Groom Artist - Senior Level

Job description:

• Create realistic and visually stunning fur, hair, and feather grooming for digital characters and creatures, ensuring they seamlessly integrate with the projects visual style and requirements.
• Work closely with the modeling, rigging, and animation teams to ensure groomed assets meet technical and artistic specifications, including articulation and movement.
• Collaborate effectively with creative Head, VFX/DFX supervisors and lead(s) to incorporate feedback and revisions into grooming work.

As a Groom Artist, you will create and manage high-quality hair, fur, feathers, and other grooming assets for photorealistic or stylized characters, creatures, and environments in VFX productions. You will collaborate closely with the Character, Creature, and Look Development teams to ensure seamless integration of your work into the overall visual design.

Key Responsibilities :

• Asset Creation: Design and create detailed grooming for hair, fur, feathers, and similar elements using industry-standard tools like XGen, Houdini. Collaborate with modeling and texture artists to ensure groom assets fit character or creature topology seamlessly.

• Look Development: Work closely with the LookDev team to achieve realistic or stylized results, ensuring consistency with the project s art direction. Adjust grooming properties to meet creative requirements.

• Simulation and Optimization: Collaborate with the FX and Rigging teams to ensure dynamic simulations of grooms function properly during animation. Optimize grooming setups for rendering while maintaining visual exactness.

• Pipeline and Technical Integration: Troubleshoot grooming pipelines in collaboration with the pipeline team. Address technical challenges, such as hair collisions, intersections, and render optimization.

• Quality Control: Review assets under different lighting and rendering conditions to ensure consistent quality across the pipeline. Respond to feedback from creative heads, VFX/DFX supervisors and implement necessary changes promptly.

Required Skills

• Proficiency in grooming tools such as XGen (Maya), or Houdini Groom.
• Strong understanding of hair, fur, and feather behavior, anatomy, and dynamics.
• Experience with rendering engines like Arnold, V-Ray.
• Knowledge of texturing and shading processes to enhance groom fidelity.
• Ability to optimize assets for high-quality rendering within production constraints.
• Experience with Python or MEL scripting would be a plus.
• Understanding of rigging and simulation workflows for dynamic groom effects.

Experience

• Minimum of 4-6 years of experience in a similar role within a VFX studio or production environment.
• A portfolio demonstrating expertise in creating high-quality grooms for feature film, episodics, commercials.