Animation Programmer

Rockstar North is currently seeking an experienced Animation Programmer with an interest in secondary motion.

We are looking for a talented engineer to help us develop advanced secondary motion technology including cloth, hair/fur and soft tissue simulation for characters. You should have strong initiative, a detailed knowledge of physics and animation systems, as well as a passion for realistic, high quality visual effects.

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Develop, maintain, extend and support a wide range of character based secondary motion runtime systems, pipelines and tools.
- Join our core animation technology team and work closely with gameplay, tools and art teams across different Rockstar studios.
- Iterate with animators, artists, and designers to continuously improve the quality, realism, and application of secondary motion in all Rockstar titles.
- Independently help research, develop, and integrate new simulation techniques for a variety of effects (including cloth, hair/fur, fat, muscle, attachments etc).

QUALIFICATIONS

A degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
Strong C/C++ programming skills, OO design skills and 3D math background.
Knowledge of character animation technology (e.g. blend trees, animation compression techniques, IK).
Experience developing within a large existing codebase, collaborating or working independently within a large team.
Familiarity with optimization and multi-threading techniques.
Passion for character based games, good eye for visual effect aesthetics.
Good communication skills, ability to clearly share complex technical information with programmers, artists, and designers.

DESIRED SKILLS

Games industry experience working on AAA character based titles.
Detailed knowledge of collision detection, rigid and soft body dynamics.
Prior experience with GPU compute based simulation is a bonus.