Houdini Technical Artist - W/M/NB

Under the responsibility of the Technical Director, the Houdini Technical Artist helps define and create, support and maintain the procedural content generation pipeline and tools. A key aspect of this role is not only to understand existing processes and update/optimise them but also to understand level designers and level artists’ needs in order to provide custom tailored tools.

Responsibilities

• Create Houdini digital assets for use in game with Houdini Engine (procedural objects, terrain processing & space population (rocks and vegetation))
• Iterate with the various teams to:
  • Create tools linking the game engine to Houdini processes
  • Empower the world builders by freeing them from redundant tasks
  • Allow the artists to express their creativity by providing them with comprehensive tools
• Maintain the processes, pipeline and documentation by ensuring that all new additions are compliant with existing systems.
• Be able to gather gameplay (playability/variety), technical constraints (memory/performance) and artistic requirements in a single rule.
• Troubleshoot problems and find appropriate solutions.
• Assist the team in learning new technologies and processes.
• Share a common trunk of knowledge among Houdini artists, while each brings their own knowledge to the project.

Qualifications

• Well‑advanced Houdini knowledge
• Familiar with VEX and ideally with Python
• Strong understanding of rendering budgets and other technical constraints related to performance in real‑time engines
• Strong understanding of the requirements for a global pipeline, the ability to enforce strong processes and to set up new ones
• Experience collaborating with graphic programmers and mentoring artists
• Good knowledge and understanding of the video game development processes and techniques
• Overall artistic knowledge (composition, color, motion, etc.) is a plus

Nice to Have

• Experience in developing games for consoles (PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3)
• Familiarity with 3DSMax/Zbrush/Motion Builder/Photoshop
• Knowledge of other programming languages (C#, C++, JavaScript)
• USD knowledge is a plus

Location: based in Annecy – France

Remote: hybrid