3D Rigging Artist

Job Overview

We are looking for a highly skilled and technical 3D Rigging Artist to join our game development team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, testing, and maintaining robust, animation-friendly rigs for characters, creatures, vehicles, and props. Because our pipeline utilizes a hybrid workflow, you must have deep expertise in both Maya and Blender, with a seamless transition process into Unreal Engine.

If you have a strong understanding of anatomy, a passion for real-time game development, and the technical problem-solving skills to build scalable rigging pipelines, we want you on our team.

Key Responsibilities

• Rig Creation: Design, build, and maintain highly articulate, intuitive, and animation-friendly rigs for a variety of game assets (bipeds, quadrupeds, mechanical objects, and facial rigs) using both Maya and Blender.
• Engine Integration: Export, integrate, and test rigs directly within Unreal Engine, ensuring skeletal meshes, physics assets, and animations function flawlessly in a real-time environment.
• Pipeline & Tooling: Develop custom scripts and tools (via Python or Engine Blueprints) to automate and streamline the rigging and skinning processes for the animation team.
• Collaboration: Work closely with character modelers to ensure topology is optimized for deformation, and collaborate with animators to ensure rigs meet performance and direction requirements.
• Troubleshooting: Diagnose and resolve technical issues related to deformation, weight painting, and engine-side physics or cloth simulations.
• Optimization: Ensure all rigs and skeletal hierarchies are strictly optimized for real-time game performance and meet specific technical budgets.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 4+ years of professional experience working as a Rigging Artist strictly within the video game industry.
• Software Mastery: Expert-level proficiency in both Autodesk Maya and Blender (you must be comfortable working, rigging, and troubleshooting across both packages).
• Game Engine Expertise: Proven, hands-on experience with Unreal Engine, including its skeletal mesh pipeline, Physics Assets (PhAT), and importing/exporting standards.
• Anatomy Knowledge: Deep understanding of human and animal anatomy, muscle mechanics, and kinesthesiology as it applies to organic deformation and weight painting.
• Portfolio/Demo Reel: A strong demo reel demonstrating game-ready rigs, custom tools, and a clear understanding of real-time technical constraints.

Preferred Skills (Nice to Have)

• Experience with Unreal Engine's Control Rig and Blueprints.
• Strong scripting abilities in Python or MEL for tool creation and workflow automation.
• Experience with dynamic setups, such as real-time cloth simulation, hair dynamics, or spring controllers.
• Familiarity with motion capture retargeting pipelines.