Animation R&D Programmer: Retargeting

Job Description

Rockstar Games is seeking an experienced Animation R&D Programmer to join their team in Carlsbad, CA. The candidate will contribute to the development of advanced animation systems for large open-world character-based games. The role involves collaborating with various teams across Rockstar studios to push the boundaries of character animation on next-generation hardware.

The position focuses on inventing, developing, and maintaining a runtime animation system, pipeline, and tools. The programmer will work on technology to adjust animations to different characters and environments, and research procedural animation techniques.

• Help invent, develop, expand, maintain, and support an extensive runtime animation system, pipeline, and tools.
• Develop robust and performant technology to adjust animation to different characters, situations, and environments.
• Collaborate and contribute to the research and development of features related to procedural animation, motion adaptation, and character motion synthesis.
• Keep up to date with the latest academic and industry breakthroughs, independently research and develop improvements to continuously push our technology forward.

• A degree in Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.
• Proven development of solutions in animation retargeting, motion adaptation, or related subjects.
• Experience creating, extending or working directly with an animation system within a game engine.

• Good communication skills, ability to clearly share complex technical information with other programmers, animators and technical artists.
• Strong C/C++ programming skills.
• Strong 3D math skills.
• Knowledge of character animation technology, particularly retargeting and IK systems.
• Familiarity with common optimization and multi-threading techniques.

• Opportunity to work on large-scale creative projects.