Digital Domain Vancouver/Montreal/Los Angeles is hiring CFX Pipeline Technical Director!
Interested, send your resume to Amy Quek, Senior Recruiter at aquek@d2.com
Purpose of the job:
The Crowd Department is responsible for the design and setup of crowd agents meeting the specific
needs of each show, as well as the integration of these agents into complex crowd systems for
downstream departments such as fx and lighting.
The Crowd Pipeline TD is responsible for maintaining, troubleshooting, and improving the crowd
pipeline. They design, implement, and manage tools that assist the digital artists with their daily use of
both third party and in-house software and systems. The role requires strong technical and
communication skills, as well as a firm understanding of animation blending, state machines, software
design, computer graphics, and production workflow.
Crowd Pipeline TDs work with peers and supervisors to craft novel tools, techniques, and procedures,
as directed by the Crowds Supervisor. They also provide show support as needed for artists using the
crowd pipeline and toolset.
Essential Functions/Responsibilities:
● Ability to work with artists and other TDs to help design and create tools to be integrated into
Digital Domain’s existing pipeline. These tools will be created using a combination of custom
and commercial Python and C++ APIs.
● Work with Crowd Leads to augment the team’s workflows and toolsets to achieve specific goals
of the project.
● Work directly with artists to troubleshoot and fix problems.
● Craft and update documentation for tools, techniques, and workflows generated
Essential Functions/Responsibilities:
• Ability to learn quickly and work in a fast paced, dynamic atmosphere.
• Collaborate with the Character FX Pipeline team and department stakeholders to find
and present opportunities for improvements that can be addressed through
communication, training, documentation, or by developing technology solutions.
• Help to ensure that solutions find the right balance between the immediate-term needs of
current projects while also contributing to the department’s long-term roadmap.
• Support artists with production issues by applying debugging skills and tracking the
progress in tickets
• Design, extend and integrate a range of proprietary software into our multi-DCC (Maya,
Houdini, etc) pipeline.
• Participate with the rest of the Pipeline Department to maintain and improve the quality of
existing tools and APIs
Education and/or Experience Required:
● 3+ years experience as a Technical Director.
● Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or a related field and/or a combination
of education and experience that would be equivalent to that level of professionalism, problem
solving, and analytical skills.
● Experience with crowds (Houdini, Massive, or similar) and understanding of underlying
technology, including finite state machines and event triggers.
● Experience with Houdini desired, including familiarity with Houdini’s Python frameworks (HOM,
etc.) and creation of HDAs.
● Experience with VEX, CHOPs, and procedural creation and management of HDAs a plus.
● Understanding of Houdini agent primitive structure and definition a plus.
● Experience with Nuance, MotionBuilder, or equivalent a plus.
● Experience with motion editing/processing, signal processing, and/or programmatic animation
cleanup a plus.
● Knowledge of PySide is a plus.