Lead 3D Animator, Spine/Unity Integration
A5 Labs
contract
Posted on:
Location: 🇯🇵 Japan
Visit company websiteJob Level
Senior
Tech Stack
PythonUnity
About the role
- Lead 3D Animator to build and own the pipeline for rigging and animating low‑poly 3D characters, rendering clean frame sequences, and authoring production‑ready Spine animations for use in Unity 3D.
- Hands‑on across the entire flow—from low‑poly character rigging and motion, to render standards, Spine skeleton setup (IK/constraints/weights/skins), and final integration.
- Define the 3D‑to‑2D render pipeline, build Spine skeletons, prepare sprite sheets/atlases and Spine exports, and establish workflows and documentation.
- Create deformation‑aware character rigs, animate game‑ready cycles and cinematic moments, and drive render consistency for readability in atlases.
- Integrate Spine content into Unity, collaborate with designers and VFX, and evaluate/adopt tools and automation to improve productivity.
Requirements
- 5+ years in character animation for games or interactive content, with shipped titles or live products.
- Expert rigging & keyframe skills in Blender or Maya (controllers/constraints, deformation, skinning) focused on low‑poly stylized characters.
- Production experience creating Spine rigs and animations: bones/IK/constraints, meshes/weights, skins, dopesheet/graph editing, track mixing, events, and exports for runtime.
- Proven 3D→2D render pipeline experience (frame sequences/sprite sheets) optimized for mobile (atlas packing, memory/perf constraints).
- Strong animation fundamentals (timing, spacing, arcs, weight, anticipation, follow‑through) and motion readability at small screen sizes.
- Clear documentation and spec writing for engineers (states, events, naming, asset maps).
- Nice‑to‑Have: Unity real‑time animation systems, Spine‑Unity runtime customization, shaders, addressables/asset bundles, Python/MEL, simple C# familiarity.