Houdini Technical Artist - W/M/NB

The Houdini Technical Artist defines, creates, supports, and maintains procedural content generation pipelines and tools. This role involves understanding existing processes, optimizing them, and developing custom tools based on the needs of level designers and artists. Key responsibilities include creating Houdini digital assets for in-game use, iterating with teams to link the game engine to Houdini, empowering world builders, and maintaining documentation.

Must Have

• Create Houdini digital assets for use in game with Houdini Engine (procedural objects, terrain processing & space population)
• Iterate with the various teams to create tools linking the game engine to Houdini processes
• Empower the world builders by freeing them from redundant task
• Allow the artists to express their creativity by providing them with comprehensive tools
• Maintain the processes, pipeline and documentation
• Be able to gather in a same rule the gameplay, technical constraints and artistic requirements
• Troubleshoot problems and find appropriate solutions
• Assist the team in learning new technologies and processes
• Well advanced Houdini knowledge
• Familiar with VEX and ideally with Python
• Strong understanding of rendering budgets and other technical constraints related to performance in real-time engines
• Strong understanding of the requirements for a global pipeline, the ability to enforce strong processes and to setup new ones
• Experience collaborating with graphic programmers and mentoring artists
• Excellent communication skills
• Good knowledge and understanding of the video game development processes and techniques

Good to Have

• Overall artistic knowledge (composition, color, motion, etc.)
• Experience in developing games for consoles (PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3)
• Familiarity with 3DSMax/Zbrush/Motion Builder /Photoshop
• Knowledge of other programming languages (C#, C++, Java Script)
• USD knowledge

Job Description

Under the responsibility of the Technical Director, the Houdini Technical Artist helps define and create, support and maintain the procedural content generation pipeline and tools. A key aspect of this role is not only to understand the existing processes and to be able to update/optimize it but is also about being able to understand the level designers and level artists’ needs in order to provide custom tailored tools.

Responsibilities

• Create Houdini digital assets for use in game with Houdini Engine (procedural objects, terrain processing & space population (rocks and vegetation))
• Iterate with the various teams to:
• Create tools linking the game engine to Houdini processes
• Empower the world builders by freeing them from redundant task
• Allow the artists to express their creativity by providing them with comprehensive tools
• Maintain the processes, pipeline and documentation by ensuring that all new addition is compliant with the existing systems.
• Be able to gather in a same rule the gameplay (playability/variety), the technical constraints (memory/perf) and the artistic requirements
• Troubleshoot problems and find appropriate solutions
• Assist the team in learning new technologies and processes
• Between the Houdini Artists, a common trunk of knowledge is shared, but each one is also able to bring his own knowledge in the project.

Qualifications

• Well advanced Houdini knowledge
• Familiar with VEX and ideally with Python
• Strong understanding of rendering budgets and other technical constraints related to performance in real-time engines
• Strong understanding of the requirements for a global pipeline, the ability to enforce strong processes and to setup new ones
• Experience collaborating with graphic programmers and mentoring artists
• Excellent communication skills
• Good knowledge and understanding of the video game development processes and techniques

Nice to have

• Overall artistic knowledge (composition, color, motion, etc.) is a plus
• Experience in developing games for consoles (PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3)
• Familiarity with 3DSMax/Zbrush/Motion Builder /Photoshop
• Knowledge of other programming languages (C#, C++, Java Script)
• USD knowledge is a plus