Rigging Director (New AAA Project)

About the role

We are seeking a Rigging Director to lead the creation of high‑quality rigs for characters, creatures and vehicles on a new AAA title. Reporting to the Art Director and Technical Art Director, you will define pipelines, standards and tools that enable seamless integration across departments.

Key responsibilities

• Define rigging specifications, naming conventions and cross‑department delivery pipelines for all assets.
• Design and implement cinematic‑level facial rigging solutions, including ARKit, MetaHuman or proprietary systems, and build a full FACS‑based BlendShape library.
• Lead physical rigging of cloth, hair and soft bodies, integrating them with UE5 Chaos/NvCloth and establishing performance budgets.
• Develop rigging toolchains and automation scripts using Python, MEL and C++.
• Create and maintain Control Rigs, IK/FK solvers and template libraries, and evaluate emerging technologies such as ML Deformer and Neural Rig.
• Oversee rigging QA, setting standards for deformation quality, stretch limits and intersection detection to meet platform certification requirements.
• Collaborate with Technical Artists to optimise rigs and allocate resources across teams.

Required profile

• 8+ years of character rigging experience in AAA game or film/TV production.
• Proven track record delivering facial motion‑capture rigs (ARKit, MetaHuman or in‑house).
• Strong knowledge of realistic human anatomy and deformation principles.
• Experience with Maya and Houdini, and deep expertise in UE5 Control Rig and Blueprint workflows.
• Solid scripting abilities in Python and MEL; C++ experience is a plus.

Required skills

• Maya
• Houdini
• Unreal Engine 5 (Control Rig, Blueprint)
• Python
• MEL
• C++ (optional)
• ARKit / MetaHuman facial capture
• Chaos Cloth, NvCloth, XGen, Ornatrix
• ML Deformer, Neural Rig