Ken Faiman Technical art / AI systems

Rigging & simulation / agents, retrieval & local AI

Character systems
and AI systems,
in production.

Two practices, both current. Character rigs, simulation and artist pipelines for film, cinematics and avatars. Agent, retrieval and generative systems that run on my own GPU, each with its test results published.

13 feature films, The Matrix to How to Train Your Dragon 25+ Blizzard cinematics across seven franchises 50+ Meta peers adopted my multi-agent research system
Play the Blizzard reel The AI systems

Blizzard reel

Blizzard Cinematics, 2015 to 2022

Rig/Sim show lead, overseeing 10+ riggers: character rigs, facial, muscle, cloth and hair, my team's and mine. Each simulation was scoped with the people who needed it before it was built, then tuned pass by pass.

Fig. 01

The shipped editor, 2025. The images are Meta's.

Meta Avatars

Meta Reality Labs / 2022 to 2026 / Senior Technical Artist, GenAI & Avatars

I built the universal hair rig for Meta Avatars and its authoring pipeline. 10+ artists authored 200+ dynamic hairstyles on it, for a system with more than a billion avatars.

Also at Meta
Core rigging and deformation for the same avatars: auto-rigging, autofit deformation, skinning, blendshapes, a parametric body with skeleton-refit retargeting.
Avatar Clothing
With the Avatar Clothing team: the clothing rig and deformation, garment fitting to the parametric body, and the Maya tooling artists use to author outfits.
Training inputs
100+ character rigs for a physics-based ML rigging model.
Pipeline work at Meta
The C++ Horizon Worlds USD pipeline library: conversion, correction, rendering and CI validation, including AssetGen 2.0.
Links
Meta Avatars, the shipped system
AssetGen 2.0, Meta Horizon developer blog

Index / 01 to 09

Nine systems, nine case studies.

Retrieval, generation, agents, infrastructure, and one Unreal Engine tool, from a knowledge server measured in VRAM against score to an agent that finishes 1980s adventure games on its own. Each case study says how the thing works and how it was tested.

Retrieval and generative Two systems

AI systems · Mainframe MCP · In daily use A knowledge server you can check. Thousands of notes on my own GPU. A second model ranks the matches, and contradictions between notes are flagged. The current stack runs in 3.7 GB of VRAM at 92% of the score of the 13.5 GB stack it replaced. Source code How it works
Generative · font generation · Research build A font from two letters. Two letters in, the other 92 characters out, traced into a font you can install. A FLUX.2 LoRA trained on 925 typefaces, scored on 50 it never saw. How it works

Agents Three systems

Infrastructure and tools Three systems

Character tools Unreal Engine

Film VFX / 2002 to 2015 / DreamWorks Animation · ESC Entertainment · Rhythm & Hues

Thirteen feature films.

Character FX Lead at DreamWorks for a team of 25+, with hands-on cloth, hair and skin on hero characters across eight of them. Digital-human facial work on The Matrix sequels at ESC for Warner Bros.

Visual effectsESC Entertainment · Rhythm & Hues · 2002 to 2005

  1. 2003The Matrix Reloaded
  2. 2003The Matrix Revolutions
  3. 2004Catwoman
  4. 2004The Ladykillers
  5. 2005The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Feature animationDreamWorks Animation · 2005 to 2015

  1. 2006Over the Hedge
  2. 2007Bee Movie
  3. 2008Kung Fu Panda
  4. 2010How to Train Your Dragon
  5. 2011Puss in Boots
  6. 2013Turbo
  7. 2014Penguins of Madagascar
  8. 2015Home

2000 to present

25 years building character systems.

  • Toolset

    Maya · Houdini · Unreal

    Python · C++ · OpenUSD

    • Python throughout; C++ for the Unreal plugin, interpreters, USD
  1. 2022–2026

    Senior Technical Artist, GenAI & Avatars

    Meta Reality Labs

    • Hair technical lead: universal hair rig and Maya pipeline
    • Auto-rigging, autofit, skinning, blendshapes, parametric body
    • Clothing rig, deformation and garment fitting
    • Research agent shared company-wide, 50+ users
  2. 2015–2022

    Rigging & Simulation Lead

    Blizzard Entertainment

    • Rig/Sim show lead, 10+ riggers, every franchise
    • Overwatch 2 Sojourn cinematic, Diablo IV release trailer
    • Stitches build system: Nucleus sim framework, core modules
  3. 2005–2015

    Character FX Lead / Senior Simulation Developer

    DreamWorks Animation

    • Character FX lead for a team of 25+
    • Cloth, hair and skin on hero characters, eight features
    • Universal skin collision solver; Puss in Boots feather rigs
    • Rod and curve solvers with R&D; curve solver at SIGGRAPH
  4. 2002–2005

    Facial & Crowd Systems

    ESC Entertainment · Rhythm & Hues

    • Universal Capture core contributor; VES 2004, Sci-Tech 2015
    • Superpunch sketch author; Electronic Theater, SIGGRAPH 2004
    • Autonomous crowd characters, The Chronicles of Narnia
  5. 1996–2001

    UCLA · Gnomon · Activision

    B.A. Film & TV, Honors · Game Artist