Groom Artist

About the Role

We are looking for a Groom Artist to develop unique character hair, hairstyles, and mutant fur for our open-world project based in Unreal Engine 5.

Key Responsibilities

• Create realistic hair, unique character hairstyles, and fur for mutants and creatures.
• Develop and implement efficient hair and fur creation pipelines from scratch.
• Create and bake hair/fur textures, and generate high-quality Hair Cards.
• Integrate, set up, and assemble hairstyles and fur within Unreal Engine 5.
• Create LODs and deeply optimize Hair Cards to ensure stable FPS in an open-world game.
• Collaborate closely with Technical Artists: actively participate in the development and creation of hair shaders, their setup and optimization, as well as physics tuning.

Requirements

• Hair Cards & Grooming Software:
  • Solid proficiency in software for creating hairstyles and Hair Cards (Maya / XGen, Ornatrix, FiberShop, Houdini, Blender).
• Texturing:
  • Strong knowledge of the necessary software for generating and baking hair and fur textures for hairstyles and creatures.
• Game Engine:
  • Practical experience with Unreal Engine 5 (working with the Groom plugin, setting up Hair Cards, and LODs).
  • Deep understanding of how real-time hair shaders should work, and readiness to co-create them alongside the Tech Art team.
  • Understanding of the specifics of creating well-optimized hairstyles for open-world projects.
  • Basic 3D modeling skills at a minimum level.

Nice to Have

• Experience collaborating with the Concept Art team in the early stages of development.
• Ability to propose your own artistic and visual solutions.
• Understanding of animal/creature anatomy and fur movement dynamics.

Work Format

• Office - Prague.
• Office - Kyiv.
• Remote (Europe)

Hiring Steps

• Technical interview.
• Test task (optional).
• Cultural interview.