zwick Posted September 27, 2018 Share Posted September 27, 2018 https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings/oM1o8fw3 Hello, I come here a lot of Houdini help and techniques and just to see what people are doing with Houdini! We are looking for a FX artist for an unannounced project here at Blizzard. My name is John Zwicker and I’m a senior artist here on this unannounced project. We are still relatively small and I am currently working on vfx helping out where I can but I’m more of a generalist who works a lot on environments. The effects we are making are realistic (smoke, explosions, fire, clouds, etc.) but have a need for a lot of organic and fantastical effects as well. We have been experimenting a lot with Houdini for not just rendering out flipbooks but using it to help create destruction, procedural masking and placement of assets in a scene, auto generation of LODs, procedural modeling, etc. We believe Houdini is the future of game production for not only better workflows and speed but keeping our team size down. This person will help define the tech and workflows of creating VFX for our projects. We want you to not only work with people on our team but vfx artists across all of Blizzard because you will help “pave the way” of vfx creation throughout the studio. If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this post or email me at jzwicker@blizzard.com thanks, z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiryha Posted September 27, 2018 Share Posted September 27, 2018 Hi, John! I am wondering if you will consider an experienced artist from the VFX industry as a possible candidate? This question about switching careers from VFX to game dev rises frequently and I am interesting how hard it would be to get a mid or senior position. From what I know about recruiting in the US the first thing HR looks for is a fit. No fit — no chances, and luck of game dev experience is an obstacle here even if you have 20++ experience in VFX. Just want to get some thoughts from the employer point of view. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zwick Posted September 27, 2018 Author Share Posted September 27, 2018 15 minutes ago, kiryha said: Hi, John! I am wondering if you will consider an experienced artist from the VFX industry as a possible candidate? This question about switching careers from VFX to game dev rises frequently and I am interesting how hard it would be to get a mid or senior position. From what I know about recruiting in the US the first thing HR looks for is a fit. No fit — no chances, and luck of game dev experience is an obstacle here even if you have 20++ experience in VFX. Just want to get some thoughts from the employer point of view. Hi Kiryha, I actually came from VFX industry way back in 2002. I feel that if a person knows how an effect should look like (color, form, animation, ect) they can learn the constraints of game development. More and more our industries are blending together. And I think techniques that are used in the VFX industry are carrying over to realtime and could have a fresh perspective on our tools and techniques. We also need to work with our cinematics department here where they take our effects and re-create them, id rather work with them so they don't have to recreate effects in some way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiryha Posted September 27, 2018 Share Posted September 27, 2018 Yeh, I know that for the artist it would be much more easy to switch than to learn from the beginning. My concern was particularly about how HRs (and other employees involved in hiring) treat such artists, do they consider them as a potential candidate or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zwick Posted September 27, 2018 Author Share Posted September 27, 2018 HR asks what we want on a per team basis, at least at Blizzard. So if we tell HR to consider people from the VFX industry, they will. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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