Job Overview
| Category | Details |
| Business/Studio | DNEG Animation |
| Location | Sydney, Australia |
About DNEG Animation
DNEG Animation is a world-class studio dedicated to crafting captivating worlds and compelling characters through beautiful, high-quality animation. Fueled by the passion of our global crew, we are delivering an exciting slate of major animated features, including The Angry Birds Movie 3, The Cat in the Hat, and Bad Fairies. We embrace diverse animation styles and thrive on collaboration, ensuring every role is vital to the success of our shows, such as The Garfield Movie, Nimona, and Entergalactic. We are currently expanding our team in Sydney and seeking new talent committed to furthering the art of animation.
Job Description / Key Purpose
We are seeking a skilled Lighting TD to play a critical role in the final look and mood of our animated films. The successful candidate will combine artistic sensibility with technical expertise to light and composite shots, ensuring creative direction is met while maintaining technical quality and production continuity.
You will be responsible for taking shots from the initial lighting phase through to final delivery on schedule. This involves advanced technical troubleshooting, workflow optimization, and close collaboration with multiple departments.
Key Responsibilities / Job Duties
- Shot Execution: Artistically light and composite shots, establishing mood and look for animated sequences while maintaining continuity across an entire sequence.
- Technical Problem Solving: Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues, specifically addressing render noise, optimizing render times, and managing memory usage within a modern path-tracing renderer.
- Tool Development: Develop, maintain, and optimize tools, scripts, and workflows to automate tasks and improve efficiency specifically for the Lighting department.
- Workflow Integration: Collaborate closely with the Pipeline, Compositing, Look Development, and FX teams to ensure seamless integration of lighting tools and processes into the broader production pipeline.
- Rendering Optimization: Strategically manage and optimize render setups (e.g., utilizing render passes or AOV’s) to meet specific render budgets and minimize farm usage without compromising visual quality.
- Look Development Support: Work with Look Development and Surfacing Artists to ensure that shaders and assets are functionally correct and visually consistent within the established lighting and color pipeline requirements.
Job Requirements / Must Haves
- Experience: Previous high-end experience in a similar Lighting TD role within a professional production environment.
- Technical Lighting: Good working knowledge of sequence-based lighting methodologies.
- Software Knowledge: Strong knowledge of node-based lighting and compositing tools, specifically within the context of path-trace rendering.
- Artistic Foundation: Strong grasp of artistic principles, lighting techniques, and CG techniques.
- Pipeline Familiarity: Strong familiarity with feature animation pipelines and understanding of common pipeline issues.
- Demonstrable Skill: Proven, demonstrable experience in both shot lighting and compositing.
Additional Skills / Nice to Have
- Professional experience utilizing Katana, Renderman, and Nuke.
- A showreel that features relevant feature animation work.
About DNEG
DNEG is one of the world’s leading visual effects and animation companies, employing over 9,000 people across the globe. We fundamentally believe that embracing our differences is vital to our collective success and are committed to creating an equitable, diverse, and inclusive work environment. We welcome and encourage applications from all backgrounds and experiences.
