Senior Lighting Technical Director

Job Description

Description

Position at Industrial Light & Magic

The Senior Lighting TDs can independently light, render, and do moderate-level compositing of very complex shots, needing only initial direction and guidance from their supervisors.

Primary Responsibilities
• Design and implement direct and reflected lighting and shadows for assigned shots that meet art and tone direction.
• Ensure that assigned shots fit the continuity of the sequence and able to create sequence-based lighting setups that can be completed by less experienced Lighting TDs.
• Develop solutions and techniques that meet art/technical direction. Trouble-shoots asset and pipeline technical issues and optimizes rendering setups.
• Participate in team review of work under development.
• Able to navigate and use previous setups for at least a dozen shots, insertion of shot specialization, managing multiple assets and lighting setups.
• Also able to take in implicit surface and volumetric datasets, light using varying shadowing strategies, imitate distributed light sources. Management of volumetric light setups, including shadowing and cucoloris development.
• Also able to light, material assign and render for actors using CG hair and scattering skin materials.
• Set up and light very complex/multiple creatures (hairy or furry) and elements.
• Excellent pipeline scripting ability.
• Solid compositing ability, can wrangle bluescreen extractions, working knowledge of Nuke.
• Can write plugins, set up sequences, debug simulations and write set up and rman surface shaders with proficiency.
• Can write/hack rman procedural and volumetric shaders, as well as procedural and surface shaders with proficiency.
• Can animate moderate objects with proficiency.
• Excellent knowledge of Renderman and other unviased rendering systems. Needs to know one or more major 3D applications, including Katana, Maya, or Zeno.
• Can pick up new techniques quickly and easily and can debug just about anything
• Set a standard for all TDs in continually raising the bar for speed, quality of work, and adaptability.
• Proven ability to quickly pick up new proprietary pipelines.
• Design and create lighting and the look of computer generated objects and scenes.
• Create images, effects, and programs for digitally composited sequences.
• Responsible for compiling the various elements of a shot and seeing it through to completion.
• Demonstrate good listening and communication skills by openly receiving direction and criticism by asking good questions to confirm clear understanding of the directions and how to approach what needs to be done. Once clear, implements the requested changes immediately and raises flags right away if a solution is not quickly found or if there are any delays, making sure the Supervisors and Production are kept in the loop and are up-to-date on the status of one’s shot work.
• Demonstrates solid presentation/communication skills in dailies/shot review by clearly and briefly outlining what has been accomplished and what next should be addressed in the shot.
• Demonstrate solid problem solving skills.
• Demonstrate the ability to prioritize tasks managing time very well, providing everyone with accurate time estimates on shot task completion.

Reporting Relationships
• Reports to the CG Talent Manager, Lighting and receives daily guidance from the CG Supervisor and VFX Producer.

Education / Experience
• At least 5 years relevant professional VFX experience and at least a college level diploma in computer graphics, fine arts, design, or photography, or related field; OR, at least 7 years relevant professional VFX experience in lieu of education.
• Experience with either Katana, 3DS Max, Maya, Houdini or other software.

Required Skills / Competencies
• Linux and scripting ability
• Renderman/Vray
• Nuke
• Experience in Python and/or Lua

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-g39kn4-3-149-234-141-42 in your application.