3D Artist CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a mid-level game artist who started in architectural and product visualisation and moved into games. The name, studios and titles are invented. If you have no studio credits yet, keep the shape and use the section further down.

No art director hires a 3D artist from a CV. They hire from your ArtStation, your showreel or your breakdowns. So the CV has one job: get the link clicked and answer the questions the portfolio cannot.

• Put the portfolio URL in the contact line, in plain text, not behind a word like 'portfolio'. Recruiters copy and paste, and some applicant systems strip hyperlinks.
• If you have a showreel, give the length and say whether there is a password. A 3-minute showreel with no breakdown is a common reason for a pass.
• Say what is yours. On the CV, next to a shipped title, write which assets you owned. Shared credit with no clarity reads as padding.
• Answer the things the portfolio hides: which software you used for each stage, whether you can hit a budget, whether you can take feedback and how fast you work.
• List the engines. Studios filter hard on Unreal versus Unity, and archviz studios filter on V-Ray, Corona or Arnold.
• Name the shipped titles and platforms. If you are under an NDA, write 'unannounced console title, 2025' and say what you built.

Three lines. What you make, how deep your ownership goes, the software and engine, and one number that shows scale or constraint. Change the discipline word and the tools to match the job advert.

The tell of an amateur CV is bullets about software. The tell of a hireable artist is bullets about constraints, volume and review. Every line below carries an asset count, a budget or a turnaround.

Do not dump 25 logos in a row. Group by pipeline stage so a lead can see where your ownership starts and stops, and mark honest levels.

• Modelling: Maya, Blender, 3ds Max, Plasticity or Fusion for hard surface, modular kit and trim sheet construction, block-out to final.
• Sculpting: ZBrush (DynaMesh, ZRemesher, layers), Mudbox, alphas and custom brushes, anatomy for characters and creatures.
• Topology and UVs: retopology, edge flow for deformation, UV layout in RizomUV or Maya, texel density, UDIMs, atlasing.
• Texturing and shading: Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Mari, PBR metal/rough workflow, baking in Marmoset or Substance, hand-painted styles.
• Rendering and lookdev: Marmoset Toolbag, Arnold, V-Ray, Corona, Cycles, lighting for turntables and hero shots, render passes and comp in Photoshop or Nuke.
• Engines: Unreal Engine 5 (Nanite, Lumen, material instances, Blueprint basics), Unity (URP or HDRP, prefabs, shader graph), LOD authoring, collision setup.
• Adjacent skills worth listing if real: basic rigging and skin weights, Marvelous Designer for cloth, Houdini for scatter or destruction, Python or MEL scripting for small tools.
• Production: Perforce or Git, Jira or Shotgrid, art review, writing asset specs, outsource feedback, working to a budget and a milestone date.

'3D artist' is a wide title and generalist applications get filtered out at large studios. Small studios and archviz shops do want generalists. Read the job advert and rename your own title to theirs.

• Character artist: anatomy, likeness, clothing, grooming, deformation-friendly topology, Marvelous Designer, ZBrush depth. Portfolio needs a turntable and a wireframe.
• Environment artist: modular kits, trim sheets, set dressing, world building tools, streaming and draw call budgets, vegetation and terrain tools.
• Prop and hard surface artist: volume and consistency, working from reference and CAD, clean bakes, LODs. Studios hire this for throughput, so asset counts matter most.
• Vehicle or weapon artist: often its own job advert on racing and shooter teams. Show the interior, the moving parts and the damage states.
• Technical artist leaning: shaders, tools, scripting, optimisation. If you can profile a scene, say so with a number.
• Archviz and product viz: lighting, materials, photoreal accuracy, client revision handling, print and animation deliverables.
• XR and real-time: strict budgets, baked lighting, single-pass shaders, device performance targets in frames per second.

This field is unusually kind to self-taught artists, because the portfolio is checkable. Four finished, well-presented pieces beat a degree with no work to show. What kills junior applications is unfinished work and no evidence you can work to a spec.

1. 1Build 3 to 5 finished pieces, not 15 half-done ones. Each needs a turntable, a wireframe or topology shot, the texture maps and a short breakdown of the workflow.
2. 2Give yourself a real constraint on at least two pieces and state it: a triangle budget, a texture ceiling, a target engine, a 5-day deadline. That single detail separates you from other juniors.
3. 3Put a personal projects block where experience would go. Title, date, engine, what you owned, the constraint you hit, and the link.
4. 4Add any paid work at all: a prop commission, a Fiverr order, a 3D print model, a friend's game jam, an architectural render for a local builder. Two commissions delivered on time is real experience.
5. 5List game jams and mod work with the team size and your role. Shipping something small with other people answers the collaboration question.
6. 6Do the free credential if it helps: Autodesk Maya certification, an Unreal Engine learning path. It will never beat portfolio work, so do it after the pieces are done.
7. 7Prepare for the art test. Most junior hires come down to a paid or unpaid test asset with a spec and a deadline. Mention on your CV that you are available for one.

• One page if you can, two at most, up to about ten years. Your portfolio is the long document.
• Plain single-column text. Two-column art CVs with icons and skill bars parse badly in applicant tracking software and tell a lead nothing about your level.
• Contact line order: name, city, email, phone, portfolio URL, showreel length, LinkedIn if you use it. No photo, no date of birth.
• Send a PDF named firstname-lastname-3d-artist-cv.pdf. Keep it under 1 MB so it opens on a phone.
• Mirror the job advert's exact words. Studios search their applicant database for 'Unreal Engine 5', 'Substance Painter', 'retopology', 'trim sheet', 'texel density', 'LOD', 'Nanite', 'PBR'. If you have done it, write it the way they wrote it.
• Put shipped titles with platform and year in their own small block if you have more than two. Recruiters look for them first.
• If your work is under NDA, write 'unannounced PC and console title, 2026, characters and props' and leave the rest for the interview.
• Skip the career objective. Use a 3-line personal statement that names your discipline, your engine and one number.

“I open the ArtStation link before I read a word. What the CV has to tell me is what you owned on those assets, what budget you hit, and whether you have taken feedback from a lead before. Half the CVs I see leave all three out.”