Job Description
Senior Technical Artist (Character) – The Sims
Multiple Locations: Redwood City, CA, USA • Vancouver, BC, Canada • Orlando, FL, USA • Austin, TX, USA • Seattle, WA, USA • Toronto, ON, Canada • Utah, USA • Georgia, USA • Illinois, USA • North Carolina, USA • New York, USA
Requisition Number:180743
Can this position be remote?: Yes
We are a global team of creators, storytellers, technologists, experience originators, innovators and so much more. We believe amazing games and experiences start with teams as diverse as the players and communities we serve. At Electronic Arts, the only limit is your imagination.
Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don’t settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be.
Teams are building the next generation game and creative platform, Project Rene and reimagining The Sims that players know and love with even more new ways to play. We’re excited you’re interested to learn more about how you can join our team and dream big.
You will be reporting to the Senior Technical Art Director.
Location: Remote North America – open to most North America locations
As a Character Technical Artist at Maxis, you will collaborate with Art & Animation Leads, Technical Artists, and Engineers across the studio and EA, to push the boundaries of character technology. The model applicant is passionate about character development, exploring new technologies, and implementing modern game production solutions for existing and new IPs.
Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with Art & Animation Directors, Engineers, Character & Animation Leads to achieve look development, content pipeline, and runtime implementation goals.
- Create character look development prototypes, applying latest technologies to aesthetic and performance goals.
- Collaborate with technical directors to define character performance requirements, diagnose, profile, and manage content costs.
- Help develop a technical character pipeline from Maya to Unreal.
- Firefight production issues, investigating urgent issues and resolving roadblocks.
- Collaborate with teams across the studio and EA to improve character development practices and pipelines.
- Create solid documentation and training material.
Qualifications:
- Production experience in Unreal Editor with a focus on character pipelines, including skeletal mesh actors, rigs & animations workflows, blueprints.
- Understanding of human and creature anatomy, proportion, silhouette, & topology and techniques to create foundational models and textures.
- 5+ years of experience of Maya and industry leading tools for character development (Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Marmoset Toolbag, etc).
- Proficiency in Unreal Materials with a focus on character look development.
- Fundamentals in PBR and proficiency in Substance Designer and Painter workflows.
- 1+ years of experience with runtime dynamics Cloth & Hair and related authoring techniques.
- 1+ years of experience designing and overseeing large character part systems.
- Proficiency in Python, Mel, and developing and maintaining artists production tools.
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience developing and maintaining Maya riggs for game characters.
- Experience developing for iOS/Android.
- Experience developing for console hardware (XB1/XBX/PS4/PS5).
