Senior Character Technical Artist

Job Title:

Senior Character Technical Artist - Treyarch (Los Angeles)

Requisition ID:

R025075

Job Description:

Treyarch, the studio behind the best-selling Call of Duty - Black Ops franchise, is seeking a Senior Character Technical Artist to join its legendary team in delivering the next generation of Call of Duty games.

Our goal is to create stunning, realistic, and memorable characters and props that work seamlessly in fast action-60 frames per second gameplay and non-pre-rendered, real-time cinematics - pushing the boundaries of gameplay, art, storytelling, and technology to reach our global audience of hundreds of millions of players.

As a Senior Character Technical Artist, you will work on tools, pipeline process, and art assets directly on our current and future games with a focus on characters, creatures, weapons, and vehicles

Our ideal candidate will demonstrate a balance of technical skills and excellent art sense while keeping efficient games in mind.

What you’ll do…

• Evaluate, expand, and maintain asset creation pipelines and processes.
• Present and carry through new innovative ideas for raising the visual bar and improving technology.
• Collaborate with engineers and artists to drive teamwork, support, and communication.
• Develop sophisticated deformation systems for clothes and muscles to achieve realistic results during real-time gameplay.
• Work with existing and build new real-time physics systems for cloth, hair, soft and rigid objects.
• Develop procedural systems for deformation and mechanical machines.
• Interact with outsourcing teams during skinning and deformation reviews, guide on improving visual quality.
• Work with animators on developing animation control rigs tools and animation pipeline tools.
• Mentor, educate, and share your subject matter expertise with the team to instill standard methodologies and further grow our team.

To succeed you should have…

• 5+ years of professional Technical Art or Technical Animation experience in video games, ideally with at least one shipped title.
• Mastery in at least one industry established game engine or a proprietary engine that supports AAA games at scale.
• Ability to assess the content scope and ensure successful delivery of content on may be tight deadlines.
• Strong communication, presentation, and follow-up skills.
• Outstanding problem-solving skills regarding creative, technical, and production issues, while keeping a professional, calm, and composed demeanor.
• Experience developing and improving tools and scripts with Python APIs in various art creation software.
• Experience using Qt, PySide, and/or PyQt.
• Solid knowledge and understanding of facial and figure anatomy, as well as hard surface mechanical shapes.

We’d love it if you also have…

• A passion for playing and making video games.
• Are a self-starter and proactive.
• An experience and interest in AI.
• Ability to fix or modify modeling issues, including LOD's and UV's.
• Understanding of version control and project management tools.
• C++/Maya API experience.

We love hearing from anyone who is enthusiastic about changing the games industry. Not sure you meet all qualifications? Let us decide! Research shows that women and members of other under-represented groups tend to not apply to jobs when they think they may not meet every qualification, when, in fact, they often do! At Activision Blizzard, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and strongly encourage you to apply.

ABOUT TREYARCH

Founded in 1996, Treyarch is a videogame studio whose purpose is to create awesome games for the world to enjoy. With this purpose in mind, we crafted the award winning Call of Duty: Black Ops series and pioneered the fan favorite Zombies mode.

At Treyarch, we empower the team to be individually driven to innovate on our games, processes, and culture. How we do things is just as important as what we do.

Studio culture and development, we believe it’s a team effort and that collaboration and hearing one another is key. Every day we face the large and small challenges together and every voice matters.

These values guide us in our mission to create moments that matter. Both to the players and to us, the creators. In an era where triumphs and defeats are readily shared, seeing players engage with our creations gives us great pride. Come help us create that next moment.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

To learn more about our studio, please visit us at www.treyarch.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/treyarch, and @treyarch on Twitter.

PS, we’ve also got some pretty amazing office perks and benefits, like 20 vacation days and 16 holidays, 10 weeks of family leave, free lunches and snacks at our office, comprehensive healthcare, and more! Check out all the details here for more information: https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com

Rewards

We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered!  Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company.  You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $80,800.00 - $149,400.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.