Skills

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.

If you are interested in hearing more detail about any of the points listed above, please contact me via my linkedin page.