Electronic Arts

EA SPORTS is one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world, with top-selling videogame franchises, award-winning interactive technology, fan programs, and cross-platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sport through industry-leading sports video games, including Madden NFL football, FIFA soccer, NHL® hockey, NBA LIVE basketball, and EA SPORTS UFC.

EA SPORTS Tech provides specialized technology teams working on modern character motion, content pipelines and workflows, machine learning, game security, dev ops, long lead feature and technology development for all EA SPORTS titles, and improves Frostbite engine workflows and solutions for all in partnership with engineers. As part of EA SPORTS Tech, the Technical Art Team helps push visual boundaries and experiences for our players. We invest in future technologies, shared tooling, and production workflows. We combine creativity and imagination with technical expertise. We are a diverse group that encourages team members to bring their unique perspectives and expertise to work every day.

This team works onsite 3 days/week in our Burnaby studio.

Your Responsibilities

As a Senior Character Technical Artist (TA), you will be heavily involved in the Sports Technology Character Initiatives. The main areas of responsibilities include character deformation and simulation in Houdini, and working with and debugging farms, pipelines, and simulation set-ups. There will also be work involved developing simulation and accessory rigs. You will be expected to cross-collaborate and communicate with TAs, SEs, and Character Artists, and provide technical and artistic feedback on anatomy and deformation. The work benefits from keeping up to date with the latest Houdini features, and assessing their impact on future improvements. There will also be work involving run-time rigging implementation in a data-driven GameEngine.

Your Qualifications

• At least 5+ years of cinematic/games production experience working in technical art/rigging/animation.

• A bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) in a related field.

• Expert knowledge designing complex skeletons, control rigs, secondary animation (fat, jiggle, muscle sim), and skin deformations in both DCC and GameEngine.

• Strong understanding of human anatomy and animation principles.

• In depth expertise with relevant 3D software packages such as Houdini and Maya, specifically building Houdini Digital Assets (HDA) and using Procedural Dependency Graphs (PDG).

• Experience with asset optimization and organization challenges and real-time limitations specific to character deformation. In-depth knowledge of USD is a bonus.

• Proficient scripting/programming in Python and/or C#.

• A willingness to jump into the unknown and solve new problems to resolve technical challenges and limitations.

• A Passion for Games!