Job Title: Senior Facial Character TD (Senior Character TD) 

Summary: Responsible for authoring facial rigs from scratch or utilizing a variety of high-resolution scan-data; participate in facial research & development efforts; pioneer and recommend new tools, techniques and technology for pushing visual boundaries, performance and efficiency. Responsible for a strong understanding of FACS and facial anatomy, as well as cutting edge approaches to facial technology. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:

• Authors high quality photorealistic facial rigs based on FACS using blendshapes 

• Authors rigging systems to augment or support blendshape-based facial rigs 

• Authors or contributes to systems/workflows for integrating head and body rigs 

• Collaborates with Character Art, Animation, and Engineering teams to deliver the highest quality assets with animator/mocap friendly interfaces that run smoothly in engine

• Contributes to tools for authoring and editing facial rigs (python/pyqt/pyside) 

• Contributes to automated tools and workflows for runtime optimization

• Contributes to tools for ingesting 3rd party facial rigs 

• Contributes to facial animation systems such as facial solvers and R&D (python/C /Machine Learning)

• Sculpts FACS (from scratch if necessary) using deformers and/or sculpting tools 

• Processes and cleans 3D or 4D scan data from FACS sessions 

• Keeps up with state-of-the-art approaches to facial rigging for photorealistic characters in film and games 

• Has strong understanding of facial shape transfer techniques and ability to implement shape transfer pipelines 

• May be asked to direct actors through FACS during facial acquisitions 

• May ingest and integrate facial assets from 3rd parties 

• May be expected to maintain relationships and provide feedback to external vendors 

• Other duties may be assigned

Supervisory Responsibilities: This role has no supervisory duties but may mentor other TD’s with regard to facial mechanics, rigging, sculpting, or solving techniques. 

Computer Skills: Expert-level experience withMaya. Experience sculpting details with ZBrush, Mudbox, or comparable; processing scan data with Wrap3 or comparable; with deformation transfer workflows. Preferred experience with machine-learning based solutions for facial scanning/authoring/solving (TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc); authoring plugins that aid in facial deformation transfer or solving (python or C ); and working with faces in realtime (Unity, Unreal or other).