So what do I do? Here’s a breakdown of my day-to-day with respect to the technical animator trifecta of rigging, implementation, and pipeline development.

Rigging

• Rigging creatures, props, environmental assets and humanoids in Maya.
• Maintaining a database of assets, patching and updating where needed.
• Custom retargeting solutions to transfer animations between characters, or between DCC packages.
• Implementing animation feedback on rigs, refining or adding features.

Implementation

• Implementation of locomotion, AI, combat, and non-organic animations.
• Working with blendspaces, aimposes, additives and corrective poses.
• Setting up runtime IK.
• New runtime feature research and development with engineering teams.
• Debugging animation issues, feeding back to animation or code as needed.
• Authoring animatable assets for use in engine. Creatures, props, humanoids etc.

Development

• Python and C++ tool development.
• Automation in Maya for animation, rigging, and batching tasks.
• Custom Maya plugins for import/export pipelines.
• Tools to bulk edit engine implementation data.
• Tools integrating into project management software.
• Maintenance and deployment of pipelines.
• Updating legacy code from python 2 to python 3.

Soft(er) Skills

• Supporting animation, troubleshooting workflow issues.
• Disseminating specialist information through documentation to a larger studio.
• Establishing development best practices, providing supporting documentation.
• Evaluating technology stacks to deploy to solve various development challenges.
• Training new staff in proprietary technologies.
• Agile workload planning and bug triage.
• Gathering and executing on feedback.