Senior Technical Animator

Job Description

Based at our well-established studio in the heart of Sussex in the UK, you will be working as a key member of the team on our upcoming Total War titles. In this role, you will be able to make a real impact on our games. You will bring your knowledge and experience to help push the boundaries of the strategy genre by collaborating with the wider development team - striving to make our titles better than ever before.

This opportunity is for a Senior Technical Animator to provide maternity cover over a 12 month period. This will include working on multiple titles in the Total War series as part of a technical animation team.

Key Responsibilities

The role involves working proactively with the animation and character art departments to provide support and implement content into the game. Technical Animation on Total War involves a broad skill set and a strong understanding of game asset pipelines.

On a day-to-day basis, you will:

Rigging / Skinning:

• Expand and improve an existing in-house rigging system.
• Build rigs using existing in-house rigging system effectively and efficiently.
• Skin characters to existing skeletons quickly and effectively.

Engine:

• Set up animation assets and characters in our proprietary game engine.
• Build and maintain animation graphs for a variety of assets.

Tools:

• Maintain and improve an existing animation tool base.
• Develop pipeline and workflow tools to improve workflows.

Additional:

• Support animation users with expert technical assistance in both Maya and game engine.
• Communicate and interpret between teams of varying disciplines (programmers, designers, artists, animators, etc)
• Collaborate with other TA’s across multiple projects.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Essential

• Previously shipped AAA titles in an equivalent role.

• Experience creating and managing animation pipelines.

• Expert in Autodesk Maya rigging and animation tools.

• Working experience of Animation Graphs.

• Experience with game engines (Unreal, Unity, etc).

• Extensive experience designing and maintaining tools in a production environment.

• Experience writing tools in Python.

• Experience with automated rigging solutions.

• Excellent problem solving and communication skills.

• Passion for development and problem solving.

Desirable

• Strong understanding of 3D math (linear algebra, vector and matrix math).

• Working experience with version control software.

• Experience with face rigging.

• Experience with C++

• Experience with Motion capture pipelines.

About Creative Assembly

It’s an exciting time to be a part of our craft-led studio as we push boundaries, creating deep and detailed experiences that last.

Our teams are diverse from across the world, from trainees to industry veterans who constantly challenge us and make sure we are striving for the best within our games and our studio life. We are united through our shared values of Quality, Focus, Teamwork, Respect and Trust and we win awards for our culture and our people-centric approach, having won a Best Place to Work Award for five consecutive years. We invest in our people, the studio, and our projects. We’ll give you the creative freedom, tools, support, and development to achieve your potential.

Our studios are based in Horsham, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria, including several bespoke state-of-the-art audio suites and a dedicated motion capture facility.

We offer many benefits to support you and your family including:

• Additional medical and dental health insurance for you, your partner and kids, life insurance, and free health care screening
• Additional holiday allowance plus full studio closure over the Christmas and New Year period, as all Bulgarian Bank holidays
• Annual discretionary studio bonus
• Defined career development pathways and personalised training support including; Dev Day, internal masterclasses, prestigious creative workshops, on-site training with renowned specialists and global conference attendance
• Wellbeing support with an employee assistance programme
• Free games and merchandise plus access to our extensive games library
• Free breakfast every day - toast, cereals, yoghurts, fresh fruit, soft drinks and more in our fully stocked kitchen
• Office massages
• Studio parties for you and your family; such as our Summer and Christmas parties, Children’s day party, wrap parties for game releases

Our studio sites have disabled access. We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.