Technical Director, Animation

CREATOR OF WORLDS

Ubisoft’s 19,000 team members, working across more than 40 locations around the world, are bound by a common mission to enrich players’ lives with original and memorable gaming experiences. Their dedication and talent has 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.

Opening its doors in July 2008, Ubisoft Singapore features the largest AAA studio in Southeast Asia and is home to a culture that celebrates serious fun and diversity. As proud innovators of naval gameplay and water technology, we’re super excited to be the lead studio in bringing a brand-new IP to you – Skull and Bones! Our other notable works include every Assassin’s Creed game since Assassin’s Creed II, with our latest Viking adventure being Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

YOUR DAILY ADVENTURE

As a Technical Director, your role is to own the technical aspects of Animation production, including ensuring that we use the best techniques and practices available, while meeting delivery requirements.

These are some of the key areas on which you have a direct influence to help make this game a success:

Offering Animation solutions and innovations that create value for the consumer
Quality, stability, scalability and improvement of Animation production pipeline
Rapidity of iteration for the content creation team
Management of the Animation performance to ensure frame rate targets
Mentoring and growing TD Animation expertise in the studio
Functional

Act as the technical reference for Animation, including tools, methods, etc. to realize animation of the game.
Representing Animation needs and requirements to engineers implementing systems.
Accountability for Animation budgets (performance and memory) and help animators realize the best quality while fitting in budgets in the worst case.
Help develop and push a roadmap/vision along with rendering/tools/etc and establish short/mid/long-term priorities.
Test Animation tools before deployment and make sure they function correctly throughout production.
Anticipating and detecting potential issues or negative interactions between systems and workflows.
Produce and maintain documentation using Confluence on tools, methods, trainings, processes, and engine limits for consultation and future reference.
Pipeline

Help guide and build pipelines for Animation creation based on best practices, take ownership of important or risky modifications to the pipeline.
Technical planning and coordination of the animation pipeline.
Evaluate Ubisoft’s existing engines in order to identify product strengths and weaknesses and recommend those that meet our needs
Collaboration

Foster inter-team coordination. Help coordinate communication between Animation/Core Tech/TDs groups and achieve consensus for the requirements necessary to ship a high quality title. Help make a group a team.
Coordinate and act as liaison between the animation team and programming team. Use Jira to track and manage with programmers needed improvements and bugs fixes.
Establish an open communication canal with your peers on the project, particularly with other Technical Directors but also with artists, and leads.
Mentoring

Coaching and mentoring TD Animators/TD Characters with best development practices and technical constraints.
Project/Studio

Work closely with HR recruitment and producers to identify, hire and grow promising candidates in your area of expertise.
Researching, initiating and implementing strategic technical changes for the project.
Reach out to other collaboration / knowledge sharing from/to other relevant teams (e.g. Pioneer, Silex, FC, Hero, etc.) or events (e.g. UDC)

WHAT YOU WILL BRING

Minimum 10-15 years
At least 5 years’ experience in Rigging , Skinning and/or Modelling video game characters or equivalent; 3 years experience as a Tech Animation Director (or equivalent)
3 years’ experience as an assistant TD is a plus
College diploma in 3D animation for video games or equivalent.
Good interpersonal and communication skills (self-Organization skills; Good coaching skills, capacity to Influence, writing skills (technical documents), be visionary;
Extensive knowledge in primarily Rigging, Skinning, Modelling and/or Texturing, shaders is a plus;
Extensive knowledge of 3dMax Character Studio/biped and Motion builder is an asset;
Knowledge of programming languages such as Max Script, Python and C Sharp;
Extensive knowledge of game engine limitations and production needs.