Character Rigger · Technical Artist · Python Developer
Valeriya
Fedoseeva
Designing modular rigging pipelines for teams that need flexibility without sacrificing stability. Creator of the Sunshine Tool Suite - a modular ecosystem of rigging and pipeline tools for Maya.
Valeriya Fedoseeva
Tokyo · Malmö · Remote
01 / Background
Character Rigging & Technical Art
I build character rigs, modular rigging systems, and production tools for Autodesk Maya.
I moved abroad alone at fifteen — Ireland, then the UK, then Japan — and picked up the habit of building my own footing wherever I landed. That instinct followed me into rigging.
Over the past several years I’ve worked across cinematic production and games — from Square Enix Visual Works in Tokyo to Massive Entertainment in Malmö, and now on independent tools and pipeline systems.
These days I’m focused on Sunshine — a collection of rigging and production tools that grew out of questions I kept asking myself while working in production:
How can rebuilding a character be safer?
How can tools explain what’s wrong instead of quietly failing?
How can a pipeline work for one developer as comfortably as it does for a large studio?
Those questions gradually became more interesting to me than simply adding another rig feature. So while I still enjoy building characters, I spend just as much time designing the systems that support them.
Approach
“A rig that only survives until the character changes isn’t finished. Validation and rebuild-safety aren’t extras — they’re the job. That’s the premise behind everything under Sunshine: tools that check their own assumptions before they build, and don’t quietly assume a studio-sized pipeline sits behind them. Automation doesn’t replace a rigger’s judgment — it just stops spending that judgment twice.”
Square Enix Visual Works — Tokyo, 2017–2021 · Massive Entertainment — MalmöFF7 Remake, Kingdom Hearts III, Just Cause 4, Dissidia NTAutodesk Maya, Python, PyQt, PyMEL
02 / Brand Suite
The Sunshine Tools
One system, four connected tools — built around the same core idea: rig and pipeline logic that validates itself before it builds anything.
Sunshine Project Manager
Solo-Scale Production Pipeline
A Maya-integrated pipeline tool for solo and small-team production. The full cycle — project setup, asset and shot creation, versioned save, and publish with validation — already runs end to end.
Key Architecture & Features:
- •Finder-style project browser, sandboxed to the project root
- •Project, asset, and shot creation from editable JSON templates
- •Full save → publish cycle with per-department validation and sidecar metadata
- •Session log with severity filtering — surfaces its own failures instead of failing silently
/assets/characters/hero/
├── model_pub.fbx
├── rig_v012.ma
└── publish_meta.json
Zero-config solo asset structuring
Sunshine Auto Rigger
Modular Character Rigging
Assembles character rigs from modular components — spine, arm, leg, hand, neck/head — through a six-phase build system (validate → build → connect → finalize) instead of built from scratch each time. Core rig architecture holds up under review; animator-facing tools are the current focus before production use.
Key Architecture & Features:
- •Six-phase module build, modules discovered through a socket + space registry — no hardcoded wiring between parts
- •Near-zero IK/FK constraint offsets and production-grade stretch, verified module by module
- •Node-graph assembly UI with per-module validation before build
Connected modules via Socket attributes
Assembly node interface blueprint
Sunshine Facial Rigger
FACS-Driven Facial Rigging
A FACS-driven facial rigging system, built region by region — brow, eyelids, ears, nose, lips, cheeks — driven by a curve-template library instead of hand-keyed correctives.
Key Architecture & Features:
- •Region-based guide creation with auto-tagging for mirroring and detection
- •Calibration tab with live driver preview and response presets
- •Artist / TD mode split — curve-library internals stay protected in production
Live facial response calibration
Sunshine Riggie ToolKit
Everyday rigging toolkit
A compact Maya toolkit for the rigging tasks that come up constantly — renaming, joint orientation, attribute connections, batch constraints, skin transfer — each as its own focused tool behind one launcher panel.
Key Architecture & Features:
- •Eight focused tools, from joint orientation to ngSkinTools2 layer transfer, behind a single launcher
- •Skin Transfer runs as a staged, validated workflow with rollback if something goes wrong
- •Built-in health checks and per-tool bug reporting — failures surface instead of hiding
// riggie_shelf
One-click rigging utilities shelf
03 / Sandbox Playground
Interactive System Demos
Test the live logic behind the tools directly in your browser. Swap modes to explore artist-friendly vs technical director insights.
Joints: 5
Status: Validated
Joints: 3
Status: Validated
Joints: 4
Status: Blocked
Joints: 18
Status: Validated
Node Inspector
Inspect module attributes
04 / Dev Diary
Sunshine Build Log
Short, dated notes on what’s changing across Sunshine — added as it happens, not written up after the fact.
Locked the socket model
Sockets are real named joints tagged with a socketName attribute, not abstract config labels.
Split builder file
Split a 3,400-line builder file that had grown to cover every facial region at once.
Solo-scale pipeline
Started this because studio-scale pipeline tools assume a studio.
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