About One Man Studio

We partner with major AAA teams to ship real-time content. Senior, hands-on, fully remote.

The Role

Finish client-approved VFX proxies/blockouts into final, game-ready effects at AAA shipping quality. You’ll sit across the character and environment pods, owning lookdev, performance, and integration in Unreal. Work closely with the Lead 3D Artist, Principals, Tech Art, Design, and the client to keep effects readable, on-style, and on-budget.

What You’ll Do

• Finish to final: Turn blockouts into shippable VFX using Niagara, materials/shaders, flipbooks, meshes, and decals.

• Readability & style: Lock timing, silhouettes, color/luminance, and screen economy so effects land under gameplay lighting and camera.

• Integration: Hook up VFX via Blueprints, Anim Notifies, and gameplay events; author Niagara Systems/Emitters that are reusable and clean.

• Materials & shaders: Build performant shader graphs (erosion/dissolve, fresnel, distortion, lightning, trails) with parameter controls for tuning.

• Performance: Profile and optimize (stat GPU, stat Niagara, shader complexity); manage bounds, LODs, culling, tick rates, and scalability groups.

• Ownership areas: Character combat/abilities, hits/reactions, traversal, ambient/facility FX, destruction bits, and environmental atmospherics.

• Pipeline: Maintain libraries (textures, flipbooks, curves), naming conventions, and Niagara templates; contribute tools and validators with Tech Art.

• Collaboration: Sync regularly with other disciplines to ensure cross-discipline quality.

• Documentation: Keep brief breakdowns and tunables so other pods can reuse systems without guesswork.

Requirements

• 5+ years creating real-time VFX for games; shipped at least one AA/AAA title or equivalent live product.

• Strong Unreal Engine VFX: Niagara, material editor, Blueprints, Sequencer; solid grasp of particle sims and GPU/CPU trade-offs.

• Authoring skills: flipbook creation (Substance/Houdini/Photoshop), mesh-based FX, ribbon/trail setups, decals, light/mesh integration.

• Proven eye for timing, shape language, color/value, and gameplay readability.

• Performance-minded: comfortable profiling and hitting budgets under production lighting.

• Clear communicator; reliable in a remote, multi-time-zone team.

Nice to Have

• Houdini for VFX meshes/flipbooks and utility tools.

• Fluid/volumetric approaches (smoke/fire lookdev) and stylized FX chops.

• Basic C++/Python for tooling; Niagara data interfaces experience.

Portfolio

Show final, in-engine Unreal VFX with succinct breakdowns: Niagara graphs, material snippets, flipbook sources, perf notes (calls, overdraw/shader complexity), and gameplay captures under production lighting. If we can’t see process and results, we can’t assess.

What Success Looks Like

• High first-pass approvals from the client.

• FX that are clear, on-style, and within budget—no late surprises.

• Reusable systems/templates that speed up other pods.