Founding 3D Technical Artist, Character Pipeline (New Game)

Dapper Labs; Vancouver; Hybrid; CAD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental and vision

Generous time off

Access to AI tooling platforms

Job summary

Dapper Labs is hiring a Founding 3D Technical Artist for a new game. You will own the 3D character pipeline, decide body shape, materials, and rarity, and lead the tooling strategy for rigged, animated characters. You’ll steer asset quality and integration with the build and AI-assisted tools.

You’ll work with the creators of CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, operating in a remote-capable, hybrid setup based in Vancouver, with team members across North America.

Qualifications

• Shipped a 3D character or asset pipeline in a game or real-time product.
• Took 3D characters through modeling, rigging, skinning, shading and export to an engine.
• Scripting in at least one major modeling package (Houdini, Blender, Maya, Unity or Unreal).
• Able to explain and showcase diverse 3D characters you were responsible for.

Responsibilities

• Define how traits become a 3D model: body shape, materials, pattern, expression and rarity.
• Build and own the pipeline to produce rigged, posed, animated 3D characters with minimal hand-fixing.
• Decide how 3D ships appear: real-time rigs and rendered video, with team input.
• Write down quality standards and build checks to enforce them.

Skills

3D character pipeline

Character rigging

Character shading

Procedural workflows

Scripting in modeling tools

Tools

Houdini

Blender

Maya

Unity

Unreal

Job description

Founding 3D Technical Artist, Character Pipeline (New Game)

Dapper Labs · Remote-capable · PT-ET Time Zones ·

You're going to help us bring our new game to life with a 3D pipeline that turns out hundreds of thousands of unique generative game characters from a library of distinctive cool, cute, weird, fun, and silly attributes, with rare ones reading as rare at a glance. Players will breed these, trade them, and each one belongs to their owner, where they'll develop attachments and want to show off to the rest of the world.

We've got a 2D prototype of that pipeline, you'll help us bring it to life with real 3D assets.

The team

You'll be the first technical artist on a small obsessive team led by the creators of CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, and Disney Pinnacle by Dapper Labs. There's no art director above you: you and the team own the look together. The game is playable today in internal playtests, ready for you to fall in love, ready for you to help define the visual stack.

Why us

We made CryptoKitties. In its first week in 2017 it carried more than 10% of Ethereum's traffic, and one cat sold for $117,712. We co-authored ERC-721, the Ethereum standard for NFTs, then built NBA Top Shot, with more than 1.6 million collectors, and Disney Pinnacle with Disney, Pixar and Star Wars.

CryptoKitties showed us that people care about owning a character when the character is worth having. We also learned what happens when a market runs ahead of the game. This time we're building the game first. Characters live on a blockchain, so players own them outright. You won’t write smart contracts.

What you'll own

• The character system. Decide how traits become a 3D model: body shape, materials, pattern, expression. Any two characters should be easy to tell apart, and rarity should show at a glance.
• The pipeline. Take a trait spec to a finished, rigged, posed and animated 3D character in the build, with nobody fixing each one by hand. You pick the tools, whether DCC, procedural, generative or a mix.
• How the 3D ships. Real-time rigged models in the build, plus 3D rendered to video. You decide the "how" with the team, on evidence, in your first weeks.
• The quality bar. Write down what good looks like, and build the checks that hold every asset to it.
• Reuse. Build it so our next game gets started running, with artists focusing in the right places.

Generative AI is at the center of this pipeline, directed by an artist with taste. You’ll use it every day and push it further than it goes today. If you believe AI is bad for games, this role won’t suit you. Tell us where generative tools help in a 3D character pipeline and where they get in the way.

What success looks like

• Month 1: the format is chosen, with a working proof in the build.
• Month 2: the pipeline is fully in production with a library of hundreds of traits turning out a cast of tens of thousands of unique characters with no hand fixes.
• Month 3+: Work underway on a portfolio of new games running through evolutions of the same pipeline.

What you bring

• You've shipped a 3D character or asset pipeline in a game or real-time product.
• You've taken 3D characters all the way through: modeling, rigging, skinning, shading and export to an engine.
• You go deep in and script at least one major modeling package (perhaps Houdini, Blender, Maya, Unity or Unreal).
• You can explain your taste. Show us 3D characters whose variety and appeal you were responsible for.
• You like building systems other people can run without you.

It helps if you've built procedural or combinatorial character systems (trait layering, morph targets, shader-driven variation), exported to glTF or USD, worked on creature-collection or trading-card games, or spent real time with generative 3D tools and have opinions about where they fall short.

Nobody has all of this. If the problem grabs you, write to us.

How we work

We ship in slices: when a date is at risk, we cut scope and keep the date. We write decisions down. On team day you'll meet someone who won't be your manager. Ask us hard questions about hours, leadership or our history, and we'll answer them.

• Where : remote-capable, but we're based in Vancouver, with team members around Las Vegas and Montreal. Being able to come in-office is a plus.
• Health : medical, dental and vision, plus mental health support.
• Time off : generous, and we make sure people take it.
• Tools : Anthropic, OpenAI, and additional AI platform access with no usage caps for real work.

How we hire

• Conversation, 45 minutes. Walk us through a pipeline you built and the tradeoffs you made.
• Craft loop, 60 to 90 minutes, with 24 to 48 hours to prepare. It's a real problem from our character system.
• Team day. You meet the people you'd work with. We decide within five business days.

Finalists also do a paid trial of 5-7 days at fair compensation rates, scheduled around your current job. You can show the work in your portfolio.