Facial Animator (DNEG VFX)

Overview

Job Description: We\’re looking for experienced Facial Animators to join the DNEG VFX team working across a variety of high profile film and entertainment projects, as well as contributing to the product development efforts, producing cutting edge photoreal synthetic facial performances. Neural animation is the next evolution of animation where we directly affect the output of our AI models via animatable neural rigs. We are hiring remotely across the EMEA region.

Key Responsibilities

• Work closely with Animation and VFX supervision.
• Animating realistic facial performance using our newly developed neural animation toolset.
• Solving Facial Capture pipelines from multiple driving inputs.
• Continue to become familiar with new tools, software, data and other related technologies.
• Drive to push boundaries in the AI space for VFX and facial animation and capture.

Must Haves

• Experience within Facial Animation teams.
• Expert knowledge of Maya.
• Proven track record of delivering high end film/TV/Video Game facial animation work.
• Ability to interpret and deliver creative briefs and collaborate with creative supervision as part of the creative process.
• Strong experience and knowledge of facial anatomy and the effects on facial expressions and speech.
• Experience in solving facial capture pipelines.
• Strong creative and technical understanding of facial rigging systems and workflows.
• Good team player and strong communicator.
• Good problem solving skills and the ability to independently find solutions.

Nice to Have

• Experience using Nuke and Unreal Engine.
• Prior experience in generative AI for video, audio, or multimodal content.
• Experience pipelining new tools and workflows within an existing pipeline.
• Familiarity with Machine Learning facial solving techniques.
• An understanding of Machine Learning fundamentals.
• Experience with training diffusion, transformer, or generative video models.
• Experience scripting in Python and TCL as well as any visual scripting experience creating tools and animation workflows.

About You

• Innovative and creative problem solver.
• Likes challenges.
• Adaptable to change.
• Calm under pressure.