Lighting Artist Jobs : Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the world’s premier visual effects studio and an integral subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is seeking talented, driven, and highly skilled Lighting Technical Directors (Lighting TDs) at both Mid and Senior levels to join our state-of-the-art studio in Mumbai, India.
For over five decades, ILM has remained at the absolute forefront of cinematic innovation, pioneering groundbreaking visual effects for iconic blockbusters, immersive media, and virtual production. As a Lighting TD at ILM, you will play a crucial role in the final visual execution of our feature films. You will bridge the gap between technical rendering pipelines and pure cinematic artistry, translating the Director’s overarching creative vision into beautifully lit, photorealistic, and cohesive digital imagery.
Whether you are an established mid-level artist looking to scale your career with Hollywood’s biggest titles, or a veteran senior artist eager to architect complex sequences and mentor the next generation of digital talent, this role offers an unparalleled opportunity to make a lasting impact on global cinema.
Job Overview : Lighting Artist
| Metric / Parameter | Position Details & Specifics |
| Company Name | Industrial Light & Magic (Lucasfilm Visual Effects India Private Limited) |
| Official Job Title | Lighting Technical Director (Lighting TD) |
| Experience Levels Available | Mid-Level & Senior-Level |
| Location | Mumbai, India |
| Position Type | Full-Time |
| Primary Core Software | Katana, Maya, Houdini, RenderMan, Arnold, V-Ray, and Nuke |
| Operating System Environment | Linux (Python / Shell scripting is a strong asset) |
| Core Technical Focus | 3D direct & reflected lighting, scene assembly, volumetric lights, and photorealistic rendering for digital doubles (CG hair, fur, and scattering skin). |
| Key Responsibilities | End-to-end shot compilation, sequence-level setup adaptation, cross-department asset management, rendering optimization, dailies presentation, and artist mentorship (Senior level). |
Primary Responsibilities
1. Creative Lighting Design & Scene Execution
- Aesthetic Alignment: Design, implement, and fine-tune direct and reflected lighting setups, shadows, and environment moods for assigned shots, ensuring they precisely match the established art direction, color palette, and dramatic tone of the film.
- Sequence Management: Successfully navigate, interpret, and adapt previous sequence-level setups across at least a dozen concurrent shots. This includes inserting shot-specific overrides, balancing multiple high-resolution digital assets, and optimizing render passes.
- Volumetric Engineering: Manage complex volumetric light setups, including the development of advanced shadowing networks and cucoloris (gobo) patterns to add texture, depth, and cinematic realism to atmospheric environments.
- Character Look Optimization: Refine lighting parameters, material properties, and final renders for digital characters and digital doubles. This requires deep familiarity with handling computer-generated (CG) hair, fur, and subsurface scattering (SSS) skin materials to capture true photo-realism.
2. Technical Troubleshooting & Shot Completion
- Comp Compiling: Compile diverse, multi-layered digital elements into cohesive, digitally composited sequences, seeing individual shots entirely through from initial technical layout to final creative sign-off.
- Workflow Innovation: Proactively develop innovative technical solutions, script expressions, and optimization techniques that resolve complex render-heavy limitations without sacrificing the artistic intent of the VFX Supervisor.
- Pipeline Cleanliness: Maintain impeccably organized scene files, efficient render layers, and clean data pipelines to ensure minimal footprint on the local and global render farms.
3. Collaboration, Communication & Dailies Culture
- Agile Teamwork: Work with energy, exceptional competency, and enthusiasm within a highly collaborative team environment, adapting quickly to daily creative supervision and pipeline updates.
- Constructive Communication: Demonstrate superb active listening and communication skills. Receive creative direction, technical criticism, and supervisor notes openly and without ego. Ask targeted, clarifying questions to ensure an exact understanding of immediate objectives.
- Proactive Problem Escallation: Implement requested creative alterations immediately. If a technical bottleneck or render error is encountered, raise flags right away to prevent production bottlenecks, ensuring that Supervisors and Production coordinators are continuously kept in the loop regarding shot status.
- Dailies Excellence: Showcase strong presentation and communication skills during daily shot reviews (dailies). Briefly and articulately outline what has been technically accomplished, what challenges remain, and define the clear next steps for the shot or sequence.
4. Leadership & Mentorship (Senior Level Expectations)
- Artistic Foresight: Continually develop and refine an exceptional artistic eye capable of anticipating potential visual defects, grain mismatches, or compositing artifacts before they hit the supervisor’s desk.
- Time & Task Architecture: Prioritize daily and weekly tasks efficiently, managing your time with precision while providing production leads with accurate, realistic time estimates for task completion.
- Knowledge Sharing: Serve as a dedicated mentor to junior and mid-level digital artists, guiding them through complex lighting setups, troubleshooting render issues, and accelerating their technical growth within ILM’s proprietary global pipeline.
Core Skills & Technical Competencies
What We are Looking For:
- High-End VFX Foundation: A proven track record of working within an international, high-pressure visual effects pipeline. Candidates must have credits on major live-action feature films or high-end episodic series.
- Lighting Toolkits: Production-proven proficiency with standard industry lighting and rendering applications. Strong familiarity with tools such as Katana, Maya, Houdini, RenderMan, Arnold, or V-Ray is highly advantageous.
- Compositing Knowledge: A solid technical understanding of digital compositing principles within Nuke, enabling you to pre-composite your own lighting layers and analyze your renders against the live-action plate effectively.
- Linux Environment: A strong comfort level operating natively within a Linux OS environment. Basic knowledge of Python or shell scripting for workflow automation is considered a significant plus.
- Anatomy of Light: A profound conceptual understanding of real-world physical lighting behaviors, photography, lens properties, and how light interacts with varied real-world materials (metals, fabrics, skin, atmospheres).
- Resilience & Adaptability: The ability to remain highly focused and deliver premium, high-quality visual outputs under tight, unyielding production deadlines.
Education & Experience Requirements
Education: A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Graphics, Animation, Fine Arts, Photography, or a related discipline—or equivalent, demonstrable studio experience.
Mid-Level Track: Typically requires a minimum of 3 to 5 years of hands-on production experience as a Lighting TD within a premier visual effects facility.
Senior-Level Track: Typically requires 6+ years of high-end feature film production experience, with a documented history of sequence ownership, complex problem solving, and leading/mentoring smaller teams of artists.
About Industrial Light & Magic
Founded in 1975 by George Lucas, ILM is the leading effects facility in the world, serving the motion picture, commercial production, and attraction industries. ILM has created visual effects for over 325 feature films and has played a key role in seven of the top 10 worldwide box-office hits of all time and has contributed to 25 of the top 50. ILM has set the standard for visual effects, creating some of the most stunning images in the history of film. At the forefront of the digital revolution, the company continues to break new ground in visual effects, VR, AR, and Immersive Cinema.
About The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family.
Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.
Note: This position is with Lucasfilm Visual Effects (India) Private Limited, operating under the global business brand of Industrial Light & Magic. ILM is an equal opportunity employer.
