as we know it. The bar to deliver world-class games continues to rise, driven by advantages in better hardware and software capabilities. Along with optimizing game development engines, developing infrastructure and workflows for efficient remote and hybrid development, brings new opportunities and engineering challenges that all studios are facing today. Solving these challenges is critical to enabling efficient hybrid teams as well as external globally distributed development partners who help scale during peak phases of development.

At The Coalition Studio, through our work on the acclaimed Gears of War franchise, we are tackling these problems head-on by leading engine innovation, developing technical showcase technologies, and delivering world-class workflows, tools and features that are adopted across the wider Xbox Game Studios organization. The Senior Character Technical Artist is responsible for supporting a content creation pipeline balancing ease of use, visual quality, and optimal performance with a focus on characters, rigging and animation.

In this role you will work directly with our Engine team in both developing and maintaining these systems but also help push and grow their adoption across Xbox Studios.

Responsibilities
- Design and implement simple, fast, elegant data driven content creation pipelines.

- Support both art and engineering.

- Implement/maintain game wide pipelines collaborating with engineering and content teams on implementation.

- Supports artists by troubleshooting artwork, fixing content issues or providing training and documentation.

- Optimize content to hit performance targets or memory targets - Create high quality shaders and materials for a wide variety of surface types - Create tools and scripts to assist the artists in their workflow.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Master's Degree in Computer Science, Graphic Design, Digital Arts, Technical Art, Game Design, or related field AND 3+ years technical art or industry related design experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Graphic Design, Digital Arts, Technical Art, Game Design, or related field AND 4+ years technical art or industry-related design experience OR equivalent experience.
4+ years experience using related software and packages (e.g., Autodesk Maya, Motion Builder, 3D Studio Max, Adobe Creative Suite, SideFX Houdini, Zbrush, Substance Suite).
Proven experience rigging and building characters on a game production.
Shipped a AAA game.

Preferred Qualifications  :
Experience authoring characters for game/realtime platforms:
Experience creating rigs for the full-body, face, clothing and/or hair.

- Experience optimizing high-fidelity characters for games.
Familiar with UE5’s Metahumans or similar scalable character solutions.
Familiar with the end-to-end character creation pipeline, including modelling, surfacing/texturing, materials, and animation.
Proven track record of continuously improving content pipelines.

- Understanding of data driven art content pipelines.
Understanding of physically based lighting and shading.
Material/Shader authoring experience is a bonus.
Scripting experience. Python preferred.

Experience with Unreal Engine 5 or equivalent is a huge plus.
Experience using Maya a plus.
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Technical Art IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across Canada is CAD $114,400 - CAD $203,900 per year.
Find additional pay information here:

Technical Art IC4 - L'échelle salariale de base typique pour ce rôle dans l'ensemble du Canada est de 114,400 $ CAD à 203,900 $ CAD par année.
Pour plus d'information au sujet de la rémunération, veuillez cliquer ici:

Ce poste sera ouvert pendant au moins cinq jours et les candidatures seront acceptées de façon continue jusqu’à ce que le poste soit pourvu.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft est un employeur offrant l’égalité d’accès à l’emploi. Tous les candidats qualifiés seront pris en considération pour l’emploi, sans égard à l’âge, à l’ascendance, à…