About the role
About the Team
Epic Games creates a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Teams are composed of talented, passionate people focused on building award-winning games and engine technology that enables others to create visually stunning interactive experiences. The environment is centered on innovation, doing right by the community, and raising the bar of engine and game development.
What You'll Do
Epic Games is searching for a Lead Gameplay Technical Animator with a passion for expressive character movement. In this role, you will collaborate across teams and contribute directly to Fortnite and other initiatives as part of a collaboration with Disney. You will seek solutions to problems and work with other disciplines to make positive changes to workflows, tools, and technologies that directly impact Gameplay.
Responsibilities
- Work closely with technical animators, Leads, Directors, and Outsource Managers to ensure assets are set up for success in the different stages of production.
- Communicate and drive alignment around strategy for technical animation and adjacent gameplay teams.
- Work with production to schedule, prioritize, and delegate assets for the team, both internal and vendor.
- Work closely with animators, modelers, and designers to ensure a smooth development pipeline that delivers high-quality assets.
- Assist with pipeline tools and work with engine and project leads on the continuous improvement of those engine tools.
- Mentor rigging-focused technical animators.
- Rig characters, weapons, creatures, and vehicles.
- Set up assets in Unreal Engine 5, including control rigs, cloth, physics, and blueprints.
- Maintain detailed documentation, video reference, and examples of art asset production, procedures, and engine requirements to support internal and external artists.
What We're Looking For
- Extensive experience rigging characters in Maya and/or Unreal Engine.
- A portfolio demonstrating rigging for a range of characters, bipeds, and creatures, both body and faces.
- Attention to aesthetic detail, especially with regard to character deformation and physics movement.
- Familiarity with the Unreal Engine 5 art pipeline.
- A positive individual with strong written communication and teamwork skills.
- Exceptional problem-solving abilities.
- User-focused, passionate, solutions-focused, and innovative mindset.
Preferred Qualifications
- Control Rig experience.
- Python programming skills.
Benefits
- Medical, Dental, and Vision HRA coverage with 100% of premiums paid for employees and dependents.
- Long Term Disability and Life Insurance.
- 401k with competitive match.
- Robust mental well-being program through Modern Health, providing free therapy and coaching for employees and dependents.
- Unlimited PTO and sick time.
- Paid sabbatical after 7 years of employment.
- Company-wide paid breaks and celebratory events.
About the Company
Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company. For over 30 years, the company has made award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content. Unreal Engine technology provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, and is used across media, entertainment, automotive, and architectural design industries. Epic Games values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture and is an Equal Opportunity employer.