Senior Rigger / Technical Animator [Cinematics]

Job description

Massive Entertainment is a world-leading AAA studio located in Malmö, Sweden and part of the Ubisoft family. We’re a multinational team of more than 750 passionate and highly skilled people from 50+ different countries. Our studio’s goal has always been – and still is – to craft the finest gaming experiences for all players.  

At Massive, you get to do what you love most while bringing your own experience to our ongoing projects, like Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Star Wars Outlaws. We're also developing new tech here, such as our in-house engine Snowdrop, and Ubisoft Connect - Ubisoft's digital ecosystem and distribution platform. 

Massive Cinematics is an internal cinematics team at Massive that is focusing on delivering pre-rendered assets for game projects across Ubisoft. The assets are purposed either in games or as marketing assets by Ubisoft.  

We are looking for a Senior Rigger/Technical Animator for our Cinematics team. You will be involved in innovating technical animation solutions daily within the cinematics department. This includes character rigging for both body and face, developing tools and pipelines, and enabling our animators to do their best possible work within both the mocap and keyframe spaces. Both for pre-rendered cinematics and real-time. You will play a big part in creating next-generation cinematics for many AAA projects, working with studios from across the globe.   

We're offering a permanent position in Malmö, Sweden, with the flexibility to work partially from home (up to two days a week) under our Flexible Workplace Policy. Please apply using English, our company's primary language.  

What you'll do  

·  Collaborate with the art & animation teams to understand the overall project vision + rigging and skinning needs. 
·  Hands on rigging for characters, creatures & objects for games 
·  Provide rigging solutions to character art and character animation 
·  Ensure that Characters deformations are at the right quality level 
·  Work with production teams to create the desired animation controls and qualities for objects and characters 
·  Tests and trouble shoot animation controls and adjusts as necessary throughout the production cycle 
·  Researching and keeping up to date with new rigging solutions to advance our pipeline and workflows to the next level  
·  Collaborating with the team to develop current and new tools, rig-modules, workflow, and plugins.  
·  Be ready for quick tweaks during production to fit the animators’ current needs   

What you’ll bring  

You are enthusiastic about games, animation, rigging, and the emerging technologies that surround them. You are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve visual quality, and what is behind it or the workflow to achieve it. You are open to developing your own and your wider teams' ideas and you constantly aspire to push your work to the highest possible level. It is also important that you have strong written and verbal communication skills to be able to share your knowledge with the rest of the team and stakeholders.   

Besides the above we’re looking for someone aligned with our core values and the following skills and experience: 

·  Bachelor’s Degree in art, engineering or equivalent experience 
·  Specific experience of Character/Creature rigging & skinning with strong foundations on rigging in general 
·  Extensive knowledge and experience of animation, modelling and other related experience 
·  Thorough knowledge of human and creature anatomy, deformation and rigging techniques   
·  Expert knowledge of Maya 
·  Knowledge of scripting in Python   
·  Strong troubleshooting and problem solving skills 
·  Solid experience working in Motionbuilder 
·  It's a bonus if you have previous experience in Houdini 

Ubisoft’s 19,000 team members, working across more than 30 countries around the world, are bound by a common mission to enrich players’ lives with original and memorable gaming experiences. Their commitment and talent have brought to life many acclaimed franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, Just Dance, Rainbow Six, and many more to come. Ubisoft is an equal opportunity employer that believes diverse backgrounds and perspectives are key to creating worlds where both players and teams can thrive and express themselves. If you are excited about solving game-changing challenges, cutting edge technologies and pushing the boundaries of entertainment, we invite you to join our journey and help us create the unknown. 

You can also find a summary of the Massive Job Perks here.   

All your application information will be kept confidential according to EEO & GDPR guidelines.